The “stained glass prayer” that can give light to daily life

Here's a prayer to entrust each day of the year — and of our life — to the Lord, with all our joys and sorrows, work and struggles.

Stained glass is a school of prayer, if we just know how to contemplate it. Each piece has its place, and only makes sense as part of a larger design, just as the members of the Body of Christ each have their place in the Church.

If the tiniest piece of glass breaks, the harsh, pale light marks its fall or absence. The missing color is a flaw in the work that, without it, is no longer complete.

In this prayer, Fr. Gaston Lecleir uses this image to offer up to God each and every day of the year — the bright happy ones and the dark sad ones as well.

While it mentions the new year, we can pray it all year round.

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Stained glass prayer

You offer me this new year
like a stained-glass window to be assembled
from 365 pieces of every color
that represent the days of my life.
I will put into it the red of my love and enthusiasm,
the mauve of my suffering and mourning,
the green of my hopes and the pink of my dreams,
the blue or gray of my commitments or struggles,
the yellow and gold of my harvests…
I’ll reserve white for ordinary days,
and black for those when you are absent.
I’ll cement it all together with the prayer of my faith,
and by my serene trust in you.
Lord, I simply ask you to illuminate
from within this stained-glass window of my life
with the light of your presence
and with the fire of your Spirit of life.
Thus, through my transparency,
may those I meet this year
discover the face
of your beloved Son, Jesus Christ,
Our Lord. Amen.

Prayer translated from the book “Rythmes et spirales vers Dieu” by Fr. Gaston Lecleir (1928-2014).