Welcome to the Off the Page podcast from Franciscan Media, a podcast that will feature in-depth
conversations with Franciscan authors and artists. My name is Stephen Copeland and I'm
Franciscan Media's book editor. And our next guest on the podcast is a special one, someone
who probably needs no introduction, though I'm going to give you one anyway. I'm so
thrilled to welcome sister Elia Delio to Franciscan Media's Off the Page podcast. Elia Delio,
OSF, PhD, is a Franciscan sister and an American theologian specializing in the area of science
and religion. Her work often bridges evolution, physics, and neuroscience with Franciscan
theology. She currently holds the Josephine C. Connolly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova
University and also holds two honorary doctorates, one from St. Francis University in 2015 and
one from Sacred Heart University in 2020. The focus of this conversation are the themes
revolving around two books that were recently republished by Franciscan Media, Humility
of God, A Franciscan Perspective, which was released on June 4, 2024, and Franciscan
Prayer, Awakening to Oneness with God, which was re-released on July 2, 2024. Though she
wrote these books 20 years ago, I think you'll find that they are even more relevant today
and are absolutely foundational to the work she continues to do around Franciscan theology.
I personally think this is a really important conversation. In our world, God is so often
used and I think used as the right word there is almost an extension of the ego to judge
someone else or be right or at its worst, justify the pursuit of power. So Franciscan
theology has a lot to say about this because of its anchoring in the radical humility of
God, which reconnects us back to our own heart and the experience and story of the other.
So you'll find in this interview that Sister Elia invites us into this profound mystery
and to also be changed by it on an experiential and personal level. So it's one of the reasons
why she aptly says in our interview that Franciscan theology or at least a number of its themes
contribute to a theology of the future. I'm so thrilled to share this interview with you
and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. So without further ado, here is Sister Elia Delio.
All right. So I'd like to start out with humility of God, Sister Elia. Why is the book's message?
You wrote this book 20 years ago. Why is this book's message still important today?
Yeah, I think it may be more important today than it was even 20 years ago because we continue
to have sort of a God problem in so far as we can't find God in the world. And I think
our anxious searching for God has left, has resulted in all sorts of conflicts, personal,
collective conflicts. And I think we have over-emphasized God as a power that we need
to adhere to when we miss the fact that that power is already here. It's a power of love
as Francis himself recognized. So I go back to, as I do in the book, to this simplicity
of Francis of Assisi because I really think sometimes being educated is not an advantage.
We think we place a lot of emphasis on education and training the mind. And we have basically
done so to the detriment of the heart. And I think we are sort of heart deprived or heart
starved. We have no idea even really what the heart means. And I think that Francis,
you know, this very simple person was not kind of weighed down by over-intellectualism
and therefore could really live in the concrete simplicity of life where he met God. But he
was a very wise person. And so he recognized that presence of God within him as well as
without. And that's where I think Bonaventure, you know, in fact, I was just thinking about
this recently because Thomas Aquinas became the official theologian, you know, the Catholic
church. But Bonaventure was a contemporary of Aquinas. And I often wonder, you know,
why Bonaventure was sort of, he drifted out of the scene. You know, basically the church
acknowledges him, you know, has a nice special feast day on July 15th. But other than that,
his theology does not make any significant difference. And I think, you know, the thing
is Bonaventure developed his theology not on scholasticism alone, but on Francis of
Assisi. And I think that concrete example of Francis, especially after Bonaventure was
elected minister general, played a significant role in how he thought about God and God's
relationship to the world and what this means in terms of Jesus Christ. So I think we have
elements in this theological tradition that have yet to be fully mined. And that's why
I wrote the book.
Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned, you mentioned something I wanted to come back to how we may be heart
deprived today. What does the heart mean from a St. Francis of Assisi perspective? And perhaps
he wouldn't have used the philosophical language that Bonaventure used, but I sense the Franciscan
vision has something to offer us here.
Yes. Well, you know, and the heart did play a significant role even in Francis's own writings.
And he kind of gives us a glimpse in those writings, how he thinks about the heart. He
tells us it is the dwelling place of the spirit. And so that's actually right out of scripture.
You know, Paul says, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And so Francis recognizes,
yeah, you know, like we are the place where God dwells and that place is the heart. Certainly
he doesn't mean the physical pumping heart, but you know, we need that to keep going for
the heart. The heart is that deep seat of the interior place of the soul, the place
of the silence, the withinness that we all experience. It's deeply part of us, but it's
not subject to the, in other words, it's more than just the thinking portion of us. Now
from a physiological perspective, the heart really is the higher level of integration.
In other words, where we are taking what we know and what we feel and how we relate to
things and we integrate all that information in a higher center. And I think Francis had
that notion of a deep integration of how he felt, what he experienced and his faith in
God. And that for him is the place of the heart, which can get kind of messed up by
everything we get. We weigh the heart with our thoughts, our preoccupations, our anxieties,
our fears, you know, like Jesus said, we kind of store these things up in our, you know,
the heart is like the barn where we store everything and we store things up and we have
no place for the spirit to dwell. So the heart, and I take that heart as soul, you know, I
don't think those things are too far apart, those two words. It's the deep, deep center
of personhood that's opened up to the mystery of God. And that was preeminent for Francis
and Bonaventure.
