As Shakespeare once asked, “What’s in a name?” As Francis illustrated throughout his papacy, it means a lot. “Some people want to know why I wished to be called Francis,” he said in an interview. “For me, Francis of Assisi is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation.” In his 12 years as pope, Francis lived up to his name, guiding our Church with the mind of a Jesuit and the heart of a Franciscan. 

When he died in April, Catholics the world over felt unsure and unmoored. I certainly did. And although we have no way of knowing the road ahead, we can look back on the road behind us and marvel at how this brilliant, compassionate, flawed, and funny priest from Argentina managed to reform the Church and renew our sense of purpose as a global community of believers. 

Thank you, Pope Francis, for your service. We are better for it. 

During and after his election as pope in March 2013, he was a man of many firsts. 

The election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergolio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, made him a man of multiple firsts: a pope from South America, ordained a priest after the end of Vatican II, a Jesuit, and someone who had never studied in Rome or worked there full-time. Having once worked as a chemical technician and a bouncer, he also loved to dance the tango. 

On February 11, 2013, the cardinals in Rome had gathered for a seemingly very ordinary event: the approval of three candidates for canonization. After Pope Benedict XVI finished that business, he shocked them and the whole world by announcing that, effective at the end of that month, he was resigning as pope after his eight-year ministry as bishop of Rome. 

Before the conclave began, cardinals over and under the age of 80 gathered for a week of general congregations to assess the needs of the Church. Because there was no funeral to plan, there was much more time for sharing their concerns. 

Cardinal Bergoglio, one of the last ones to speak, warned his brother cardinals about “spiritual worldliness” and “a self-referential Church,” one excessively focused on its rights and reluctant to engage people on the peripheries. The Church, he said, is like the moon—having no light of its own because it simply reflects the light coming from Christ. 

During his first meeting with people in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis spoke in a very conversational tone, saying: “We take up the journey, bishop and people. This journey of the Church of Rome which presides in charity over all the Churches. A journey of fraternity, of love, of trust among use. Let us always pray for one another.” He shocked many people when, before giving his blessing, he first asked the people for a moment of silence to bless him. He later ended all his public talks with a request that those present pray for him. 

Once at work, he promptly appointed eight cardinals from around the world to advise him on two matters: the reform of the Roman Curia and the governance of the universal Church. To Preach the Gospel, a 2022 apostolic constitution, addressed the first task; work on the second task continues. 

Pope Francis visited Rome’s parishes, schools, hospitals, and prisons; traveled widely in Italy; and made 47 apostolic journeys outside Italy, many to countries with small Catholic populations. Pope Francis brought the peripheries into the center by appointing cardinals from almost 30 countries that never had a voter in a papal conclave. 

Living Up to His Namesake 

Three days after his election, Pope Francis told several thousand journalists that, after his election, Cardinal Claudio Humes, OFM, a longtime friend, leaned over and urged him not to forget the poor. Bergoglio’s bold decision to take the name Francis ensured he would always remember them. After describing St. Francis of Assisi as a man of poverty, a man of peace, and someone who wanted to protect creation, Pope Francis added, “How I would like a Church that is poor and for the poor.” 

At the chrism Mass on March 28, 2013, he asked priests to be “shepherds with the smell of their sheep.” In late August that year, Father Antonio Spadaro, SJ, interviewed him for more than six hours on behalf of Jesuit publications around the world. After Pope Francis said, “I am a sinner,” he explained that he began considering a priestly vocation after making a life-changing confession at the age of 17. He also described the Church as a “field hospital” for wounded people. 

On October 4, 2014, he visited Assisi and the old cathedral’s new Chapel of the Renunciation, recalling St. Francis’ returning his clothes to his father. Speaking to poor people, immigrants, and those seeking employment, Pope Francis gave a resounding no to the question: “Can we make Christianity a little more human without the cross, without Jesus, without renunciation?” 

Travels, Meetings, Interviews, Phone Calls 

His first major trip in Italy was to Lampedusa, an island off Sicily’s coast, where he denounced the “globalization of indifference” shown to refugees, many of whom had drowned while seeking freedom on that island. Among the 68 countries he visited, no recent pope had ever visited 37 of those countries, especially in Asia and Africa. 

He also visited individuals and groups of survivors of clerical sexual abuse, appointing one of them, Juan Carlos Cruz, to the papal commission for the protection of children and vulnerable adults. 

At the end of his 2015 address to a joint session of the US Congress, he said: “A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as [Abraham] Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to ‘dream’ of full rights for all their brothers and sisters as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.” 

Critics, Autobiography, Final Chapter 

Pope Francis frequently denounced clericalism. Not all bishops’ conferences agreed with his 2018 decision to revise the Catechism of the Catholic Church by withdrawing its acceptance of the death penalty. Similarly, not all episcopal conferences agreed with his 2023 defense of civil unions for same-sex couples—without describing them as marriages. 

In October 2023 and 2024, Pope Francis held monthlong meetings at the Vatican, including bishops and large numbers of laypeople and members of religious communities—all with votes. He gave new meaning to the terms collegiality and synodality, pointing out that these apply in various ways to all levels of the Church. 

