During Ordinary Time in 2023, we listened to a series of lectures by Sister Ilia Delio called “Christian Life: An Adventure in Love.” The weekly questions are posted here!
Week of May 28th: Chapter One - Called Into Being
Delio insists Christians have a calling to love the world by saying yes to the people in our lives—not because we are special, but because we are loved. Do you find this idea more comforting or more challenging? Why?
Delio describes the invitation in Christ from God as being “an invitation into a future rooted in Christ that involves the radical transformation of created reality through the unitive power of God’s love.” She also describes this as reclaiming the early church’s cosmic Christology. What questions arose for you in this emphasis?
Delio describes our current status in the church as daily inhabiting post-modern and expanding spaces while having a faith system that clings to a pre-modern worldview. How might seeing the culmination of evolution as the person and love of Christ help us be more open to change as an expected aspect of our faith?
Reflect on the lecture. What challenges you? What did you agree with? What did you disagree with? Did the lecture unlock any freedom or wonder for you?
Week of June 4th: Chapter Two - God is Love
Delio offers three images from church history for the overflowing love/being of God: boiling over (Meister Eckhart), fountain-fullness (St. Bonaventure), and Niagara Falls (herself). Pray with these images and ask God to reveal more of this goodness and love to you. Where do you sense a need or desire for this overflowing love?
What hopes, challenges, or desires arise when you hear this invitation: “So I invite you to begin this journey into God by calling to mind everything God is for you and then to negate everything you have said. Make your way into the great silence of this great immense abyss of love. Go slowly, because this journey needs time, patience, and attentiveness.”
Delio offers mystery—not as something hidden in the darkness—but as the mystical where words always fall short of describing experience. Pray slowly with this mystery, asking God to be with you in this mystical, indescribable reality and being of love.
Delio describes God’s love as eros—ecstatically desiring all of creation and agape— and agape —always giving Godself away for all of creation. Return to the images of overflowing love with these words and offer what you think of or feel in prayer. If possible, sit in silence while contemplating these descriptions of love. What do you notice?
Week of June 11th: Chapter Three - The Trinity
Delio grounds the idea of God being a person in relationship more than individually. How does this expression of God’s personhood as relationality impact your own interaction with the Holy Trinity?
Delio emphasizes the terms Father and Son are not biological terms, but relational in nature. She says the first person of the Trinity could also be called Mother or Source and refers to the second person as the Word, Image, or Expression of the Source who is always proclaiming who the Father is. Spend time contemplating this mystery and love. What comes to your mind?
The theme of God’s hospitality runs throughout this lecture. Where do you need or want to sense more of the hospitality of God? Consider turning that desire into a prayer conversation with the Trinity (this is what we will do in our contemplative prayer time this evening over Zoom).
Week of June 18th: Chapter Four - The Unfolding Story of Life
What shifts in your understanding and relationship to creation as you ponder creation being an ongoing event rather than a past event? How does creation being grounded in ongoing relationship rather than something that happened in history impact your daily life?
Delio describes God as an artist placing creation—even the smallest speck of dust—as an expression of the infinite and incomprehensible love of God that is always boiling over. She insists that when we participate in destroying creation we are limiting God’s expressions of love. She also suggests if we want to know God we should just look around to see how God has expressed and given love away in the book of creation. What discipline might help you remember to enter into this relationship with creation? What might you want to repent for in limiting God’s expression?
Delio names individualism, consumerism, and privatism as culprits in distancing ourselves from being members of creation who remember we have emerged from the earth and not created it. Are there places in your own life and imagination where detaching from these three ways of being might restore the joy and wonder of being and receiving expressions of God’s love?
She quotes Juergen Moltmann who says heaven is the undetermined goodness and newness that transcend earth’s determined goodness. He writes, “Heaven is ours in this creation as we are on the right track toward the relationship of God as love.” Delio describes hope as the eternal spring that comes from looking for the newness in each day as creation continues to unfold instead of trying to make it through one more day. Do you notice any desire or inspiration in these ideas?
Week of June 25th: Chapter Five - Jesus Christ: The Beloved of God
Delio looks into church history to show the work of theologians who have questioned “sin” being the main reason Jesus became incarnate and insisted love is the root reason. She quotes one colleague who compares the life of Jesus being reduced to sin as someone “building the Taj Mahal to cover a pothole.” How does shifting the incarnation from being predominantly about sin to being primarily about God’s desire to express love impact your understanding of God?
Delio corrects a view of salvation that says we are “rescued from this world” to salvation being a restoration of our health in relationship to all of creation. She also says, “We are not saved from the world, but we learn that Christ is the reason for the world.” Contemplate this shift and notice what imaginations and desires grow from this reflection.
