Catholic Peace Prayer is for anyone

(published in June, 2024 and reposted with content edit. St. Joseph's Hospital is in Plainedge, N.Y.

My mother loved the Prayer of St. Francis.

She sang it to my father along with a Catholic nun at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Plainedge when he died in 2011.

The Peace Prayer is attributed to a French priest, not the saint, but pays homage to St. Francis who is said to have preached about peace and goodness.

The feelings about what I knew about his life are what led me and my friends to Umbria out of the way on a drive across Italy.

We all four were curious to see what kind of cathedral was built for the man with the stigmata who was believed to be the first saint to have that. He was also said to pray for the animals that suffered to become food. That also resonated. Some of us were vegetarians.

The two-level basilica on a hill is still for me the most beautiful I’ve seen.

There’s an iconic sight from the village plaza. The frescoes are dizzying inside. I only can describe two (I write these on memory).

One was a heartbreaking scene of Christ’s death on the Cross. His mother has her face cradled to His. The other is very happy showing Francis feeding birds.

My mother is shown here on the upper and lower parts of the basilica in Assisi. The photos are by her traveling companion my aunt Flora Beaver on their trip in 1983 or ‘84.

I always think of my mother when I hear the words of the Peace Prayer.

I’ve laid it on her grave at Holy Rood. On a happy occasion in February, the prayer was read at the Mass with my grandson’s Christening.

Last night I heard the prayer but differently.

I listened to a podcast with author Timberlake Hawkeye talking about his book Faithful Religionless I finished last weekend.

He said in the interview he recites the Prayer of St. Francis in his morning meditations. In his version though some of the words are changed to provide him personal meaning.

You can listen to him talk about that on TEDxHonolulu 2012

Here is an original version of the way my mother would say or sing 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.