1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:12,400 Welcome to the Off the Page podcast from Franciscan Media, a podcast that will feature in-depth 2 00:00:12,400 --> 00:00:17,440 conversations with Franciscan authors and artists. My name is Stephen Copeland and I'm 3 00:00:17,440 --> 00:00:22,880 Franciscan Media's book editor. And our next guest on the podcast is a special one, someone 4 00:00:22,880 --> 00:00:27,620 who probably needs no introduction, though I'm going to give you one anyway. I'm so 5 00:00:27,620 --> 00:00:34,680 thrilled to welcome sister Elia Delio to Franciscan Media's Off the Page podcast. Elia Delio, 6 00:00:34,680 --> 00:00:42,000 OSF, PhD, is a Franciscan sister and an American theologian specializing in the area of science 7 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:47,120 and religion. Her work often bridges evolution, physics, and neuroscience with Franciscan 8 00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:53,160 theology. She currently holds the Josephine C. Connolly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova 9 00:00:53,160 --> 00:01:00,240 University and also holds two honorary doctorates, one from St. Francis University in 2015 and 10 00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:05,440 one from Sacred Heart University in 2020. The focus of this conversation are the themes 11 00:01:05,440 --> 00:01:10,300 revolving around two books that were recently republished by Franciscan Media, Humility 12 00:01:10,300 --> 00:01:16,440 of God, A Franciscan Perspective, which was released on June 4, 2024, and Franciscan 13 00:01:16,440 --> 00:01:22,940 Prayer, Awakening to Oneness with God, which was re-released on July 2, 2024. Though she 14 00:01:22,940 --> 00:01:27,320 wrote these books 20 years ago, I think you'll find that they are even more relevant today 15 00:01:27,320 --> 00:01:33,000 and are absolutely foundational to the work she continues to do around Franciscan theology. 16 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:40,560 I personally think this is a really important conversation. In our world, God is so often 17 00:01:40,560 --> 00:01:46,820 used and I think used as the right word there is almost an extension of the ego to judge 18 00:01:46,820 --> 00:01:53,680 someone else or be right or at its worst, justify the pursuit of power. So Franciscan 19 00:01:53,680 --> 00:01:58,720 theology has a lot to say about this because of its anchoring in the radical humility of 20 00:01:58,720 --> 00:02:04,840 God, which reconnects us back to our own heart and the experience and story of the other. 21 00:02:04,840 --> 00:02:11,280 So you'll find in this interview that Sister Elia invites us into this profound mystery 22 00:02:11,280 --> 00:02:17,560 and to also be changed by it on an experiential and personal level. So it's one of the reasons 23 00:02:17,560 --> 00:02:24,440 why she aptly says in our interview that Franciscan theology or at least a number of its themes 24 00:02:24,440 --> 00:02:29,640 contribute to a theology of the future. I'm so thrilled to share this interview with you 25 00:02:29,640 --> 00:02:36,520 and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. So without further ado, here is Sister Elia Delio. 26 00:02:36,520 --> 00:02:48,600 All right. So I'd like to start out with humility of God, Sister Elia. Why is the book's message? 27 00:02:48,600 --> 00:02:53,760 You wrote this book 20 years ago. Why is this book's message still important today? 28 00:02:53,760 --> 00:03:00,840 Yeah, I think it may be more important today than it was even 20 years ago because we continue 29 00:03:00,840 --> 00:03:08,440 to have sort of a God problem in so far as we can't find God in the world. And I think 30 00:03:08,440 --> 00:03:16,440 our anxious searching for God has left, has resulted in all sorts of conflicts, personal, 31 00:03:16,440 --> 00:03:26,560 collective conflicts. And I think we have over-emphasized God as a power that we need 32 00:03:26,560 --> 00:03:34,840 to adhere to when we miss the fact that that power is already here. It's a power of love 33 00:03:34,840 --> 00:03:42,000 as Francis himself recognized. So I go back to, as I do in the book, to this simplicity 34 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:50,960 of Francis of Assisi because I really think sometimes being educated is not an advantage. 35 00:03:50,960 --> 00:03:57,480 We think we place a lot of emphasis on education and training the mind. And we have basically 36 00:03:57,480 --> 00:04:04,680 done so to the detriment of the heart. And I think we are sort of heart deprived or heart 37 00:04:04,680 --> 00:04:10,560 starved. We have no idea even really what the heart means. And I think that Francis, 38 00:04:10,560 --> 00:04:17,640 you know, this very simple person was not kind of weighed down by over-intellectualism 39 00:04:17,640 --> 00:04:24,240 and therefore could really live in the concrete simplicity of life where he met God. But he 40 00:04:24,240 --> 00:04:29,960 was a very wise person. And so he recognized that presence of God within him as well as 41 00:04:29,960 --> 00:04:36,160 without. And that's where I think Bonaventure, you know, in fact, I was just thinking about 42 00:04:36,160 --> 00:04:42,160 this recently because Thomas Aquinas became the official theologian, you know, the Catholic 43 00:04:42,160 --> 00:04:49,280 church. But Bonaventure was a contemporary of Aquinas. And I often wonder, you know, 44 00:04:49,280 --> 00:04:55,460 why Bonaventure was sort of, he drifted out of the scene. You know, basically the church 45 00:04:55,460 --> 00:05:03,120 acknowledges him, you know, has a nice special feast day on July 15th. But other than that, 46 00:05:03,120 --> 00:05:08,960 his theology does not make any significant difference. And I think, you know, the thing 47 00:05:08,960 --> 00:05:15,520 is Bonaventure developed his theology not on scholasticism alone, but on Francis of 48 00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:21,720 Assisi. And I think that concrete example of Francis, especially after Bonaventure was 49 00:05:21,720 --> 00:05:28,000 elected minister general, played a significant role in how he thought about God and God's 50 00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:36,680 relationship to the world and what this means in terms of Jesus Christ. So I think we have 51 00:05:36,680 --> 00:05:41,320 elements in this theological tradition that have yet to be fully mined. And that's why 52 00:05:41,320 --> 00:05:43,320 I wrote the book. 53 00:05:43,320 --> 00:05:49,680 Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned, you mentioned something I wanted to come back to how we may be heart 54 00:05:49,680 --> 00:05:59,880 deprived today. What does the heart mean from a St. Francis of Assisi perspective? And perhaps 55 00:05:59,880 --> 00:06:08,320 he wouldn't have used the philosophical language that Bonaventure used, but I sense the Franciscan 56 00:06:08,320 --> 00:06:11,320 vision has something to offer us here. 57 00:06:11,320 --> 00:06:19,120 Yes. Well, you know, and the heart did play a significant role even in Francis's own writings. 58 00:06:19,120 --> 00:06:24,280 And he kind of gives us a glimpse in those writings, how he thinks about the heart. He 59 00:06:24,280 --> 00:06:31,400 tells us it is the dwelling place of the spirit. And so that's actually right out of scripture. 60 00:06:31,400 --> 00:06:37,400 You know, Paul says, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And so Francis recognizes, 61 00:06:37,400 --> 00:06:44,440 yeah, you know, like we are the place where God dwells and that place is the heart. Certainly 62 00:06:44,440 --> 00:06:49,400 he doesn't mean the physical pumping heart, but you know, we need that to keep going for 63 00:06:49,400 --> 00:06:56,400 the heart. The heart is that deep seat of the interior place of the soul, the place 64 00:06:56,400 --> 00:07:05,600 of the silence, the withinness that we all experience. It's deeply part of us, but it's 65 00:07:05,600 --> 00:07:12,800 not subject to the, in other words, it's more than just the thinking portion of us. Now 66 00:07:12,800 --> 00:07:18,160 from a physiological perspective, the heart really is the higher level of integration. 67 00:07:18,160 --> 00:07:24,280 In other words, where we are taking what we know and what we feel and how we relate to 68 00:07:24,280 --> 00:07:30,760 things and we integrate all that information in a higher center. And I think Francis had 69 00:07:30,760 --> 00:07:38,520 that notion of a deep integration of how he felt, what he experienced and his faith in 70 00:07:38,520 --> 00:07:44,400 God. And that for him is the place of the heart, which can get kind of messed up by 71 00:07:44,400 --> 00:07:51,800 everything we get. We weigh the heart with our thoughts, our preoccupations, our anxieties, 72 00:07:51,800 --> 00:07:57,040 our fears, you know, like Jesus said, we kind of store these things up in our, you know, 73 00:07:57,040 --> 00:08:01,760 the heart is like the barn where we store everything and we store things up and we have 74 00:08:01,760 --> 00:08:07,720 no place for the spirit to dwell. So the heart, and I take that heart as soul, you know, I 75 00:08:07,720 --> 00:08:13,800 don't think those things are too far apart, those two words. It's the deep, deep center 76 00:08:13,800 --> 00:08:21,800 of personhood that's opened up to the mystery of God. And that was preeminent for Francis 77 00:08:21,800 --> 00:08:22,800 and Bonaventure. 