In 2024 he published Life (HarperCollins), the first autobiography written by a pope still in office. He died on April 21, 2025, at his Casa Santa Marta residence at the Vatican. Five days later, after a funeral at St. Peter’s, he was buried at the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. 

In the 2025 pre-conclave general congregations, cardinals again described the Church’s needs and, in general terms, the gifts of the next bishop of Rome, building on the legacy of Pope Francis. 

Chronology

• Born (1936) in Buenos Aires, eldest of five children; his parents and grandparents had emigrated from Italy; enters the Society of Jesus (1958), ordained a priest (1969), served as Jesuit provincial in Argentina (1973–79).
• Served as rector of San Miguel Seminary (1980–86) before studies in Germany (1986), teaches in Buenos Aires (1986–90), worked as confessor and spiritual director in Cordoba, Argentina (1990–92).
• Named auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires (1992), its coadjutor archbishop (1997), archbishop of Buenos Aires (1998), and cardinal (2001). In October 2001, he was appointed relator at a world synod of bishops when Cardinal Egan returned to New York City after 9/11
• Cardinal Bergoglio chaired the 2007 drafting committee for the Fifth General Council of CELAM (the Latin American bishops’ council).
• Elected pope on March 13, 2013; chose to live in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta instead of in the nearby apostolic palace; in an empty St. Peter’s Square, livestreamed a prayer service for the end of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020); began a five-week hospitalization for double pneumonia and other respiratory complications (February 14, 2025).

By the Numbers

• 68 countries and territories visited as pope
• 938 people canonized in Rome
• 1,541 people approved for local beatifications
• 4 encyclicals: Light of Faith (mostly by Pope Benedict XVI), 2013; Laudato Si’, (on climate change), 2015; Fratelli Tutti (on social friendship), 2020; He Loves Us (on the Sacred Heart of Jesus), 2024
• 7 apostolic exhortations
• 110 cardinals named
• 3 women appointed to head Vatican offices previously run by men
• 5 ordinary assemblies of the synods of bishops, including the family (2013–14) and synodality (2023–24)
• 2 declarations signed with Muslim leaders (one on caring for our common home and the other on respecting all human cultures)

As Christians, forgiving others may be the toughest thing Jesus has asked us to do. The author challenges us to start small and gradually learn to turn those who have hurt us over to God. 

Some years back, I was on social media commenting on the cruelty of destroying lives and families at the border for the “crime” of not being able to speak English and do paperwork. It is an unpopular thing to say in some Christian circles, and my post sparked the following conversation with a brother Christian who thought refugees were getting exactly what was coming to them: 

Reader: There’s a special place in hell for you. 

Me: Forgive me for offending you. 

Reader: Ask Jesus for forgiveness. You’ll get nothing from me. 

It’s a novel form of Christianity that uses Jesus as a human shield for refusing to forgive people. Some, of a more progressive bent, respond to those like my reader with revulsion and, in turn, find it easy to want to cast such people out of all decent society and withhold forgiveness from them. 

Both reactions illustrate something that I have come to deeply believe: Our culture has it all wrong in focusing on the pelvic issues as the big bugaboo of Catholic moral teaching. 

I mean, I get it. Sex sells and it makes for exciting controversy. So it’s easy to buy the idea that the great barrier to Christian moral teaching is all the stuff about contraception, divorce, abortion, and LGBTQ issues. But in my experience if you really want to tap into deep subterranean magma wells of rage, remind people that Jesus commands us to forgive everyone who sins against us.  

Everyone? Really? 

Yes. Everyone. “When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your transgressions” (Mk 11:25). 

Note the completely unconditional nature of that demand. Not “anyone who apologizes” or “anyone who repents” or “anyone who has hurt you personally but not that jerk who hurt your best friend” or “anyone within reasonable limits but not those people who are obviously beyond the pale.” Anyone. Period. 

This insistence on forgiveness likewise underscores Jesus’ teaching on the Our Father in the Sermon on the Mount. On a prayer that has literally had libraries of books written about it, analyzing every detail, Jesus has only this commentary to offer: “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions” (Mt 6:14–15). 

Yikes! That’s pretty forceful. Why would Jesus say something so hardcore? Because, as Flannery O’Connor observed, “When people are deaf, you shout.” Forgiveness is hard—crucifixion hard (as in the innocent Jesus hanging on the cross praying “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”)—and so we don’t want to face our need to do it. That’s why I think the forgiveness of sin is the single most difficult teaching of Jesus. 

To be sure, we love it for ourselves. But the grace with which it is given us by God can make it easy to forget just how costly that grace was for God. As C.S. Lewis observes, it cost God, so far as we know, nothing to create the world. But to forgive sins cost him crucifixion. And we get some inkling of that cost when we turn from the forgiveness of our sins to his demand that we forgive that monster over there who has never apologized for what he did to us, who laughs it off and calls us an over-sensitive snowflake, who never will apologize, and who continues to hurt us in this very hour. 

Why It’s So Hard to Forgive 

Yes. Forgiveness is, without any possible comparison, the most difficult thing Jesus calls us to do. I think this has a great deal to do with our supposing that forgiveness means pretending those we are called to forgive are not impenitent jerks, or that they didn’t hurt us, or that we have to go on letting them hurt us, or that we somehow had it coming, or that forgiving means letting them win or get away with it, or that the struggle we endure in striving to forgive makes God so mad at us that he sides with our abuser—as though we are the problem for being hurt. 

