The Prayer of Saint Francis.The Prayer of Saint Francis By Leonardo Boff Orbis, $12, 118 pp. In the introductory pages, Boff boff 1 n. Slang 1. A line in a play or film, for example, that elicits a big laugh: "He doesn't go for the big boffs, artificially inflated, but lets his comedy build through a leisurely provides a reasonable explanation of who wrote the prayer and under what conditions. What he has to say about the prayer's origins is completely new to me despite my having kept out an eye for solid information about it for some time. Twenty years TWENTY YEARS. The lapse of twenty years raises a presumption of certain facts, and after such a time, the party against whom the presumption has been raised, will be required to prove a negative to establish his rights. 2. ago, someone traced the prayer to Germany but that, in fact, does not seem to be the case. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Boff, a French Catholic aristocrat, the Marquis de La Rochetulon, sent Pope Benedict XV Pope Benedict XV (Latin: Benedictus PP. XV), (Italian: Benedetto XV), (November 21, 1854 – January 22, 1922), born Giacomo Paolo Giovanni Battista della Chiesa a series of prayers for peace during the early period of World War I. One of those prayers was published in L'Osservatore Romano L'Osservatore Romano ("The Roman Observer") is the Vatican's newspaper. It covers all the Pope's public activities, publishes editorials by important churchmen, and prints official documents after being released. in December 1916. A week later, the French Catholic newspaper La Croix La Croix is a French, Roman Catholic, daily newspaper. It is published in Paris and distributed throughout the country, with a circulation of just under 100,000. It is neither explicitly liberal or conservative on major political issues, but follows the Church's position picked up the prayer and published it. The prayer gained further currency when a French Franciscan put the text--now described as a "Prayer for Peace by Saint Francis"--on a poster for the use of Third Order Franciscans. From there, the prayer spread. After this explanatory opening, Boff takes the individual petitions of the prayer, writes brief reflections on them, and ends each reflection with a prayer. One of the most attractive features of these meditations is Boff's sensitivity to words. He ponders, for example, the relationship between symbolic and diabolic; the embedding of the word "heart" in "concord"; the concept of "Master" when applied to Christ. Each reflection is only a few pages, but there is much to be learned from each. Alas, the bibliography at the end of the book did not receive adequate attention. Too many books are cited in the Portuguese and too many standard texts about Francis in English go unmentioned. Lawrence S. Cunningham is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. |
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