St. Francis of Assisi Archives - Bishop Kevin Farrell

In the Peace Prayer of St. Francis the various couplets following our request to be made God’s instrument as we discussed in our last blog, are a litany of those elements necessary for peace; love, pardon, faith, hope, light and joy—”but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor. 13:13)

Our verse this week is on love because it is the cornerstone of peace. It is also the antithesis of hatred to which it is closely related as is true of antithetical terms, which are defined by each other. For example, darkness is the absence of light.

Poetess Etla Wheeler Wilcox penned the line, “Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes.” Hate destroys, love gives life. Hatred and love cannot co-exist. Jesus commands us that we are to “love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). One who loves unconditionally, as God loves us, cannot hate.

Hatred has many faces. Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel professes that “the opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference,” which he characterizes as, “the epitome of evil.” Indeed, Pope Francis has been an outspoken critic of the “globalization of indifference,” which has replaced love and mercy with “an economic system that has removed the person from the centre and replaced him with the god of money; an economic system that excludes, and creates the throwaway culture in which we live.”

We sow love by our witness, acts of kindness, compassion, mercy, consideration shown to others. Love is contagious. The Holy Father observed that “Goodness always tends to spread. Every authentic experience of truth and goodness seeks by its very nature to grow within us, and any person who has experienced a profound liberation becomes more sensitive to the needs of others. As it expands, goodness takes root and develops. If we wish to lead a dignified and fulfilling life, we have to reach out to others and seek their good” (EG 9). Just as “the love of Christ urges us on” (2 Cor 5:14), our acts of love impel others, for God is love and those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them. (1 John 4:16)

—

Image Credit: USDA on Flickr

The Peace Prayer of St. Francis begins with a plea that God use us as his instrument. An instrument is something that is used to accomplish a greater purpose than is inherently possible in and of itself. A flute is a device that must be used to be an instrument, such as when it is used by James Galway to make magical music. Mary became the instrument used by God to accomplish the Incarnation.

In praying the Peace Prayer we are asking God to change us, to “make us” which implies we are asking to be changed, to move in a new direction; to experience what the early Church called metanoia, a Greek word meaning changing one’s mind. Our Christian ancestors used it to refer to conversion.

Conversion is always the work of the Holy Spirit, even the grace, the nudge to consider the idea, is from the Spirit. When we ask Jesus to change us into his instrument, what are we asking for? The answer is provided in an old hymn written in 1926 by David Iverson called Spirit of the Living God. Here are the lyrics that describe what we are requesting when we ask to be made into Jesus’ instrument.

Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.
Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.

If I may borrow from the 12 Steps Program, it means to “let go and let God.” Conversion is at the heart of Christian Faith. On Ash Wednesday we were charged to “repent and believe in the Gospel.” (Mark 1:15)

The Holy Spirit calls us in many voices. One of those voices we are hearing a lot lately is that of Our Holy Father Pope Francis, who in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium wrote, “The new evangelization calls on every baptized person to be a peacemaker and a credible witness to a reconciled life.” (EG 239)

What habit, what opinion contrary to the Gospel, what withheld forgiveness must we surrender to the cauldron of conversion this Lent to allow ourselves to be melted, molded, and filled? What must we change to become an instrument of God’s peace?

—

Image credit: “IU Violin Shop” by Austin Davis on Flickr

Search

Sowing the love of God

Becoming an instrument of God’s peace