Prayer of
St Francis
Lord,
make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that
I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we
receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
This prayer has become known as the Prayer of St Francis although it was almost certainly not written by St Francis of Assisi but rather represents the particular form of spirituality which he, and his followers have been instrumental in developing. The prayer first appeared in 1913 when it was called the Prayer for Peace and shortly afterwards a poster was published showing St Francis holding the prayer with the caption “this prayer sums up Franciscan ideals and also represents a response to the urgent needs of our age.” The prayer thus became known as the Prayer of St Francis.
But what does God’s peace look like and what does it mean to be an instrument of it?
When my children were small, a favourite bedtime book was called ‘Peace at last’. In it Father Bear tries to go to sleep but owing to his wife’s snoring finds his bed too noisy. He then moves around the house trying to find a quiet place but everywhere he goes seems to have its own noises and he still can’t get to sleep. Eventually he goes back to his own bed to find his wife has stopped snoring and he finds ‘peace at last’. But of course, God’s peace is not merely the absence of noise, nor is it the absence of war, or the absence of argument or the absence of anything else for that matter. Rather it is the presence of something positive. The presence of justice, of reconciliation, of equality, of fairness, of freedom, of respect, of hope and of love.
So how might we become instruments of that sort of peace? What does it feel like to be an instrument? Well, it strikes me there are two ways we can understand the nature of an instrument. The first is purely mechanical – I am using a computer to type this. The computer and my words are unrelated, the computer is merely an instrument to allow me to write down my thoughts. Being an instrument of peace is not like this though. For that we need a more existential definition. Those who want to be instruments of God’s peace must themselves be peaceful persons. They must embody those qualities of justice, reconciliation, equality and so on which define that peace. Imagine a violinist producing a virtuoso performance on her instrument. Her whole body moves with the violin, her fingers seem to be one with the strings and the bow a part of her arms. Violin, musician, arms, strings, body, bow, sounds, fingers, rhythm, all seem to be one living instrument of the music. In the same way perhaps we can become instruments of God’s peace when it is so much a part of us that we don’t even have to think about it.
I wonder which of the lines in the prayer for peace you feel challenges you the most. Perhaps you could make that the focus of your prayers
Lesley
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