Thought for the Month
Shine Through Me
Dear Lord, 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 all my life my 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 you, O Lord!
Stay with me, then I shall begin to shine as you do;
so to shine as to be light to others.
The light, O Lord, 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 every way you love best,
by shining on those around me.
Let me preach you without preaching,
not by works 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.
Mother Teresa loved this prayer by John Henry Newman, a nineteenth-century English theologian and cardinal. At the end of each day's Mass, the Missionaries of Charity pray it together.