ReflectionsLord Make Me. This year I would like to look with you at the very well-known prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi which challenges us to live as citizens of another kingdom, the upside-down kingdom of God, to live the exact opposite of what we find in our world. His prayer begins with the plea: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” It’s a very courageous prayer to pray. It’s really saying to God that he can have a free hand in our lives. It’s requesting that he ‘make’ us into peacemakers, instruments that he can use to bring his peace to troubled people, to torn relationships, to divided communities, to a war-weary world. In order for us to develop, to mature into such, it may be that we, too, have to go through our times of hard testing. It certainly will mean that, whatever it costs, we discover that peace within ourselves for how can he use us if we haven’t got for ourselves what we want to give to others? Really we are praying that we become image-bearers of Jesus who embodies in himself all those characteristics that bring that peace that the world can neither give nor take away.
Francis of Assisi lived eight centuries ago, born in 1182. He is arguably the best known saint of the church. Even if many of us don’t know very much about him, we have all heard of him; we are all aware of him. Elizabeth Goudge writes of him, “His influence upon European music, art, drama and politics has been a study for many scholars, yet it is as a Christian that he matters to us, as a humble poor man who set himself to tread as closely as he could in the footsteps of Christ, perhaps as closely as any man has ever done, and by so doing shames us. Looking at him we see what it means to be Christian, and what it costs. His story is not only endearing, it is terrifying. Yet without the fear and shame he would not have so much power over us, for we know in our hearts that what is worth having costs everything. And so his power lives on and we cannot measure it because it is nowhere near its end.”¹ Whether he actually wrote this prayer or not to my mind doesn’t really matter. What matters is that this prayer sums up his life and finds more than a passing echo in our hearts. This prayer is probably the best known and best loved prayer after the Lord’s Prayer, but, like the Lord’s Prayer, if we really began to take it seriously, would challenge us and stretch us more than we think we could cope with. We sing it so blithely, don’t we? “Make me a channel of your peace!” If we are serious, it’s a dangerous song to sing, a rather terrifying prayer to pray. You have only to read a life of St. Francis to see what it cost him. You have only to turn to the gospels, to the accounts of the passion, to see what it cost Jesus. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan, writes of his father in the faith, “Francis is first of all saying that we cannot change the world except insofar as we have changed ourselves. We can only give away who we are. We can only offer to others what God has done in us. We have no real head answers. We must be an answer. We only know the other side of journeys that we have made ourselves. Francis walked to the edge and so he could lead others to what he found there. All the conflicts and contradictions of life must find a resolution in us before we can resolve anything out there. Only the forgiven can forgive, only the healed can heal, only those who stand daily in need of mercy can offer mercy to others.”²
So, let’s take this prayer and ‘work’ with it this year; let’s reflect on it; let it shame us and terrify us and heal us. And in a year’s time may we be better able to be instruments of his peace, because in some way, through our meeting together in Faith and Friendship, we have been ‘made’ a little bit more. Lord, make me…
Ruth