Reading Francis

What would St. Francis say?

A friend recently sent a “Reverse Prayer of St. Francis: Make Me a Channel of Disturbance”. It’s a good prayer. As is the “Peace Prayer of St. Francis,” to which it is a counterpoint.

St. Francis didn’t pray either of these prayers, it’s worth saying at the outset. The “Make me a channel (or instrument) of your peace” prayer that every post-Vatican II Catholic (and many, many others) have heard and sung, first appeared in French in 1912. The “reverse” prayer is a century later – the earliest I can find it is around 2015.

But, from what I, a fan-of-but-not-expert-on St. Francis, can tell, there are elements of both that align with his example, as well as elements that he wouldn’t claim in a million years. Let me explain.

Someone actually recently asked me, “So what was St. Francis really about?”, and as fat a pitch as that was, I fouled it off. (It was early on a Saturday morning, and the coffee hadn’t kicked in.) What I should have said was, maybe more than anyone before or after him, St. Francis took the Mystery of the Incarnation, the idea that the one Creator God became a human being in Jesus, literally and seriously. Because God had become part of Creation, all of Creation became worth recognizing as recipients of divine love. Because God became so humble as to become a defenseless child, Francis sought to be as humble as he could be. When he read that Jesus told the disciples not to take any possessions with them, Francis relinquished all of his and expected anyone who joined his group to do the same. Since Jesus spent his time healing the lepers, embracing the outcasts, and preaching a change of heart, Francis organized his days around those things.

So what would he have said about these prayers?

First of all, as many actual Franciscan scholars have said, Francis’ commitment to humility meant he never would have written a prayer so focused on the first person. “Make me”, “let me,” etc., imply a “me” worth elevating; Francis spent his life emptying himself of all worth so as to point people toward Jesus.

That the more recent prayer is called a “Reverse Prayer” carries a bit of an accusation of the original. If I’m not reading that into the text, it seems to argue that the “Peace Prayer”’s call for individual holiness can end in complacency in the face of injustice. St. Francis certainly lived a life that was not marked by “apathy,” “compliance,” “silence,” or “comfort.” He lived his life in constant motion, he literally stripped naked in an act of noncompliance toward his father and the reigning ethic of pursuit of wealth, he was such the opposite of silent that he preached everywhere and to everyone, from rulers to animals, and he eschewed all comfort, not only for the sake of personally piety but in solidarity with the excluded, making himself one of the dispossessed by literally shedding his possessions. Francis would have appreciated that the “Reverse” prayer makes clear that the way of Jesus is far from the status quo.

At the same time, St. Francis’ approach to holiness was more aligned with that of the “Peace” prayer, because he, a poor man in service to an all-powerful Lord, focused on doing what was his to do. Francis was a disrupter, a disturber, not as an advocate but as an example. He didn’t start out reforming an ailing Church; when he heard the message “Rebuild my Church,” he literally started putting stones together to rebuild abandoned churches. He didn’t rally for the poor; he became one of them in their service. He didn’t rail against compliance or articulate a social program; he just lived a life of radical poverty in community. He didn’t just wish for peace; he made it (or tried to) by interceding peacefully in the midst of conflict.

Here’s an example. When he lay sick, he was told of a fight between the local mayor and bishop. He didn’t sit back, or take sides, or lecture the two parties. Instead he wrote a new verse to a prayer that is authentically his:

Praised by You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love, and bear infirmity and tribulation. Blessed are those who endure in peace for by You, Most High, shall they be crowned.

Then he told his brothers to go sing this new verse to the two combatants. And the mayor and bishop made up.

I wrote a while back about the need for “previously unimagined third responses.” St. Francis’ life and example has had such a lasting impact precisely because it was full of such surprising fresh, authentic responses to the Good News. His whole life was a previously unimagined third response.

What would he say about these two prayers? I’m sure he would have praised the God they are written for and honored those who created them. And then he would have pursued a way that was neither complacent nor combative, one neither I nor the authors of these prayers would have previously imagined.

PS – If you don’t know much about St. Francis, there are a lot of great books out there. Let me recommend by friend Bret Thoman’s as a good starter. It’s well-researched and an easy read.