Throughout the chapter Delio refers to the plan of God being the love of God. Specifically, she says, “When we say we are Christian we are saying God has a plan and than plan is love and Christ is the expression of this love.” She adds, “The question is not do you want to be a Christian, but do you want to love?” Contemplate these sentences and see if there is anything you want to say to God or to another person as you reflect.
Week of July 2nd: Chapter Six - Jesus: The Humility of God
Delio contrasts idols and icons in this section saying the idols are typically things we project ourselves onto others from something within us. She says these idols are usually products of individualism and privatism while icons are gifts of creation in which we allow divine light to shine through. Rather than moving us to self-obsession, icons move us into the belonging of God’s love in creation. Is there a specific person, place, or thing that you have seen or received as either an idol, icon, or both? Is there something or someone that you’ve treated as an idol that receiving as an icon may shift your relationship to the person or thing into a more healthy space?
Delio quotes St. Francis saying, “As we see, so we love.” Salvation is seeing and receiving all of creation grounded in the love of God. This love is present in something as small as an acorn leaf and as consistent as the face of someone you consider an enemy. She says, “To reject another is to reject God because the other’s life comes from God as source.” How does this free you? How does it challenge you? Does it stir up any memory or emotion you’d like to turn into a conversation with God in prayer?
Delio describes worship and liturgy as “a celebration of God’s humble love.” Early in this section she also says, “You can’t be a Christian and accumulate.” While she is speaking of possessions in this statement, I think it can also apply to knowledge. How would shifting from corporate worship being an accumulation of possessions (knowledge, people, etc.) to a celebration of God’s humble love change your own view of the point of discipleship and church?
Week of July 9th: Chapter Seven - The Centrality of the Cross
Delio quotes Bonaventure’s remarking on how sin leads to an insatiable obsession with questioning both ourselves and others that never finds peace. It reminds me of Willie James Jennings’ description of “a cancerous self-obsession” that so often exists in Christian communities. How might moving these self-obsessions away from insatiable self-examinations and into the movement of the cross that reconciles and unites people provide freedom for you?
Delio says that we have domesticated the cross by rationalizing and reducing its meaning to something comprehensible in human rationality. She describes ways that rationalizing the cross have been used to suppress marginalized people by glorifying innocent suffering. The word mystery is used often in this chapter. In what ways is your relationship to the cross rooted in rationality? In what ways is it connected to mystery? Spend time contemplating these ways of relating to the cross and see if you notice how you might be attached to a rationality that reduces God’s love. Is there a conversation you may want to have with God about this space?
Delio insists the power of God is the love of God and quotes a theologian who says, “The cross is not a de-divinization of God. God does not become less divine in the cross, but rather the cross is the revelation of the divine God. It is by the very unfathomablness of his forgiving love that he proves he is God and not a man. God need not strip himself of his omnipotence in order to reveal his love. On the contrary, it requires omnipotence to be able to surrender oneself and give oneself away and it requires omnipotence to be able to take oneself back in the giving and to preserve the independence and freedom of the recipient. Only an almighty love can give itself wholly to the other and be a helpless love. This is the God who saves.” What images might be helpful to you as you try to describe this love? Consider writing a few lines as you contemplate God’s love.
Week of July 16th: Chapter Eight - Jesus Christ, You, and Me
Engaging with this chapter felt like squeezing the first seven chapters into some practical action. Before Delio unpacks the work of Christ that takes place in and through us, she elaborates on the prayer life of St. Francis with these words, “Francis did not so much pray and he became a prayer.” She also describes prayer as “not saying prayers, but the primal speech that longs to utter itself in a deep dialogue of love.” How does this life of prayer, or this way of abiding in love ground the work we were created to participate in? Are there areas of your life where you can say it feels like a prayer without words? Name some of those places.
Delio insists the way we love is full of actual significance for the life of the world because of being made in the image of God. She says each of us is a little word of God created to express the Word of God revealed in Jesus. Is there someone in your life who it is difficult to receive as a little word of God? How might hearing them as an expression of God’s love create space for a more merciful relationship?
She uses the trees and flowers as examples within creation which do the work of giving and receiving goodness for self and others. She elaborates on God’s patience and mercy to be a “beggar of love who waits at the soul’s door” with a powerless love which was expressed at the cross. She describes freedom as life lived in this powerless love wearing “garments of mercy and reconciliation” for the sake of the entire universe. Pay attention to the largeness and simplicity of these words. What is challenging in this space? What is freeing? Does this invitation to join God in powerless love feel like freedom? Why or why not?
