Our Morning Offering – 9 January
Radiating Christ
By Blessed John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
Dear Jesus,
help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go.
Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly,
that 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 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 of the sympathetic influence of what I do,
the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.
Amen.
Note: the Prayer above has become known as the prayer of St Mother Teresa but it was written by Blessed John Henry and adopted by St Mother Teresa and her Sisters of Charity and is recited daily by them. It is sometimes called the “Fragrance” Prayer.
And today, as Christmastide has gone and we race onward to “radiate Christ” let us pray too, to this beautiful Poem, “When the Song of the Angels is Stilled.”
When the Song of the Angels Is Stilled
Poem by Howard Thurman (1899-1981)
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.
AnaStpaul 