God becoming the breath of our whole being

ANIMA CHRISTI
Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O Good Jesus, hear me.
Within Thy wounds hide me.
Suffer me not to be separated from thee.
From the malignant enemy defend me.
In the hour of my death call me.
And bid me come unto Thee,
That with all Thy saints,
I may praise thee
Forever and ever.
Amen.
 
I have been reading The Words We Pray: Discovering the Richness of Traditional Catholic Prayers by Amy Welborn and I have to admit that I do not recall reading or hearing the Anima Christi before, but something in it connected with a meditation of the day in the Magnificat that follows.

   All the sinews of our heart are consecrated by the presence of jesus. Our body itself becomes infinite because it becomes the Body of Christ. And if tyranny is horrible, if despotism is mon-strous, it is because, ultimately, by treating man like a thing, these evils hide the treasure that each one bears in himself, that is the presence of God.
   Evil is precisely the absence of God. It is the veil cast over the light of one’s Christ, preventing the life of Christ from circulating in us. The good is the unimpeded circulation of God. It is his presence communicating itself and becoming the breath of our whole being.
   Hence, we are not subjected to a law prescribing us to do this or that. There are no more commandments, no more laws for us, there is only one reality: the life, the presence of Christ entrusted to us, who wants to live in our heart, in our mind, in our tender love, in our friendships, in all our human activities, so that the Incarnation may be pursued through us and the world may breathe God’s tender love.
   Everything is simplified, admirably simplified when reduced to a Face. You see the admirable symbol of the sixth station of the Way of the Cross: Veronica holding out her veil to the face of the Lord and wanting to restore it to its first beauty.
   The meaning of Christian life and the effort of the Christian is to bring out, to give back all his own beauty and that of others to the Face of Jesus. The dalogue of our interior life must be reduced to that. It is not a matter of hypercritically examining our actions. It is a matter of placing ourselves again before a Presence, of losing ourselves in a dialogue while we are fulfilling ourselves and to feel always in greater depth that the life of God is handed over into our hands. that is the great and supreme purity. -- Father Maurice Zundel  [Father Zundel († 1975) was a Swiss mystic, poet, philoso-pher, liturgist, and author.]