78 00:08:22,800 --> 00:08:30,160 Yeah. And that's a humble God, correct? A God that dwells within our heart, you know, 79 00:08:30,160 --> 00:08:35,840 a spirit Francis talks about creating a space within ourselves for God to dwell. That's 80 00:08:35,840 --> 00:08:41,280 a, that gets back to your book, correct? Like this is a, this is a humble trajectory by 81 00:08:41,280 --> 00:08:42,280 the divine. 82 00:08:42,280 --> 00:08:48,360 That's right, Steve. In other words, God is not, so Thomas Aquinas, you know, had this 83 00:08:48,360 --> 00:08:57,600 notion that God has kind of an inner self and an outer self. And Thomas's God is like 84 00:08:57,600 --> 00:09:05,240 happy to be within God's own life as being perfect being and freely decides to create. 85 00:09:05,240 --> 00:09:12,420 But the Franciscan God begins not with being, but with goodness. So a self diffusiveness 86 00:09:12,420 --> 00:09:19,880 of God, a God who is in the sense unstoppable in, in that highest good or love. And that 87 00:09:19,880 --> 00:09:24,880 means that God will go to the ends of the earth, you know, will go to the lowest place, 88 00:09:24,880 --> 00:09:30,560 whatever is left out of that, that goodness, God will go there to be there, God for us. 89 00:09:30,560 --> 00:09:37,240 And that's the type of God that Bonaventure conveys to us, a God who bends low in love, 90 00:09:37,240 --> 00:09:43,720 you know, and embraces us, lifts us up because God, not only is God good, but God desires 91 00:09:43,720 --> 00:09:51,200 to share that good. And so the will of God is that, you know, love be shared and, and 92 00:09:51,200 --> 00:09:56,680 reciprocated, as Francis said, the love of him who loved us is greatly to be loved. So 93 00:09:56,680 --> 00:10:05,040 I think, you know, those two are entangled with each other. That was my little cat too. 94 00:10:05,040 --> 00:10:12,520 So she's very insistent and that would be Francis, right? So, you know, intellectual 95 00:10:12,520 --> 00:10:18,380 says I'm doing something very important here. I'm having this very important conversation 96 00:10:18,380 --> 00:10:23,360 and I don't care about the cat. It's quick the door that Franciscan says, no, the cat 97 00:10:23,360 --> 00:10:29,320 is at the door and wants to come in because the cat wants to be loved. So that's, so that, 98 00:10:29,320 --> 00:10:33,880 that act of love is higher than the act of knowledge alone. 99 00:10:33,880 --> 00:10:40,440 Only you could connect theology back to your cat wanting, wanting into the room. 100 00:10:40,440 --> 00:10:41,760 True. 101 00:10:41,760 --> 00:10:53,320 Yeah, it's, um, you mentioned a lot there. You mentioned this deep center and a, you 102 00:10:53,320 --> 00:10:59,720 know, the God for Francis and Bonaventure that humbly bends low into our lives and dwells 103 00:10:59,720 --> 00:11:08,320 within us. How did this vision differ from other, um, other Christian theology of that 104 00:11:08,320 --> 00:11:15,960 day? Um, were they hitting on something that was maybe perhaps not new, but had been forgotten? 105 00:11:15,960 --> 00:11:24,440 Yeah, I think, you know, I really, I see kind of to, to, let me just, you know, trace this 106 00:11:24,440 --> 00:11:30,360 back to what Bonaventure, what it, you know, what inspires Bonaventure is not so much the 107 00:11:30,360 --> 00:11:36,800 philosophical tradition per se, because he does rely on Aristotle and, and Plato just 108 00:11:36,800 --> 00:11:44,040 in the same way that Thomas Aquinas did, but it's, um, the, the role of scripture, I think 109 00:11:44,040 --> 00:11:50,120 plays a significant role. And, and this of course is very, you know, consonant with Francis's 110 00:11:50,120 --> 00:11:55,440 evangelical life or gospel based life. And in scripture and Bonaventure tells us in the 111 00:11:55,440 --> 00:12:01,080 itinerary on his soul's journey into God, yes, God is being, God is perfect being, eternal 112 00:12:01,080 --> 00:12:07,360 being, you know, um, but he says, that's the name of God in the old Testament, you know, 113 00:12:07,360 --> 00:12:13,760 the name of God that's revealed to Moses. I am who I am. But he says, um, God reveals 114 00:12:13,760 --> 00:12:19,840 God's self in a new way in the New Testament. When Jesus is asked the question, you know, 115 00:12:19,840 --> 00:12:26,840 Jesus says, no one is good, but God alone. Bonaventure takes that, um, that, that kind 116 00:12:26,840 --> 00:12:33,520 of response of Jesus, no one is good, but God alone as the new name of God. So that's 117 00:12:33,520 --> 00:12:40,400 what he's saying. Yes, God is being, but God is even, God is a type of being. So it's not 118 00:12:40,400 --> 00:12:45,560 just what that God is being, but God is a certain type of being, a being that is diffusive 119 00:12:45,560 --> 00:12:51,320 goodness. And therefore I think good is even higher than being for Bonaventure. And that's, 120 00:12:51,320 --> 00:12:55,400 I think that goes right back to the pseudo Dionysius, you know, that, you know, if you 121 00:12:55,400 --> 00:13:01,000 go up, if you try to really approach God into this, you go up, up, up, up for the Dionysius, 122 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:05,880 you know, and you go into the realm of silence and, you know, and you can't say because being 123 00:13:05,880 --> 00:13:13,000 is diffusive, it's, you know, God is, is more than what we can, but it's not an unknowing. 124 00:13:13,000 --> 00:13:18,720 And I think that's the difference between Thomas and Bonaventure. God is not unknowable. 125 00:13:18,720 --> 00:13:24,320 God is overwhelming. That's, that's God is overwhelming goodness. And that's what Francis 126 00:13:24,320 --> 00:13:30,480 experiences in creation, the overwhelming good. So Francis experiences that and discusses 127 00:13:30,480 --> 00:13:36,760 it in using superlatives. You're most high, all good, supreme good, totally good. Not 128 00:13:36,760 --> 00:13:42,080 just like you're good, you know, as, as Thomas, you know, claim is where the Thomas would 129 00:13:42,080 --> 00:13:47,520 say, you know, God is good. No, God is most good. And that's, that's a huge difference 130 00:13:47,520 --> 00:13:53,880 actually between a Franciscan, Franciscan theology and to mystic theology, not the unknowable 131 00:13:53,880 --> 00:13:56,240 God, the overwhelmingly of God. 132 00:13:56,240 --> 00:14:04,760 Yeah. And if being is self diffusive, like you mentioned, as Bonaventure says, now that, 133 00:14:04,760 --> 00:14:11,880 that invites us into a God who is not only being like object, but who is becoming correct. 134 00:14:11,880 --> 00:14:14,720 Am I reading that interpreting that correctly or 135 00:14:14,720 --> 00:14:19,680 He could. So Bonaventure was a medievalist, right? So he always wrote within the, you 136 00:14:19,680 --> 00:14:24,440 know, the boundaries of his own age. And, you know, he will say, um, as he does that 137 00:14:24,440 --> 00:14:30,840 God is immutable, but there's, you know, he, you can see there's a tension in his writings, 138 00:14:30,840 --> 00:14:34,840 quite honestly, if you look closely. So he's like, well, I really can't go outside these 139 00:14:34,840 --> 00:14:38,760 boundaries. You know, they're not going to let me teach anymore. So he stays, you know, 140 00:14:38,760 --> 00:14:44,960 within the language of scholasticism, but he says for us, for example, in the itinerarium, 141 00:14:44,960 --> 00:14:51,760 goodness is both necessary and free. So in other words, there's a necessity in God in 142 00:14:51,760 --> 00:14:58,680 Bonaventure. It's a dialectic God freely creates, but God is the highest good in God in a sense 143 00:14:58,680 --> 00:15:04,440 has to share that goodness. A goodness can contain, it can't stay within itself. Like 144 00:15:04,440 --> 00:15:09,080 Thomas's God is like, yeah, I can, you know, I can be perfectly at home. I don't need you 145 00:15:09,080 --> 00:15:13,720 guys, you know, I don't need creation. Like, uh, yeah, I just think it's a nice idea. I 146 00:15:13,720 --> 00:15:18,400 think I'll make creation and, you know, and, you know, have a good time there, but Bonaventure 147 00:15:18,400 --> 00:15:25,280 is like, this is unstoppable goodness. This is like, so in that sense, that place of necessity 148 00:15:25,280 --> 00:15:32,640 of the good to diffuse itself, not just free, but it has to love has to, in a sense, go 149 00:15:32,640 --> 00:15:37,640 out of itself. That's what love does. Love that stays inward looking, right? It's selfish 150 00:15:37,640 --> 00:15:43,920 love. And God is not selfish. God is completely communicative. Of course, we wouldn't even 151 00:15:43,920 --> 00:15:49,320 be able to say the name of God if God wasn't communicative. All of this to say this does 152 00:15:49,320 --> 00:15:59,440 lend itself away from kind of this, uh, God world relationship was it, which is engineered 153 00:15:59,440 --> 00:16:06,200 as a providential relationship to a process type of relationship. God is deeply related 154 00:16:06,200 --> 00:16:13,560 to the world and the world is deeply related to God. And, you know, again, I think they 155 00:16:13,560 --> 00:16:17,920 would have to be a much stronger case. And I want to tell you here, but you know, Bonaventure 156 00:16:17,920 --> 00:16:26,120 sees that God is completely revealed in Jesus Christ, right? So it's very Christo centric. 