Friday, December 12

Prayer of St. Francis







I find nothing wrong with the so-called ‘ready-made’ prayers. Do you? Hi! Tell me, if you find it a problem. I became aware of this difference much later in my prayer-life. It has not bothered me anyway. Some of my best friends in prayer circle never pray a written prayer. I have never felt the need to do it that way. Prayers can be planned. I go about to meditate the written prayers and feel the same with the writer. It is like two of us, the writer and me, saying the same thing to God!

The best of the written prayers that I munch daily are from an old collection of prayers: the Psalms. The world would have been an awesome poorer without all those poetic prayers in the Bible! The Psalms were written before the birth of Jesus. The praying Jews throughout their dynamic history regularly used them. The Bible tells us that Jesus used Psalms for his meditations. So, what is wrong with us journeying through today’s pre-written prayers?

My most favourite ready-made prayer is that of St. Francis. Simply tremendous, this prayer has kept me thinking every time I have prayed it. The beauty of its words, the depth of its meaning, the condensation of its Christian theology and the simplicity of its narration makes it a formidable prayer. Simply said, the prayer of St. Francis is the gist of Christian living.

Every Advent, I keep a copy of St. Francis prayer and pray it often. Sometimes, the prayer penetrates me so much that I stop praying those sacred words... and I keep telling, “ Lord, I am unable to tell you all this because I failed to be a good person who ‘understood’, a good person who ‘loved’, a good person who ‘consoled’. I have failed to give, I have failed to pardon and I have failed to die in my heart....”

St. Francis prayer is like this:

Lord, make me an instrument of thy 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 sadness, joy;
where there is darkness light.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
not so much to be understood as to understand;
not so much to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.

Amen!

Followers