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" Lord, make me an instrument of your peace..."
I have a feeling that when Francis first uttered that prayer, it sounded a lot rougher than it does now; that when he first prayed that prayer the words didn’t line up symmetrically, didn’t come out poetically—that he fought hard for what to say. I have a feeling that this prayer we’ve come to know as HIS prayer was born out of a variety of injustices, tragedies, and conundrums—ones he witnessed and ones he experienced first hand; and that, through time, this prayer grew layer by layer, heart ache by heart ache, until it embodied as fully as words can the calling Francis felt to the very marrow of his soul: to be God’s humble servant.

This Sunday celebration of the legacy of St. Francis was shaped by several events that took place during the week preceding it, including a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, and the execution of death row inmate Kelly Gissendaner.

We ask the question, where is God in all this? There can never be any easy, any tidy answer. But the testimony of Jesus' life and death affirms that where there is suffering, there is God.