A Lenten Prayer from the Stated Clerk

God is indeed calling us this Lent to follow the way of Christ and not the way of the world. To help myself in that pilgrimage, I have been praying often the well-known prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

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.

I commend St. Francis’ familiar, yet timeless, words to you this Lenten season. And I urge you to pray it in the confident assurance that Easter is coming, when we will celebrate the power of the risen Christ to bring salvation, hope, peace, and fullness of life to each of us and to our world.

Clifton Kirkpatrick is the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).