Prayer attributed to St Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy 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;
and 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.
Amen.
(c) travelling.steve on Flickr
How it started:
A sermon which Francis heard in 1209 on Mt 10:9 made such an impression on him that he decided to devote himself wholly to a life of apostolic poverty. Clad in a rough garment, barefoot, and, after the Evangelical precept, without staff or scrip, he began to preach repentance.
He was soon joined by a prominent fellow townsman, Bernardo di Quintavalle, who contributed all that he had to the work, and by other companions, who are said to have reached the number of eleven within a year. The brothers lived in the deserted lazar-house of Rivo Torto near Assisi; but they spent much of their time traveling through the mountainous districts of Umbria, always cheerful and full of songs, yet making a deep impression on their hearers by their earnest exhortations. Their life was extremely ascetic, though such practises were apparently not prescribed by the first rule which Francis gave them (probably as early as 1209), which seems to have been nothing more than a collection of Scriptural passages emphasizing the duty of poverty.
In spite of the obvious similarity between this principle and the fundamental ideas of the followers of Peter Waldo, the brotherhood of Assisi succeeded in gaining the approval of Pope Innocent III. What seems to have impressed first the Bishop of Assisi, Guido, then Cardinal Giovanni di San Paolo and finally Innocent himself, was their utter loyalty to the Church and the clergy. He was not only the Pope reigning during the life of St. Francis of Assisi, but he was also responsible for helping to construct the Church Francis was being called to rebuild. Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran Council helped maintain the church in Europe. Francis was called to a life of poverty and to the joyful freedom that comes when the corruptible treasures of this life are not the object of our life's energies nor the measure of success. Francis was called to a life of humility, showing forth in his nonviolence, peace, and respect for creation. Francis was called to a life of simplicity, and put all of his hope in Jesus Christ. Innocent probably saw in them a possible answer to his desire for an orthodox preaching force to counter heresy. Many legends have clustered around the decisive audience of Francis with the Pope. The realistic account in Matthew Paris, according to which the Pope originally sent the shabby saint off to keep swine, and only recognized his real worth by his ready obedience, has, in spite of its improbability, a certain historical interest, since it shows the natural antipathy of the older Benedictine monasticism to the plebeian mendicant orders. The group was tonsured and Francis was ordained as a deacon, allowing him to read Gospels in the church.Francis had to suffer from the dissensions just alluded to and the transformation which they operated in the originally simple constitution of the brotherhood, making it a regular order under strict supervision from Rome. Exasperated by the demands of running a growing and fractious Order, Francis asked Pope Honorius III for help in 1219. He was assigned Cardinal Ugolino as protector of the order by the Pope. Francis resigned the day-to-day running of the Order into the hands of others but retained the power to shape the Order's legislation, writing a Rule in 1221 which he revised and had approved in 1223. At least after about 1223, the day-to-day running of the Order was in the hands of Brother Elias of Cortona, an able friar who would be elected as leader of the friars a few years after Francis' death (1226) but who aroused much opposition because of his autocratic style of leadership. He planned and built the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi in which Saint Francis is buried, a building including the friary Sacro Convento, which still today is the spiritual centre of the order.
In the external successes of the brothers, as they were reported at the yearly general chapters, there was much to encourage Francis. Caesarius of Speyer, the first German provincial, a zealous advocate of the founder's strict principle of poverty, began in 1221 from Augsburg, with twenty-five companions, to win for the order the land watered by the Rhine and the Danube. In 1224 Agnellus of Pisa led a small group of friars to England. The branch of the order arriving in England became known as the greyfriars. Beginning at Canterbury, the ecclesiastical capital, they moved on to London, the political capital and Oxford, the intellectual capital. From these three bases the Franciscans swiftly expanded to embrace the principal towns of England.
The Franciscans divided over the cenruties into several orders:
Franciscan Friars (Order of Friars Minor) - O.F.M. (1209)
Franciscan Apostolic Sisters - F.A.S. (1954)
Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn - O.S.F. (1858)
Franciscan Brothers of the Eucharist - F.B.E. (2004)
Franciscan Brothers of Peace - F.B.P. (1982)
Franciscan Clarist Congregation
Franciscan Friars of the Renewal - C.F.R. (1987)
Franciscan Friars of the Third Order Regular - T.O.R. (1447)
Franciscan Handmaids of Mary (1915)
Franciscan Hospitaller Sisters of the Immaculate Conception - F.H.I.C. (1876)
Franciscan Minims of the Perpetual Help of Mary - f.m. (1942)
Franciscans of the Immaculate - F.I.
Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood - F.M.D.M. (1887)
Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word - M.F.V.A. (1987)
Franciscan Missionaries of Mary - F.M.M. (1877)
Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (1859)
Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Infant Jesus (1879)
Franciscan Servants of Jesus (1997)
Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity - O.S.F. (1869)
Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist - F.S.E. (1973)
Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception - F.S.I.C.
Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate (1893)
Franciscan Sisters of Penance of the Sorrowful Mother - T.O.R. (1988)
Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration - O.S.F. (1849)
Links:-
Some selected quotes from St Francis
Franciscan International Study Centre at Canterbury (UK)