Yeah. And that's a humble God, correct? A God that dwells within our heart, you know,
a spirit Francis talks about creating a space within ourselves for God to dwell. That's
a, that gets back to your book, correct? Like this is a, this is a humble trajectory by
the divine.
That's right, Steve. In other words, God is not, so Thomas Aquinas, you know, had this
notion that God has kind of an inner self and an outer self. And Thomas's God is like
happy to be within God's own life as being perfect being and freely decides to create.
But the Franciscan God begins not with being, but with goodness. So a self diffusiveness
of God, a God who is in the sense unstoppable in, in that highest good or love. And that
means that God will go to the ends of the earth, you know, will go to the lowest place,
whatever is left out of that, that goodness, God will go there to be there, God for us.
And that's the type of God that Bonaventure conveys to us, a God who bends low in love,
you know, and embraces us, lifts us up because God, not only is God good, but God desires
to share that good. And so the will of God is that, you know, love be shared and, and
reciprocated, as Francis said, the love of him who loved us is greatly to be loved. So
I think, you know, those two are entangled with each other. That was my little cat too.
So she's very insistent and that would be Francis, right? So, you know, intellectual
says I'm doing something very important here. I'm having this very important conversation
and I don't care about the cat. It's quick the door that Franciscan says, no, the cat
is at the door and wants to come in because the cat wants to be loved. So that's, so that,
that act of love is higher than the act of knowledge alone.
Only you could connect theology back to your cat wanting, wanting into the room.
True.
Yeah, it's, um, you mentioned a lot there. You mentioned this deep center and a, you
know, the God for Francis and Bonaventure that humbly bends low into our lives and dwells
within us. How did this vision differ from other, um, other Christian theology of that
day? Um, were they hitting on something that was maybe perhaps not new, but had been forgotten?
Yeah, I think, you know, I really, I see kind of to, to, let me just, you know, trace this
back to what Bonaventure, what it, you know, what inspires Bonaventure is not so much the
philosophical tradition per se, because he does rely on Aristotle and, and Plato just
in the same way that Thomas Aquinas did, but it's, um, the, the role of scripture, I think
plays a significant role. And, and this of course is very, you know, consonant with Francis's
evangelical life or gospel based life. And in scripture and Bonaventure tells us in the
itinerary on his soul's journey into God, yes, God is being, God is perfect being, eternal
being, you know, um, but he says, that's the name of God in the old Testament, you know,
the name of God that's revealed to Moses. I am who I am. But he says, um, God reveals
God's self in a new way in the New Testament. When Jesus is asked the question, you know,
Jesus says, no one is good, but God alone. Bonaventure takes that, um, that, that kind
of response of Jesus, no one is good, but God alone as the new name of God. So that's
what he's saying. Yes, God is being, but God is even, God is a type of being. So it's not
just what that God is being, but God is a certain type of being, a being that is diffusive
goodness. And therefore I think good is even higher than being for Bonaventure. And that's,
I think that goes right back to the pseudo Dionysius, you know, that, you know, if you
go up, if you try to really approach God into this, you go up, up, up, up for the Dionysius,
you know, and you go into the realm of silence and, you know, and you can't say because being
is diffusive, it's, you know, God is, is more than what we can, but it's not an unknowing.
And I think that's the difference between Thomas and Bonaventure. God is not unknowable.
God is overwhelming. That's, that's God is overwhelming goodness. And that's what Francis
experiences in creation, the overwhelming good. So Francis experiences that and discusses
it in using superlatives. You're most high, all good, supreme good, totally good. Not
just like you're good, you know, as, as Thomas, you know, claim is where the Thomas would
say, you know, God is good. No, God is most good. And that's, that's a huge difference
actually between a Franciscan, Franciscan theology and to mystic theology, not the unknowable
God, the overwhelmingly of God.
Yeah. And if being is self diffusive, like you mentioned, as Bonaventure says, now that,
that invites us into a God who is not only being like object, but who is becoming correct.
Am I reading that interpreting that correctly or
He could. So Bonaventure was a medievalist, right? So he always wrote within the, you
know, the boundaries of his own age. And, you know, he will say, um, as he does that
God is immutable, but there's, you know, he, you can see there's a tension in his writings,
quite honestly, if you look closely. So he's like, well, I really can't go outside these
boundaries. You know, they're not going to let me teach anymore. So he stays, you know,
within the language of scholasticism, but he says for us, for example, in the itinerarium,
goodness is both necessary and free. So in other words, there's a necessity in God in
Bonaventure. It's a dialectic God freely creates, but God is the highest good in God in a sense
has to share that goodness. A goodness can contain, it can't stay within itself. Like
Thomas's God is like, yeah, I can, you know, I can be perfectly at home. I don't need you
guys, you know, I don't need creation. Like, uh, yeah, I just think it's a nice idea. I
think I'll make creation and, you know, and, you know, have a good time there, but Bonaventure
is like, this is unstoppable goodness. This is like, so in that sense, that place of necessity
of the good to diffuse itself, not just free, but it has to love has to, in a sense, go
out of itself. That's what love does. Love that stays inward looking, right? It's selfish
love. And God is not selfish. God is completely communicative. Of course, we wouldn't even
be able to say the name of God if God wasn't communicative. All of this to say this does
lend itself away from kind of this, uh, God world relationship was it, which is engineered
as a providential relationship to a process type of relationship. God is deeply related
to the world and the world is deeply related to God. And, you know, again, I think they
would have to be a much stronger case. And I want to tell you here, but you know, Bonaventure
sees that God is completely revealed in Jesus Christ, right? So it's very Christo centric.
