The thirteenth century Franciscan, Bonaventure claims Christ is the ladder of spiritual ascent. How can the only begotten Son of God be a pattern for the saints through the ages? Christ is both without sin and divine in nature. How can we bridge the gap between us and Christ? Bonaventure often employs an updated metaphysic to the classic neoplatonic exitus/reditus: the return to God must only come through Christ. Throughout his corpus, Bonaventure utilizes a threefold metaphysic of returning to God with exemplarity as the metaphysical gate by which one returns to God: ortus—modus—fructus. This paper will seek the definition of the metaphysic through the Seraphic Doctor’s diverse terminology of such a triad (in Breviloquium: ortus—progresses—fructus; in On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology: eggresus—effectus—fructus; and in Itinerarium: origo—exemplar—finis). Upon reaching consensus of meaning for exemplarity, the metaphysic is applied as the means by which the saints may imitate Christ and climb Christ, the ladder of spiritual ascent.