Grace Remembered and Relived; Entry 17 (see first Entry here.)
4 October:
Psalm 101:6a:
"My eyes are upon the faithful in the land."
Psalm 109:3:
"Despite my love, they accuse me; * but as for me, I pray for them."
The first verse encouraged me to be faithful to my calling as Rector, the second verse an aspect of what that faithfulness consisted.
October 4 is the Feast of St. Francis, and seeing this date in my journal gave me the opportunity I've been seeking to mention a new discovery about this much beloved prayer attributed to 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 discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we 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.
According to the Vatican's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, the prayer was first published in 1912, and then reprinted in its pages four years later because Pope Benedict XV, moved by the carnage of the Great War, desired a fitting prayer for peace.
Even if St. Francis didn't write it, it captured his spirit. Less than 40 years after his death, St. Bonaventure, one of his friars, wrote his Major Life of St. Francis. It includes these passages:
"In all his sermons he began by wishing his hearers peace, saying to them, 'God give you peace,' a form of greeting which he had learned by revelation, as he afterwards asserted. He was moved by the spirit of the prophets and he proclaimed peace and salvation. By his salutary warnings he united in the bond of true peace great numbers of people who had been at enmity with Christ and far from salvation."
"Although [Francis'] spirit was one of poverty and lowliness, free from all pretense and devoid of life-giving powers, Francis had already attracted seven followers and he was anxious to invite the whole world to repent and give it new life in Christ. So he told his companions, 'Go and bring to all a message of peace and penance, that their sins may be forgiven.'"
But more than St. Bonaventure's own record, we have Francis' own words in his Testament, which he wrote within a month of his death:
"God revealed a form of greeting to me, telling me that we should say, 'God give you peace.'"
"God give you peace."
The excerpts from the writings of St. Francis are adapted from St. Francis of Assisi, Writings and Early Biographies, English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis, Marion A. Habig, ed., (c) 1973 Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago.
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