This past Tuesday, our Living Room used the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi to dedicate our meeting as a reflection upon his life and legacy. His commitment to simplicity and dependence upon God to provide for his needs is a challenging one in world obsessed with producing more and more goods to be consumed. We thanked God for the ways some human beings are able to rise above the safe and the conventional to bear witness to radical love and service for Christ. If the witness of St. Francis can help us move the dial even a little to a more Christ-oriented life, then we will all be the better for it. One of the best loved prayers to God ever written comes from him, and enriches our prayer life considerably; I urge you not to skim over it because it is so familiar, rather, feast on its wisdom this weekend with thankful hearts.
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