Let Us Begin

St. Francis’s Way of Becoming Like Christ and Renewing the World 

By Thomas Griffin

Our Sunday Visitor, 2024

$18.95, 168 pages

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So many of us struggle to deepen our spiritual lives and our walk with Christ. However, oftentimes, it just seems so difficult to overcome the myriad obstacles that can pop up out of nowhere. 

Or we see the problems in the world, our nation and the Church, and we despair, thinking there is nothing we can do about. 

To help with this quandary, Thomas Griffin, a religion teacher at a Long Island, New York, Catholic high school and Register contributor, has written the timely and useful Let Us Begin: St. Francis’s Way of Becoming Like Christ and Renewing the World (Our Sunday Visitor).

As the title indicates, he uses St. Francis’ life to illustrate how to grow closer to Christ and transform our world in ways large and small. The reader will likely find the material challenging because Griffin does not present a soft-pedaling of the Gospel. 

Indeed, if one only has a cursory familiarity with the life of St. Francis, this will be an eye-opening introduction to just how radical his Christianity was. Francis didn’t try to make excuses about tinkering around the edges of Christ’s profound call to conversion, something all too many do. Rather, he dove in and did everything Christ commanded in a literal fashion. 

As Griffin writes, “What drew Francis into the heart of Jesus Christ was the all-encompassing nature of the message of the gospel. Jesus demanded everything of those who followed him. In our times, so many can be quick to shave down the rougher edges of the gospel message to fit their own prerogatives. The truly Franciscan lens does no such thing.”

The result of Francis fully following the Gospel was electric. “During [St. Francis’] lifetime nearly 5,000 men dedicated their lives as friars.”

To be more specific, he attracted this many followers over 17 years, from 1209, when he founded the Franciscans, until 1226, when he died. That is incredible. 

With those 5,000 individuals, he started a movement that renewed a profoundly broken Church in the 13th century. Griffin writes that Catholics back then went through the motions, but there was a strongly evident lack of a personal relationship with Christ on the part of most Christians.

Seeing a similar situation in our own time, Griffin has set out to provide a remedy to what ails us, all the while using practical examples any of us can use. 

As he writes when giving his basic framework: 

“What I have seen in studying the life of St. Francis of Assisi … is that most of the time all we need to do is salvage what we have already been given. All we need to do is bring to light what has always been there and what has always been true: That following Jesus Christ means I commit myself to a personally intimate, ongoing, and radical transformation of my heart to be in line with his heart; that being Christian means that we understand that our personal mess and the mess of the world is something that Jesus wants to and can salvage; that my commitment to my own ongoing conversion in Christ, and the commitment of every other person on the planet, is the answer to renewal.”

As anyone who has tried to do this knows, it is not an easy task. But through Griffin’s adept presentation, the Poverello of Assisi shows us the way. 

Part of the way, the part that will be hardest for most to stomach, is the necessity of material poverty, the kind that the Franciscans embrace and love. Who, though, wants to be impoverished? There’s the not being able to pay your bills, not having the ability to afford the extras in life like going out to eat. Few people actually want that. 

But as Griffin writes, “Francis was convicted of the fact that the path to holiness runs through poverty and simplicity. Pursuing a life of exclaiming poverty and simplicity to the world is not an option for Catholics, but rather a command from Christ. Dependence and trust must root the disciple as he goes about his duty of spreading Jesus’ teachings, life, and salvific mission to a world that desperately needs him. Francis read this as directly applicable to his own life and circumstances.” And we are compelled to do the same with our life and circumstances. This is written by a person who hates being poor. 

The author shows us the ways in which Eucharistic devotion, the same kind the man from Assisi had, plays a pivotal role in turning ourselves toward Christ and away from the world. He gives us plenty of Gospel passages by which to judge for ourselves as to whether he is giving us merely his personal opinion or biblical imperatives. And he shows us how having a personal relationship with the poor — not merely writing a check, but really knowing someone who is desperately poor — is part of a total reliance on God, which Griffin makes sense of in the book. 

If you feel the need to be challenged by the Gospels (and which authentic Christian doesn’t?) and a desire to draw closer to Christ than ever before, then follow in the footsteps of St. Francis. Griffin shows you how. This is a must-have book for anyone who wants to be truly Christian.