But forgiveness doesn’t mean any of these things. Indeed, forgiveness necessarily presupposes that the person we forgive really has sinned against us. In short, the forgiveness of sin is not the same thing at all as excusing somebody. When the bus lurches and somebody accidently steps on our toes, they obviously could not help it. The laws of physics made it happen, not their willful malice or sinful neglect. So we excuse them. It’s when somebody deliberately stomps on our toes, or neglectfully fails to protect our toes from the bowling ball they carelessly left to roll off their seat and on to our foot, that forgiveness comes in. 

Consider an illustration from the world of law. In law, a pardon does not mean declaring somebody innocent. On the contrary, a pardon means they are guilty of the crime—and that they are forgiven for committing it. 

Forgiveness, likewise, does not mean God is saying to the victim, “You are the bad one for seeing that your abuser is abusive.” It means, rather, that God knows your abuser is abusive and that he is Emmanuel: God with you in your suffering. That is who Christ crucified is for us. He suffers what we endure with us and we with him. That means we can center our whole worth in the unconditional love of God as he stands between us and the diabolical act of gaslighting by the abuser. It means we can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, refuse and reject the lies of our abuser about what a loser we are, how we had it coming, why we are the real villain, etc—and hand that person and those lies over to God. It means finding our identity in the love Christ has for us in creating us, in sharing in the abuse we suffered on his cross and, in rising from the dead, giving us the grace to see that those lies need not define us and that pain need not chain us anymore. 

Breaking the Chains 

In short, forgiveness is about our liberation, not about knuckling under to our abuser’s oppression. It’s not about letting them get away with it. It’s about walking away in freedom from their power over us. 

Forgiveness has to do with handing our abuser over to God, desiring their ultimate good, and then walking away from their abusive control. It does not mean refusing to call the cops when they have committed a crime, or not calling the liar out when he lies, or not fighting back if he tries to hurt us again, or not telling anybody else what our abuser did. Indeed, it may well be that the sin they have committed is also a crime that needs to be punished. If so, it is not unforgiveness to, for instance, testify in court against them, particularly if they remain a danger to others. That is love for others and even for the sinner. 

But the key is to hand them over to God and seek his mercy for them, not because they are not sinners, but because they are. It is to release the sinner into the hands of God. To not carry them anymore. To be free of them. To no longer let them control our lives. To grow past them and let the love of Christ control our responses, not their dominating, wounding will. And that process, precisely because it is about our liberation and rooted in the love of God, does not at all depend on whether our abuser says they are sorry. If it did, we would be chained in bitterness to the memory of every impenitent or dead person who ever sinned against us. But God is not chained. He breaks chains. 

Starting Small 

The good news is that God knows our weakness and starts small with us. Most of the sins we endure are small ones in ordinary life, and we can start practicing the forgiveness of sins there rather than instantly demanding seven Herculean feats of ourselves. The guy who missed the lunch date. The fender bender. The irritating chatterbox at work. The toilet seat left up. The dirty dishes left on the counter. 

This principle of practicing forgiveness in small things so as to train like an athlete to forgive big things is something Jesus is getting at in his parables when he says, “The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth?” (Lk 16:10–11). 

Note, for instance, how often Jesus relates the forgiveness of sins to the forgiveness of debt, and how often our culture battles to forget that relationship. Some translations of the Lord’s Prayer say, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Jesus again and again illustrates the demand to forgive in economic terms, as when he defends the sinful woman he forgave by asking who will love more: the one who has been forgiven a small debt or a huge one? (cf. Lk 7:36–50). He tells the parable of the unmerciful servant who is forgiven a gigantic debt, yet who refuses to forgive a trivial one (Mt 18:21–35). We are, of course, quite right to spiritualize all this language to apply to moral, emotional, and spiritual debts we owe and are owed us. 

But here’s the thing: We are not to pretend this does not apply to economic debts as well. For instance, when the bishops call for student loan debt relief in order to ease the staggering burden of school debt on graduates who are trying to start families and buy homes, do we respond like the unmerciful servant and demand “Pay me what you owe me!” while refusing to forgive the relatively trivial tax burden it will cost us so that our children can prosper? Or do we respond generously like the king who forgave the unmerciful servant a gigantic debt? 

In short, forgiveness of economic debt is, in a minor key, the same as forgiveness for the debt of sin. And Jesus warns us that if we are cheapskates with forgiveness in small things like money, we are not going to suddenly be spiritual giants of mercy in big things for the same reason that couch potatoes do not suddenly jump up and run the Boston Marathon. We have to train ourselves to be merciful just as we have to train for distance running. 

Accepting God’s Forgiveness 

Another aspect of the forgiveness of sins is that, while it is freely given us by God, it does us no good if we do not open ourselves to the love who is God who gives it to us. That is the real reason that Jesus warns that if we do not forgive, we will not be forgiven. When God tries to hand you a gift, even he cannot give it to you if you refuse to unclench your fist. If you refuse to forgive the sins of others, one of the paradoxes of the spiritual life is that it is highly likely you will refuse to forgive yourself for similar or related sins. And if you refuse forgiveness, God does not force you to accept it, and you live in that unforgiveness till you open yourself to his love. But that openness has to include your neighbor, whether you have sinned against him or he against you. 

