On Not Sorting Other People Out

It is very tempting to spend a lot of energy on making other people behave better. How can I stop that person behaving badly and make them change their ways? One useful bit of advice St Francis gave to one of his Ministers (the brother or sister with responsibility for an area within the Franciscan community) was simple - don't even try!

Francis' Letter to a Minister is one of the few documents that comes from the hand of the saint and it gives a valuable insight into his spirituality and his approach to human psychology. The letter is addressed to a Minister who is clearly facing difficulties with his brothers and these difficulties seem to include personal attacks on him. Francis' advice is clear. No brother must go from him without having been shown mercy, and if that brother does not even ask for mercy, he should be offered it. Francis urges that the Minister see these trials as an opportunity to exercise forgiveness and says that this opportunity is of greater spiritual merit than any hermitage. Francis valued his times in a hermitage very highly indeed, so this is a significant comparison.

The advice is profound. Francis is saying that we have no responsiblity for and certainly no control over someone else's behaviour, but we do have responsibility for our own. If someone has wronged us, the spiritual challenge is not for us to understand the nature of that wrong or find a way to correct it. The challenge is to find a way to forgive. Francis goes further and proposes a new addition to the Rule which deals with the wrongdoing of brothers. Surprisingly, Francis urges that a brother's fault should be kept secret, not exposed to the community. It should be dealt with tenderly and with mercy, recognising that the one wronged is also likely to commit wrong at some time. There is good psychology in this advice. If someone has committed wrong and that wrong is compounded by exposing the wrongdoer to shame in the community, have we not just made the problem more complicated to solve? Such exposure also runs the risk of inviting self-congratulating complacency among those who were not in the wrong on this occasion.

I don't know how or if this kind of advice for a small community can be 'scaled up' for wider society, but it's certainly worth thinking about. In any case, the spiritual insight contained in this short letter remains strong: when we are wronged, the one thing we can influence is our response to the wrong. To respond with mercy is to grow more like Christ.