Ilia Delio, OSF – Franciscan Media

God of Overflowing Love

Ilia Delio, OSF — Sun, 11 May 2025 09:30:00 +0000

The goal of prayer is to make Jesus Christ alive in the believer. To bring Christ to life is the way to peace. Prayer is that relationship with God, the longing of the human heart for God, and God’s longing for us. Franciscan prayer is about relationship with a God of overflowing love. It is discovering the God of love at the center of our lives and of our world and finding the truth of our identity in God. To enter into this relationship one must be a person of desire. God does not force us into a relationship of love but freely gives us the grace to respond to his invitation of love. Spiritual desire is the longing of the heart for relationship with God that brings happiness and peace. Francis of Assisi was a passionate person, a dreamer, a lover and a person of desire. When he felt his desire filled in hearing the gospel, he found the answer to his deepest longings and changed his life accordingly. He became a follower of Christ. Francis’ life shows us that we must be attentive to our desires if we are to find the fulfillment of our lives in God.

—from the book Franciscan Prayer
by Ilia Delio, OSF

Prayer Lifts Us Up

Ilia Delio, OSF — Sat, 10 May 2025 09:30:00 +0000

An understanding of prayer in the Franciscan tradition, that is, the spirituality of prayer, can offer new vitality to Christian life today because it is a path of relationship with God that strives to live in the fullness of the Incarnation. It is a path that can enkindle the fire of Christian life by lifting us out of the doldrums of mediocrity and complacency and draw us into the mystery of Christ. Franciscan prayer is dynamic because it is about participation in the mystical Body of Christ. Prayer in this tradition is decisively incarnational; it is centered on the person of Jesus Christ.

—from the book Franciscan Prayer
by Ilia Delio, OSF

Open to a Future in God

Ilia Delio, OSF — Sun, 04 May 2025 09:30:00 +0000

To trust in the power of God’s grace through darkness, isolation, bitterness and rejection is to be on the way to becoming prayer because it is the way to freedom in God. For prayer, that deep relationship of God breathing in us, requires change and conversion. And where there is change, there is the letting go of the old and the giving birth to the new. To pray is to be open to the new, to the future in God. The way to life passes through change and ultimately the change from death to life. Prayer is the way to life because in prayer we are invited to change and to grow in love. We are invited into relationship with God who loves us and is faithful to us even when the world around us seems to fail. For it is in darkness that God’s light shines radiantly.

Thus we must enter into the darkness to see the light. We must enter into the center of our hearts to find the solitude of God’s loving embrace.

—from the book Franciscan Prayer
by Ilia Delio, OSF

God Is Fully Alive!

Ilia Delio, OSF — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 09:30:00 +0000

At the heart of it all, Franciscan prayer is about gospel living. It is not really concerned with knowledge or intellectual contemplation. It is concerned with the human person and the transformation of the human person in God. It is about living Christ and making the Good News of the Incarnation alive. How desperately this path of prayer is needed in our world today! We seek healing of divisions, hate and violence. We desire wholeness, unity and peace. How shall these things come about? Are they merely ideas or values that must be given flesh and blood? To live the gospel is to put flesh and blood on God and proclaim throughout the universe, the glory of God is fully alive! Without flesh and blood, the Good News that God has become human and healed the divisions of humankind and all creation is not news at all.

Christian life demands human participation or it simply does not exist. It is an empty title in a broken world. If we desire justice, peace and love among humankind and throughout creation, then we humans must become justice, peace and love. This is the Good News of Jesus Christ and the Good News of being Christian—to live in the depths of God’s faithful love in a way that resounds throughout all creation. The path of Franciscan prayer is a way to live fully the Gospel life by living fully in the mystery of Christ. We must descend with Christ into the darkness of our humanity so that we may rise with Christ in the unity of love. In a world marked by violence and death, suffering does not have the last word. The last word is love and that love is the fullness of Christ, the Word of God.

—from the book Franciscan Prayer: Awakening to Oneness with God
by Ilia Delio, OSF

Know Ourselves in God

Ilia Delio, OSF — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 09:30:00 +0000

Incarnation is what all of creation is about because it is the Word of God made flesh. We who claim to be Christian are caught up in the mystery of Christ in an explicit way. To be caught up in this mystery is to be caught up in a God of “reckless love”—reckless enough to remain faithful in love in suffering and death. We are called to find this God in fragile human flesh, encounter him and let ourselves be fully embraced by him. To encounter this God of humble love, however, does not demand that we first look inside ourselves in some type of “detached” introspection. On the contrary we are asked to look long and hard at the person of Jesus Christ, especially in the concrete details of the cross. It is here that we can begin to know God and ourselves in God. Gazing in this way will ultimately lead us to our true identity in God.

—from the book Franciscan Prayer: Awakening to Oneness with God
by Ilia Delio, OSF

How Does Jesus Live in Me?

Ilia Delio, OSF — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 09:30:00 +0000

The Franciscan path is different because it does not ask, “what would Jesus do?” but “how does Jesus live in me?” For the Franciscans, the Incarnation is intrinsic to human personhood. What we are about as humans and what we are to become as children of God is integrally related to the person of Jesus Christ. Christ is not merely a person we follow, as if following John or Jim, nor is salvation about the “dos and don’ts” of being saved. Rather Christ, the Word incarnate, is the person in whom each person finds his or her unique meaning and origin. The logic of the Franciscan imitatio Christi is God’s self-emptying love which is incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. To say that Jesus is the theophany or manifestation of God means that in the form of Jesus’ life, God has been fully revealed.

Jesus Christ is the image of God because Christ is the “Word” or the perfect self-expression of the Father. Therefore, it is Christ who is the perfect image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15).

—from the book Franciscan Prayer: Awakening to Oneness with God
by Ilia Delio, OSF