Sunday Thoughts: St. Francis Prayer

The story goes that the "Prayer of St. Francis" was actually not written by the man in the 13th century who loved animals and served the poor.

As near as anyone can tell, the earliest record of the prayer is from the TWENTIETH century, when it was published in a small religious magazine in France called La Clochette (The Bell). An English translation was later published in a Quaker magazine and attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.

During and immediately after the Second World War, the prayer was distributed to millions of people.

That's okay. For me, that doesn't make the prayer one bit less important:

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;
and 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. 

Amen