Remaining in Love

 

 

 

The Mysticism of Francis and Clare

Remaining in Love

Friday, August 14, 2026

READ ON CAC.ORG

 

 

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 flows back into the earth, giving birth to the endless unfolding of creation. Francis invites everyone to his table, which is God’s table….

 
The more saintly Saint Francis grows, the more human he becomes. His love of creation keeps him close to the earth, where he rejoices in the simple yet unutterably holy gift of being a man, a man connected to other men and to women, to earth and sky, to forest and village and river and sea, to the tiny ant and the majestic eagle, to winter snowfall and the promise of spring sleeping beneath it. [1]

Father Richard considers Franciscan mysticism an invitation to love the divine presence in the world, in ourselves, and in all creation:  

All being can correctly and rightly be spoken of with “one voice” (univocity), as Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus (1266–1308) would later put it. What I am you also are, and so is the world. Creation is one giant symphony of mutual sympathy, or, as Augustine loved to say, “And thus the end will be the one Christ, loving himself.” [2]
 
To arrive at this mystical vision, I must know that I am, at least in part, the very thing I am seeking. In fact, that is what makes me seek it! God cannot be found “out there” until God is first found “in here,” within ourselves. Then we can almost naturally see God in others and in all creation too. What we seek is what we are. The search for God and the search for our true self are finally thesame search. Francis’s all-night prayer, “Who are you, O God, and who am I?” is one of the most honest prayers we can offer.

A heart transformed by this realization of oneness knows that only love “in here” can spot and enjoy love “out there.” Thus, all mystics are positive people—or they are not mystics. Their spiritual work is precisely that of recognizing and then handing over all their inner negativity and fear to God. The great paradox here is that such a victory is a total gift from God, and yet we must also want it very much (see Philippians 2:12–13).
 
The central practice in Franciscan mysticism, therefore, is that we must remain in love, which is why it is a commandment as such (John 15:9) and, in fact, the commandment of Jesus. Only when we are eager to love can we see love and goodness in the world around us. We must ourselves remain in peace and then we will see and find peace over there. Remain in beauty, and we will honor beauty everywhere. [3]