This is why sayings like “When people bring up your past tell them that Jesus has dropped the charges” can be a double-edged sword. It is a very good thing to have the strength of grace to withstand the accusations of the enemy about sins for which God has forgiven you.

But it is also vital to ask ourselves, “What if the victims of my forgiven sins still do live in the past because of trauma I inflicted on them?” Forgiveness of our sins is a glorious thing, and we should praise God for it. But what goes with it is the grace to, as far as it lies in our power, make things right for those we hurt. To walk away from those we hurt saying, “My sins are forgiven. I don’t live in the past. Too bad for you!” is not repentance, contrition, or a firm purpose of amendment, but simply feckless narcissism. It’s a way of telling your victim that God is on the side of their abusers and it is, in the final analysis, a form of taking the name of God in vain. 

One final point: It is easy to forget that the instructions in the New Testament about forgiving sins are generally for Christians dealing with other Christians in their own communities, not for shiny, happy, perfect, sinless Christians suffering only at the hands of evil unbelievers. Dorothy Day warned that the Church is the cross upon which Jesus is crucified. Yes, there are real saints who are living sacraments in the Church, and we ignore them and focus only on the bad at great peril to our souls. But those who are deeply and intensely wounded by their fellow Christians need also to be heard and not shouted down. It is a pattern going all the way back to the apostles that the worst pain somebody attempting obedience to God faces is not from those outside the communion of Christ but from those within it who hate, abuse, betray, abandon, neglect, and backbite. 

This is why Jesus commands the Church’s members to practice radical forgiveness of one another. I stink at all this, of course. It is a struggle every day for me. But Jesus says it is nonetheless the Way. It is hard, hard work to get there. But it can be done if we choose to receive the grace to do it. And the fruit it bears is freedom.

The heart, writes Pope Francis, “usually indicates our true intentions, what we really think, believe, and desire, the ‘secrets’ that we tell no one; in a word, the naked truth about ourselves.” Our fast-paced and technology-driven society easily promotes “an unhealthy individualism.” Although “our real personal history is built with the heart . . . a society dominated by narcissism and self-centeredness will increasingly become ‘heartless.’” 

We decide what to do or avoid based on what is in our hearts, which is where Jesus calls us and leads us to a better place. “The cross is Jesus’ most eloquent word of love. [Love is] a word that is not shallow, sentimental, or merely edifying. It is love, sheer love.” 

Jesus’ sense of “heart” leads him to embrace the cross, where his side was pierced. The blood and water that flowed out energize and support the missionary vocation of all baptized persons. Between December 1673 and June 1675, Jesus reportedly appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, encouraging devotion to the Sacred Heart. 

What Difference Does This Devotion Make? 

Pope Francis summarized the importance of Sacred Heart devotion to several saints and the Jesuits, in general. St. Claude la Colombière, SJ, was St. Margaret’s confessor. This devotion has always had very practical consequences. 

“If we believe that grace can bridge every distance,“ writes Pope Francis, “this means that Christ by his sufferings united himself to the sufferings of his disciples in every time and place. In this way, whenever we endure suffering, we can also experience the interior consolation of knowing that Christ suffers with us. In seeking to console him, we will find ourselves consoled.” 

Judged by Our Hearts 

Our minds collect information that our hearts process. Two individuals seeing the same person in need can respond very differently: The first individual may assume, for example, that this person’s need arises from a personal failing (e.g., substance abuse or gambling too much); the second individual, who sees a person made in God’s image and likeness, chooses to respond compassionately. 

When Jesus describes those who will be saved and the ones who will not (Mt 25:31–46), he was describing people who had access to similar information but who processed it very differently. We see the same dynamic in the parable of the good Samaritan (Lk 10:29–37) and the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19–31). The prayer “God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity” (Lk 18:11) came from a self-serving heart, one not radically open to God’s grace. 

In Hope: The Autobiography, Pope Francis writes, “We are our hearts because it is that which distinguishes us, which configures us in our spiritual identity, which places us in communion with other people.” He goes on to explain: “The real personal adventure is that which is accomplished from the heart. At the end of life, all that matters will be this.” 

Learn more about the Sacred Heart of Jesus here.

Many of us struggle with feeling disconnected from God at times. This author offers some helpful steps to enter God’s presence.  

Many people who pray regularly have experiences in life when prayer is easy, and every situation or encounter speaks of God’s presence. When praying with Scripture, they connect to Jesus and can relate the passage to their lives. It is easy to see where God is leading, since discernment is easy. 

Perhaps for you, like it has been for me at times, your prayer experience is anything but easy. You can remember instances when you entered into a prayer time and “felt” God’s presence. But now the 20 minutes you set aside for quiet prayer is full of distractions, and the time you set to reflect on the day’s readings seems like an eternity. 

At times like this, I find myself frequently checking my clock to see how much time is left. Even at Mass some days, I find my mind wandering to tasks I have planned for later. I catch myself and try to focus on the words of the Eucharistic prayer and find it difficult. My physical body is there, but my mind is elsewhere. 

