(photo: Tom Delaney, Sherburne County, Minnesota, 2025)

We had a little surprise in the daily parade of deer along the woodline when this young White-Tailed Deer (Ordocoileus virginianus) buck showed up. In Anishinaabemowin, the language of the indigenous Ojibwe people of our area, these deer are called waawaashkeshi. In the language of the indigenous Dakota people also of our area, they are called taḣiŋça. Of course, if you depend on the land and natural resources for the necessities of life, it is a good sign when you see a young buck and know that the local deer population will continue to prosper. Even now, it is a joy to see a young buck as a sign that the truth, beauty, and good of nature and ecological balance are still offered to us. If you would like to learn more, and especially in the Ojibwe tradition, go to the online copy of Nando-gikenimindwaa
Nindinawemaaganidog — Getting to Know All of Creation and see the entry for waawaashkeshi, it includes a wisdom tale.

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Today let’s take a look at one of the wisdom saying of St. Francis of Assisi that is included in a 13th century compilation of his words and teachings in a document called the Admonitions. This document includes a vast number of the short teachings of St. Francis, and today we will consider this one (from #27 in the Admonitions) and see how it relates to forgiveness:

“Where there is mercy and discretion there is neither superfluity nor hard-heartedness.” ~ St. Francis of Assisi, Admonitions 27

In a previous post, Mercy Makes Forgiveness, we took a look at how mercy is needed as part of the forgiveness process. Mercy grows out of recognizing our sameness of basic humanity with other people, including someone who hurt or offended us. Circumstances can cloud this human sameness we all share, and those clouding circumstances are usually what is happening when someone hurts or offends us. When we use empathy to get back to recognizing our sameness and shared humanity with the person who hurt or offended us, we can use empathy in a process of full and lasting forgiveness. We simply must have mercy for that full and lasting forgiveness to happen.

The words of St. Francis also point to the importance of mercy, and intentionally pairs mercy with something that is also important — discretion. Discretion can be understood as the use of prudence, wisdom – or let’s even just call it “life smarts” – in making seeing things as they are, making decisions, and doing things. When we have and use discretion, we see things as they truly are, make decisions that are wise (as opposed to clever), and do things that really work with what is true and fulfill the potential of things in ways that are good. That’s my own eclectic definition based on over 55 years of life experience, and you probably won’t find that one in a dictionary, but let’s keep going…

Why did St. Francis pair mercy with discretion? In the section of the Admonitions that the quote comes from, St. Francis pairs a lot of important things with each other:

• clarity and wisdom
• patience and humility
• poverty and joy
• quiet and meditation
• mercy and discretion

The first thing to see that St. Francis is doing is putting things together – mercy and discretion in our example – making connections, and pointing to relatedness and relationships. Remember that we are talking about the author of the Canticle of the Creatures (also known as the Canticle of Creation or the Canticle of the Sun), an original work in which St. Francis addresses “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon” — St. Francis is the consummate connections guy. His words convey a perspective that things do go together, that everything is interconnected to everything else in and through God, and in that way there is relatedness and relationship everywhere. In a later time, St. Bonaventure would write extensively about this all-pervading connection and relatedness of things in and through God.

The next thing to see is that St. Francis is saying that the connection between mercy and discretion is good because it prevents two vices that we want to avoid if we want the good life: superfluity and hard-heartedness. Let’s take a closer look…

Superfluity happens when we have too much of something, to the point that it is not needed and exceeds what we actually need. The problem with having too much of something is that it usually takes away or distracts from something that is important and meaningful. When there is superfluity, there is too much, we lose importance and meaning, such that we usually end up valuing it less. Value is a good thing, so we want to avoid superfluity if we can! We get the most value and derive the most benefit when we can keep things to their essential importance and meaning.

Hard-heartedness happens when when we shut down our own capacity to understand and care for others in their life situations. It can happen when we become extremely self-centered, and especially when we have experienced so much pain and trauma from life experiences that we go into a deeply defensive self-centered place of being. The problem with being hard-hearted is that you’ve basically checked yourself out of the most important aspects of life: giving and receiving love, care, joy, compassion, wisdom…the list goes on and on. You’re inert and not participating anymore. If the two most important things to do in life are to “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:36-40) you’re in real trouble because when you’re hard-hearted, you’ve removed yourself from being a loving person that does either of those things. You are basically not living.

