Radiating Christ
Radiating Christ
In this week’s Gospel, our Lord calls on all of us to act as “salt of the earth”, preserving goodness and adding divine flavour to human life, and as “life of the world”, illuminating truth amid darkness through visible good works that draw others to praise God.
Quite a tall order. Alone, we cannot do it. But with the Holy Spirit and through prayer, we can. The “Radiating Christ” or “Fragrance Prayer,” written by Saint John Henry Newman (1801–1890), asks to share in our Lord Jesus Christ’s light and presence. The prayer was famously adopted by Saint Teresa of Calcutta as a daily prayer after Communion for her Missionaries of Charity.
Dear Jesus,
Help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with Your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of Yours. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me but only Jesus! Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others; the light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine: it will be You shining on others through me. Let me thus praise You in the way You love best: by shining on those around me. Let me preach You without preaching, not by words, but by my example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.
Amen.
Blessed Sunday to all
Randy Reyes
