Prayer of Saint Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace;

Where there is hatred, let me bring love;

Where there is injury, let me bring forgiveness;

Where there is discord, let me bring harmony;

Where there is error, let me bring truth;

Where there is doubt, let me bring faith;

Where there is despair, let me bring hope;

Where there are shadows, let me bring light;

Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;

To understand, than to be understood;

To love, than to be loved;

For it is in giving that one receives.

It is in forgetting oneself that one finds;

It is in forgiving that one is forgiven.

It is in dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Amen.

After I posted “Pray for Your Enemies”, this prayer popped into my head. It does seem to follow that theme.

Many teachers, including my good friend and mentor Lynn Woodland, teach that what you most want you must give to others. In Lynn’s groups, we often choose a personality characteristic or an ability that we would most like to have at that moment. After doing some spiritual work around claiming that thing, we are given the opportunity to confer that characteristic or ability to others in the group. In order to strengthen loving kindness in ourselves, for example, we would confer that trait to others who wished to receive it.

Wayne Dyer has a great observation on this prayer. He remarks that Saint Francis didn’t pray by saying, “Hey, Lord, I don’t have any peace. The neighbors are complaining and I don’t know what to do. Would you give me some peace?” I love that because it points out to me that Francis was a human being and likely had numerous worldly concerns of his own (life was pretty brutal in the 13^th century, from what I can gather). Yet, he chose to ask God to help him be an instrument of peace for others. That seems a truly saintly request, indeed.

Thanks to Wikipedia for posting the full French text of this prayer, which I used as a guide when posting the English here. The also say that the earliest confirmed version of this prayer comes from the 19^th century, so it may well not have been written by Saint Francis of Assisi himself. If it was inspired by Saint Francis, though, that's just as good as far as I am concerned. The spirit is still true.