Ilia Delio, OSF

The simplest way to describe God’s poverty and humility is in terms of love. Love gives itself away—this is God’s poverty. Love turns toward the other so it can give itself to the other—this is God’s humility. In the Incarnation, God turns toward us through the Son/Word and gives himself to us as love.… The God whom Francis discovered is a God who shows himself to us in poor and humble fragile human flesh. This is a God who loves us so much as to be reckless in love; a God who throws it all away out of love and never tires of loving.

Francis of Assisi grasped something of the mystery of God and, in a particular way, the mystery of God’s humility. Although he was simple and not well educated, he had an insight into God that I can only say was profound. Francis did not study theology. He did not try to figure out what God is through reason. He simply spent long hours in prayer, often in caves, mountains or places of solitude, places where he could distance himself from the busy everyday world.

Too often our prayers are projections of our own needs and desires and we give God little room to enter into the conversation. Talking all the time to God without ever listening is like a phone conversation with constant static; it is deafening to God. Silence is a language God can speak without being constantly interrupted because God is a mystery of incomprehensible love, and love speaks for itself.

Did you ever have one of those days where the whole idea of God was just too much to think about? As if trying to “get a handle” on God was like trying to kiss the moon? If the mystics are right (and usually they are because they see things much differently than we do) then you were probably closer that day to God than any other day in your life. How is this possible, you ask? How can God be close to you (or you to God) when God seems so far away or not at all? Even better, how can God be close to you when you are totally confused? This is my answer to you: God is a mystery of humble love.

Francis went about the world following the footprints of Christ, not so he could look like Christ, but because they were the footprints of divine humility. He discovered that God descends in love to meet us where we are and he found God in the most unexpected forms: the disfigured flesh of a leper, the complaints of a brother, the radiance of the sun, in short, the cloister of the universe. The wisdom of Francis makes us realize that God loves us in our incomplete humanity even though we are always running away trying to rid ourselves of defects, wounds and brokenness.

Francis of Assisi wanted to be a “brother minor” so that he could humbly bend down in solidarity with all living creatures of the earth. We, too, are called to bend low in love, to find the humble love of God in the simple ordinary and oftentimes broken hearts of the world. To do so, however, we must be free to bend low in love. In Christ, God has set us free. It is up to us as Christians to live in the freedom of God’s humble love. Only by living in the freedom of love can we help transform the world into the fullness of Christ. It is possible.