Minute Meditations

Identity in God

man kneeling with hands raised while praying

The life of Francis shows us that to appreciate the book of creation we must come to know ourselves as creatures of God and as creatures of creation. Without self-knowledge there can be no real knowledge of creation as our home and the womb of our birth. Without the human person to give voice to creation—to celebrate its giftedness and sacredness—creation becomes mute and vulnerable to manipulation. The key to creation’s holiness, therefore, is in human identity—who we are in our Creator, the Trinity of divine love. This identity is revealed to us in Jesus Christ, the Word in whom we are made flesh. If God is alive in us, as God was in Francis, then we are alive to the world of God’s good creation. However, if God is dead in us, then we are dead to the deeper meaning of creation as well.

Francis realized that God humbly bends low in love and hides in simple, ordinary, fragile beings. So too we must realize that God is in our midst. Only when we can recognize creatures for what they are—expressions of God’s overflowing love—can we recognize the source of our own lives as well. The love that gave birth to all creatures is the same love that has brought us into existence. This is what Francis realized: the luminous web of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ. We are called to live in this luminous web of love.

—from the book Care for Creation: A Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth
by Keith Douglass Warner, OFM, Ilia Delio, OSF, and Pamela Wood


Care for Creation | Franciscan Media
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