Cry the Gospel with your Life

Cry the Gospel with your Life

We do good, not by what we say and do, but by what we are, by the grace which accompanies our actions, by the way that Jesus lives within us, by the way that our actions are Jesus' actions, working in and through us.

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Our entire existence and being should shout the Gospel from the rooftops. Our entire person should breathe Jesus. All our actions and our entire life should proclaim that we belong to Jesus. Our lives should be a mirror image of an evangelical life.

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Our entire being should be a living sermon, a reflection of Jesus, a scent of Jesus, something that proclaims Jesus, that makes others see Jesus and that shines like an image of Jesus.

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Jesus speaks:

Your vocation: Preach the Gospel silently as I did in My hidden life, and as also did Mary and Joseph.

Your rule: Follow Me, do what I did, in every situation ask yourself: What would Our Lord have done? Then do that. That is your only rule, but it is absolutely binding on you.

Sister Magdeleine, who was inspired by Charles and founded the Little Sisters of Jesus in 1939, wrote an eloquent reflection on what it means to "Cry the Gospel with your Life." Her thoughts show the depth of this simple phrase:

To cry the Gospel by your whole life means trying to live as Jesus lived, with the Gospel to give you light.

It means living His self-surrender as a tiny child in the crib in Bethlehem, His poverty and His very ordinary life in Nazareth, both His contemplative life and His active charity on the roads during His public ministry, His surrender to God, His Father, in the pain of the passion and of the crucifixion.

It means trying to love as He loved, living in the spirit of the beatitudes: in poverty, in gentleness, in a thirst for justice, being merciful, being pure of heart, and rejoicing when you suffer persecution out of love for Christ.

-- Little Sister Magdeleine