157 00:16:26,120 --> 00:16:31,880 And this is where I see a resonance between Bonaventure and Teilhard de Jardin. And Teilhard 158 00:16:31,880 --> 00:16:38,720 would say, um, God becomes something new in Christ. And I think you can read that into 159 00:16:38,720 --> 00:16:45,920 Bonaventure as well. Like, like God doesn't, God is even more God precisely in and with 160 00:16:45,920 --> 00:16:53,200 the human person than apart from the human person or creation. And so the way to read, 161 00:16:53,200 --> 00:17:00,020 process theology into back into Bonaventure's humility of God. Sounds like a perfect problem 162 00:17:00,020 --> 00:17:05,880 for you to address. Of course, of course, you know, never getting bored. That's for 163 00:17:05,880 --> 00:17:12,760 sure. Yeah. Well, I was wondering that leads to my next question. Um, like you wrote humility 164 00:17:12,760 --> 00:17:21,800 of God 20 years ago. Um, but I was wondering how the themes from this book apply today 165 00:17:21,800 --> 00:17:27,680 to your work in science or perhaps your scholarship on Teilhard de Jardin. Um, you know, are there 166 00:17:27,680 --> 00:17:34,680 certain themes here that are still playing out in your work? Absolutely. In fact, um, 167 00:17:34,680 --> 00:17:41,440 my work actually can be traced back to Bonaventure's humility of God, quite honestly. It's a God 168 00:17:41,440 --> 00:17:46,760 who doesn't stay within God's self. It goes out of God's self. And of course, the culmination 169 00:17:46,760 --> 00:17:54,980 of that divine love is, I sense, um, you know, shown in, in the Christ. And, um, that kind 170 00:17:54,980 --> 00:18:01,280 of theology, first of all, John Templeton, the Templeton Foundation spoke about the need 171 00:18:01,280 --> 00:18:06,640 for the humility of God. So, you know, there's a way that science, you know, John Templeton 172 00:18:06,640 --> 00:18:13,760 himself saw the humility of God as the route science would benefit by, you know, um, in 173 00:18:13,760 --> 00:18:19,400 the kind of the move towards renewing a dialogue between science and religion. Teilhard de 174 00:18:19,400 --> 00:18:25,880 Jardin, really, he never used the term humility of God because he didn't know Bonaventure, 175 00:18:25,880 --> 00:18:32,200 but it's there. It's implicit in his work. It's a God who's deeply, who bends low and 176 00:18:32,200 --> 00:18:38,200 is deeply involved and cares for it. This is a God of care and compassion and a God 177 00:18:38,200 --> 00:18:44,440 who's entwined. You can't be compassionate and be apathetic at the same time. You can't 178 00:18:44,440 --> 00:18:51,440 be compassionate at a distance. To be compassionate is to be engaged in the suffering of another. 179 00:18:51,440 --> 00:18:56,480 You know, and I think that's the kind of God Bonaventure holds out for us. Teilhard builds 180 00:18:56,480 --> 00:19:02,960 on. So a lot of Bonaventure's theology is kind of brought into my own thinking and then 181 00:19:02,960 --> 00:19:09,000 trying to be updated now in light of what science is telling us and, you know, and where 182 00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:15,520 we're going, even with artificial intelligence. But I think the key of, you know, what is 183 00:19:15,520 --> 00:19:22,360 similar, both in the humility of God book and in Teilhard is the Christocentrism or 184 00:19:22,360 --> 00:19:27,960 the, not in a narrow sense, like we all have to be Christian or Catholic, but in the widest 185 00:19:27,960 --> 00:19:35,720 sense that God, divine love is incarnate throughout all of creation and is recapitulated in the 186 00:19:35,720 --> 00:19:41,400 human person. And therefore it gives a form to the universe, as Teilhard would say. We 187 00:19:41,400 --> 00:19:47,640 are created for something. There's something taking place in creation. And in the Pauline 188 00:19:47,640 --> 00:19:53,280 sense, it's the body of Christ or the peroma, the fullness of Christ. So there is a deep 189 00:19:53,280 --> 00:19:57,840 resonance to all this to say between Bonaventure and Teilhard and where I were to write the 190 00:19:57,840 --> 00:20:02,960 book all over again, I would probably include pretty much all the same themes and maybe 191 00:20:02,960 --> 00:20:05,080 tack on another five chapters. 192 00:20:05,080 --> 00:20:08,520 Five chapters about Teilhard? 193 00:20:08,520 --> 00:20:12,400 Probably. 194 00:20:12,400 --> 00:20:20,440 You mentioned something there, Sister Ilya. I was wondering how the Franciscan interpretation, 195 00:20:20,440 --> 00:20:31,520 the Franciscan experiential approach to the incarnation, how that really helps to capture, 196 00:20:31,520 --> 00:20:38,760 if I'm not sure if I'm saying the wrong word, but it invites us to contemplate the radical 197 00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:41,680 humility of a God that bends low. 198 00:20:41,680 --> 00:20:46,960 Yeah. Now that's a great question. And there is a significant difference again, I think, 199 00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:55,400 between Franciscan theology and mystic theology. Thomas, of course, acknowledged the role of 200 00:20:55,400 --> 00:21:02,720 the fallenness of creation and following St. Anselm. If Adam had not sinned, Christ would 201 00:21:02,720 --> 00:21:10,280 not come. So yay to sin because we got a good out of it. We got the Christ. Bonaventure 202 00:21:10,280 --> 00:21:18,720 holds sort of a via media place in between because he's a scholastic. And he does in 203 00:21:18,720 --> 00:21:24,120 his Bribiloquium, in his centus commentary, he acknowledges original sin. But then you 204 00:21:24,120 --> 00:21:32,800 go back to how he's conceiving God, the Trinity, the triune God in relation to creation. And 205 00:21:32,800 --> 00:21:38,600 as Zachary Hayes pointed out a number of years ago, it's really not sin, but the excess love 206 00:21:38,600 --> 00:21:44,280 and mercy of God, for Bonaventure, that's the reason for the incarnation. And so again, 207 00:21:44,280 --> 00:21:49,720 it's not explicit. Like he's not in your face, like this is it folks. But Don Scodas comes 208 00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:54,160 along and says, yeah, let me tell you another way to look at this thing. So, you know, and 209 00:21:54,160 --> 00:21:59,360 Scodas is really like, well, God is love, you know, and that's kind of interesting. 210 00:21:59,360 --> 00:22:03,800 He's coming at it from a more, a different, a little bit slightly different philosophical 211 00:22:03,800 --> 00:22:10,320 position, but very complimentary to Bonaventure. God is love. And love is never going to do 212 00:22:10,320 --> 00:22:15,920 anything for a defect. Like, you know, like, oh my gosh, there's this big hole in creation. 213 00:22:15,920 --> 00:22:21,160 I've got to repair, you know. So it's like, why would the highest love, you know, just 214 00:22:21,160 --> 00:22:25,920 be shown to us out of a defect in creation? Or, you know, as Bill Short, brother Bill 215 00:22:25,920 --> 00:22:31,240 Short always says, why build the Taj Mahal to cover a pot hole? You know, which why do 216 00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:40,120 something so like incredible for this? So the statistic notion of the primacy of Christ, 217 00:22:40,120 --> 00:22:46,200 that whether or not sin ever existed, Christ would have come is really based on the absolute 218 00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:53,480 love of God or Bonaventure and says the absolute self-diffusion of God's goodness. Right. And 219 00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:59,160 so, so the universe is made for something from the beginning and it's made for love, 220 00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:05,800 quite honestly. And Teilhard picks that up right away. Teilhard actually discovered, 221 00:23:05,800 --> 00:23:11,400 on Scodus rather late in life from a Franciscan, Fr. Allegra, I think a conventional Franciscan, 222 00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:17,840 Sicilian at that. And he said, that's it. That's the theology of the future. But the 223 00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:26,400 difference is Scodus saw Christ as the blueprint of creation. That's what we're made for. And 224 00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:33,280 creation, and Teilhard saw Christ as the goal of creation. They're very, they're complimentary, 225 00:23:33,280 --> 00:23:38,840 but just because Teilhard's thinking in terms of evolution. So all of this to say that the 226 00:23:38,840 --> 00:23:48,400 Franciscan reason for the incarnation is distinctly different from Thomas Aquinas. And again, 227 00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:56,120 it's not being based on fallenness or being or original sin. It's simply based on love. 228 00:23:56,120 --> 00:24:02,080 You know, it's original love as Matthew Fox might have said, original blessing, you know, 229 00:24:02,080 --> 00:24:10,240 and what would our world look like if we actually had a church based on original love? Honestly, 230 00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:17,160 because we're very Thomistic, we're a very self-focused group on sin and fallenness and 231 00:24:17,160 --> 00:24:22,720 everything is due to the weakness of human nature and fallen human nature. And I'm like, 232 00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:29,280 wow, how do we ever get this far? We're so depraved, you know, and we need God to save 233 00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:34,400 us. And I'm like, oh gosh, you know, and I think God just simply wants to be loved. And 234 00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:39,920 like we do well to love God and return because we're more together in God than without God. 235 00:24:39,920 --> 00:24:44,760 So yeah, we keep coming back to Bonaventure and I know Bonaventure is a huge, huge part 236 00:24:44,760 --> 00:24:51,960 of this book. He's probably on every page. Weird question. If you could ask St. Bonaventure 237 00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:59,400 