Franciscan Benediction
May God bless us with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that we may live from deep within our hearts.
May God bless us with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of God's creations
So that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.
May God bless us with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,
So that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless us with just enough foolishness
To believe that we can make a difference in the world,
So that we can do what others claim cannot be done:
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and all our neighbors who are poor.
Amen.
I came across this prayer attributed to St Francis. It sounds too modern, western, and reads too rhetorically tidy for me to have much confidence it came from the medieval monk and troubadour. But then again, someone who spent three weeks in dialogue and as a peacemaking envoy to the Sultan of Egypt may well have shown the inner dispositions for which this prayer asks. So there's a spiritual congruence of these prayer petitions for converted attitudes with what we know of what Francis was about. And there is a further alignment of the heart if this prayer is read alongside the more famous prayer attributed to Francis - Make me a channel of your peace.
In both prayers, the sentiments and ideas, the psychological insight and spiritual intelligence that gets to the heart of what is wrong in the world, and how God is seeking to make it right, show considerable family resemblance. So if the prayer isn't by St Francis - it could have been, indeed it should have been! In any case Christians seeking to follow faithfully after Jesus in the fluctuating flux that is our western cultural malaise, will find in this prayer important clues for living intelligently, faithfully and with inner integrity. Because we are called to witness to Christ the way, the truth and the life amongst the greed and injustice, the lies and deceit, the fear and anxiety, the hedonism and sadness, the individual uncertainties and collective confusion of a society so lost and blurred in vision that it gets harder to distinguish between a road and a cliff edge.
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