As I have grown in understanding more about prayer through talking to a spiritual director and reading the lives of the saints, I realized that times of distractions, the lack of feeling God’s presence, and struggling through my usual methods of prayer are common experiences on the spiritual journey. Many people were surprised to learn that Mother Teresa felt an emptiness in her experience of prayer during much of her ministry. She, like many other saints, had periods of feeling God’s absence. Yet, like St. Teresa of Calcutta, they continued to pray. 

You Are Normal 

Whatever name we give it, it is normal for most people to have occurrences in life when prayer can seem difficult. Every rosary we pray, every morning prayer we recite, and every liturgy we attend are probably not going to have our full attention. Much of our prayer life may not be easy. However unfocused prayer may seem, we are still praying by offering our time and effort to God. 

What causes this dryness in our prayer? Some may relate it to a period of grief after a loved one dies suddenly or too young, while others may look to a period following a job loss or unexpected move. Having a mental illness like depression may make prayer difficult. For many of us, these periods just happen. It is important to remember you are still praying, even though you may not feel peace and comfort. Putting the effort in prayer is a sacrifice we make and God accepts it. 

Here are some steps you can try to enter into prayer when it is difficult. Remember that prayer is a relationship with God our creator, whom we know as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Relationships take time and are based on love. In our friendships and marriages there are times when we hear “I love you.” There are also times when the love is there, but more silent to our expectations. The same is true in our relationship with God. 

Rituals and Tasks 

Begin your prayer time remembering to put yourself in God’s presence. Take a moment to focus by breathing in God’s grace and breathing out distractions. 

When I return home from work, I have rituals that act as a transition to the rest of the day when I will spend time in quiet prayer. I get something to drink, call my mom, and sit and review the day. Finishing these daily rituals, I am ready to move into quiet prayer. We may have rituals with our prayer like making the Sign of the Cross, lighting a candle, or sitting in a particular room and body position. These rituals are consistent and help us transition. 

Building in quiet times when God can speak to you throughout the day also helps. I find that if I follow a quiet prayer time with a task such as washing dishes or vacuuming, my mind turns to God and I know God’s presence. Going for a walk, exercising, or practicing yoga can become prayer times. Ask God to meet you in the unexpected. 

Scripture Prompts 

Recall God’s love and care for you by recalling Scripture verses that speak of God’s love. My go-to passage is Psalm 139, a psalm found in the Liturgy of the Hours that I prayed on several directed retreats: God intimately knows me in my mother’s womb. Recall and slowly reread the words. 

Other passages that I refer to for prayer include Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” and Isaiah 43: 1–5: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine.” 

Another passage that helps when prayer is difficult is the Emmaus account in Luke 24. The two disciples are confused about all that has happened and they share this with the “stranger” who later is revealed as Jesus. Jesus accompanies and listens to the disciples as he also accompanies and listens to us. God never betrays us and is always there. 

Using Your Imagination 

St. Ignatius of Loyola teaches a method of prayer, called Ignatian contemplation or imaginative prayer, that uses the senses and imagination to place ourselves into a biblical passage. This type of prayer moves me from being active—using my mind to imagine the scene—to more quiet moments of listening to what God is saying to me. If I am really distracted, I describe in a journal what the passage would look like, which helps me focus. All prayer takes practice and time. 

Another technique of prayer I find helpful is imagining myself being in a place where I experienced God’s love and presence. I remember a chapel visit when I felt God embracing me after a car accident that left me in pain for months. I travel in my mind to a place in nature when I felt God’s presence. If I am praying with a specific Scripture passage, like the Samaritan woman at the well, I remember the time it had a major effect on my life and led to my adult commitment to faith. 

Examen Prayer 

Praying an Examen, another prayer method taught by St. Ignatius of Loyola, is the process of putting ourselves in God’s presence and reviewing one’s day. Next, I ask God to show me all the graces and gifts I received during the day, and I express gratitude. Continuing the Examen, I ask the Spirit to reveal to me ways I have failed and I ask for pardon, forgiveness, and healing. Finally, I offer prayers for the next day, considering what may happen, the people I may meet, and my hopes. I conclude with an Our Father. 

I find that at times it is helpful to use one of the Examen apps available. In particular I like Pray as You Go, which includes meditation and several different Examens. 

Apps and Spiritual Reading 

We live in an age when we have apps and other online tools to aid our prayer. My day is hemmed with morning and evening prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours, which I pray from an app. I like praying the Liturgy of the Hours because I am joined with others in the Church’s prayers and my friends that pray it daily. Consistency is important. 

Many people find praying with the daily lectionary readings to be fruitful, and these are available online or in the Magnificat or Give Us This Day magazines that are published monthly. 

Spiritual reading of a book on prayer or a saint helps me when I am in a rut; I may return to the same book. There are many daily devotionals you can choose for Advent and Lent or for the whole year. Being a Secular Franciscan, I enjoy and am challenged by the reflections in Peace and Good: Through the Year with Francis of Assisi, by Pat McCloskey, OFM. It includes prayers and readings by and about St. Francis. 