Thankfully St. Francis points to the two things that will reliably prevent superfluity and hard-heartedness from entering our lives: mercy and discretion. The relationship of mercy and discretion to superfluity and hard-heartedness is what we could call “antagonistic,” meaning that they are opposed to each other, and usually you can only have one and not the other. It’s the kind of relationship that we can actually use to give ourselves the good life, by keeping mercy and discernment in place against superfluity and hard-heartedness.

The third thing St. Francis is doing in our quote, is pointing to the importance of balance. He pairs mercy and discretion, along with superfluity and hard-heartedness, in a way that suggests a balance is needed between mercy and discernment. If you have too much mercy, you can get into superfluity and your mercy is excessive, losing its importance and meaning, and losing its essential value and benefit. When it happens it looks like you just have mercy all the time for anything and everything without even thinking about it or the caring about what’s really going on with people and in situations. Discretion balances mercy by applying prudence, wisdom, and “life smarts” in a way that prevents us from being excessive when it comes to mercy and having problems with superfluity. In the same way, discretion without mercy can get us into an overly rational and limited experiential view of things that doesn’t leave room for basic compassion and empathy — and that can get us into hard-heartedness. Mercy balances discretion by keep us always open to having an emotional experience of other people and their life situations, with empathy and compassion, even if our rational mind and other limited life experiences do not inclide us toward mercy or are even trying to pull us away from mercy. “Life smarts” are a very good and important, but always need to be accompanied by mercy.

The last observation I will make is that our quote from St. Francis shows that when you pair good things like mercy and discretion, you get double the value and benefit of them when they are separately on their own. On their own, when you have only one good thing, you may only receive the benefit of that one thing…and maybe. When you pair good things, because you are pairing and putting two things together, you will get two benefits together, and the balance between the two good things helps ensure that you get those paired and doubled benefits. When you pair mercy and discretion, you get the benefits of both, and mercy and discretion balance each other in ways that make sure you don’t lose their benefits and get superfluity and hard-heartedness instead. I hope I’ve done a good enough job explaining that so that it makes sense and doesn’t come off as a kind of shell game.

When it comes to forgiveness, the lesson to take away from all of this is that the mercy that motivates you to begin forgiving someone is best paired with discretion, meaning that you do forgiveness in a prudent, wise, and “life smarts” way so that the benefits of forgiveness will happen for both you and the person you are forgiving. Without discretion, our mercy can be excessive and then our forgiveness loses its importance, meaning, essential value, and even its benefit for you or the other person. When we use a well-defined and research validated process like the REACH Forgiveness Process that can be taught in Live and Forgive presentations, guided retreats, small group series or wilderness walks, we are using mercy (empathy, the “E” in REACH) in way that is intentionally and by design in balance with wisdom, prudence, and “life smarts.” In the same way, without mercy, we can think we are being wise, prudent, and smart about whether to forgive or not, but we will be lacking the essential and crucial element of mercy (empathy). Empathy is so crucial for full and lasting forgiveness that the latter (forgiveness) cannot happen without the former (empathy). Again, when we use well-defined and research validated process like the REACH Forgiveness Process that can be taught in Live and Forgive presentations, guided retreats, small group series or wilderness walks, we are using discretion in way that is balanced with mercy and empathy. You can see and understand that using a well-defined and validated process like the REACH Forgiveness Process in Live and Forgive is crucial for attaining a full and lasting forgiveness of someone for ourselves, and for ensuring that we really do receive the various mental health, physical health, relationship, and faith-life benefits of forgiveness for ourselves, and others.

This text is an original work of its author Tom Delaney and was entirely composed without the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

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If your parish or faith community is seeking a deeper experience of healing, mercy, and spiritual renewal, Live and Forgive is here to help. To begin the conversation, email Live and Forgive presenter and facilitator Tom Delaney at tom@liveandforgive.com—Tom will be glad to connect with you in a spirit of welcome, respect, and shared faith.