A Prayer That Says It All

There's another part of the sermon I heard yesterday that I feel must share as well. It was a beautiful prayer that I had never heard before but that I doubt I'll ever forget. It was written by a French priest who went as a missionary to China and who died there as a martyr in 1840, having been tortured, crucified, and suffocated, all because he would not give up preaching the good news of Jesus Christ. Here is the poem:

O my Divine Savior,
Transform me into Yourself.
May my hands be the hands of Jesus.
Grant that every faculty of my body
May serve only to glorify You.

Above all,
Transform my soul and all its powers
So that my memory, will and affection
May be the memory, will and affections
Of Jesus.

I pray You
To destroy in me all that is not of You.
Grant that I may live but in You, by You and for You,
So that I may truly say, with Saint Paul,
"I live - now not I - But Christ lives in me."

- Saint Jean-Gabriel Perboyre

It says it all!