One of the deacons in my church prefaced his offertory prayer this past Sunday with a pray of another kind, not one having to do with the offering itself but nonetheless a most appropriate prayer for the hour in which we Americans find ourselves once again.
After mentioning the recent bad news about one person being killed and 19 others hurt after a speeding car slammed into a throng of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Va., my Baptist Deacon friend recited the prayer, known as the Peace Prayer, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. You may recognize it:
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.
Most scholars of history maintain that prayer wasn’t actually written by St. Francis but by an unknown Christian, and not in the 1200s but probably in the early 1900s, and not in Italy, where St. Francis ministered, but in France. It was widely publicized during the trying days of WWII and after. Reading the words of the prayer and knowing anything of the way St. Francis lived certainly makes the attachment to him an understandable one.
The prayer’s unknown source in no way diminishes the impact that prayer has for me; indeed, it makes it all the more meaningful. Some anonymous believer wrote those penetrating words in some particular situation, a difficult one, I’d guess. But not knowing the exact circumstances makes me think less about the person who wrote them and more about the words themselves.
The prayer captured my heart Sunday morning, although I had prayed it many times before. My Deacon friend was visibly moved by the tragedy of which he spoke, and I admired his courage in voicing the Peace Prayer.
I’m not a political analyst or commentator. But like my Deacon friend, I can point to the way of peace, while at the same time admitting it’s not an easy path to follow, for anger wells up in me, as I’m quite sure it does in you, and I too want to retaliate at all the wrongs done to others, and the ones to me, too— perhaps the ones to me first, for I am tempted to place myself at the center my own little universe of hurts. Retaliation and retribution aren’t exclusive to Charlottesville, and one doesn’t have to physically harm someone to destroy them.
And then, I realize any form of striking back only keeps us on the merry-go-round of hate until we tumble off, dizzied by our own visions of getting even.
Wherever we let hostility prevail, we allow the possibility for another Charlottesville to erupt.
Then it becomes commonplace, no longer shocking us.
The best thing for church folks to do in times like these is simply to be the church, living the life of the One who called us out, following Him, loving our Lord with all we are and loving our neighbors—the ones we like and those we don’t—as our Lord loves them.
The Lord expects his light to shine through his children, especially when the darkness seems to prevail around them.
And though it may appear as if the forces of darkness are about to extinguish the Light, take heart, for the darkness will not overcome the Light, nor those who walk in the Light.
So, take a little time soon and look at the prayer printed on this page and ponder the words of whoever it was that wrote them.
Reading them won’t take very long.
Living them will encompass a lifetime.