Center for Action and Contemplation

Francis’s love for God deepens his love for life. Mirabai Starr illuminates:

Now that he has fallen in love with God, Francis recognizes his relatedness to all life. If the creator is his father, then all living things are his sisters and brothers. This connectedness fills him with wild joy, a joy that spills over every vessel of the human experience and...

Franciscan mysticism is at heart incarnational mysticism. Theologian Ilia Delio highlights how Francis of Assisi was transformed by the radical implications of the Incarnation, including his powerful experience meeting a leper:
 
Francis lived in the spirit of humility and poverty by following the poor and humble Christ…. Just as God reached out to embrac...

Clare of Assisi provides spiritual counsel to Bohemian princess Agnes of Prague. She recommends praying before images of the cross:

Gaze upon, examine, contemplate, most noble queen, desiring to follow your spouse…. If you suffer with him, you will reign with him. Grieving with him, you will rejoice with him. Dying with him on the cross of tribulation, y...

Feast Day of Clare of Assisi

Sister Margaret Carney tells of the radical trajectory of Clare of Assisi’s life, who left behind wealth and social standing under cover of night in exchange for a simple life devoted to God:

The year was 1212. On Palm Sunday morning she attended the Mass in the cathedral…. Late that same night, Clar...

Father Richard explores how Franciscan mysticism invites us to encounter divine presence in our concrete, specific lives:

Francis of Assisi knew that if we could accept that the finite manifests the infinite, and that the physical is the doorway to the spiritual (which is the foundational principle we call “incarnation”), then all we need is right here an...