Coming Closer to God

Sister Ilia Delio wrote a book entitled "Franciscan Prayer". It is page after page of the most beautiful insights into how to pray and how to find God within ourselves and in our lives. This is an excerpt from her book:

“As a Minister General of a large Order, Bonaventure provided, among other things, spiritual direction for those seeking God. In a letter to Poor Clare nuns, he offered directives as to how we might enter into prayer by way of ‘descent’. The steps are summarized as follows:

· Return to yourself;
· Enter into your heart;
· Ponder what you were, are, should have been, called to be;
· What you are by nature;
· What you are through sin;
· What you should have been through effort;
· What you can still be through grace;
· Meditate in your heart;
· Let your spirit brood. (Are you resentful, angry, jealous?)
· Plow this field, work on yourself;
· Strive for freedom within, the freedom that leads to relationship with God, realizing that God will never force us to love him;
· Lack of self-knowledge and failure to appreciate one’s own worth make for faulty judgment in all other matters;
· If you are not able to understand (and accept) your own self, you will not be able to understand (or accept) what is beyond you.

Bonaventure’s advice is practical and balanced. We cannot love the God we cannot see unless we love the God we see within ourselves and in others. The more we are able to find God within ourselves, the more we can find God outside ourselves. The deeper our relation with God, the greater the realization of our identity in God, that is, the closer we come to God. The more we are ourselves the more we can love others, for no other reason or purpose but simply to love them because God is love.” – Sister Ilia Delio, O.S.F.