I hope that you read the title of this piece with disgust. Not only is the title a shameless anachronism, but the contemporary obsession with mindset therapies and mindfulness practices are often justly the objects of satire and scorn. Indeed, trying to compare the contemporary array of mindset methodologies to the teachings of Saint Francis is a little like trying to compare Dr. Seuss with Dostoevsky: while the mindset guru and St. Francis each preach a gospel to the world, their sermons are in entirely different genres.
In the first place, the object aimed for by the mindset project can be said to be, at most, only tangentially related to a soul’s salvation, whereas the desire for salvation is the very torch with which Saint Francis would set our hearts aflame. Secondly, while many mindset “philosophies” and formulas may be clever or useful in their own way, they rarely achieve anything close to the intricate marriage between perennial fundamentality and radical novelty that characterizes the teaching of Saint Francis.
Nevertheless, there is one surprising exhortation from Saint Francis which bears a striking formal resemblance to the mindset credo, but which, in the wider context of the Franciscan message offers infinitely greater fruit. The exhortation is written in a letter from Saint Francis to an anonymous minister of his order, and advises him to hold his religious brothers dear precisely in their most distressing faults. So far, this is standard saintly advice for religious superiors, but Saint Francis then adds “and do not wish that they were better Christians.” This may seem like a paradoxical exhortation to a Catholic mind since, in imitation of Christ, a Catholic desires that all, especially those closest to him, should become the best possible Christians. Indeed, according to the scholastic definition of charity as desiring the good of the other (or oneself), we might even say that desiring others to be better Christians is nearly synonymous with charity itself.
I think, however, that we can readily dismiss any idea that Saint Francis does not understand charity and instead uncover another meaning of the exhortation. It must be noted that Saint Francis is not writing a moral manual, but rather delivering practical advice to a specific person. The sense that struck me when I read the passage was something like, “do not sit there idly wishing you were surrounded by saints,” or “Stop,” like John Mayer, “waiting on the world to change.” Interpreted in this way, I would contend that Saint Francis is laying out the Christian idea which constitutes the core of a genuine insight achieved (albeit in a fragmented and secularized manner) by many mindset methodologies.
This message of Saint Francis is often manifested by practitioners of mindset as the ideal of radical responsibility: the tendency to shoulder more than one’s burden rather than passing off the load; proactively attending to duty while paying little heed to the obstacles outside one’s control; and maintaining consistency and positivity across time. This initial interpretation is still bogged down by the influence of “Mindset.” The pure insight of Saint Francis, however, is deeper. While the secularized manifestation of this idea as responsibility bears vestiges and resonances of the Cross, the teaching of Saint Francis is entirely overshadowed by Calvary.
What Saint Francis is teaching to his brother is the willing submission to evil, “which is a self-humiliation in all things.” The Franciscan minister must not merely shift his focus from the faults of other souls to his own, but must rejoice in their faults just insofar as they are directed against him and his comfort. Thus, as James P. Reilly (not to be confused with O’Reilly) says, “rectitude of will is not simply a quality of perseverance." A stoic passivity will not suffice for the growth of virtue, only intentional rejoicing in the oppression of evil and the inscrutable providence of God. When Saint Bonaventure, the “second founder” of the Franciscans, treats this theme, he writes: “If anyone seeks to ascertain why a greater gift of grace is allotted to one sinner than to another, he should be silent and cry out with the Apostle: ‘O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgements and how unsearchable His ways! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counselor? Or who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made Him? For of Him and by Him and in Him are all things; to Him be glory forever.’”
Thanks, Matthew. Great quote: “rectitude of will is not simply a quality of perseverance."