Francis understood that God is not remote and distant, a God who has nothing in common with creation. Rather, God is unstoppable goodness—a God who simply can’t wait to give everything away and to love us where we are. God comes to us—that is God’s humility—and we are called to love God in return.
If God loves us where we are and comes to be with us humbly in the flesh, then we must admit that the humility of God is intertwined with the Incarnation. Incarnation we might say is God bending low to embrace the world in love. This makes the entire creation—all peoples, all mountains and valleys, all creatures big and small, everything that exists—holy because God embraces it. This is what I believe Teilhard de Chardin was trying to tell us when he said, “There is nothing profane here below for those who have eyes to see.” Everything is sacred. The entire creation, including every person, is a sacrament of God.
—from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective
by Ilia Delio, OSF
