Franciscan Spirituality

The meek are blessed precisely because they recognize their dependence on the generosity of God and creation.

Saints rejoice in their common humanity, knowing that God’s word becomes flesh in fallible and ambivalent persons like ourselves.

As Bonaventure writes, God is “totally submerged in the waters from the sole of the foot to the top of the head…. [God] appeared to you as your beloved cut through with wound upon wound in order to heal you.”

The first Franciscans believed that God was in the world, actively shaping human experience, and inspiring birds’ songs and wolves’ howls.

God feels the pain of an injured baby bird, fallen out of its nest, and the loneliness of a pet mourning the death of its human companion.