Step 11 · Prayer and Meditation
The Prayer of St. Francis
Step Eleven is about conscious contact: prayer and meditation, practised a little every day. This prayer is one many of us came to love for it.
This prayer is far older than the fellowship — first published anonymously in France around 1912 and long attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. Generations in recovery have adopted it as the Eleventh Step's companion.
Lord, make me an instrument of thy 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.
TRADITIONAL · ATTRIBUTED TO ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
How many of us use it
It turns the attention outward. Instead of asking for things for ourselves, it asks to be useful — to bring pardon, hope and light where they are missing.
Many of us read it slowly in the morning, one line at a time, and keep the line that lands for the rest of the day.