And this is where I see a resonance between Bonaventure and Teilhard de Jardin. And Teilhard
would say, um, God becomes something new in Christ. And I think you can read that into
Bonaventure as well. Like, like God doesn't, God is even more God precisely in and with
the human person than apart from the human person or creation. And so the way to read,
process theology into back into Bonaventure's humility of God. Sounds like a perfect problem
for you to address. Of course, of course, you know, never getting bored. That's for
sure. Yeah. Well, I was wondering that leads to my next question. Um, like you wrote humility
of God 20 years ago. Um, but I was wondering how the themes from this book apply today
to your work in science or perhaps your scholarship on Teilhard de Jardin. Um, you know, are there
certain themes here that are still playing out in your work? Absolutely. In fact, um,
my work actually can be traced back to Bonaventure's humility of God, quite honestly. It's a God
who doesn't stay within God's self. It goes out of God's self. And of course, the culmination
of that divine love is, I sense, um, you know, shown in, in the Christ. And, um, that kind
of theology, first of all, John Templeton, the Templeton Foundation spoke about the need
for the humility of God. So, you know, there's a way that science, you know, John Templeton
himself saw the humility of God as the route science would benefit by, you know, um, in
the kind of the move towards renewing a dialogue between science and religion. Teilhard de
Jardin, really, he never used the term humility of God because he didn't know Bonaventure,
but it's there. It's implicit in his work. It's a God who's deeply, who bends low and
is deeply involved and cares for it. This is a God of care and compassion and a God
who's entwined. You can't be compassionate and be apathetic at the same time. You can't
be compassionate at a distance. To be compassionate is to be engaged in the suffering of another.
You know, and I think that's the kind of God Bonaventure holds out for us. Teilhard builds
on. So a lot of Bonaventure's theology is kind of brought into my own thinking and then
trying to be updated now in light of what science is telling us and, you know, and where
we're going, even with artificial intelligence. But I think the key of, you know, what is
similar, both in the humility of God book and in Teilhard is the Christocentrism or
the, not in a narrow sense, like we all have to be Christian or Catholic, but in the widest
sense that God, divine love is incarnate throughout all of creation and is recapitulated in the
human person. And therefore it gives a form to the universe, as Teilhard would say. We
are created for something. There's something taking place in creation. And in the Pauline
sense, it's the body of Christ or the peroma, the fullness of Christ. So there is a deep
resonance to all this to say between Bonaventure and Teilhard and where I were to write the
book all over again, I would probably include pretty much all the same themes and maybe
tack on another five chapters.
Five chapters about Teilhard?
Probably.
You mentioned something there, Sister Ilya. I was wondering how the Franciscan interpretation,
the Franciscan experiential approach to the incarnation, how that really helps to capture,
if I'm not sure if I'm saying the wrong word, but it invites us to contemplate the radical
humility of a God that bends low.
Yeah. Now that's a great question. And there is a significant difference again, I think,
between Franciscan theology and mystic theology. Thomas, of course, acknowledged the role of
the fallenness of creation and following St. Anselm. If Adam had not sinned, Christ would
not come. So yay to sin because we got a good out of it. We got the Christ. Bonaventure
holds sort of a via media place in between because he's a scholastic. And he does in
his Bribiloquium, in his centus commentary, he acknowledges original sin. But then you
go back to how he's conceiving God, the Trinity, the triune God in relation to creation. And
as Zachary Hayes pointed out a number of years ago, it's really not sin, but the excess love
and mercy of God, for Bonaventure, that's the reason for the incarnation. And so again,
it's not explicit. Like he's not in your face, like this is it folks. But Don Scodas comes
along and says, yeah, let me tell you another way to look at this thing. So, you know, and
Scodas is really like, well, God is love, you know, and that's kind of interesting.
He's coming at it from a more, a different, a little bit slightly different philosophical
position, but very complimentary to Bonaventure. God is love. And love is never going to do
anything for a defect. Like, you know, like, oh my gosh, there's this big hole in creation.
