To pray as a poor person is countercultural. To gaze on a God who is poor and humble is disarming. But if we desire to come to the full potential of our humanity so that we may know the truth of ourselves and the world in which we live then we must strive to be poor. Poverty in prayer is difficult but if we gaze daily upon the God of descending love, the God who comes to us in poverty and humility, then we can begin to be detached from the multiplicity of things in our lives and move toward the simplicity of the gaze.
For the prayer of gazing means that God becomes less an idol of our own projections (needs and desires) and more of an icon of infinite love piercing through finite reality.
—from the book Franciscan Prayer: Awakening to Oneness with God
by Ilia Delio, OSF