anything today, what would it be? What do you think you would ask him? 238 00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:06,000 Well, that's an interesting question. I don't know because I would have said, how would 239 00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:12,040 you have finished your final collations on the six days of creation? Because he, his 240 00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:21,320 thought in my view, really culminated in the set of lectures and he died, you know, you 241 00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:27,080 know, there's nothing worth dying in the middle of a book, so to speak. So he set out something 242 00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:32,800 and here's what's so fascinating in that first collation on six days of creation. His thought 243 00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:38,120 really matured to the fact that Christ, you know, Christ is metaphysical. He put Christ 244 00:25:38,120 --> 00:25:44,520 at the center of metaphysics or being. And that's just like, no one has really, really 245 00:25:44,520 --> 00:25:51,960 figured that one out at all. Like, what does that mean? And, you know, basically he's saying 246 00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:58,640 that love is the basis and the root reality, I think, of all that exists and that it is 247 00:25:58,640 --> 00:26:07,800 personal and singular. And so anyway, his metaphysics of being and his way of knowledge, 248 00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:12,840 epistemology are the same. To put this, you know, a lot of big words here. All this to 249 00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:18,840 say is love goes further than knowledge. Again, in the West, we're too focused. Think of artificial 250 00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:23,040 intelligence. We're so fearful. We're going to bring download our brains, lose our brains, 251 00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:29,280 computers are going to take over our brains. And I'm like, yeah, that, that could be. In 252 00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:38,400 fact, that may not be the worst thing in my view, but computers will not take over the 253 00:26:38,400 --> 00:26:45,680 capacity to love beyond measure. In other words, love, the will is higher than the mind 254 00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:50,440 for Bonaventure, I think, you know, and that's what his, I think that metaphysics of Christ 255 00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:55,480 is centered is pointing in that direction. That love goes further than knowledge. That 256 00:26:55,480 --> 00:27:01,200 wisdom is a higher knowledge, as Augustine tells us. And we, we simply never got that 257 00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:05,360 into our bloodstream, certainly in the West. I think actually, and I say the West because 258 00:27:05,360 --> 00:27:13,120 I think, I think Eastern religions have their own version of love that's actually more, 259 00:27:13,120 --> 00:27:19,240 more attuned to modern science and a healthier view of humans and ecology on the whole, but 260 00:27:19,240 --> 00:27:25,560 the West, we're just fixated on knowledge and perfection of knowledge and the mind and, 261 00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:30,480 you know, how many degrees you have and where you went to school and how many things you've 262 00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:35,680 made, how many books you've written and, and who cares, you know, because really what moves 263 00:27:35,680 --> 00:27:42,440 us is like Mother Teresa feeding the poor or Dorothy Stang, you know, like, you know, 264 00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:49,600 defending the people of the Amazon. We are much more moved by people who love than by 265 00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:50,600 people who know. 266 00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:54,320 Yeah. Which goes back to the heart where we started. 267 00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:57,840 Back to the heart. And so that's, so I'd like to know how Bonaventure would have finished 268 00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:03,960 those lectures, developing it into a whole history, like Yohakim of Fiore's idea of his, 269 00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:08,680 this is what history is about. See unfolding of God, you know, the whole Trinity thing. 270 00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:14,080 Yeah. But before I switch gears and move on to the other book that you wrote 20 years 271 00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:20,280 ago, Franciscan prayer, do you have any other comments on the humility of God or anything 272 00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:23,120 we may have left out or anything you wanted to hit on? 273 00:28:23,120 --> 00:28:27,600 No, it's just that honestly, I don't hear it talked about. I don't hear it preached. 274 00:28:27,600 --> 00:28:33,400 I go to a Franciscan parish. I'd like to have Franciscans start preaching on their own theology 275 00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:38,680 instead of borrowing Thomas Aquinas all the time or just some random contemporary writer. 276 00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:44,280 I'm saying that we have, we have, you know, elements in this tradition that need to be 277 00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:49,200 brought out because people are desperately looking for the very things we already have. 278 00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:55,320 We have the treasure within, right? And we're not mining this treasure. And we need, we 279 00:28:55,320 --> 00:29:00,320 need more scholars. Quite honestly, we don't have enough Franciscan scholars or people 280 00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:05,160 who can tap into this tradition and really bring it out. Like, like the Jesuits have 281 00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:10,200 done for Thomas Aquinas that have to skip it to them. They really have mined Thomas 282 00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:16,400 for the modern age, but we haven't done so. And for some reason we keep, we keep this 283 00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:22,240 tradition very medieval and it doesn't have to be locked into its medieval constraints. 284 00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:27,880 It's a medieval tradition that has a lot of modern implications. That's what I'm trying 285 00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:33,840 to do now, but we need other people on board here and we need to start understanding what 286 00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:39,760 the humility of God means for us today in a world of AI, in a world of science, in a 287 00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:47,760 world of cultural and societal polarities and oppositions. What does that humility, a 288 00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:53,600 humble God mean when you have political differences, when you have interracial marriages, when 289 00:29:53,600 --> 00:30:00,680 you have transgender and non-binary gender and you know, whatever persons are, how do 290 00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:07,960 we, how do we love in the midst of differences? Because love is our binding force and differences 291 00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:10,960 are overcome by love. But honestly. 292 00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:16,440 Yeah. Could you answer your own question there? Like, what does the humility of God have to 293 00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:22,360 say to us today? As you mentioned these different, yeah. 294 00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:29,280 Really simple. Stop judging. Stop having your big ideas of what people should be and really 295 00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:34,440 meet the concrete person in a concrete way. Like look at them eye to eye, maybe touch 296 00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:38,160 them once in a while. Even if you're going to do it virtually, make sure you're looking 297 00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:43,960 them in the eye. See how they smile. See what their face is like. All of this is where God 298 00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:49,680 is being radiated as the humility of God. And so, you know, we are, we tend to be, our 299 00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:53,600 minds are elsewhere. They're roaming around the earth thinking about our meetings and 300 00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:59,920 what we have to do. And we're so disembodied and humility of God is about embodiment. Maybe 301 00:30:59,920 --> 00:31:06,760 that's a very concise way to say it. A God who takes on a body, the love of God in an 302 00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:09,720 embodied way. That's all we're saying. 303 00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:11,720 I love that. 304 00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:14,720 You're trying to find your body again. 