I've got to repair, you know. So it's like, why would the highest love, you know, just
be shown to us out of a defect in creation? Or, you know, as Bill Short, brother Bill
Short always says, why build the Taj Mahal to cover a pot hole? You know, which why do
something so like incredible for this? So the statistic notion of the primacy of Christ,
that whether or not sin ever existed, Christ would have come is really based on the absolute
love of God or Bonaventure and says the absolute self-diffusion of God's goodness. Right. And
so, so the universe is made for something from the beginning and it's made for love,
quite honestly. And Teilhard picks that up right away. Teilhard actually discovered,
on Scodus rather late in life from a Franciscan, Fr. Allegra, I think a conventional Franciscan,
Sicilian at that. And he said, that's it. That's the theology of the future. But the
difference is Scodus saw Christ as the blueprint of creation. That's what we're made for. And
creation, and Teilhard saw Christ as the goal of creation. They're very, they're complimentary,
but just because Teilhard's thinking in terms of evolution. So all of this to say that the
Franciscan reason for the incarnation is distinctly different from Thomas Aquinas. And again,
it's not being based on fallenness or being or original sin. It's simply based on love.
You know, it's original love as Matthew Fox might have said, original blessing, you know,
and what would our world look like if we actually had a church based on original love? Honestly,
because we're very Thomistic, we're a very self-focused group on sin and fallenness and
everything is due to the weakness of human nature and fallen human nature. And I'm like,
wow, how do we ever get this far? We're so depraved, you know, and we need God to save
us. And I'm like, oh gosh, you know, and I think God just simply wants to be loved. And
like we do well to love God and return because we're more together in God than without God.
So yeah, we keep coming back to Bonaventure and I know Bonaventure is a huge, huge part
of this book. He's probably on every page. Weird question. If you could ask St. Bonaventure
anything today, what would it be? What do you think you would ask him?
Well, that's an interesting question. I don't know because I would have said, how would
you have finished your final collations on the six days of creation? Because he, his
thought in my view, really culminated in the set of lectures and he died, you know, you
know, there's nothing worth dying in the middle of a book, so to speak. So he set out something
and here's what's so fascinating in that first collation on six days of creation. His thought
really matured to the fact that Christ, you know, Christ is metaphysical. He put Christ
at the center of metaphysics or being. And that's just like, no one has really, really
figured that one out at all. Like, what does that mean? And, you know, basically he's saying
that love is the basis and the root reality, I think, of all that exists and that it is
personal and singular. And so anyway, his metaphysics of being and his way of knowledge,
epistemology are the same. To put this, you know, a lot of big words here. All this to
say is love goes further than knowledge. Again, in the West, we're too focused. Think of artificial
intelligence. We're so fearful. We're going to bring download our brains, lose our brains,
computers are going to take over our brains. And I'm like, yeah, that, that could be. In
fact, that may not be the worst thing in my view, but computers will not take over the
capacity to love beyond measure. In other words, love, the will is higher than the mind
for Bonaventure, I think, you know, and that's what his, I think that metaphysics of Christ
is centered is pointing in that direction. That love goes further than knowledge. That
wisdom is a higher knowledge, as Augustine tells us. And we, we simply never got that
into our bloodstream, certainly in the West. I think actually, and I say the West because
I think, I think Eastern religions have their own version of love that's actually more,
more attuned to modern science and a healthier view of humans and ecology on the whole, but
the West, we're just fixated on knowledge and perfection of knowledge and the mind and,
you know, how many degrees you have and where you went to school and how many things you've
made, how many books you've written and, and who cares, you know, because really what moves
us is like Mother Teresa feeding the poor or Dorothy Stang, you know, like, you know,
defending the people of the Amazon. We are much more moved by people who love than by
people who know.
Yeah. Which goes back to the heart where we started.
Back to the heart. And so that's, so I'd like to know how Bonaventure would have finished
those lectures, developing it into a whole history, like Yohakim of Fiore's idea of his,
this is what history is about. See unfolding of God, you know, the whole Trinity thing.
Yeah. But before I switch gears and move on to the other book that you wrote 20 years
ago, Franciscan prayer, do you have any other comments on the humility of God or anything
we may have left out or anything you wanted to hit on?
No, it's just that honestly, I don't hear it talked about. I don't hear it preached.
I go to a Franciscan parish. I'd like to have Franciscans start preaching on their own theology
instead of borrowing Thomas Aquinas all the time or just some random contemporary writer.
I'm saying that we have, we have, you know, elements in this tradition that need to be
brought out because people are desperately looking for the very things we already have.
We have the treasure within, right? And we're not mining this treasure. And we need, we
need more scholars. Quite honestly, we don't have enough Franciscan scholars or people
who can tap into this tradition and really bring it out. Like, like the Jesuits have
done for Thomas Aquinas that have to skip it to them. They really have mined Thomas
for the modern age, but we haven't done so. And for some reason we keep, we keep this
tradition very medieval and it doesn't have to be locked into its medieval constraints.
It's a medieval tradition that has a lot of modern implications. That's what I'm trying
to do now, but we need other people on board here and we need to start understanding what
the humility of God means for us today in a world of AI, in a world of science, in a
world of cultural and societal polarities and oppositions. What does that humility, a
humble God mean when you have political differences, when you have interracial marriages, when
you have transgender and non-binary gender and you know, whatever persons are, how do
we, how do we love in the midst of differences? Because love is our binding force and differences
are overcome by love. But honestly.
