What do Franciscans contribute today? This question was foremost on my mind as I attended the Franciscan Studies conference that brought me to Europe this year. We are heirs to a specific tradition in medieval philosophy, but more importantly, we are stewards of a religious tradition attentive to nature. Today, the scientific and disenchanted view of nature predominates, but many turn to Francis for a better perspective. I agree that he shows us a better way of looking at nature. But it is not just about enjoying nature; it is also about understanding how nature provides guidance for what it means to act naturally.

Today’s scientific view of nature challenges us. For example, consider what it says about St. Francis’s repulsion from lepers before his conversion. “When I was in sin,” he writes in his Testament, “it seemed very bitter for me to see lepers.” Scientists will say that this is natural. Neurobiologists know how our brain makes us recoil from the suffering of others. Watching the pain of others causes us to feel pain ourselves. They point to “mirror neurons” that have the effect of literally feeling pain when we see another undergoing a painful experience. And pain is something that we naturally avoid. So did St. Francis act naturally when he was in sin and unnaturally after his conversion, when he showed mercy to lepers, turned to them, cared for them, and even expressed his affection for them with a kiss?

Now consider what Jesus says in Mt 19:8: “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” We all know people who have had to divorce. Sometimes, there is no other way. But in the beginning, in the way God created humans, our hearts were meant to be soft and capable of dealing with anything. Being soft-hearted is truly natural to us, and if it seems that science is telling us otherwise, then we must be misunderstanding it somehow. We need a Christian understanding of nature that recovers what it meant “in the beginning,” and I think that this is the proper domain of Franciscan scholars.

The other challenge is to be joyful about the Gospel. Indeed, joy in response to faith found might be the quintessential Franciscan ingredient. Such joy is not false optimism but a response to having properly understood one’s own human nature in its relationship to God and the freedom from fear that this brings.

Christian faith is very much about understanding what it means to be human and act accordingly. This link between understanding and acting is key. The Franciscan tradition claims attentiveness to the ordinary concerns of the majority of people, and our intellectual work must be in service of it. The heart of Franciscan scholarship must be about understanding how to live naturally and joyfully, and all scientific knowledge is ultimately meant for this.