Reading the lives of the saints has helped me learn that there is a lot of ordinariness in their lives. There are many books on saints, and online you can find Saint of the Day reflections at FranciscanMedia.org for more inspiration. 

Faith Sharing 

If your prayer is empty or unfocused, faith sharing—talking about experiences of prayer and the Spirit—may help. Sharing my faith experience and listening to the stories and experiences of my brothers and sisters of faith are ways of knowing God’s active presence in our lives. 

Reflecting on times of emptiness when I was depressed, I know that faith sharing was extremely helpful, whether it was with friends, my Secular Franciscan fraternity, or a spiritual director. I remember going to confession and admitting that I wasn’t feeling anything in prayer and felt that I wasn’t praying. The confessor counseled me that I was praying and that God’s graces were there every moment. 

Don’t be alone in your spiritual emptiness. Join a Bible study or faith-sharing group in your parish in person or online. Through sharing with others, I have realized that much of my faith journey is ordinary and not extraordinary. Accepting this reality has made my journey easier and helped me be more faithful to prayer times. 

Journal Writing 

Keeping a journal and reflecting on past journal entries is another way to find hope in prayer. I often write letters to God and tell him my feelings. I complain about my emptiness and lack of affirmation in my prayer but also acknowledge that I know in my heart that God is there. I tell the Lord I am frustrated or discouraged. 

Being honest with God helps me know God’s love by remembering that God is present, even though I may not feel God’s presence as I once had. Many times, my writing leads to quiet times of reflection. 

If you have journal entries from your “conversion” experiences, mementos, prayer cards, or letters that relate to you spiritually, go back to them. Read them and make them your prayer again. I find rereading journals helps me see how God has acted in my life without me even knowing it until I reread my writing. It is like the story of two sets of footprints on the beach and one disappears. At the end of the reflection, the speaker realizes that Jesus was carrying her during the difficult times. 

Good Company 

The important thing is to be faithful and consistent to your prayer time, even though you struggle. You may try a different prayer method, such as adding journaling, Lectio Divina, or centering prayer. My spiritual director encourages me to be eclectic in my prayer; having the knowledge of different types of prayer enables me to choose different ways to pray. 

Just because you are not “feeling” God’s presence in prayer does not mean you are not praying or being faithful to your commitment. You are in good company. We should not doubt God’s presence or love. Our whole lives are connected to God. 

Arguably no Franciscan theologian has bridged science and religion quite like Sister Ilia Delio, OSF.  

“If you want to know how science and religion are related, first come to know the deepest truth of yourself,” writes Sister Ilia Delio, OSF, in Birth of a Dancing Star. “This is what I realized when I looked into the nighttime sky: I saw myself in the stars and the stars within me.” 4:00 in the afternoon of April 8, 2024: That was when I interviewed Sister Ilia for St. Anthony Messenger. It’s a fitting thing to talk to someone like Sister Ilia in the middle of a solar eclipse. Theologians like her don’t come along often. Their orbits and alignment change the colors of our skies. They invite us into mystery, to contemplate the nature of the universe. They are phenomena. We experience beauty and emerge changed. 

“Well, we have to admit: We live in a wondrous universe,” she beams, her common expression when talking about anything related to science or theology. “Francis of Assisi was awed by the beauty of nature and its natural and miraculous ability to grow, to be wild, to have this kind of spontaneous beauty to it. The fact that we’re in a solar eclipse, moving around the sun as the moon moves around us—in this orbital phase of life—I’m reminded of how often we get stuck on ideas, like we are never going to change, when in fact we are in movement already.” 

Sister Ilia describes how her mentor, the late Bonaventure scholar Ewert Cousins, was an “intellectual Etch A Sketch,” nonlinearly making connections among the fields of Franciscan theology, Church history, philosophy, and science, in a way that, eventually, if his students were patient, forms an image. Sister Ilia is no different. The eclipse had led her to think about nature, then Francis, then orbiting, then how movement is fundamental to an evolutionary universe. Now, she is circling back to Francis, the movement of his own spirit, the movement of energy in our reality and, brilliantly, back to our tendency to get stuck and fight our own orbits. 

“Francis, you know, was very charismatic,” she continues. “He probably would have been among the evangelicals today. He may have found the Catholic Church a bit too, you know, stuffy. He was a free spirit who was sort of uncontainable at times, maybe a little uncontrollable. But there’s something about the spirit he had. 

“The whole world, really, is spirit. Energy is the name of the game, quite honestly. We’re surrounded today by these fields of energy, and that same spirit is alive even in the solar eclipse. Energy and aliveness, that’s what it’s all about. But we get stuck on concepts and categories. We get kind of locked into intellectualism.” 

See the image on the Etch A Sketch? 

Arguably no Franciscan theologian has bridged science and religion quite like Sister Ilia. When reading her work, one might be tempted to categorize her in the impersonal world of academia. Though she admits her tendency is to sometimes remain in her head—comfortable playing in the realm of research and ideas—the joyful spontaneity of Francis continually invites her back to the earth. She loves watching (and talking) basketball, preferably while drinking some kind of German beer. She loves playing guitar and piano and still dreams of touring in a rock band. She sometimes wonders about taking a stab at a stand-up comedy routine. 

