Prayer of the Companions of Saint Francis

This is a prayer we say at each Fraternity gathering.

Prayer of the Companions of Saint Francis:

     Draw us to yourself, most worthy Father Francis, that we may run after your fragrance of holiness. As you know, we are lukewarm because of our sloth, languid because of our idleness, half-alive because of our negligence. This little flock is following you with hesitant steps. Our weak eyes cannot bear the dazzling rays of your perfection.
     Renew our days as from the beginning, O mirror and model of perfection, and do not allow us, who are like you in our profession, to be unlike you in our lives.
     Holy Father, remember all your sons and daughters, who surrounded by inextricable danger, follow your footsteps though from so great a distance. Give us strength that we may resist; purify us that we may gleam forth; fill us with joy that we may be happy. 

     Pray that the spirit of grace and of prayer be poured upon us; that we may have the true humility you had; that we may observe the poverty you observed; that we may be filled with the charity with which you always loved Christ Crucified, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns world without end. Amen.

Pax et bonum