Do you long for peace in your heart?

Do you long for peace in your heart? Pray the prayer below and mean 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.

Amen.

This very prayer has inspired me to write my poem entitled 'Let me Sow Peace', and not forgetting the exemplary life of the man who wrote it.

 

Today is the memorial of Francis of Assisi and in memory of him, I am posting this favourite prayer of all times. It is a prayer that challenges us to pray to be different, to be as Jesus would want us to be, to live out the Gospel in the way that God asks us to and to be His messengers of peace. Without peace, there is no life.

Francis was a man who loved all the pleasures and wealth of the world and he dreamed to become a knight. He experienced a deep conversion, thus leaving everything he ever had to follow Christ. He fully obeyed what he had heard in prayer:
"Francis! Everything you have loved and desired in the flesh it is your duty to despise and hate, if you wish to know My will. And when you have begun this, all that now seems sweet and lovely to you will become intolerable and bitter, but all that you used to avoid will turn itself to great sweetness and exceeding joy."

From the cross in the abandoned ruins of the chapel of San Damiano, Christ told him, "Francis, go out and build up my house, for it is nearly falling down." That day, he became the knight of a King, the saviour of the world.