The Prayer of St. Francis is a well-known. Here’s the Prayer, followed by a reflection for today (Feb. 20) on “pardon” from a Lenten booklet prepared by members of the United Church of the San Juans in Ridgway, CO.

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;
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

“Part of my job, when I was on staff at First Presbyterian Church in Boulder was to prepare ‘messages’ on a twice monthly basis. These were to be shared in our huge singles Sunday School class. Some Sundays, we would have upwards of 100 single adults in our group; many ere just separated, some post-divorce, others recently widowed. All were seeking advice or encouragement about getting on with life, in most cases a life-style change that had not been chosen by that person. A second part of my job was the coordinator for the Divorce Recovery Program. This is where I ran into the word ‘pardon,’ used differently than the legal usage more familiar in society today.

“I have always loved words; when I run into an unfamiliar one, I generally stop what I am doing and look up the meaning. The computer has made my lifelong affair with words much easier! I used to haul my huge old five pound unabridged version (1940) of Webster’s Dictionary down off the shelf, turn the onion skin tot he right location and study the pronunciation, origin and usage of these unfamiliar words. Some words I managed to remember and use myself to reinforce the memory, but others faded away quickly because they were not that useful. The word pardon has an interesting origin; it stems from the Medieval Lation perdonare, meaning to remit, overlook, or literally ‘to forgive.’ The Latin was then adopted into a Germanic ancestor of our English, where it was translated piece-by-piece. Linguists call this process a ‘calque’, a tracing or copy. ‘Per’ was replaced by ‘for’, a prefix that means ‘thoroughly’, and ‘donare’ was replaced with ‘giefan’ meaning to give. The Germanic result was ‘forgiefan’ which showed up in Old English meaning to ‘give up’ or to allow.

“It isn’t just divorced or widowed parties who might need to deal with the concept of pardon or forgiveness; most of us have experienced hurt, deliberately or not, by the thoughtless or painful words and actions of others. The most difficult concept to explain is that pardoning or forgiving is not about saying what happened was ‘alright’; rather, the act of pardon or forgiveness allows the injured party to let go or give away the hurt and release the hold that kept that person stuck in the past.”

– Member of United Church of the San Juans

Thanks to dear friend, former classmate and colleague Harry Strong for sending “Lenten Devotionals” complied by members and friends of the United Church of the San Juans in Ridgeway, Colorado.

Here’s the entire Prayer of St. Francis: