An Instrument Of Peace

“Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.” Thus starts the peace prayer of St. Francis. It’s a simple prayer but, how it is needed in the world in which we currently live.

You don’t have to be a praying person to benefit from the prayer for peace. Reading it and living it is enough. The prayer itself is a basic manual for kindness toward others.

The prayer asks that we offer love where we find hate. Or, when someone injures us, we pardon them. It asks us to offer light where we find darkness. In other words, we bring positives to the negatives we encounter.

The whole prayer is a prayer of opposites. It is a prayer that our life be used as an instrument for peace. Instead of using our lives to spread negativity and hate, we ask to be an instrument of love and kindness.

We are now in the Christmas season, which traditionally has meant peace, joy, and laughter. Kindness and generosity are usually the most abundant during these few weeks in November and December.

However, peace has been hard to find in the last few years. People have forgotten how to be instruments of peace. Instead, they pour hate on top of hate. They spread the darkness they encounter instead of nullifying it with its opposite.

Habits take about 30 days to form. Maybe we could form the habit of repeating this prayer every morning for the next two months. Let it guide our actions throughout each of the days we live. Hopefully at the end of the two months, we will be renewed instruments of peace.

I want to be that instrument of peace. I want my love to balance and cross out the hate. Let me be the joy to counterbalance all the sorrow in this world. Please won’t you join me?

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (Prayer for Peace)

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.