In talking to Sister Ilia, one will find that the faith she has formed through her study of science and religion—through the bridging of evolution and theology—is also deeply practical. Phenomena, after all, can be evaluated from afar. On the other hand, these mysteries can change us from within. 

An Unlikely Journey 

Sister Ilia never thought she’d be a theologian. She assumed her life would unfold in the sciences. Her mother was a nurse; her sister was a nurse. Her two brothers married into doctors’ families. Sister Ilia was on the same career path, hence her study of neuroscience and neurotoxicology in college and grad school. She earned a PhD in pharmacology at Rutgers University-Biomedical and Healthcare Sciences (formerly New Jersey Medical School), where her research focused on ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. But religious life called to Sister Ilia. 

Ever since a traumatic episode as a teenager that involved a fire at the all-girls boarding school she attended, she had felt that she “belonged entirely to God,” as she writes in her autobiography. So, naturally, she abandoned her postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, where she was about to join a top-ranked Alzheimer’s disease group, and decided to fully enter into religious life at a Carmelite monastery. 

Talk about nonlinear. She wouldn’t abandon the sciences, though. Not yet. She eventually joined a Franciscan community and continued a postdoctoral fellowship in neurotoxicology at Rutgers University. But the Franciscan tradition spoke directly to Sister Ilia’s heart and led her to contemplate the strangest of vocational pivots: from pharmacology to theology. 

She started all over and went back to school, earning a master of theology at Fordham University, followed by a doctorate in historical theology. “At one point I said to myself, ‘Why did I spend 13 years studying science?’” Sister Ilia reflects. “I gave it all up and, at the time, couldn’t help but feel that that this was really wacky.” It was, without a doubt, wacky. But she was in good company with the Franciscans. Little did she know that she wasn’t leaving science behind either. 

Soon, as she ventured deeper into the world of theology at Fordham, she would meet Cousins. He would mention to her an unfamiliar name, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit paleontologist and priest. Cousins had written articles exploring the Christocentrism prevalent in the metaphysics of both Bonaventure and Teilhard. Sister Ilia found that her mentor’s unique ability to “Etch A Sketch” made her wonder if science still, somehow, would be in her future. “I could tell that Cousins was an integrated thinker,” she reflects. “It’s a different way of thinking, quite honestly. But it helped me realize that I could keep a big toe in science, even as I studied religion.” 

Teilhard’s work almost had to age in the cellar of Sister Ilia’s mind. Ten years, to be exact, when she accepted a post as a senior research fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center and learned that Georgetown housed a large section of Teilhard’s archives. She began to obsessively spiral into his work. 

“After that, it just started taking off: to see these parallels, if not confluence, between Teilhard and Francis in theology,” Sister Ilia reflects. “I tell people all the time that Teilhard de Chardin was a closet Franciscan, and, had he become a Franciscan, we probably would have published all his stuff,” she adds with a laugh. 

Sister Ilia’s long academic journey was finally bringing forth her voice. She reflects, “I felt like a fish who had found water.” 

(R)Evolutionary Thinking 

Sister Ilia’s entire journey could be summarized as a continual letting go of the direction she thought she was going. All those years she had spent studying science: She let them go and started all over with theology. All those years finding her way in the world: She let them go and entered the monastery. All those years she had spent in an organized cloister: She let those go and, alongside her best friend, Sister Lisa Drover, OSF, began to imagine a new way of religious life. The Franciscan Sisters of Washington DC were born, as was the Center for Christogenesis (Christogenesis.org), a ministry focused on religious convergence while also integrating Western scientific thought. 

Sister Ilia says that holding onto things makes no sense in an evolutionary universe. 

“To live in an evolutionary world is to let go when the right time comes,” she says. “I think that’s exactly what Francis did. He could let go when the right time came and engage in new ways of thinking and structures of relationship. I think Francis’ notion of poverty, as much as it was material, was more of an emphasis on living without possessing. People possess. We possess our ideas, our judgments, our opinions. We grip them and hold onto them with a tight grasp, not letting them go for anything. 

“So, one thing for me is to become conscious of where I grasp and to make every effort to let go, to live sine proprio, without possessing. We are a consumer culture of graspers, and we simply don’t know what it means to live in the flow of letting go.” 

Sister Ilia’s affinity for the sciences might lead to her common description as a “cyborg Christian,” but she is also unashamedly human. “Part of the letting go is knowing yourself, knowing your strengths and weaknesses,” she reflects. “Francis of Assisi really knew himself. Anyone who spends a long time in prayer and deep meditation comes to the darkness of your own self. That can be where God is at work, trying to break through that darkness and bring light. Bonaventure once said that the lack of self-knowledge makes for faulty knowledge in everything else.” 

Her work also receives its fair share of criticism, but she accepts that she is not in the mainstream of Catholic theology. She likes Franciscan Father Richard Rohr’s notion of making her home on the edge of the inside. “Someone has to be on the margins for things to expand,” she reflects. She’s in good company. Her two intellectual heroes, Teilhard and Trappist monk Thomas Merton, both faced unpopularity in their day. Teilhard was once labeled dangerous by the Holy Office because of his integration of religion and evolution. Merton’s interreligious writings, quite provocative for his time, raised eyebrows; his antiwar essays and gravitation toward Eastern ways of thinking may have landed him on a CIA list of potentially dangerous people. Sister Ilia has learned over time to let go of other people’s opinions, particularly in academia, where it is sometimes easy to rub people the wrong way. 

