Jody Serey’s Reflection

Practical Peacemaking for Everyday People

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (Prayer for Peace)

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.

Many of us have known this prayer for years. We have heard it, said it, perhaps even memorized it (at least the first stanza). It is simple. It is beautiful. And it is, if we are honest, a little overwhelming.

Because when we hear words like these, we may picture something large, public, and noisy –great acts of courage, bold movements, visible and even sudden change.

But many of us are no longer living in that kind of season. We are not marching in the streets. We are not carrying signs. Our days are quieter now. More contained. More ordinary.

And yet — this prayer has not outlived its usefulness. It has simply come closer to home.

What does it mean, then, to be an instrument of peace in a life that is lived mostly in familiar rooms, among familiar people, within the steady rhythm of ordinary days?

It may mean something as small — and as difficult — as refusing to let our hearts harden.

Where there is hatred, we may not be called to change the world. But we can choose not to add to the harshness. We can refuse to repeat the demeaning story, the dismissive remark, the easy rush to judgment. We can let kindness interrupt us and pull us back from bitterness.

Where there is injury, we may carry our own wounds that have scarred us for years. Some of them earned. Some of them deep. Peace, in this season, may look like loosening our emotional grip on those old injuries — deciding that internal quiet is worth more than rehearsing what was done to us in the past. Sometimes forgiveness is spoken aloud. Sometimes it is simply released, quietly, within.

Where there is doubt, we may be the steady voice for someone else. A grandchild unsure of their path. A friend questioning their worth. Faith does not always sound like certainty. Sometimes it sounds like, “You’ll find your way. I believe that because I believe in you.”

Where there is despair, hope does not arrive as an inspirational speech. It arrives as actual presence. Sitting beside someone. Listening without correcting or interjecting an opinion. Staying when it would be easier to withdraw. Hope, at a mature stage of life, is often carried in silence.

Where there is darkness, light can be as simple as attention. A text. A phone call. A note. A remembered name, or shared experience that is shared again. A gentle tone that changes the temperature of a room.

Where there is sadness, joy is not forced. It is shared. A story told. A memory recalled. A moment of laughter that rises up, unplanned, and reminds us that something good still lives among us even in the most difficult of days.

There is a quiet authority that comes with age. Those of us who have decades of life behind us have seen enough to know that anger burns hot and fades quickly. But a kindness — even a small one offered at the right moment — can last for years as a memory.

We have learned that most arguments are not worth winning. That people carry burdens we cannot see. That a soft answer is not weakness, but wisdom.

The world does not only need loud peacemakers. It needs steady ones. And many of those are sitting right here.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…

Not an instrument of noise. Not an instrument of argument. But something quieter. Something truer.

An instrument that is used, day by day, in kitchens, in conversations, in small decisions no one else will ever see.

Peace is not something we go out to demand.

It is something we carry into a room.

Or we don’t.