Yeah. Could you answer your own question there? Like, what does the humility of God have to
say to us today? As you mentioned these different, yeah.
Really simple. Stop judging. Stop having your big ideas of what people should be and really
meet the concrete person in a concrete way. Like look at them eye to eye, maybe touch
them once in a while. Even if you're going to do it virtually, make sure you're looking
them in the eye. See how they smile. See what their face is like. All of this is where God
is being radiated as the humility of God. And so, you know, we are, we tend to be, our
minds are elsewhere. They're roaming around the earth thinking about our meetings and
what we have to do. And we're so disembodied and humility of God is about embodiment. Maybe
that's a very concise way to say it. A God who takes on a body, the love of God in an
embodied way. That's all we're saying.
I love that.
You're trying to find your body again.
Yeah. Yeah. Which is so, you know, that, that really goes back to St. Francis, right? Who's
so concrete and experiential and every being he encounters, he's reading it in a way where
it's speaking something to him about this God who loves him.
Right. It's all about embodiment. So the humility of God and embodiment are actually, they're
like a double helix. You can't separate them. That's why it's incarnational. Right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. We, before I, before I hit record sister, Elia, you were telling me about how you were
using Franciscan prayer and got it right here. You said you were recently using this book
for something else that you were working on. And I was just curious how the themes you
wrote about 20 years ago in this book still apply to your work today and how they continue
to evolve within you.
Yeah. So again, you know, coming out of the example of, and the life of Francis of Assisi,
I think one of the lines that has always stayed with me is something that Thomas of Trellano
wrote in his first life where he said, Francis did not so much pray as he himself became
living prayer.
And I think that's a really, really important line for us because today we live in this
world of methods, you know, like, like what method should I use to get close to God? You
know, and it's like, well, I'll try centering prayer. I'm going to do meditation. I'm going
to do yoga. So we're always kind of focused on the steps of the method, you know, and
making sure we get the method right. And did I achieve what the aims of the method? And
it's like, Francis did none of that. And it really goes back to again, a very simple,
I think Francis being a very simple person, you know, took that kind of maxim from Jesus
where your, where your heart is there, your treasure lies, where your mind is there, your
treasure lies. And I think he made his every effort to focus his mind, you know, on the
love of God. And that's as simple as it gets. It's about mind focusing. And that is what
meditation and centering prayer are about. It's just that he disciplined himself. So
it's not just centering your mind. It prayer requires a reordering of our lives. You know,
to be a living prayer is not something you can kind of, you know, do. It's what you are.
So you have to, you have to reorder what you are kind of restructure your priorities, you
know, um, you know, how do you govern what goes into your head and what comes out of
your head, you know, like what we're thinking about, um, the choices we make. So, uh, I
think prayer again is so fundamental. So the prayer and the humility of God actually go
hand in hand. I wrote them as two books, but they really could have been written as one
book, um, because Bonaventure himself in the soul's journey to God, you know, really begins
on that level of creation, but it's about a prayerful journey into God that ends on
the level of the crucified Christ. So, um, many people ask me, so what do you do? Like,
how do you pray? And especially because I write about evolution and technology and stuff.
I don't do that much, quite honestly. You don't have to do, you have to be. So it's
not about doing, it's about being. And that's hard for us to get our head around. Like,
what does that mean? You know, being and just becoming aware of your own, you know, your
own, um, existence in relation to what draws that existence to more life, which is God.
So yeah, what would you say that being was for someone like St. Francis or St. Bonaventure
or St. Claire for that matter, or even a SCOTUS like what would, what was being, what does
that mean to be, um, particularly as it pertains to prayer?
Yeah, I don't, you know, I think, uh, sometimes we overly romanticize Francis and Claire quite
honestly, as if, you know, they just kind of woke up and had, had this ecstatic, you
know, uh, vision of God or something, but I think you had to really work hard at it.
You know, I mean, when you read Francis, you get the sense that this little Italian guy
got really annoyed with people. He really didn't like lepers. He had his likes and dislikes
and he really had to train himself. So what I, you know, what I see in Francis and Claire
is a strong will. They were, they were very strong willed and they really set their minds
on loving God on this gospel way of life, following the footprints of Christ. And that's
what they were going to do no matter what, you know, and their minds weren't distracted
by Facebook and social media and television and you know, everything else they, they had,
um, and whatever distractions came into their life, they, they made sure they got them out
of their lives. So I think Francis, you know, again, we see in the biographies, he struggled
with, um, his body, you know, his sexual desires, um, probably his love for Claire, you know,
was that just the platonic love? And I'm sure she had the same thing. I mean, um, they were
real people and they had, um, you know, real desires and that's the good. And so prayer
is what helped them kind of come back. Well, what am I about? Like, what do I really, really
want? And it's about desire. So prayer is fundamentally about desire. And that's what
I see both in Francis and in Claire. Um, Claire's letters to Agnes Soprano, you know, really
are about what do you desire Agnes, you know, um, you know, set your gaze, set your heart
on this love of God, you know, shown to us in this cross. Um, and, and that's what I
find today is Francis can prayer can help, um, we situate, um, we, we, how would I say,
reorganize ourselves, kind of retune our GPS signals, you know, because our desires are
all over the place. It's like, I want to be famous. I want, you know, I want people to
love me. I want a million dollars. I want, you know, and I just want everything. And
they're like, well, maybe just try one thing, God, and then everything else from there,
we'll find its own, you know, order. And that's what Francis can prayer is about. It's about
ordering the desires based on our, what is our deepest desire? Yeah. Yeah. I had that
question written down actually, like how do desire and prayer go together? Um, yeah.
