Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace

The Prayer of St. Francis has always been very special to me. In a series of entries over the next couple of weeks I plan to break down each line and what it means to me.

"Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace"

I'd like to think that this prayer was written in a time of great need in the author's life. Even though it's called The Prayer of St. Francis, it was almost certainly not written by St. Francis of Assisi. The prayer is a plea. Although it can be a calming prayer that is used to solidify beliefs and morals from which we stuggle not to stray, when you really think about the words, it is a poem begging for repentance.

While Jesus sometimes claimed to bring the opposite of peace (Luke 12:51), his actions spoke volumes to the contrary. He's favorite greeting was definately "Peace be with you." Even in the modern Catholic Mass, the last thing done before Holy Communion is a Sign of Peace that starts with the greeting "Peace by with you" spoken by the presider.

While there are many, many definitions that one could assign to the word, I believe that there are two principle meanings that apply directly to the teachings of Jesus"

• harmony is personal relations
• freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions

So, deconstructing the first line:

Jesus, Son of God and Prince of Peace, help me to bring harmony to my interactions with everyone that I meet and help me to clear other minds of their personal turmoil through my actions and words.

That's a good prayer in and of itself. Peace is freeing your mind of the noise and problems; it's being able to stay calm with it still going on around you. We can't heal anyone; all we can do is help them to know that Jesus' love is bigger than all the problems of this world.

The innerbattle that I have over this is that sometimes being "preachy" or "evangelistic" can bring more unrest than peace. The flipside to that arguement is that through helping someone to foster a relationship with Jesus Christ (even if there is a little bit of tough love involved), we are ultimately bringing peace to their heart.

That's where the "instrument" part comes in. The pray doesn't say, "Lord, help me force peace upon others." An instrument is only a small part in a large symphony. No one human is going to be able to bring peace to another by themselves. Only by working together as individual instruments in the symphony can we show others what it means to be a true Christian...a true instrument of Jesus' peace.

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