BEAUTY

These are some of the prayers of the Missionaries of Charity, that we prayed each day. My last week in India, I moved in with my friend Monika from Germany into the Hotel Galaxy across from Modern Lodge. I told her how much I loved the prayers and would miss them, and she gave me a little book in which she wrote down all the prayers we would pray each morning. It was one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever received, especially because in the USA my life is so technological...using cell phones, texting, emailing, and now teaching with Ipads. Everything is virtual. And yet, in the simplicity of India with few resources, a friend I had just met took over an hour to copy down prayers in her handwriting in a small book for me, out of love. It truly touched my heart and I will cherish it, and the prayers within, forever!

Make us Worthy Lord, to serve our fellow men throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them trhoguh our hands this day their daily bread, and by our understanding love give peace and joy.

Physician's Prayer

Dear Lord, the great healer, I kneel before you since every perfect gift must come from you. I pray, give skill to my hands, clear vision to my mind, kindness and meekness to my heart and a true realization of the priviledge that is mine. Give me singleness of purpose, strength to lift up a part of the burden of my suffering fellow man. Take from my heart all guile and worldliness, that with the simple faith of a child I may rely on you. Amen.

"Let us be only ALL for Jesus!"

Radiating Christ

Dear Jesus, help me 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 into contact with may feel your presence in our souls. 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 other. The Light, oh 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 the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what we do, the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you. Amen.

I Thirst is written next to every crucifix of the Missionaries of Charity. Their mission is to quench the thirst of Jesus for souls, for Love.

I Offer My Life 

I offer my life in this small fragile host to be clothed with your flesh, to be fed with your blood. I surrender my all to be broken and blest, to be shared and outpoured in You, my God. 

I have given you all: all my dreams, all my tears, all my life! My God, you have called me by name., I belong now to you, only you for all time.

Take now my time, my mind and my heart, my liberty Lord,  I return it to you. And within all these gifts that you've given to me, I return with great joy to you my Lord.

I come Lord this day to answer your call, to follow your steps, to do your will. Your thirst now has filled the depths of my soul- in freedom I cry to you my God.

My life now is yours, to care for the poor, to feed with your word, to quench with your peace, to clothe with your presence, to shelter in love so that you Lord may touch them, You my God.