By Fr. Russel Murray, O.F.M.
Something wonderful happened to me on Aug. 19, 2019. I became a Bonnie.
That day I began my service as our university’s new vice president for Mission Integration and entered its 161-year-old history of education in the Franciscan Tradition — not that I was a stranger to that tradition. I have known “Bona’s” since I entered Holy Name Province in 1991 and was already immersed in the 800-year-old tradition in which Bona’s is rooted.
Still, this was a new moment for me and for Bona’s. Like the trees surrounding our beautiful campus, roots give us the strength to grow into the future. At Bona’s I was adding a new “ring” to my life as a Franciscan friar, at a moment when Bona’s was opening a new chapter in its life as a Franciscan university.
The university’s Mission Statement declares that, “St. Bonaventure is a Catholic university dedicated to educational excellence as informed by our Franciscan and liberal arts traditions.”
Among the many values that guided the life of our Franciscan patron, St. Bonaventure, we see these values as particularly important for our life right now — that we are a Franciscan community that nurtures compassion, seeks wisdom, and builds integrity. It is worth spending this Franciscan Minute reflecting on just what these values mean for us.
Community for Franciscans means more than a group of people occupying the same space, bundled together by happenstance and making the best of it.
It means that we are in a filial relationship — that we are children of God, bonded to one another as sisters and brothers. In a word, we belong to one another, working together for the true good of one another and of our world. This is what St. Francis meant when he named us as little sisters and brothers: not that we are of little worth, but that our mission is to raise up the worth of all people by being people of compassion.
Compassion is much more than pity. As the word itself says, compassion is to “suffer with” another — to become so sensitive to the people with whom we share life that their joys and sorrows, their concerns and anxieties echo within our hearts.
It is only as a people of compassion that we, like St. Francis, are fully able to share God’s unconditional love, particularly with those who live on the margins of society: the needy, the ignored and the excluded.
St. Bonaventure taught that there is no knowledge without love. Love is the key that unlocks the human heart, so that what we know may transform who we are, opening us to God’s gift of wisdom.
So, we are convinced that education at St. Bonaventure University must be personally transformative. It must be eminently practical, yes, but in the fullest sense of the term, i.e., learning not only concepts and skills, but also what it means to live humanly, deeply, and well in the world as a sister/brother.
Integrity is a watchword for our world today. Walking one’s talk, living the values one espouses is as needed now as it ever was.
For Franciscans, integrity also entails something more fundamental: growing fully into the human being that God has created and calls us to be. Therefore, to build a community of integrity means that our relationships should be based on respect for the dignity of others, realizing that the values we espouse mean little unless they are embodied in our personal and professional lives.
“What’s a Bonnie?” It is a question we hear often enough, especially at sporting events. Everyone knows what a Jayhawk is – or a Blue Devil or a Ram. So, what is a Bonnie? The answer is simple and direct, and all Bonnies learn it their first day on campus: “I am!” I am … a brother, a sister, a member of a Franciscan community that nurtures compassion, seeks wisdom and builds integrity.
What a joy it is – finally – to be a Bonnie with you!
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