305 00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:20,560 Yeah. Yeah. Which is so, you know, that, that really goes back to St. Francis, right? Who's 306 00:31:20,560 --> 00:31:31,680 so concrete and experiential and every being he encounters, he's reading it in a way where 307 00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:36,000 it's speaking something to him about this God who loves him. 308 00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:41,600 Right. It's all about embodiment. So the humility of God and embodiment are actually, they're 309 00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:47,600 like a double helix. You can't separate them. That's why it's incarnational. Right? 310 00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:49,600 Yeah. Yeah. 311 00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:56,600 Yeah. We, before I, before I hit record sister, Elia, you were telling me about how you were 312 00:31:56,600 --> 00:32:04,760 using Franciscan prayer and got it right here. You said you were recently using this book 313 00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:09,360 for something else that you were working on. And I was just curious how the themes you 314 00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:14,920 wrote about 20 years ago in this book still apply to your work today and how they continue 315 00:32:14,920 --> 00:32:16,920 to evolve within you. 316 00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:24,120 Yeah. So again, you know, coming out of the example of, and the life of Francis of Assisi, 317 00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:29,760 I think one of the lines that has always stayed with me is something that Thomas of Trellano 318 00:32:29,760 --> 00:32:35,520 wrote in his first life where he said, Francis did not so much pray as he himself became 319 00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:38,040 living prayer. 320 00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:43,440 And I think that's a really, really important line for us because today we live in this 321 00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:48,320 world of methods, you know, like, like what method should I use to get close to God? You 322 00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:51,640 know, and it's like, well, I'll try centering prayer. I'm going to do meditation. I'm going 323 00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:58,520 to do yoga. So we're always kind of focused on the steps of the method, you know, and 324 00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:02,720 making sure we get the method right. And did I achieve what the aims of the method? And 325 00:33:02,720 --> 00:33:08,320 it's like, Francis did none of that. And it really goes back to again, a very simple, 326 00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:14,780 I think Francis being a very simple person, you know, took that kind of maxim from Jesus 327 00:33:14,780 --> 00:33:18,680 where your, where your heart is there, your treasure lies, where your mind is there, your 328 00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:24,280 treasure lies. And I think he made his every effort to focus his mind, you know, on the 329 00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:29,640 love of God. And that's as simple as it gets. It's about mind focusing. And that is what 330 00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:35,200 meditation and centering prayer are about. It's just that he disciplined himself. So 331 00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:41,200 it's not just centering your mind. It prayer requires a reordering of our lives. You know, 332 00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:46,120 to be a living prayer is not something you can kind of, you know, do. It's what you are. 333 00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:53,480 So you have to, you have to reorder what you are kind of restructure your priorities, you 334 00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:58,180 know, um, you know, how do you govern what goes into your head and what comes out of 335 00:33:58,180 --> 00:34:04,600 your head, you know, like what we're thinking about, um, the choices we make. So, uh, I 336 00:34:04,600 --> 00:34:10,080 think prayer again is so fundamental. So the prayer and the humility of God actually go 337 00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:14,160 hand in hand. I wrote them as two books, but they really could have been written as one 338 00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:20,680 book, um, because Bonaventure himself in the soul's journey to God, you know, really begins 339 00:34:20,680 --> 00:34:25,320 on that level of creation, but it's about a prayerful journey into God that ends on 340 00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:31,680 the level of the crucified Christ. So, um, many people ask me, so what do you do? Like, 341 00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:37,560 how do you pray? And especially because I write about evolution and technology and stuff. 342 00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:43,520 I don't do that much, quite honestly. You don't have to do, you have to be. So it's 343 00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:49,160 not about doing, it's about being. And that's hard for us to get our head around. Like, 344 00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:56,040 what does that mean? You know, being and just becoming aware of your own, you know, your 345 00:34:56,040 --> 00:35:03,200 own, um, existence in relation to what draws that existence to more life, which is God. 346 00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:11,020 So yeah, what would you say that being was for someone like St. Francis or St. Bonaventure 347 00:35:11,020 --> 00:35:16,280 or St. Claire for that matter, or even a SCOTUS like what would, what was being, what does 348 00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:20,240 that mean to be, um, particularly as it pertains to prayer? 349 00:35:20,240 --> 00:35:26,040 Yeah, I don't, you know, I think, uh, sometimes we overly romanticize Francis and Claire quite 350 00:35:26,040 --> 00:35:30,680 honestly, as if, you know, they just kind of woke up and had, had this ecstatic, you 351 00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:35,720 know, uh, vision of God or something, but I think you had to really work hard at it. 352 00:35:35,720 --> 00:35:39,760 You know, I mean, when you read Francis, you get the sense that this little Italian guy 353 00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:45,480 got really annoyed with people. He really didn't like lepers. He had his likes and dislikes 354 00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:51,000 and he really had to train himself. So what I, you know, what I see in Francis and Claire 355 00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:57,280 is a strong will. They were, they were very strong willed and they really set their minds 356 00:35:57,280 --> 00:36:02,640 on loving God on this gospel way of life, following the footprints of Christ. And that's 357 00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:07,120 what they were going to do no matter what, you know, and their minds weren't distracted 358 00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:12,680 by Facebook and social media and television and you know, everything else they, they had, 359 00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:16,720 um, and whatever distractions came into their life, they, they made sure they got them out 360 00:36:16,720 --> 00:36:23,720 of their lives. So I think Francis, you know, again, we see in the biographies, he struggled 361 00:36:23,720 --> 00:36:31,080 with, um, his body, you know, his sexual desires, um, probably his love for Claire, you know, 362 00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:35,480 was that just the platonic love? And I'm sure she had the same thing. I mean, um, they were 363 00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:42,280 real people and they had, um, you know, real desires and that's the good. And so prayer 364 00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:47,160 is what helped them kind of come back. Well, what am I about? Like, what do I really, really 365 00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:52,440 want? And it's about desire. So prayer is fundamentally about desire. And that's what 366 00:36:52,440 --> 00:36:58,880 I see both in Francis and in Claire. Um, Claire's letters to Agnes Soprano, you know, really 367 00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:05,520 are about what do you desire Agnes, you know, um, you know, set your gaze, set your heart 368 00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:10,760 on this love of God, you know, shown to us in this cross. Um, and, and that's what I 369 00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:19,200 find today is Francis can prayer can help, um, we situate, um, we, we, how would I say, 370 00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:25,120 reorganize ourselves, kind of retune our GPS signals, you know, because our desires are 371 00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:29,000 all over the place. It's like, I want to be famous. I want, you know, I want people to 372 00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:35,320 love me. I want a million dollars. I want, you know, and I just want everything. And 373 00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:41,320 they're like, well, maybe just try one thing, God, and then everything else from there, 374 00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:46,880 we'll find its own, you know, order. And that's what Francis can prayer is about. It's about 375 00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:54,360 ordering the desires based on our, what is our deepest desire? Yeah. Yeah. I had that 376 00:37:54,360 --> 00:38:02,640 question written down actually, like how do desire and prayer go together? Um, yeah. 377 00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:09,880 I think desire actually needs much more attention than what our minds are doing. I'd like to 378 00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:16,480 shift our modern attention away from what we know to what we desire. Uh, and I think, 379 00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:23,880 uh, cause desire, it from there flows everything else, you know, and I think our, our postmodern 380 00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:31,320 world is because everything now is accessible and readily visible. We want it all. And that's 381 00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:39,320 why we have, uh, we have a dissolution effects dispersion of desires and we can't find ourselves. 