Franciscan Blessing

I have a special place in my heart for St. Francis and, therefore, all things Franciscan. My friend Gerry passed on to me the other day this Franciscan blessing that someone had sent to him. I read it with a half-smile, because it a a very challenging blessing…one that invites us into deeper discipleship.

May God bless you with discomfort
at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships,
so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger
at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,
so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed
for those who suffer pain, rejection, starvation and war,
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
and turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe that you can make a difference in this world,
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done!

Advertisement

2 thoughts on “Franciscan Blessing

  1. I read it with the half-smile myself. Francis of Assisi is one of those who seems so simple and maybe sweet at first glance — then you get pulled into and find that it “just aint so.” There’s a challenge to be met and a call to more.

    Thanks for sharing.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s