Happy Friday. Tonight, in the spirit of the (political) season, I have decided to mercilessly shatter one of your dearest illusions.

The magazine, “Religion & Liberty” has the honor of having published me on a couple occasions. (The fact that my friend Anthony Sacramone is Editor-in-Chief may possibly have something to do with that fact.) The latest (Fall) issue features an article on St. Francis of Assisi which astonished me with the following paragraph concerning the well-known “Prayer of St. Francis,” which begins, “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace…”:

Eleven years before the publication of Chesterton’s St. Francis of Assisi in 1923, a small Catholic magazine in France, La Clochette, published an anonymous prayer with the title Belle prière à faire pendant la Messe (A Beautiful Prayer to Say During Mass). An abridged version of this prayer was published by the Quaker magazine Friends’ Intelligencer in 1927 with the title “A Prayer of St. Francis of Assissi” [sic]:

So that’s where the prayer came from. It has nothing to do with the revered 13th Century Italian friar who preached to birds, ministered to the poor, and considered bathing a sin.

This fact doesn’t make it a bad prayer. Not at all.

I may pray it myself tonight. Seems like a good time to do something like that.

Have a good weekend.