Week of July 23rd: Chapter Nine - What is the Good About the Good News?
This chapter has a question as its title. Consider writing down a few notes on how you would answer that question before you listen to Delio. Where was the overlap? Where was there a disconnect? Where did you experience energy or desire and where did you feel a lack of energy or desire?
Delio describes surrender not as giving over to being defeated, but as a trust that allows a person to freely give oneself to another. She insists God has also surrendered to us in this kind of love. She says this giving and receiving of love is what true power is. Spend time reflecting on this kind of power. She says that we often exchange this kind of power in order to control our lives—or the lives of others. How does this alternative approach to surrender and power empower you to love?
Delio says that if we are having a hard time receiving this power we may need to take the time to stop and begin a sabbath rest. How might rest lead to the kind of surrender Delio says we are invited into?
Week of July 30th: Chapter Ten - Spirituality & Desire
This chapter demands we take our desires seriously in order to live a deeply spiritual life. Is this a new concept to you? If it’s already part of your life how has it grown out matured over time?
Delio ties the ideas of our desires being fulfilled to the lie of consumerism. How does the invitation to lean into our desires while confessing they will not be ultimately fulfilled impact you? What freedom might exist in this space? How might this tension lead to deeper prayer and relationship?
Spend time with the ideas of mimetic desire and mimetic rivalry. Consider writing down some observations and questions around the idea of our desires being manufactured for us in ways that make us see others as a threat. Where might the joy of repentance spring up in this reflection? You might like to listen to two of Fr. Danny's sermons on this topic from the past year or so: Sabbath Rest from Manufactured Desire and Mobs, Scapegoats, and the Lie.
Week of August 6th: Chapter 11 - The Meaning of Conversion
Contemplate the paradox of conversion that says we find our true selves in order to be able to love another person with hospitality. What is challenging about this claim? What is freeing? Are there places in your own story of conversion that work well in this space? Are there places where it doesn’t?
Delio quotes Meister Eckhart—“Conversion is a turning toward the other and letting the other be.” She says that if we do not make this turn we will always be trying to force others into some misplaced container of ourselves. She also recalls the previous chapters invitation to see each person you encounter as an icon of Christ. Where have you experienced this kind of hospitality? Where have you offered it to another?
The chapter concludes with this invitation to … “turn, in this moment—and in every moment—to a new discipline and way of being in the world what we do a visible presence of God’s faithful love.” The chapter began looking back in church history at the desert fathers and mothers who found ways of detaching from the compulsions of their day to become truly human. Delio says our current need includes the discipline of resting in nature, avoiding shopping, and orienting our lives to have friendship with those on the margins. Consider praying and seeking what detachment might assist you in becoming your true self so others can know the love of God?
Week of August 13th: Chapter 12 - Poverty: the Art of Letting Go
Delio describes Jesus as “the poverty of God” and invites us into living a life empty of possession. Reflect on the “power of God” also being the “poverty of God.” What wondering questions arise in this space for you?
Delio not only speaks of the possession of material things, but also of past hurts and offenses. Are there places in your own life where holding onto the possession of an offense is hindering your own freedom? Reflect on the invitation to be free of accumulating offenses. Where do you sense freedom? Where does this feel threatening? Consider inviting the Trinity into this space in conversation.
Delio uses the words from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, “blessed are the poor” as a way to understand the communion that arises from detachment from possessions. She says this way of life restores innocence and freedom in the lives of those who receive creation as a gift to share and enjoy. She contrasts this freedom with possession being a vehicle for individuals to be “locked up within themselves” and in isolation “only being aware of self.” Throughout the lectures Delio has repeatedly offered the invitation of love to be with another, allowing them to be. How does letting go of possession free us into this space of love and hospitality?
Week of August 20th: Chapter 13 - The Art of Obedience
Did you notice any shift in energy or enthusiasm as you first contemplated a twenty-five minute lecture on obedience compared to how the lecture unpacked itself?
Have you typically associated Christian obedience with words like solidarity, listening to the other, hospitality, or community? If yes, how so? If no, why do you think it hasn’t?
Try to take the time to be quiet enough to listen to yourself today. What space might you have compassion on yourself and see a basic need rather than the self-condemnation of accusation? Try this with another person. Be still. Listen. Can you hear someone’s need speak over what you may be tempted to label sin?