382 00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:43,240 We can't, we're kind of lost. We're all over the place. We can't really figure out who 383 00:38:43,240 --> 00:38:48,920 God is. We have all these culture wars and you know, political wars and, um, we want 384 00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:55,160 to be gods and all this kind of stuff. It's a mass, you know, if, if desire gets flattened 385 00:38:55,160 --> 00:39:00,840 out or dispersed all over the place, the rest of us is going to be really a mass. And I 386 00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:08,520 think, um, I think we can learn from Francis and Claire, what it means to reset the button 387 00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:14,480 of desire. Like, um, one of the lines from Francis that always spoke to me is when he 388 00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:19,800 opens the gospel, you know, it's shortly after he experiences this God in his life and has 389 00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:24,200 this conversion experience, he goes into the church and he opens the gospel and they read, 390 00:39:24,200 --> 00:39:28,240 you know, if you wish to be perfect, go sell what you own, et cetera. He said, this is 391 00:39:28,240 --> 00:39:33,800 what I want with my whole heart. This is what I want with my whole heart. And that's our, 392 00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:38,160 that's our question. Can we say this is what I want with my whole heart? Like everything 393 00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:45,520 about me will be devoted and focused to this. And the question is, what is this? That's 394 00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:53,080 our question. What is the this of our lives? Is it God? Is it my family? Is it God family? 395 00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:59,080 Is it God family job? Is it God family job? And the Yankees winning? Is it God family 396 00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:04,640 job and the Knicks winning? You know, um, what is it? What's the this of our lives? 397 00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:10,200 And once we get to that, the this of that, we'll be able to know that which is most important 398 00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:15,560 for us. So it's not that these are exclusions is that they're ordered. The business of our 399 00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:18,640 lives orders everything else. 400 00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:29,480 Yeah. How do you, um, like what does it look like today to quote, reset the button of desire? 401 00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:36,440 Um, and as you said, get back to thisness and then also answer the question of what 402 00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:41,720 this actually is, because I can, you know, sometimes I think that this is something, 403 00:40:41,720 --> 00:40:45,480 but it's actually, it's all ego, you know, and that desire is coming from maybe not a 404 00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:51,780 bad place, but it's coming from a place that it's not the deepest desire. It's not this. 405 00:40:51,780 --> 00:40:53,640 So what would you have to say about that? 406 00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:59,500 Yeah, no, I think, well, I think a few things. One is that we definitely need to slow down, 407 00:40:59,500 --> 00:41:04,440 you know, we're way, I mean, this is no great insight here. Everyone's talking about it 408 00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:09,220 today. We need to run the treadmill, you know, in the left lane on the speedway, going 409 00:41:09,220 --> 00:41:13,960 to the same red light that, you know, the person driving 20 miles an hour is going to, 410 00:41:13,960 --> 00:41:19,800 um, we need to slow down and we need to unplug. I mean, we are bombard, we just live in this 411 00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:26,240 information mill use. So we're constantly being bombarded by information. And, um, I 412 00:41:26,240 --> 00:41:31,480 think we're losing us the sense of self, the self of the self or the God self, or that 413 00:41:31,480 --> 00:41:37,920 deep, the sense of who we are, where that button of desire really is that that place 414 00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:45,520 of the heart. So that would be number one, slowing down, unplugging, and just being attentive 415 00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:52,260 to that place of the heart within. Um, the second is what are we willing to sacrifice 416 00:41:52,260 --> 00:41:58,360 for that which we desire? So we don't do well on sacrifice, you know, because we live in 417 00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:04,280 the age of greed and need, it's like, um, if I want it, I'm going to have it, you know, 418 00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:09,240 and we want it all. And of course we never have it all. So we're always living in the 419 00:42:09,240 --> 00:42:21,720 anxiety of never having enough. But if I say, for example, um, I want to love in a way that 420 00:42:21,720 --> 00:42:26,960 makes God visible and real in our lives, you know, say that's my desire, or maybe that's 421 00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:33,760 too lofty. So you say, well, I want to really help another person, you know, without any 422 00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:41,040 recompense. I don't want any reward. I really just want to help another person be human. 423 00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:46,640 And well, what are we willing to sacrifice? You know, on a very common level, that could 424 00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:52,640 be anything from like the poor person on the corner asking for money to, you know, the 425 00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:57,240 person trying to cross the street in a wheelchair. Um, you know, and those are simple ways we 426 00:42:57,240 --> 00:43:06,200 can help people, but like, how much are we willing to go the extra mile, say for forgiveness? 427 00:43:06,200 --> 00:43:13,520 Many people in our age, you know, lots of disputes and oppositions. I mean, people are 428 00:43:13,520 --> 00:43:19,920 telling me now because of the politics in our country, you know, we have pro Trump, 429 00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:26,720 anti Trump and families can get together anymore because they can't talk civilly. And I'm, 430 00:43:26,720 --> 00:43:33,920 and they're, and they're Catholic. I'm like, wow, okay, that's a problem. So what do we 431 00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:39,360 really want? Do we have to be right all the time? Do we have to actually justify our, 432 00:43:39,360 --> 00:43:45,760 our opinions, our judgments? Can we let them go? Can we really meet one another on a different 433 00:43:45,760 --> 00:43:52,840 level? So sacrifice can take on a whole different, you know, all sorts of forms. And I think, 434 00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:59,040 you know, one of the highest things is that we are certainly not willing to sacrifice 435 00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:04,520 our comfort and our securities for the sake of the larger earth, for the sake of the poor, 436 00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:12,160 to be inclusive, to be in a sense in solidarity with all creatures. So, so, um, setting our 437 00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:19,040 desires is a huge, a huge step for us, you know, going from that, which I experienced 438 00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:24,440 most within me, what I really want to what I'm willing to sacrifice, you know, to, to 439 00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:30,280 in a sense, perfect that desire. And then in the end, what am I willing to spend in 440 00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:35,520 my own life? Like, am I willing to give my own life for the sake of another, um, or what 441 00:44:35,520 --> 00:44:40,320 Francis