The simplest way to describe God’s poverty and humility is in terms of love. Love gives itself away—this is God’s poverty. Love turns toward the other so it can give itself to the other—this is God’s humility. In the Incarnation, God turns toward us through the Son/Word and gives (him)self to us as love. We call this gift of God’s love to us, this gift of total self-emptying love, “kenosis.”
The poverty of God is the kenosis or self-emptying of the Word, the descent of the Word, from the riches of divine glory into our fragile human nature. The God whom Francis discovered is a God who shows himself to us in poor and humble fragile human flesh. This is a God who loves us so much as to be reckless in love; a God who throws it all away out of love and never tires of loving.
—from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective
by Ilia Delio, OSF