Week of September 3rd: Chapter 15 - Suffering and the Cross
Prayerfully contemplate these words from Patrick Malone—a young Jesuit dying of cancer: “Faith is more than a magical formula to conquer the worry, regret, shame, and resentments that cloud our visions and make us jaded and tired. Having faith does not remove every trace of self-absorption and doubt. Those things are part of the human condition. Faith is what brings us into the deepest truth that we are in the image of an unlimited, unrestricted, unimaginable love and when we forget that, as Jesus reminded the religious authorities of his day, then religion does become a shield, a crutch, a closed refuge instead of a way to boldly throw ourselves into a harsh world knowing that it is precisely where we discover a generous God.”
How do we resist being trained for apathy? Consider Delio’s question, “Do you have time for pain?" How does television news increase our training for apathy?
Delio quotes Bonhoeffer in saying, “Only the suffering God can help.” Do you believe God suffers? Why or why not?
Week of September 3rd: Chapter 16 - The Mirror of the Cross
Compare these ways of living: “am I doing it right” vs “am I loving.” What tensions arise in the comparison? What similarities exist? How does seeing the cross of Jesus as a mirror into our own lives impact these ways of life?
Delio says the mirror of the crucified Christ shows us the love we are capable of as well as the violence we are capable of. Spend time in contemplation of the crucified Christ. What does Jesus want to say to you there? What does he want to say to the world? Do you find yourself offering more generosity to others than to yourself in what Jesus might want to say to the world?
The chapter discusses love as making room for another without turning the other into myself. How does this kind of love—love that suffers with and through—transform holiness beyond assimilation?
Week of September 10th: Chapter 16 - The Mirror of the Cross
Compare these ways of living: “am I doing it right” vs “am I loving.” What tensions arise in the comparison? What similarities exist? How does seeing the cross of Jesus as a mirror into our own lives impact these ways of life?
Delio says the mirror of the crucified Christ shows us the love we are capable of as well as the violence we are capable of. Spend time in contemplation of the crucified Christ. What does Jesus want to say to you there? What does he want to say to the world? Do you find yourself offering more generosity to others than to yourself in what Jesus might want to say to the world?
The chapter discusses love as making room for another without turning the other into myself. How does this kind of love—love that suffers with and through—transform holiness beyond assimilation?
Week of September 17th: Chapter 17 - Image and Identity
Delio quotes Thomas Merton as saying, “God utters me like a word, containing a partial truth of God’s self.” Consider taking this quote to prayer and ask God to speak to you what delight is spoken in your existence.
This chapter spends a lot of time in the integrity Christians are called to live within love. Consider praying with this idea and see what spaces of love you may be lead into?
Delio says of Jesus, “He was beautiful in what caused him to be despised.” Where do you see the presence of Jesus with and in the suffering world? Where do you see the presence of Jesus with and in your own life? What might shift in your relationship to God and others in looking at the despised parts of Christ as what is truly beautiful in the world?
Week of September 26th: Chapter 18 - Contemplation and Compassion
Delio begins by emphasizing all Christians are called into a life of contemplation—and not just monks or nuns. Does contemplation feel like something far off or unattainable? How does this chapter reframe contemplation for you?
Delio describes the compassion that arises from a life of contemplation as “experiencing God in people and places we would rather reject.” She also asks the question, “Are we willing to be united in what we see in the other?” She says the mystic is one who is willing to lay down their life for their friends.” Have you typically associated contemplation and mysticism with practical love? What does this earthiness of experience in Christ’s love make hopeful in your own life?
Contemplation, in this chapter, is described as a “depth of vision” that allows all of creation to become an icon for receiving God’s love. Consider making these phrases a place of conversational prayer.
Week of October 1st: Chapter 19 - Transformation
Delio wonders out loud in this chapter about how Christians have become so dissociated from the scandalous love of God in the world through privatization (just me and Jesus) and “multi-level mall spirituality” (treating prayer like something bought in a boutique). She says, “We miss the point of the incarnation when we live privately.” What does this challenge in your own life? What might it set free?
She describes Jesus in this chapter with these words: “His life was not nice and clean. It was not linear and successful. It contained violence and distrust from those close to him. In the end, he seemed like a failure.” She then asks the question, “Are we being scandalous in our love the way Jesus was scandalous in his?” Sit with these descriptions and question. Consider asking God where you might be called into the scandalous love of Christ.
Week of October 8th: Chapter 19 - Contemplation and Compassion
Delio quotes St. Francis as saying, “The church is the world and the human person is the cloister.” This chapter relentlessly moves people who would want to be Christians out of privatized faith and into relationship with the suffering world. How does this challenge your own view of contemplation?
She describes Francis with these words: “…a joyous mystic who needed to feel the suffering of his age, because to not enter into that suffering was to miss being alive.” How does this challenge privatized religion?
