Let Us Begin: Saint Francis’s Way of Becoming Like Christ and Renewing the World
By Thomas Griffin.
Our Sunday Visitor, 2024.
Paperback, 168 pages, $18.95.
Reviewed by David G. Bonagura, Jr.
The New Deal. The Great Society. No Child Left Behind. Build Back Better. The slogan promises a program, and the program will deliver salvation. The program, of course, in whatever age and offered by whichever party, comes from the government, which bills itself as the means of societal transformation—of salvation from present evils on the way to a happy, problem-free future. We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, must vote for the better program so we can allow the government to initiate the way of salvation. Vote for the wrong party, the fearmongers threaten, and then our country will be damned forever.
The Founding Fathers would not have understood this thinking. They envisioned America as the land of self-government, which requires individual citizens to develop virtues for humane living within their own communities. In his inaugural address, President John Adams stressed a need not for government-inspired initiatives but for “knowledge, virtue, and religion among all classes of the people, not only for their benign influence on the happiness of life in all its stages and classes, and of society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our Constitution from its natural enemies.” These qualities lead to political prosperity, as President George Washington prudently observed in his farewell address, and “religion and morality are indispensable supports” for them.
If twenty-first-century America, as divided and rancorous as she has been in generations, is to find authentic peace and prosperity, her citizens must look inside their hearts rather than out at the government for a path to renewal. Self-reform is the only way to build society back better, and the Christian religion has long served as its greatest catalyst. In Let Us Begin, Thomas Griffin offers us a model for reform: the way of Saint Francis of Assisi, who was so suffused with love for Jesus Christ that he was able to renew his world. Renewal today, which Griffin describes as a repair mission, “begins with individual conversion just as it did in the age of Saint Francis.”
Perhaps the world’s most well-known saint and one of the few who transcends sectarian boundaries, Saint Francis (1182–1226) so radically embraced Jesus’ Gospel, along with a life of poverty and charity, that he has drawn universal admiration and repeated attempts at imitation. Born into a wealthy Italian family, young Francis sought worldly glory as a knight before experiencing a profound conversion: he rejected his social status, stripped naked, and began a new life as a beggar in service of Jesus Christ and of the poor. He soon organized an entire company of men seeking to live in his manner; Pope Innocent III approved the company in 1209 as the Order of Friars Minor, or the Franciscans.
Not long after his conversion, Francis was praying in the dilapidated Church of San Damiano when he heard a call: “Francis, rebuild my Church, which has fallen into ruins.” The zealous friar leaped to the task of repairing wood, cleaning stones, and restoring order. As he completed the work, Francis began to realize that his call was not to rebuild physical church buildings, but the Church of God, the body of Christ. “That repair project,” Griffin explains, “would lead to the healing of countless lives” through Francis and his brothers’ work of preaching the Gospel to those who needed to hear it most. Choosing poverty, simplicity, and sacrifice as the springboard for their missionary work, the Franciscans labored to renew the world by calling souls to repent and embrace Jesus Christ.
The task of Francis is also our own, for our world today, Griffin argues, though glittering with industrial and technological powers that Francis’s contemporaries could not have imagined, is experiencing the same fundamental disturbances as in the thirteenth century. Since human beings’ societal problems result from personal problems, renewal can only work from the inside out: “Renewal means that we first admit that we need to repair our rundown hearts before anything else.” Religion makes this renewal possible, but, Griffin insists, we must eradicate “the view that being religious simply means that we are nice to everyone.” That was not Francis’s way: he unsettled many by his convictions and practices. The caricature of Francis as an animal-loving beatnik is “an exaggeration.”
Following Francis, Griffin’s plan for twenty-first-century renewal is the antithesis of enormous, soulless bureaucratic programs. First comes the conversion of individual hearts through prayer and repentance. “Deeper conversion only comes about when faith becomes personal,” and Griffin explains in detail how ordinary people, even those who do not think they are or can be overly devout, can develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Then we turn to our particular tasks and occupations, however mundane. “Renewal occurs once we do ordinary tasks with a supernatural vision and perspective.” With divine motivation, we seek to impact our immediate circles: family, friends, coworkers. This is the most significant and undervalued contribution we can make to society. “Too often we concern ourselves with things we cannot change, and this prevents us from impacting the world in ways we actually can.”
Griffin offers numerous suggestions that may seem trivial: be attentive to conversations with one’s spouse. Put aside adult concerns and play with one’s children on the floor. Let anger motivate helpful action rather than brooding resentment. Spend time in prayer “to look God in the face and see how we are being called to participate in his Trinitarian communion as Francis did.” He provides multiple stories, including a few personal ones that are self-deprecating in nature, to incarnate his ideas. Some exhortations repeat in different chapters, yet they are heartfelt: love is the world’s most powerful force, and the greatest love of all is the love of God that transforms hearts and brings people together focused on Him.
In The Roots of American Order, Russell Kirk wrote that “the ‘inner order’ of the soul and the ‘outer order’ of society [are] intimately linked.” Keenly aware of this, Griffin presents a compelling case for embracing Jesus Christ in a manner reminiscent of Saint Francis. We should walk in Jesus’ footsteps “because it is individual conversion that will truly change the world.”
David G. Bonagura, Jr. is the religion editor of The University Bookman. He is the author of Steadfast in Faith and Staying with the Catholic Church. He is the translator of Jerome’s Tears.
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