By Gretchen Keiser

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, Where there is hatred, let me sow love, - Where there is injury, pardon…

Where there is sadness, joy… For it is in giving that we receive, It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned And in dying, that we are born to eternal life.

According to archbishop Lyke, this well-known “Peace Prayer” can only be traced back to the early part of this century, not to the medieval times in which Francis burned his ascetic, single-hearted love for God forever into the constellation of saints.

But whether or not the prayer belongs to Francis, its message reflects an ideal that the new archbishop acknowledges is so much a part of his formation that he is always shaped by it.

Asked to reflect on how his Franciscan spirituality impacts his role as a bishop, Archbishop Lyke, who recently turned 52, said it is now so interwoven in him that it cannot be separated.

Franciscan values he has learned over the past 30 years include community, simplicity, “a spirit of justice and the high regard for people who are disenfranchised.”

“I don’t think I really make any major decisions in my life without the subconscious thread of my Franciscan life,” he said. “It would really be impossible.” The words of the “Peace Prayer” are spoken about one person'’ struggle to be like Christ, to turn predictable human reactions upside-down and embrace the cross instead.

The archbishop hears a strongly communal message. “That whole sense of reconciliation and building of communities of faith and mutual respect is very much at the core of Franciscan ministry, that and seeing that now one is left out.” In the Franciscan ideal is an urgency to be “a step ahead, always on the edge, but in the good senses of the word.”

For Francis all creatures were brothers and sisters, his “brother sun,” and “sisters moon and stars.”

Archbishop Lyke’s Franciscan brother, Father Bill Spencer, says what strikes him particularly about his longtime friend is “the enjoyment in his life of people, of life itself. He likes music, likes art, enjoys a good time, appreciates the friends he has made in different places.”

“Francis, you know,” Father Spencer pointed out, “was very much a person who found God in his creation.”

The Franciscan rule states explicitly that the friars are to be “Catholic.” What may seem obvious is interpreted to more specifically mean friars are to love the Church, and Archbishop Lyke is “very loving of the Church,” Father Spencer added.

There is a tension between being a Franciscan and being a bishop, who has a primary responsibility to the daily workings of the institutional Church, its bureaucracy and worldly face.

The archbishop’s residence, for example, is a gracious setting, suitable for the daily public gatherings and meetings he must host, but he is aware of the contrast with his brown Franciscan habit. Living in poverty would be a dramatic gesture, but would limit his contact as a bishop with many of his Catholic flock.

His “greatest tension” is between the desire to respond to the overpowering human needs he sees and the awareness that resources, financial and otherwise, are limited for the archdiocese.

“I see so much injustice, so many left out and on the margin, but I can only do what resources will let me do,” he reflected. “I live with the knowledge that I am Franciscan, but everybody isn’t.”

Francis himself did not want his friars to become bishops in the Church, Archbishop Lyke said, although he loved the Church deeply. “I think his intuitive sense of bureaucracy and hierarchy was that it was too much for a person to fulfill the demands of a friar and be a bishop as well.” He said.

Notably most bishops in the U.S. Church who are black are members of religious orders, not diocesan clergy, he pointed out. This is because the orders encouraged black candidates for the priesthood when dioceses did not, he said. When the church began to elevate black priests to the role of bishop in the last 20 years, the vast majority of candidates were in religious orders. “It is part of the residue of racism,” he said. “Because the diocesan seminaries didn’t have the seminarians, when the bishop did want to get a black bishop he had to go out of the diocese.”

For the Franciscan archbishop of Atlanta, this reality means that he reminds himself that “I can’t use my position as a bishop to make everyone a Franciscan. I have to respect all the other spiritualities” that are a part of the Catholic heritage.

He qualifies this observation quickly with the recognition that “the genius of Francis belongs to everybody…Francis is both a man for all seasons and one who needs to be attended to at this particularly time in the history of the Church.”

What is the particular urgency of Francis today? “Our knowledge of the poor and the impact of poverty on the poor is so much better now,” Archbishop Lyke said. “The increase in our knowledge demands a more incisive response to the evil situation.”

Paula Day contributed to this article.