Prayers of That Great Cloud of Witnesses
The Peace Prayer: A Compendium Entry
Read the prayer, and feel its beauty challenging your spirit to a deeper faithfulness. Pray it and experience the tension between your heart’s longing and resistance to such a life. Write it as a commitment to follow Jesus on this path of peace. Memorize it so that your memory and conscience will remind you of that commitment throughout the day.
Many of the contemporary worship songs I enjoy assume an initial state of internal struggle in the worshipper.
“There’s a grace when the heart is under fire, Another way when the walls are closing in”1
“I know there’s gonna be some brighter days, I swear that love will find you in your pain”2
This starting point is, of course, necessary and legitimate at times. But this is also the very reason I often struggle to pray this prayer. If I’m going to pray the Peace Prayer with any agreement between its words and my heart I must be at least a little secure in myself, my situation and my relationship with God.
The Peace Prayer has often been attributed to St. Francis, the author of the prayer in our last post in this series. In fact, it has often been called the Prayer of St. Francis.3 This is understandable because it reflects the spiritual biography of Francis of Assisi. But the prayer was originally written in French, not Italian, and first appeared more than 700 years after Francis’ death.
1n 1901 a Catholic Association in Paris La Ligue de la Sainte-Messe (The Holy Mass League) published the anonymous prayer under the title ‘Belle prière à faire pendant la messe‘ (A Beautiful Prayer to Say During the Mass). It then appeared in a small spiritual magazine called La Clochette, or “the little bell,” in 1912. It wasn’t until 1927 that it was attributed to Saint Francis by a French Protestant Movement, Les Chevaliers du Prince de la Paix (The Knights of the Prince of Peace), founded by Étienne Bach (1892-1986). The prayer appeared in English in 1936, as part of a book by Kirby Page (1890-1957), a Disciple of Christ minister born in Tyler County, Texas, entitled Living Courageously.
Thus, this prayer has made an adventurous journey, fruitfully prayed and passed on by thousands, if not millions of Jesus-followers, to reach us in today’s post. Read the prayer, and feel its beauty challenging your spirit to a deeper faithfulness. Pray it and experience the tension between your heart’s longing and resistance to such a life. Write it as a commitment to follow Jesus on this path of peace. Memorize it so that your memory and conscience will remind you of that commitment throughout the day.
This prayer will help you makegoodhappen.
The Peace Prayer.
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.
Anonymous.
Sarah McLachlan’s musical version of this prayer is entitled “The Peace Prayer of St. Francis.”
Where do you find this kinda stuff? I’ve always wondered if it came from St Francis. Anyhow, I can’t pray this without singing…. The notes just push their way into the words😊
LOL _ Keep those to yourself with my approval!