Bob Imbellis thread on St. Philip Neri and the paragraph by Meriol Trevor adduced by Anthony Andreass reminded me of a lovely prayer of that great son of St. Philip John Henry Newman and made me wonder if the latter were not thinking of St. Philip.Stay with me, and then I shall begin to shine as Thou shinest: so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from Thee. None of it will be mine. No merit to me. It will be Thou who shinest through me upon others. O let me thus praise Thee, in the way which Thou dost love best, by shining on all those around me. Give light to them as well as to me; light them with me, through me. Teach me to show forth Thy praise, Thy truth, Thy will. Make me preach Thee without preachingnot by words, but by my example and by the catching force, the sympathetic influence, of what I doby my visible resemblance to Thy saints, and the evident fulness of the love which my heart bears to Thee. (Meditations and Devotions, 365)In search of this passage, I typed sympathetic influence into Google and found that it is a fairly technical term in biology and medicine. My 1886 Websters Unabridged gives this as a definition of sympathy in medicine: The reciprocal influence exercised by the various parts of the body on one another, so that an affection of the whole body, or of any part, is consequent upon injury, disorder, or disease of another part. And for sympathetic it has this: Produced by sympathyapplied to symptoms and affections which occur in any part of the body in consequence of an affection of another part, more or less remote. Whether or not Newman had this meaning in mind, it is a lovely image of the links between members of the Body of Christ, already noted by St. PaulIf one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members share its joy (1 Cor 12:26)and after him by St. Augustine: If you step on someones foot, its his mouth that complains....Bob Imbellis thread on St. Philip Neri and the paragraph by Meriol Trevor adduced by Anthony Andreass reminded me of a lovely prayer of that great son of St. Philip John Henry Newman and made me wonder if the latter were not thinking of St. Philip.

Stay with me, and then I shall begin to shine as Thou shinest: so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from Thee. None of it will be mine. No merit to me. It will be Thou who shinest through me upon others. O let me thus praise Thee, in the way which Thou dost love best, by shining on all those around me. Give light to them as well as to me; light them with me, through me. Teach me to show forth Thy praise, Thy truth, Thy will. Make me preach Thee without preachingnot by words, but by my example and by the catching force, the sympathetic influence, of what I doby my visible resemblance to Thy saints, and the evident fulness of the love which my heart bears to Thee. (Meditations and Devotions, 365)

In search of this passage, I typed sympathetic influence into Google and found that it is a fairly technical term in physics and in biology and medicine. My 1886 Websters Unabridged gives this as a definition of sympathy in medicine: The reciprocal influence exercised by the various parts of the body on one another, so that an affection of the whole body, or of any part, is consequent upon injury, disorder, or disease of another part. And for sympathetic it has this: Produced by sympathyapplied to symptoms and affections which occur in any part of the body in consequence of an affection of another part, more or less remote.Whether or not Newman had this meaning in mind, it is a lovely image of the links between members of the Body of Christ, already noted by St. PaulIf one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members share its joy (1 Cor 12:26)and after him by St. Augustine: If you step on someones foot, its his mouth that complains....And doesn't Newman's prayer: "Make me preach Thee without preaching" call to mind the comment that, probably wrongly, is attributed to St. Francis: "Preach the Gospel; if necessary use words."