Franciscan Prayer

I have been reading a book titled "Franciscan Prayer" by Ilia Delio, OSF, a Franciscan Sister. It is very good. I have been reading it for a couple of months, only because I keep running across these gems that just make you sit back and ponder. It is not a book to be read lightly and quickly, but savored over time. I'd highly recommend it for anyone interested in growing deeper in their prayer life. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes so far. "When I pray, when I breathe with God, I become part of the intimacy of God's life. The Spirit of God who breathes within me draws me inot the circle of love between the Father and Son. Through prayer, I am drawn inot the dance of the Trinity." "prayer is the breath of God still breathing in us when we ourselves may be struggling for air." Wow! Good stuff.

A must read for anyone on the Franciscan journey. It is full of Franciscan theology, Bonaventure, Francis and Clare, their spirituality and the transformation and conversion we experience when we pray and experience God as a Franciscan. The chapter titles are: Divine-Human Relationship, Desire, Prayer and the Spiritual Journey, Learning to Gaze - Poverty and Prayer, Friendship with Christ, The Heart Turned Toward God, Contemplation - Seeing and Loving, Imitation - Becoming What We Love and The Way to Peace. Sister Delio explains Clare's method of contemplative prayer: gaze, consider, contemplate and imitate. "Imitation of Christ is the fruit of prayer - not the literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved through transformation." She draws the comparison to a mother's love that like Mary gives birth to Christ. Franciscan prayer is about gospel living. We don't have to leave the world to find God; rather one finds God in the details of the world. "We are not simply to pray - we are to become prayer - living flames of love that ignite the world." To share in the love of the Word made flesh is relational and bring us out into the world to embrace not only our brothers and sisters, but also our enemy so that we may share in the joy of the triune God.

This book is a delight. A must have for secular Franciscans of all denominations.

This book is well written and will appeal to non-Franciscans as well as Franciscans. The format--with questions at the end of each chapter--readily appeals to persons who wish you use the book for a discussion group. I have used one of the chapters with college undergraduates. They understood the message and found it readily applicable to their own lives. These students are all non-Franciscans; half of them are non-Catholic Christians.

The goal of Delio, a theologian, in writing this book is to define more clearly the role of Franciscan prayer in making Jesus Christ alive in the believer. To accomplish this aim, she relies on three major voices from the Franciscan tradition: Francis of Assisi, Clare of Assisi, and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. The book addresses specifics such as Clare's fourfold path to prayer (gazing, considering, contemplating, and imitating), and the Franciscan practices of poverty, friendship with Christ, and unceasing prayer as a way to live more deeply in Christ. These topics are fleshed out with background on the cultural climate leading to and encompassing the time of Francis, Clare, and Bonaventure and also details of their lives and teachings. The entirety of the book is informative and inspiring, but its greatest richness lies in the author's gift for expressing spiritual concepts; example, "We pray not to acquire a relationship with God as if acquiring something that did not previously exist. Rather, we pray to disclose the image of God in which we are created, the God within us, that is, the one in whom we are created and in whom lies the seed of our identity.... We pray not to `ascend' to Go but to `give birth to God' to allow the image in which we are created to become visible."