would say his desire for martyrdom. And that just seems like that's really wacky 442 00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:46,360 for our American culture, right? That's like, okay, that's enough. Um, and yeah, we're all 443 00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:50,200 going to die, right? That, I mean, that's just the fact of life. That's just part of 444 00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:53,800 life. The question is not that we're going to die. Is that what are we willing to die 445 00:44:53,800 --> 00:45:00,120 for? You know, and I think that's all part of our desire question. Yeah. And is this, 446 00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:05,480 um, is this one of the connections between the two books as well, where you talk about 447 00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:10,880 sacrifice? Um, and you know, I was, I was talking to someone about this the other day, 448 00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:16,160 that like, I think it's one of the reasons I love to coach is that, you know, it, it's 449 00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:21,840 hard, it's tough, but you're just giving and you're just loving young people and you're 450 00:45:21,840 --> 00:45:26,880 trying to help them, you know, and you're using sport as an avenue to help them develop 451 00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:32,920 mental and emotional strategies. And there's this sacrifice, this giving that when it comes 452 00:45:32,920 --> 00:45:39,240 to the Franciscan vision of who God is, like the Bonaventure, you know, vision of like 453 00:45:39,240 --> 00:45:44,240 this fountain fullness, this kenosis, the self-giving self-diffusiveness, something 454 00:45:44,240 --> 00:45:50,880 that is like flowing perpetually from the core of reality itself. It's like in a very 455 00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:57,400 real way, it's almost as if I'm aligning myself with the trajectory of the universe, you know, 456 00:45:57,400 --> 00:46:02,000 like, is there, am I reading, like, is that an okay bridge between the two books or what 457 00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:07,840 would you add to that? Yeah, no, I do think I think so. The self-diffusive God is what 458 00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:12,960 prayer should lead us into, you know, for one thing. I mean, becoming that living prayer 459 00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:19,320 is then not just simply praying, but in a sense, allowing that to self-diffusive goodness 460 00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:26,160 of God to be diffused in my own life. Right. And so in a sense, we become what we love, 461 00:46:26,160 --> 00:46:34,560 basically. And therefore the humility of God becomes the root reality of my life as I begin 462 00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:39,600 to live that reality, which is the living prayer. And so it's a constant deepening in 463 00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:45,720 that reality that I'm no longer praying. I'm actually indwelling. I'm indwelling the humility 464 00:46:45,720 --> 00:46:52,880 of God, who then, you know, in a sense, the problem today is not God, it's us, you know, 465 00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:57,680 the self-diffusive goodness of God, the love of God is what keeps this creation, I think, 466 00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:03,840 you know, in a unified way, moving towards something more. But it's we who hold back, 467 00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:08,760 right? To use Francis's language, hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, but 468 00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:14,080 give yourself totally to him who has given himself totally to you. And, you know, that 469 00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:19,920 sounds very poetic and very spiritual, but that's our, that's our challenge. You know, 470 00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:26,680 we do hold back, you know, and like you say, even coaching a team, you know, it's hard 471 00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:31,780 because it means going out, going out of yourself, right? You know, sometimes to bring those 472 00:47:31,780 --> 00:47:37,200 players in who are really not getting it, or they're not understanding the plays, or 473 00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:41,800 they're just messing up because they're too preoccupied on their phones or something, 474 00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:46,240 you know, and calling them into a team, calling them into a unity because there's something 475 00:47:46,240 --> 00:47:51,480 to achieve together. And that's why the humility of God in terms of our own lives, it's not 476 00:47:51,480 --> 00:47:58,360 just about us. That love itself is unitive. It's being called into a, into a bigger reality, 477 00:47:58,360 --> 00:48:04,880 into a teamwork. Like the universe is really seeking to form the best team possible for 478 00:48:04,880 --> 00:48:11,240 the greatest celebration of play. And, you know, we remain very individual. Like I really 479 00:48:11,240 --> 00:48:14,680 don't want to get involved in that game too much, or, you know, this is going to cost 480 00:48:14,680 --> 00:48:19,480 me. Like I don't want to spend that much time practicing and, you know, in that type thing 481 00:48:19,480 --> 00:48:26,240 and same thing. Practice for winning is practice for living. You know, it's the same idea. 482 00:48:26,240 --> 00:48:31,940 And it's about prayer or deepening that presence of God within us. And then it's about living 483 00:48:31,940 --> 00:48:37,160 in that humility of God or the self-diffusive love that's already within us. We have it 484 00:48:37,160 --> 00:48:43,240 within us. It's not that we have to go finding it. It's here. The problem is us. We keep 485 00:48:43,240 --> 00:48:48,240 closed doors and shut windows to that humble love of God within us. 486 00:48:48,240 --> 00:48:56,580 And I've noticed, I've noticed that in my own life where it's, there's something very 487 00:48:56,580 --> 00:49:05,520 uncomfortable about confronting the reality that God humbly enters in time and time again, 488 00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:12,440 because that means that I, if I am to live into the fullness of my own being, I have 489 00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:18,200 to enter in as well. Even places that perhaps I don't want to go. Um, people, people that 490 00:49:18,200 --> 00:49:22,160 you disagree with people, you know, the, the list of things you mentioned earlier, but 491 00:49:22,160 --> 00:49:29,360 it's like God enters in God bends low. Um, is there that God is there. And I think, you 492 00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:33,880 know, I think the unreconciled God or the unloved God is not a God you really want to 493 00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:41,680 know. Right. It's like, if you're not loved, what do you do? You kind of act out, right. 494 00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:47,520 And you kind of go seeking that love by doing crazy things. And sometimes I think, you know, 495 00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:52,400 I think the destruction of our world can be the unloved God, you know, it's like, look, 496 00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:57,600 you're not, you're not being attentive, you know, to what, where I am already within you. 497 00:49:57,600 --> 00:50:02,880 And so Francis says the love of him who loved us is great to be loved. Well, nice and pious. 498 00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:08,880 It's like, um, he kind of got it. Like if we don't love God, we do bear the consequences 499 00:50:08,880 --> 00:50:15,440 of an unloved divinity. And that's really not pretty at all, you know? Um, and this 500 00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:21,040 would be my modern, you know, um, interpretation here. And I'm going to admit that I'm throwing 501 00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:26,480 in a little bit of Carl Jung into Franciscan spirituality. That doesn't, that doesn't sound 502 00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:35,200 like you, Sister Ilya. But, you know, um, I'm just so amazed how we are our own obstacles 503 00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:42,240 to the very world we desire. And that's, that's our problem. And Francis in his own simple way, 504 00:50:42,240 --> 00:50:48,320 he understood that his admonitions clearly point in that direction. You know, we're the problem. 505 00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:54,080 God is not the problem. Bonaventure too. God is, God, the whole point of the diffusive and humble 506 00:50:54,080 --> 00:51:00,960 God is the whole creation is as Francis recognized at the end, it's filled with God. It's pregnant 507 00:51:00,960 --> 00:51:07,200 with God to use, um, Angela Foligno's phrase. So creation's not the problem. Nature is not the 508 00:51:07,200 --> 00:51:12,400 problem. Little animals are not the problem. We humans, we're the big problem, you know, 509 00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:18,240 and we have a choice to make. We have to not just know, we have to really will to love. 510 00:51:19,120 --> 00:51:25,680 That's our, that's our challenge in modern age. Yeah. Yeah. Last question about Franciscan prayer. 