11th Step Prayer: The Prayer of St. Francis Explained
When people say “the 11th step prayer,” they usually mean the Prayer of St. Francis, which Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions discusses on page 99 of its Step Eleven essay. It asks God to make you an instrument of His peace and to help you give rather than grab. Here it is in its traditional public-domain form:
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.
Despite the name, St. Francis of Assisi didn’t write it. It first appeared in print in France in the early 1900s and spread widely after that. The 12&12’s version differs slightly in wording, so read page 99 in your own copy if you want to use that one.
Why this prayer fits Step 11
Step 11 asks you to pray “only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” The St. Francis prayer does exactly that. It doesn’t ask for anything for yourself. It asks to be useful.
Look at the shape of it. The first half asks God to use you to bring the opposite of what is broken: love for hatred, pardon for injury, light for darkness. The second half asks God to turn your wants around, so you seek to comfort before being comforted, to understand before being understood.
That is the reverse of how most of us drank. Drinking was about getting. This prayer is about giving.
How to meditate on it
The 12&12 suggests reading a prayer like this slowly and thinking over each line. Here is a simple way to do that:
- Read the whole prayer once, slowly.
- Pick one line. Say, “where there is injury, pardon.”
- Sit with it for two or three minutes. Who has injured you lately? What would pardon look like today?
- Pray it back to God in your own words.
- Carry that one line into your day.
Tomorrow, take the next line. In a couple of weeks you will have prayed your way through it.
A Scripture to pray with it
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Paul says the same thing the prayer says: answer evil with good. Read the verse, then pray the prayer.
A short morning prayer from the Big Book’s pattern
The Big Book (pages 86 to 87, 4th edition) doesn’t give one set prayer for Step 11. It describes what to ask for. In our own words, a morning prayer built on that guidance could be:
God, before this day starts, I give it to You. Direct my thinking. Keep me clear of self-pity, dishonesty and selfish motives. When I don’t know what to do, give me the right thought. Show me the next step all through the day, and give me what I need to take care of what comes. Amen.
Pray it, then read the day’s Scripture, and say the St. Francis prayer if it helps. For the full rhythm of the step, see the Step 11 page.
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