11 SEPTEMBER BLESSED BONAVENTURA. Prayer to be recited today

Michele Battista Gran, born in Riudomes (Spain) in 1620, remained a widower and had become a friar with the name of Bonaventure of Barcelona. It was in several Spanish convents, demonstrating a profound spirituality, cheerfully obeying, living a retreated and mortified life. Those who live next to him are witnesses of facts that are miraculous and which allow us to glimpse his closeness to God. He feels that the Lord wants from him a particular commitment to renew the Franciscan spirit with the institution of the "Retreats", a return to spirituality and to the Franciscan poverty of the origins. He goes to Rome and finds a suffering and needy humanity here. As a true son of St. Francis he helps everyone as he can and is renamed "the apostle of Rome". The Franciscan reform that is being implemented attracts the consensus of the ecclesiastical authorities and by Popes Alexander VII and Innocent XI himself, from whom pontifical approval comes to the statutes of his "Retreats". He died in San Bonaventura al Palatino in 1684. (Avvenire)

PRAYER

O Father, who in Blessed Bonaventura from Barcelona
you have given us a model of evangelical perfection,
grant us, through his intercession,
to grow in the knowledge of Christ
and to welcome and testify with life
the word of the Gospel.
For our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who is God,
and live and reign with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
for all ages.