“I have to simply pull back and let it go,” she says. “I wish them well, I pray for them, and then I throw them into the stream of life and say, ‘May you swim.’ When we can’t throw things into the river, or when we have to run alongside the river to see where what we’ve surrendered is going, I wonder if, from a Jungian perspective, that is something within ourselves that is not fully reconciled. We have to come home within ourselves and be at peace there, knowing that the way the river flows will never be within our grasp. We will find the greater fullness of life by simply coming home to ourselves. 

“When things happen in my own life, I can’t blame other people,” she continues. “I have to ask myself the question: Who am I in this God-drenched world? And what am I called to do in this moment? So it’s about pulling back, reassessing, and then letting go. That’s the journey.” 

Wholeness and Integration 

There was a time not long ago when everything that Sister Ilia believed—about wholeness and integration, about poverty and letting go, about science and faith—came to a head. Quite literally, her head. 

She thought she’d bounce right back. She thought her willpower would be enough to push through the discomfort. Yes, she had wound up in the emergency room that day—when she left her post at Villanova University and the front tire of her bicycle caught the rut between the grass and sidewalk, stopped her full speed, and flung her headfirst into the pavement. Yes, she had been told by doctors that the accident had resulted in “head trauma.” Yes, she was in her 60s. But soon enough, she was cleared by doctors. She was rattled and sore but ready to get back to work. This wasn’t the first time she had crashed on her bicycle. 

Then began the constant buzzing in her head. Her greatest gift to the world—her mind—was now housing something of a hornet’s nest. 

She found this hum would escalate when she was staring at her computer screen. To work without her computer was not an option for someone like Sister Ilia, who not only needed her computer for the classes she taught at Villanova—where she holds the esteemed Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology—but also for her writing and research. 

The humming intensified to the point of debilitation, making the work she loved unbearable. Despite many head scans, ECGs, and new medications, no doctor could tell her what was wrong. Meanwhile, her brain and body screamed for healing. 

“I love what I do, I honestly do,” Sister Ilia says. “Even if I wasn’t employed at a university, I’d be doing this. Even if I was working at a supermarket, I’d be doing this. I’d still be doing theology. It’s where my heart is.” 

But for the first time in decades, her study of theology remained dormant. Or did it? 

“She was tenacious,” says Sister Lisa, her best friend and fellow Franciscan sister who walked with Sister Ilia as a caregiver during that dark time in her life. “She wanted to get to the bottom of it and make sure she did the right thing. She was worried at one point that she had a subdural hematoma, which we know can have a really bad outcome. She said that the constant buzz and ringing would not let up.” 

Sister Ilia eventually got connected with Randy Calabray, an expert in cranial psychotherapy. “The cranial system is designed to allow the spinal fluid to keep moving around the brain, down the spinal cord,” Calabray explains. “And if you ever look at a skull, you’ll see that there’s lots of sutures, lots of bones. Most people think their head is just a helmet, which is not the case. But that’s what can happen sometimes in head trauma—it causes the cranial system to lock down, as if it is a helmet.” 

Calabray worked with Sister Ilia for a year, essentially putting pressure on different areas of her skull, like a massage, loosening areas that had locked down. They used the ringing in her head as a gauge for progress. “She realized her body was giving her all these subtle signs and that she needed to pay attention to them,” Calabray reflects. 

They became friends. “I’d be talking to her about the body, and she would come back with theology and concepts about wholeness and oneness,” Calabray shares. “She was realizing that her body was a reflection of what she was talking about in the world.” The ringing slowly began to subside. The dividedness within herself had become its own pathway toward oneness. 

Free God 

Sister Ilia says that if she were to ever be seen at a political rally or protest, she’d likely simply be holding a plain cardboard sign that reads: FREE GOD. 

“Teilhard helps us redefine a world that is not only not finished but is also becoming—with change, with complexity,” she says. “And that is one of the hardest things to get our heads around: We don’t realize that we are actually becoming. The world itself is becoming. So, we hold on to stuff, but there’s nothing to hold on to. 

“We’ve already changed a hundred times over since what happened yesterday, and I think that the Christian God is a God who is becoming—that’s the whole point of death and resurrection, which is taking place here in the midst of a world of matter and spirit, on this ball that revolves around the sun, where we can see different phases of the moon and all this kind of stuff.” 

Sister Ilia is rolling. She’s Etch A Sketching again. “The Trinity, you know, is not three men at a tea party,” she laughs. “It’s time to let God out, to let God loose. This brings us back to Meister Eckhart and his notion of ‘God, rid me of God.’ If you want to know who God is, then let go of God, you know?” 

Again, she seems to be in good company, for maybe that is what the universe and eclipses and bodies and minds and hearts and science and religion are saying to us as well. Free God. 

It’s light again outside now, like nothing ever happened. The moon has passed between the earth and the sun. Now the dancing star and cyborg Christian is talking about basketball.