"Since imagination aids understanding, I have arranged in the form of an imaginary tree the few things I have collected among many [about the life, passion and glorification of Jesus]...About those fruits, which are twelve points of meditation on the live of Jesus, Bonaventure wrote to us with poetic language and spiritual insight.
.... Picture in your mind, a three whose roots are watered by an ever-flowing fountain that becomes a great and living river with four channels to water the garden of the entire Church. From the trunk of this tree, imagine that there are growing twelve branches that are adorned with leaves, flowers and fruit. Imagine that the leaves are a most effective medicine to prevent and cure every kind of sickness, because the word of the cross is the power of salvation to everyone who believe. Let the flowers be beautiful with the radiance of every color and perfumed with the sweetness of every fragrance, awakening and attracting the anxious hearts of men of desire. Imagine that the tree has twelve fruits...
Prologue: The Tree of Live, from The Classics of Western Spirituality, Paulist Press, 1978 (reprinted) p120 (emphasis from translator removed).
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