Prayer of St. Francis: Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace
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. Amen.
Where Does This Prayer Come From?
Paris.
December 1912.
A small Catholic magazine called La Clochette.
The Little Bell.
On one page, with no author's name, a short prayer appears in French.
Its title: "A beautiful prayer to say during Mass."
Who wrote it?
Nobody knows.
The editor, Fr. Esther Bouquerel, may have.
Then the First World War breaks out.
In 1915, a French nobleman sends the prayer to Pope Benedict XV.
In January 1916, the Vatican's newspaper prints it.
A prayer for peace, in the middle of a war.
A few years later, a Franciscan priest prints it on the back of a holy card.
The front shows St. Francis of Assisi.
You can guess what happened next.
People turned the card over and connected the dots.
By 1927, it was in print as "a prayer of St. Francis."
Did St. Francis Really Write It?
No.
Francis died in 1226.
This prayer first shows up almost seven hundred years later.
St. Francis didn't write it, but it reads like his life.
If you want his own words, pray his Canticle of the Sun.
And notice who spread this one.
It began in a Catholic magazine.
Quakers and other Protestants helped carry it around the world.
Christians who disagree on a lot, praying the same words for peace.
It doesn't need Francis's name.
It stands on Jesus' own words:
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God.
— Matthew 5:9
Wrong author.
Right Gospel.
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