I think desire actually needs much more attention than what our minds are doing. I'd like to
shift our modern attention away from what we know to what we desire. Uh, and I think,
uh, cause desire, it from there flows everything else, you know, and I think our, our postmodern
world is because everything now is accessible and readily visible. We want it all. And that's
why we have, uh, we have a dissolution effects dispersion of desires and we can't find ourselves.
We can't, we're kind of lost. We're all over the place. We can't really figure out who
God is. We have all these culture wars and you know, political wars and, um, we want
to be gods and all this kind of stuff. It's a mass, you know, if, if desire gets flattened
out or dispersed all over the place, the rest of us is going to be really a mass. And I
think, um, I think we can learn from Francis and Claire, what it means to reset the button
of desire. Like, um, one of the lines from Francis that always spoke to me is when he
opens the gospel, you know, it's shortly after he experiences this God in his life and has
this conversion experience, he goes into the church and he opens the gospel and they read,
you know, if you wish to be perfect, go sell what you own, et cetera. He said, this is
what I want with my whole heart. This is what I want with my whole heart. And that's our,
that's our question. Can we say this is what I want with my whole heart? Like everything
about me will be devoted and focused to this. And the question is, what is this? That's
our question. What is the this of our lives? Is it God? Is it my family? Is it God family?
Is it God family job? Is it God family job? And the Yankees winning? Is it God family
job and the Knicks winning? You know, um, what is it? What's the this of our lives?
And once we get to that, the this of that, we'll be able to know that which is most important
for us. So it's not that these are exclusions is that they're ordered. The business of our
lives orders everything else.
Yeah. How do you, um, like what does it look like today to quote, reset the button of desire?
Um, and as you said, get back to thisness and then also answer the question of what
this actually is, because I can, you know, sometimes I think that this is something,
but it's actually, it's all ego, you know, and that desire is coming from maybe not a
bad place, but it's coming from a place that it's not the deepest desire. It's not this.
So what would you have to say about that?
Yeah, no, I think, well, I think a few things. One is that we definitely need to slow down,
you know, we're way, I mean, this is no great insight here. Everyone's talking about it
today. We need to run the treadmill, you know, in the left lane on the speedway, going
to the same red light that, you know, the person driving 20 miles an hour is going to,
um, we need to slow down and we need to unplug. I mean, we are bombard, we just live in this
information mill use. So we're constantly being bombarded by information. And, um, I
think we're losing us the sense of self, the self of the self or the God self, or that
deep, the sense of who we are, where that button of desire really is that that place
of the heart. So that would be number one, slowing down, unplugging, and just being attentive
to that place of the heart within. Um, the second is what are we willing to sacrifice
for that which we desire? So we don't do well on sacrifice, you know, because we live in
the age of greed and need, it's like, um, if I want it, I'm going to have it, you know,
and we want it all. And of course we never have it all. So we're always living in the
anxiety of never having enough. But if I say, for example, um, I want to love in a way that
makes God visible and real in our lives, you know, say that's my desire, or maybe that's
too lofty. So you say, well, I want to really help another person, you know, without any
recompense. I don't want any reward. I really just want to help another person be human.
And well, what are we willing to sacrifice? You know, on a very common level, that could
be anything from like the poor person on the corner asking for money to, you know, the
person trying to cross the street in a wheelchair. Um, you know, and those are simple ways we
can help people, but like, how much are we willing to go the extra mile, say for forgiveness?
