Search Results for: node – Page 615

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.

In exploring Francis as a mystic, we are reminded again to look upon Christ on the cross and know that despite what things look like from a human point of view, God is love, and everything we do and everything that happens to us takes place within God’s love—even to death upon a cross. Remaining in that love, no matter what befalls us, is to remain in God. The questions are not, “Why is this happening? How can God allow this? Why doesn’t, didn’t God prevent this?” but rather, “Can this separate me from the love of God?

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.