St. Francis and Love

Received the first postcard for the St. Francis Mail Art Project.  It is from Dewi in Toronto, Ontario (Canada) who sent a pen drawing with the written phrase:  "Lord grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love.  St. Francis of Assisi."  Dewi's name is signed in the lower right-hand corner.

The Prayer of Saint Francis is a Christian prayer. It is attributed to the 13th-century saint Francis of Assisi,  although the prayer in its present form cannot be traced back further than 1912, when it was printed in France in French, in a small spiritual magazine called La Clochette (The Little Bell) as an anonymous prayer.  The prayer has been known in the United States since 1936 and Cardinal Francis Spellman and Senator Hawkes distributed millions of copies of the prayer during and just after World War II. 

The English version of the prayer reads as follows:

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.