Many people in our age, you know, lots of disputes and oppositions. I mean, people are
telling me now because of the politics in our country, you know, we have pro Trump,
anti Trump and families can get together anymore because they can't talk civilly. And I'm,
and they're, and they're Catholic. I'm like, wow, okay, that's a problem. So what do we
really want? Do we have to be right all the time? Do we have to actually justify our,
our opinions, our judgments? Can we let them go? Can we really meet one another on a different
level? So sacrifice can take on a whole different, you know, all sorts of forms. And I think,
you know, one of the highest things is that we are certainly not willing to sacrifice
our comfort and our securities for the sake of the larger earth, for the sake of the poor,
to be inclusive, to be in a sense in solidarity with all creatures. So, so, um, setting our
desires is a huge, a huge step for us, you know, going from that, which I experienced
most within me, what I really want to what I'm willing to sacrifice, you know, to, to
in a sense, perfect that desire. And then in the end, what am I willing to spend in
my own life? Like, am I willing to give my own life for the sake of another, um, or what
Francis would say his desire for martyrdom. And that just seems like that's really wacky
for our American culture, right? That's like, okay, that's enough. Um, and yeah, we're all
going to die, right? That, I mean, that's just the fact of life. That's just part of
life. The question is not that we're going to die. Is that what are we willing to die
for? You know, and I think that's all part of our desire question. Yeah. And is this,
um, is this one of the connections between the two books as well, where you talk about
sacrifice? Um, and you know, I was, I was talking to someone about this the other day,
that like, I think it's one of the reasons I love to coach is that, you know, it, it's
hard, it's tough, but you're just giving and you're just loving young people and you're
trying to help them, you know, and you're using sport as an avenue to help them develop
mental and emotional strategies. And there's this sacrifice, this giving that when it comes
to the Franciscan vision of who God is, like the Bonaventure, you know, vision of like
this fountain fullness, this kenosis, the self-giving self-diffusiveness, something
that is like flowing perpetually from the core of reality itself. It's like in a very
real way, it's almost as if I'm aligning myself with the trajectory of the universe, you know,
like, is there, am I reading, like, is that an okay bridge between the two books or what
would you add to that? Yeah, no, I do think I think so. The self-diffusive God is what
prayer should lead us into, you know, for one thing. I mean, becoming that living prayer
is then not just simply praying, but in a sense, allowing that to self-diffusive goodness
of God to be diffused in my own life. Right. And so in a sense, we become what we love,
basically. And therefore the humility of God becomes the root reality of my life as I begin
to live that reality, which is the living prayer. And so it's a constant deepening in
that reality that I'm no longer praying. I'm actually indwelling. I'm indwelling the humility
of God, who then, you know, in a sense, the problem today is not God, it's us, you know,
the self-diffusive goodness of God, the love of God is what keeps this creation, I think,
you know, in a unified way, moving towards something more. But it's we who hold back,
right? To use Francis's language, hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, but
give yourself totally to him who has given himself totally to you. And, you know, that
sounds very poetic and very spiritual, but that's our, that's our challenge. You know,
we do hold back, you know, and like you say, even coaching a team, you know, it's hard
because it means going out, going out of yourself, right? You know, sometimes to bring those
players in who are really not getting it, or they're not understanding the plays, or
they're just messing up because they're too preoccupied on their phones or something,
you know, and calling them into a team, calling them into a unity because there's something
to achieve together. And that's why the humility of God in terms of our own lives, it's not
just about us. That love itself is unitive. It's being called into a, into a bigger reality,
into a teamwork. Like the universe is really seeking to form the best team possible for
the greatest celebration of play. And, you know, we remain very individual. Like I really
don't want to get involved in that game too much, or, you know, this is going to cost
me. Like I don't want to spend that much time practicing and, you know, in that type thing
and same thing. Practice for winning is practice for living. You know, it's the same idea.
And it's about prayer or deepening that presence of God within us. And then it's about living
in that humility of God or the self-diffusive love that's already within us. We have it
within us. It's not that we have to go finding it. It's here. The problem is us. We keep
closed doors and shut windows to that humble love of God within us.
And I've noticed, I've noticed that in my own life where it's, there's something very
uncomfortable about confronting the reality that God humbly enters in time and time again,
because that means that I, if I am to live into the fullness of my own being, I have
to enter in as well. Even places that perhaps I don't want to go. Um, people, people that
you disagree with people, you know, the, the list of things you mentioned earlier, but
it's like God enters in God bends low. Um, is there that God is there. And I think, you
know, I think the unreconciled God or the unloved God is not a God you really want to
know. Right. It's like, if you're not loved, what do you do? You kind of act out, right.
And you kind of go seeking that love by doing crazy things. And sometimes I think, you know,
I think the destruction of our world can be the unloved God, you know, it's like, look,
you're not, you're not being attentive, you know, to what, where I am already within you.
And so Francis says the love of him who loved us is great to be loved. Well, nice and pious.
It's like, um, he kind of got it. Like if we don't love God, we do bear the consequences
of an unloved divinity. And that's really not pretty at all, you know? Um, and this
would be my modern, you know, um, interpretation here. And I'm going to admit that I'm throwing
in a little bit of Carl Jung into Franciscan spirituality. That doesn't, that doesn't sound
like you, Sister Ilya. But, you know, um, I'm just so amazed how we are our own obstacles
to the very world we desire. And that's, that's our problem. And Francis in his own simple way,
he understood that his admonitions clearly point in that direction. You know, we're the problem.
God is not the problem. Bonaventure too. God is, God, the whole point of the diffusive and humble
God is the whole creation is as Francis recognized at the end, it's filled with God. It's pregnant
with God to use, um, Angela Foligno's phrase. So creation's not the problem. Nature is not the
problem. Little animals are not the problem. We humans, we're the big problem, you know,
and we have a choice to make. We have to not just know, we have to really will to love.
That's our, that's our challenge in modern age. Yeah. Yeah. Last question about Franciscan prayer.
Um, what, what would you say would be, you've mentioned a couple of things, but what would you
say if you were, this is probably too, too open, but most people don't put Franciscan in prayer
together. And I think you mentioned this in your introduction, you know, where a student came up
to you and she was like Franciscan prayer. Like, what does that, what does that mean exactly?
