Make Me a Channel of Your Peace

St Francis of Assisi is a well-known Catholic monk from the 12th century. Francis had a radical conversion. Having been living a very comfortable and rich life, he had a remarkable encounter with God and sold everything, gave up everything to become a poor monk and a beggar. In fact, he would travel around preaching on the streets, had no possessions, and started an order within the church which did a lot of good and inspired a lot of people to the faith.

But here's where it gets strange - these words, which are so often or always known as the Prayer of St Francis, can't be found in any of his writings. It somehow became known that this was the Prayer of St Francis, but nowhere does he seem to use this prayer. In fact, the first time you see the prayer in this form was in France in a magazine in 1912. 
Throughout the World Wars, this prayer was often just spread around as the Prayer of St Francis, something that should be prayed because it is a beautiful prayer for peace.

This particular version is a beautiful piece of music, and it was written by Sebastian Temple - or his actual name is Jan Sebastian Font Templehoff, but obviously he made it a little bit easier by calling himself Sebastian Temple. He was born in South Africa and ended up moving to England and then later to America. He became a Catholic and joined the Franciscan Third Order. It was on a retreat where he was writing some songs based on St Francis's prayers that this song came about.

In Ian Bradley's book The Penguin Book of Hymns, he mentions that Temple wrote to him and said this about the song: 

"I wrote so easily and so prolifically that I took for granted that I could write music to the Peace Prayer of St Francis. The album's other 12 songs fell out of my lips and onto a tape recorder very easily, and I wrote them in 2 days. The third day was left for the Peace Prayer. Though inspirations for all came easily to me, its strange form drove me crazy. I could not come up with anything that sounded like music to my ears. I tried for a whole morning but nothing came. Finally I was disgusted, looked at the little statue of St Francis on my shelf and said angrily, 'Well if you want to write it, you do it. I can't!' I got up, went to the kitchen, made a cup of tea and drank it. When I returned to the guitar I picked it up, had the tape running, and the song fell out of my mouth as it was recorded a few days later."

They had requested that he write some of these songs based on St Francis's prayers, and this one just didn't come until it did, and then it came very quickly. This is often the case with songwriters - they talk about how at the right moment something just sparks and the song comes out.

The song became very popular, especially in England. In fact, it was used at Princess Diana's funeral in 1997, and it was also used at the marriage of Prince Albert II of Monaco to Charlene Wittstock in 2011. So a very common and popular hymn in that part of the world. Temple died in 1997 and never really saw the song get the popularity that it has now. 

CLICK HERE to hear “Prayer of St. Francis”

Blessings,
Dorene