Prayer of St. Francis

The Prayer of St. Francis is one of the best known and best loved prayers in the world today. Attributed traditionally to St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), its actual origins are much more recent. Nonetheless, it beautifully reflects his devotion to God and, in my opinion, reflects what a truly Christ centered marriage should be! It was a prayer once given to me, early on in my married life, as a penance for havoc I had created in my marriage through my selfishness, my anger, as well as my lack of paying attention to my wife’s needs. It was truly the medicine I needed to not only consume, but also put into practice as the remedy for a true healing and transformation of my marriage.

Over the next several weeks, I would like to use this prayer as a guide for my marriage tips and to even talk about how this played out in my own relationship. I didn’t see the beauty of it at first because it was so common of a prayer to me that, at first, I just read through it to ‘get it over with.’ Yeah, I know, it sounds pathetic. I was a jerk-face. But don’t we all get that way at times. “Just tell me what I have to do so I can get over this issue…and get back to my life.”  But eventually, God took me back to this prayer over and over, and somewhere in the midst of it all, it actually penetrated my heart.  

Each verse is calling us to put another person first and to love the other person for the sake of the wellbeing of that person:

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; 
And 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.

ACTION STEP: This week, spend time reading through this prayer, and ask the Lord to let it penetrate your heart so that you can look at your marriage through the lens of its deeper meaning.