CONTEMPLATE THE FACE OF CHRIST

Noting down some gems I am reading….

When someone would ask Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta what they could do to serve, she was known for taking the person’s hand and touching each finger, she would say, 

You-did-it-to-me.

I was hungry 

and you gave me to eat, 

I was naked 

and you clothed me, 

I was sick 

and you visited me. 

Whatever you did 

to the least of my brethren, 

you did it to me.

Mt 25:31

Pope Francis said 

• We are to be heralds of mercy. Especially at a moment full of great hopes and signs of contradiction, to introduce everyone to the great mystery of God’s mercy by contemplation of the Face of Christ.”

• To love God and neighbor is not something abstract, but profoundly concrete: it means seeing in every person the face of the Lord to be served, to serve him concretely.”

• Jesus gives us two faces, and actually only one real face, that of God reflected in many faces, because in the face of each brother, especially the smallest, the most fragile, the defenceless and the needy, there is God’s own image.

• And we must ask ourselves: when we meet one of these brothers, are we able to recognize the face of God in him?”  

Pope Benedict XVI said: 

• Closing our eyes to our neighbour also blinds us to God.”

Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s prayer Radiating Christ was one of Mother Teresa’s favorite prayers…

Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance every 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 will 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 example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears for You.  

Amen.

The above gems are excerpted from:https://illuminadomine.com/2015/06/17/bl-mother-teresa-and-the-merciful-face-of-jesus/