Lenten Light I

Yesterday was the First Sunday of Lent.

In the Liturgy of the Hours, we begin our Lenten prayers and readings with the psalms, prayers, and antiphons of Week I. The Psalm-Prayer after the first psalm of Sunday Morning Prayer is absolutely one of my favorite prayers. I have it hand-written and keep it in a place I can find whenever I want it. This is the prayer:

Father, creator of unfailing light, give that same light to those who call to you.
May our lips praise you; our lives proclaim your goodness; our work give you honor,
and our voices celebrate you for ever.

Lovely. To pray for light.

As have so many saints who have gone before us, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, bids us to pray for light. In his book, Mother Teresa: In the Shadow of Our Lady, Fr. Joseph Langford, MC, writes:
"God communicates himself in giving his gifts. Everything God does in our life fills us with him, if we have but eyes to see. Once we have realized this through prayer, we can genuinely help others in their moments of pain and crisis. People need more than our sympathy; they need the light of awareness of God's presence with them. Our faith, developed in prayer, can supply whatever may be their lack in their struggle with faith. Just as Mother Teresa communicated her faith to thousands of those who were struggling on the streets of Calcutta, or drawing their last breath in her Home for the Dying next to Kali Temple, or listening to her speak in Europe and America, so can we share the light we have received. A single flame can set a forest ablaze, and a single word of light, a word spoken in faith and born of prayer, can spread that same light to a soul plunged in darkness and doubt." (pp 65-66, Chapter 7, Contemplatives in the Heart of the World)

"No one who lights a lamp hides it away or places it (under a bushel basket), but on a lampstand so that those who enter might see the light. The lamp of the body is your eye. When your eye is sound, then your whole body is filled with light, but when it is bad, then your body is in darkness. Take care, then, that the light in you not become darkness. If your whole body is full of light, and no part of it is in darkness, then it will be as full of light as a lamp illuminating you with its brightness." Luke 11:33-36

This Lenten Season, pray for light and then share the light that is given, the same unfailing light of the creator. It is not given for us alone, it is given to be set out on a lampstand to share with everyone, especially those who are in darkness.

"This little (Lenten) light of mine - I'm gonna let it shine!"

Let your light shine!