By Annie Riley
Assistant News Editor
Father Kenan Osborne, O.F.M., will be this year’s guest speaker of the annual Brady Lecture. Osborne’s lecture, “Our Relational World Today,” will be at 4:30 p.m., Feb. 12, in the University Chapel.
The lecture will discuss St. Bonaventure’s relatable understanding of the Christian God, drawn in large measure from the Eastern Fathers of the Church, according to the lecture flyer.
This is 10th annual Ignatius Brady, O.F.M., Lecture. It was established in conjunction with a major endowment gift given to the Franciscan Institute in 2002 by the Franciscan Friars. Brother Ed Coughlin, O.F.M., vice president for the Franciscan mission, said this is his first time scheduling the annual lecture.
“Father Kenan Osborne has had a distinguished career as a Franciscan friar. He challenges others to think in a different perspective,” Brother Coughlin said. “He talks of St. Bonaventure’s knowledge of the trinity of father, son, and holy spirit. He gives a relational view of nature of God as a model for all human relationships.”
In 2010, Father Kenan wrote about the Trinitarian God, who made all things in relationship with one another, ideas he had learned from a lifetime of studying the great Franciscan theologians Bonaventure and Scotus in his book, “A Theology of Church for the Third Millennium: A Franciscan Approach.”
“I think a Franciscan approach is extremely valuable today for all college students who are also focusing on their religion, their church, their belief in God,” Father Kenan said.
Father Kenan has been a university professor for 48 years at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., he said. He has tried to assist students from many cultures to understand the relational world we live in and how the gospels and the Church can help us find ways that in their future careers will bring meaning not only to their lives but also to the students they will teach and the people they will encounter.
“Today, our world is tightly knit together and we are inter-relationally affected by others,” Father Kenan said. “Our church needs to be open to these new developments, and St. Bonaventure’s view of God, Scotus’ view of salvation, Francis’ view of ‘Brother Sun and Sister Moon,’ and St. Clare’s view of the Holy Spirit help us, who are Franciscan is some way or another, to live today in a relational world and in a relational church.”
