Francis placed the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father, at the center of community life. Francis enjoined his followers to internalize the wisdom of Jesus’s prayer by regular repetition, letting the words soak in so that they might come to define their whole lives. Francis and his companions regularly sang the Lord’s Prayer. To Francis and Clare, God was fatherly, lovingly creating the world and powerfully loving the world. Listen with heart, mind, and soul to Jesus’s Prayer:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
now and forever.
Always fresh and always new, the Lord’s Prayer evolves along with our growing understanding of the universe and the significance of the nonhuman world.
—from the book Simplicity, Spirituality, Service: The Timeless Wisdom of Francis, Clare, and Bonaventure
by Bruce G. Epperly
