I’ve always liked the expression “radiating Christ”. These two words powerfully illustrate our Christian call in light of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
The Radiating Christ Prayer was written in the 19th Century by Cardinal John Newman, it was read daily by Mother Teresa in the 20th and is an appropriate exhortation to Christians in our 21st, post-Christian century. Imagine if we lived this bolder and brighter today.
Radiating Christ
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.
Future posts will expand on the “Radiating Christ” theme, drawing from insights in a book with the same title and written in WWII by a Jesuit French priest. Feel free to follow if you are interested and not doing so already.
Northern Light 