Delio quotes St. Clare with these words: “What is the footprint of God in this world? The outline of this footprint is poverty. The surface is humility. And the depth is charity. Everyone bears this footprint—poverty because we are creatures and are dependent, humility because we exist with undeniable connected earthiness, and charity because everyone is lovable and has the potential to radiate goodness.” Spend time contemplating these words and consider asking where you might be drawn to compassionately encounter another’s specific suffering.
Delio concludes this chapter insisting the love of God does foolish things. She called the incarnation “the foolishness of God” and reminds us to love with compassion will cost us. Consider revisiting her question from chapter one: “The question isn’t do you want to be a Christian. The question is, do you want to love.” How does this chapter impact your interaction with that question?
Week of October 15th: Chapter 21 - Spiritual Motherhood
Delio calls all of us to spiritual motherhood by bearing Christ in the world through our love. She associates being made in the image of God to having the capacity for God to live in us. Contemplate these images and see what you may want to express through prayer.
This chapter is full of examples of his Christian life is an evolutionary life. What are some of the evolutionary images of this chapter that excite you? Which did you find most challenging?
The content is shifting to practice in these final chapters. Delio wonders if the reason people are finding Christianity so boring is that we have settled for “an historical religion” instead of a dynamic and evolutionary life. How might the image of Christ being carried in our love for one another unlock some of what is so stagnant in modern Christianity?
Delio says, “Christian love is the energy of the new evolution” and says that when we unite our lives to others—beyond borders and boundaries—we are participating in this new creation. Contemplate this invitation and consider wondering where it might lead you today.
Week of October 22nd: Chapter 22 - Prophetic Witness
Delio calls Christians to the prophetic life of living in the interconnected wholeness of the world by joining our lives to the lives of others. She insists we fail to be true Christians when we resist new ideas and challenges to cling to Jesus the way Mary wanted to cling to him in the garden after his resurrection. How does this kind of risk—the risk of joining our lives to others instead of separating our lives from others—challenge and release you?
She quotes Basil Pennington saying sin is a refusal to grow and change for community—or “living in the exile of us relatedness.” Contemplate this definition of sin. What shifts in your understanding or desire to repent—change your mind—in this context?
She tells the story of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin refusing to give up on the church because “even in its institutional form it offers the hope of an evolutionary universe.” She calls us to see our neighbor as God enfleshed in fragile human form and invites us to continue to co-create with Christ by making others feel the love of God in our love for them. Again, what is convicting here? What freedom arises in the call to join being more central to the Christian life than the call to separate?
Week of October 29th: Chapter 23 - Costly Discipleship
Delio quotes Jesuit Raimon Panikkar in her declaration that Jesus didn’t leave us anything but the Holy Spirit and his silent presence in the Eucharist with the charge to be sheep among wolves. She insists the Christian life lacks institution, formula, and isn’t a doctrine or a text. Earlier in her lectures she insists we must surrender to this call. What might surrender look like for you in these challenging declarations?
She speaks of Trappist monks who were martyred in Algeria. She tells the story of one of the monks who wrote a letter saying he knew and sensed his deep connection to his Muslim brothers and sisters and believed his martyrdom was a necessary act to display that unity to the world. What does this act and declaration challenge in your own view of “dying for truth” or even what Jesus may have been doing for unity in his own death?
She concludes the chapter with two challenging questions: “Do you find yourself related to everyone?” “Forgiveness is for the sake of a new future. Do you want a new future?” Spend time with these questions? What do you want as you ponder them? How might the Spirit be your help, guide, and power to find this relatedness and hope?
Week of November 5th: Chapter 24 - What Are We Becoming?
Delio quotes Panikkar again this week saying Christians need to shift from Christology to Chirstophany in their understand of what it means to be Christian. How might “being Christ in the world” shift your own ways of being from “understanding Christ in the world?”
Delio is AMAZINGLY direct in this chapter. She says that if you are rejecting people in your life because you are a Christian, you might want to take a little break from being a Christian. She also demands we urgently slow down and develop interior lives to be able to rediscover this way of loving in the world. Consider praying through these suggestions and discerning desires and ways of entering into these bold invitations.
Delia’s timeframe for salvation stands in stark contrast to the kinds of urgency many of us have been exposed to. Rather than escaping “contamination of our souls” she calls us to receive every person as a part of the Christ mystery in the world. She asks us to consider how to be Christian with a short life in a universe that will exist for millions and possibly even trillions of years. What shifts in your own understanding of “urgency” in this description of salvation?
She says that in a world with many religions we should be less concerned about converting others to our own religion and more concerned with converting ourselves to be carriers of this love. She says the Eucharist is a grounding practice for this conversion. How does this book impact your own understanding or desire for being part of a Eucharistic Community?