511 00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:31,760 Um, what, what would you say would be, you've mentioned a couple of things, but what would you 512 00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:39,840 say if you were, this is probably too, too open, but most people don't put Franciscan in prayer 513 00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:43,440 together. And I think you mentioned this in your introduction, you know, where a student came up 514 00:51:43,440 --> 00:51:48,960 to you and she was like Franciscan prayer. Like, what does that, what does that mean exactly? 515 00:51:48,960 --> 00:51:54,080 What is, what would you say is like the Franciscan traditions, unique contribution 516 00:51:54,720 --> 00:52:01,440 to something as expansive as prayer and perhaps in particular, something that we're missing 517 00:52:01,440 --> 00:52:08,400 today? Yeah, I think, you know, I think Clara Vassisi really gave us a nice segue into that 518 00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:14,240 question because she was brought up in the monastic tradition, you know, she lived under the Benedictine 519 00:52:14,240 --> 00:52:20,320 rule and therefore Alexio Divina was very familiar to her, right? Where you take the scriptures and 520 00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:25,600 you read the passage and then you reflect on the passage and then you keep meditating on it until 521 00:52:25,600 --> 00:52:32,320 it leads you to a deeper sense of God. And I think Francis, Francis had nothing like that. He 522 00:52:32,320 --> 00:52:36,480 opened the book, he said, yep, that's it, that's what I want. And then what did he do? He went out 523 00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:44,240 and he made an effort to focus his heart on that which he had experienced. So it's about, 524 00:52:44,240 --> 00:52:51,840 it's about meeting God in the concrete other, which Clara puts that in the first line, 525 00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:59,280 gaze upon him, gaze, see. Seeing is everything here. So it's not about reflection, it's about 526 00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:06,320 seeing. That's our first step to prayer. It's seeing in the most, you know, seeing the tree, 527 00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:14,080 seeing the poor person, seeing the Republican, seeing the Democrat, right? Seeing the drop of 528 00:53:14,080 --> 00:53:22,880 water. And then as we see, to use Angela's words, so we love, right? Seeing, and it's about falling 529 00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:30,320 in love by seeing the deep, you know, seeing more than what's mere superficial. It's Francis seeing 530 00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:35,840 in the hand of the leper more than just the ugliness of disfigurement. There was a goodness 531 00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:41,840 there. And we're blind. I mean, Bonaventure writes this stuff often and so does Francis, we're blind. 532 00:53:41,840 --> 00:53:46,320 And that's right out of the Gospels, right? It's because you say you see, Jesus said, that your 533 00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:52,800 blindness remains, as he said to the Pharisees. It's really, the Franciscan prayer is about 534 00:53:52,800 --> 00:54:01,920 seeing and loving, being attentive, being, seeing by being attentive to what one sees, 535 00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:07,840 being intelligent, in other words, use Lonergan's language, being reasonable about this, 536 00:54:07,840 --> 00:54:15,360 and then responding, you know, in love. If we don't see, we're not going to love, right? It's 537 00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:21,360 just an object that's in our way. Like it's just object, even persons are objects in our way, 538 00:54:21,360 --> 00:54:27,840 like because we're blind, we don't see. And so what value is prayer? So, you know, you meet people 539 00:54:27,840 --> 00:54:33,840 and they're in church and praying, praying, praying, praying, and their heads are, you know, 540 00:54:33,840 --> 00:54:39,840 in some lofty realm of some spiritual something or other, and then they go out and they're like 541 00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:48,480 stepping over, like, you know, the person lying in the street, they don't see. I'm not saying that 542 00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:55,280 all contemplatives are like that, but we have a tendency to spiritualize things apart from the 543 00:54:55,280 --> 00:55:03,040 concrete, the embodiment of things. We miss out the bodies and we become blind. So Francis, 544 00:55:03,040 --> 00:55:09,840 get prayer is really about seeing the humility of God. Yeah. And that in seeing, you know, like 545 00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:17,280 when you say that it's, you're seeing the goodness of the person, correct? You know, and in that, 546 00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:22,880 and in that goodness, there is the humility of God in action. Yeah. People don't know what does 547 00:55:22,880 --> 00:55:28,640 that mean? What should I, like people said to me, what should I look for? It's a good, it's a good 548 00:55:28,640 --> 00:55:40,080 question. And that's really a kind of funny thing, you know, because what does it mean to see the 549 00:55:40,080 --> 00:55:48,320 good? And Bonaventure helps us. It's like to see the beauty of something, to see it's kind of 550 00:55:48,960 --> 00:55:54,160 radiant wisdom. It's like, wow, like you look at a tree and you go, and you look at a tree, 551 00:55:54,160 --> 00:55:58,800 then you really look at it and you go, it's, wow, it's incredible. You know, it's wonder, 552 00:55:59,200 --> 00:56:05,680 it's awesomeness, even the way, you know, if you look at a person, look at their facial features, 553 00:56:05,680 --> 00:56:09,760 you know, they have distinct features. They had, you know, like me, I have a broken nose, 554 00:56:09,760 --> 00:56:16,560 you know, and then you go, wow, there's something about the way you're constituted. That's a beauty. 555 00:56:16,560 --> 00:56:22,960 It's all its own. It's a unique beauty, right? That no other person could replace or, you know, 556 00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:29,280 can you can clone it. And so it's beauty, it's goodness, it's the wisdom. And when we see that 557 00:56:29,280 --> 00:56:36,560 beauty, I think really goodness is about beauty, quite honestly. Beauty that cannot be, it can't 558 00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:43,680 be reproduced by a pixel, you know, or by a computer. It's a beauty that is so unclonable. 559 00:56:43,680 --> 00:56:50,320 It's so unique. It's so distinct because it's radiating in this particular way and in no other 560 00:56:50,320 --> 00:56:58,880 way, you know, and that's it. It's not just the beauty. It's this beauty to use the schistic term 561 00:56:58,880 --> 00:57:05,040 of change, the thisness of something. And I think that's what Francis saw in the leper. And that's 562 00:57:05,040 --> 00:57:14,560 what prayer has to lead us to. It's this beauty, this leaf, this rock, this leper, you know, this, 563 00:57:14,560 --> 00:57:24,160 noble person, this lady, Claire, not anyone else. And we're losing that. We're losing the thisness 564 00:57:24,160 --> 00:57:29,680 of our age and information age. Now we're all algorithms, you know, we can replace these 565 00:57:29,680 --> 00:57:37,040 algorithms and build on them. And that when we lose, when you lose thisness, then it gets lost 566 00:57:37,040 --> 00:57:41,760 in the algorithms of information. We then lose the desire for beauty. 567 00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:50,480 Yeah. Well, speaking of beauty, I mean, this conversation has been beautiful. I mean, it's 568 00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:57,040 I've really anytime I get the chance to talk to you, I mean, it stirs something within me. And 569 00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:02,400 yeah, I'm just I know I'm just so grateful for you and your work. And I know, 570 00:58:03,120 --> 00:58:07,040 Franciscan media, everyone there is really excited about the refresh of these two books. 571 00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:11,120 This has been great. And I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Do you have anything else that 572 00:58:11,120 --> 00:58:16,800 you'd like to discuss? No, Stephen, thank you. Thank you for your great work. And may Franciscan 573 00:58:16,800 --> 00:58:20,080 media keep spreading the message of this great tradition. 574 00:58:22,880 --> 00:58:29,120 Again, that was Sister Elia Delio. Franciscan prayer and humility of God are both available 575 00:58:29,120 --> 00:58:36,320 in the Franciscan media store at shop.franciscanmedia.org. If you enjoyed this conversation, 576 00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:41,120 I think you'll really enjoy both of these books. Huge thanks to Sister Elia for being on the 577 00:58:41,120 --> 00:58:46,720 Off the Page podcast from Franciscan media. And thanks as well to Father Cyprian Concilio 578 00:58:46,720 --> 00:58:51,920 for providing the music for this episode. I encourage you to check his music out on Spotify 579 00:58:51,920 --> 00:59:07,360 or wherever you listen to your music. This is Stephen Copeland signing off. Peace and all good.