The Prayer of St Francis

Overview

Believers pray for justice, for peace and for the environment, including The Prayer of St Francis. The Prayer of St Francis is a prayer for peace. In a world often troubled by war and violence, it calls us to be instruments of Christ's peace and love (CLPS24).

Many people, if asked for a prayer of St Francis, would name this one. However it is not in fact by Francis, but comes from an unknown French source, and was first recorded around 1913.

Although he came from a wealthy family, St. Francis developed a burning desire as a young man to emulate Our Lord in his love of charity and voluntary poverty. He went so far at one point as to sell his horse, and cloth from his father’s store, to help pay for the rebuilding of a church!

After renouncing his wealth, St. Francis founded one of the most famous religious orders, the Franciscans. The Franciscans lived an austere life of poverty in service to others following Jesus’s example, and preached the Gospel message all over Italy and other parts of Europe.

St. Francis’s humility was such that he never became a priest. Coming from someone whose order attracted thousands of people within its first ten years, this is modesty indeed!

Fittingly, St. Francis is the patron of Catholic Action, as well as of animals, the environment, and his native Italy. We see his legacy in the wonderful charitable work the Franciscans do all over the world today.

[The Canticle of Creation] is a prayer that outlines everything that made Francis the peacemaker that he was and the model for peace that he is for us today. It is a prayer that shows us how to find the truth again, if we’ve lost it, or to continue living in the truth we’ve already found and are trying to live.

From Surrounded by Love: Seven Teachings from Saint Francis by Murray Bodo, OFM

The Prayer of St Francis

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us 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 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

Vocal resource

The Prayer of St Francis