'That I may love Thee alone and always thirst for Thy love… that nothing but sin may sadden my heart.' A short Franciscan prayer indulgenced by Pius IX in 1874 under Bonaventure's name.
Domine sancte, Pater omnipotens, aeterne Deus, propter tuam largitatem et Filii tui, qui pro me sustinuit passionem et mortem, et Matris eius excellentissimam sanctitatem, atque beati Francisci et omnium Sanctorum merita, concede mihi peccatori, et omni tuo beneficio indigno, ut te solum diligam, tuo amore semper sitiam, beneficium passionis continuo in corde habeam, meam miseriam recognoscam, et ab omnibus conculcari et contemni cupiam; nihil me contristet nisi culpa. Amen.
O holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God! through Thy liberality and that of Thy Son, who for me endured suffering and death, through the surpassing holiness of His Mother, and through the merits of blessed Francis and of all the saints, grant me, a sinner, undeserving of all Thy benefits, that I may love Thee alone and always thirst for Thy love; that I may constantly feel in my heart the benefit of Thy passion; that I may acknowledge my misery, and desire to be trampled upon and despised by all men; that nothing but sin may sadden my heart. Amen.
Daily; on 15 July, the saint's feast; in the Franciscan family.
The Raccolta prints this as the 'Prayer of St. Bonaventure', with the indulgence of one hundred days that Pius IX granted by a rescript in his own hand on 11 April 1874. The text opens the Stimulus Amoris, the Franciscan treatise that carried Bonaventure's name for six centuries and is now attributed to James of Milan; the prayer asks through the merits of 'blessed Francis' — the one clue in the text itself to its Franciscan home.
Its last petition is one of the most quoted lines of Franciscan spirituality: nihil me contristet nisi culpa — let nothing sadden me except sin. The English is the New Raccolta's of 1903.
One hundred days, once a day — Pius IX, rescript in his own hand, 11 April 1874 (New Raccolta, 1903).
