This piece has been adpated from a story from Anthony De Mello's "The Prayer of the Frog"...
"There once lived a person so godly that even the angels rejoiced at the sight of them. But, in spite of their great holiness, they had no notion that they were holy. They just went about their humdrum tasks diffusing goodness the way flowers unselfconsciously diffuse their fragrance and street-lamps their glow.
Their holiness lay in this - that they forgot each person's past and looked at them as they were now, and they looked beyond each person's appearance to the very centre of their being where they were innocent and blameless and too ignorant to know what they were doing. Thus they loved and forgave everyone they met - and they saw nothing extraordinary in this for it was the result of their way of looking at people.
One day an angel said to them, "I have been sent to you by God. Ask for anything you wish and it will be given to you. Would you wish to have the gift of healing?" "No," they replied, "I'd rather God did the healing himself."
"Would you want to bring the sinners back to the path of righteousness?" "No," they said, "it is not for me to touch human hearts. That is the work of angels." "Would you like to be such a model of virtue that people will be drawn to imitate you?" "No," they said, "for that would make me the centre of attention."
"What then do you wish for?" asked the angel. "The grace of God," was their reply. "Having that, I have all I desire." "No, you must ask for some miracle," said the angel, "or one will be forced on you."
"Well, then I shall ask for this: let good be done through me without my being aware of it."
So it was decreed that the holy person's shadow would be endowed with healing properties whenever it fell behind them. So everywhere their shadow fell - provided they had their back to it - the sick were healed, the land became fertile, fountains sprang to life and color returned to the faces of those who were weighed down by life's sorrow.
But the person knew nothing of this because the attention of people was so centred on the shadow that they forgot about the person and so their wish that good be done through them and they forgotten was abundantly fulfilled."