What is, what would you say is like the Franciscan traditions, unique contribution
to something as expansive as prayer and perhaps in particular, something that we're missing
today? Yeah, I think, you know, I think Clara Vassisi really gave us a nice segue into that
question because she was brought up in the monastic tradition, you know, she lived under the Benedictine
rule and therefore Alexio Divina was very familiar to her, right? Where you take the scriptures and
you read the passage and then you reflect on the passage and then you keep meditating on it until
it leads you to a deeper sense of God. And I think Francis, Francis had nothing like that. He
opened the book, he said, yep, that's it, that's what I want. And then what did he do? He went out
and he made an effort to focus his heart on that which he had experienced. So it's about,
it's about meeting God in the concrete other, which Clara puts that in the first line,
gaze upon him, gaze, see. Seeing is everything here. So it's not about reflection, it's about
seeing. That's our first step to prayer. It's seeing in the most, you know, seeing the tree,
seeing the poor person, seeing the Republican, seeing the Democrat, right? Seeing the drop of
water. And then as we see, to use Angela's words, so we love, right? Seeing, and it's about falling
in love by seeing the deep, you know, seeing more than what's mere superficial. It's Francis seeing
in the hand of the leper more than just the ugliness of disfigurement. There was a goodness
there. And we're blind. I mean, Bonaventure writes this stuff often and so does Francis, we're blind.
And that's right out of the Gospels, right? It's because you say you see, Jesus said, that your
blindness remains, as he said to the Pharisees. It's really, the Franciscan prayer is about
seeing and loving, being attentive, being, seeing by being attentive to what one sees,
being intelligent, in other words, use Lonergan's language, being reasonable about this,
and then responding, you know, in love. If we don't see, we're not going to love, right? It's
just an object that's in our way. Like it's just object, even persons are objects in our way,
like because we're blind, we don't see. And so what value is prayer? So, you know, you meet people
and they're in church and praying, praying, praying, praying, and their heads are, you know,
in some lofty realm of some spiritual something or other, and then they go out and they're like
stepping over, like, you know, the person lying in the street, they don't see. I'm not saying that
all contemplatives are like that, but we have a tendency to spiritualize things apart from the
concrete, the embodiment of things. We miss out the bodies and we become blind. So Francis,
get prayer is really about seeing the humility of God. Yeah. And that in seeing, you know, like
when you say that it's, you're seeing the goodness of the person, correct? You know, and in that,
and in that goodness, there is the humility of God in action. Yeah. People don't know what does
that mean? What should I, like people said to me, what should I look for? It's a good, it's a good
question. And that's really a kind of funny thing, you know, because what does it mean to see the
good? And Bonaventure helps us. It's like to see the beauty of something, to see it's kind of
radiant wisdom. It's like, wow, like you look at a tree and you go, and you look at a tree,
then you really look at it and you go, it's, wow, it's incredible. You know, it's wonder,
it's awesomeness, even the way, you know, if you look at a person, look at their facial features,
you know, they have distinct features. They had, you know, like me, I have a broken nose,
you know, and then you go, wow, there's something about the way you're constituted. That's a beauty.
It's all its own. It's a unique beauty, right? That no other person could replace or, you know,
can you can clone it. And so it's beauty, it's goodness, it's the wisdom. And when we see that
beauty, I think really goodness is about beauty, quite honestly. Beauty that cannot be, it can't
be reproduced by a pixel, you know, or by a computer. It's a beauty that is so unclonable.
It's so unique. It's so distinct because it's radiating in this particular way and in no other
way, you know, and that's it. It's not just the beauty. It's this beauty to use the schistic term
of change, the thisness of something. And I think that's what Francis saw in the leper. And that's
what prayer has to lead us to. It's this beauty, this leaf, this rock, this leper, you know, this,
noble person, this lady, Claire, not anyone else. And we're losing that. We're losing the thisness
of our age and information age. Now we're all algorithms, you know, we can replace these
algorithms and build on them. And that when we lose, when you lose thisness, then it gets lost
in the algorithms of information. We then lose the desire for beauty.
Yeah. Well, speaking of beauty, I mean, this conversation has been beautiful. I mean, it's
I've really anytime I get the chance to talk to you, I mean, it stirs something within me. And
yeah, I'm just I know I'm just so grateful for you and your work. And I know,
Franciscan media, everyone there is really excited about the refresh of these two books.
This has been great. And I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Do you have anything else that
you'd like to discuss? No, Stephen, thank you. Thank you for your great work. And may Franciscan
media keep spreading the message of this great tradition.
Again, that was Sister Elia Delio. Franciscan prayer and humility of God are both available
in the Franciscan media store at shop.franciscanmedia.org. If you enjoyed this conversation,
I think you'll really enjoy both of these books. Huge thanks to Sister Elia for being on the
Off the Page podcast from Franciscan media. And thanks as well to Father Cyprian Concilio
for providing the music for this episode. I encourage you to check his music out on Spotify
or wherever you listen to your music. This is Stephen Copeland signing off. Peace and all good.