Passages for Meditation

Cardinal Newman

Shine Through Us

Dear Jesus, help us to spread your fragrance
everywhere we go.
Flood our souls with your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly
that our lives may only be a radiance of yours.
Shine through us, and be so in us,
that every soul we come in contact with
may feel your presence in our soul.
Let them look up and see no longer us
but only Jesus!
Stay with us, and then we 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 ours;
it will be you, shining on others through us.
Let us thus praise you in the way you love best
by shining on those around us.
Let us preach you without preaching, not by words
but by our example, by the catching force,
the sympathetic influence of what we do,
the evident fullness of the love
our hearts bear to you. Amen.

There are several versions of this prayer in circulation, varying slightly to accommodate prayer by individuals or by groups, by Catholics or by non-Catholics. This is appropriate, for John Henry Newman lived fully half of his life as a Protestant, becoming well known as a speaker for the evangelical Oxford movement, and after his conversion in 1845 went on to become equally well known as Cardinal Newman, defender of the Catholic faith. This version is from Daphne Rae's book on Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the Missionaries of Charity, Love Until It Hurts, where it appears along with the prayer of Saint Francis as one of the daily prayers of this community dedicated to serving “the poorest of the poor.”