Poem: St. Brendan's Prayer

Sky, sky, sky is the word,

Just one shout in the direction

Of the blue vastness which weighs

Nothing and everything,

No one word can convey

How sky stings, pierces and turns

Inside out the heart of a man,

Scourges him delirious with the question

He is but cannot frame, because

Sky frames all questions, always

Stretching the asked and the asker

To the limitless blue

Upon blue upon blue deeps,

Questioning, which is fire,

Spangling night in glinting shoals

Of sidereal time, till the mind

Reels, besotted with splendour,

Questioning, which ignites the body,

Burns up every leaf of the mind,

Consumes the mind's roots, the heart,

In the smelter of spirit, till the soul

Pools, gleaming, breathing red gold,

Sky, all world, sky lights up,

Kindles with the coming sun,

Throws everything into unbearable relief,

We twist, maddened by the light

Of dawn, closing its disclosing

With departure, we stumble away,

Ever looking backwards to behold

The staggering Beauty for which

We were born belonging,

Any shadow will do,

Where we hope not to die of regret,

Because we forget just enough

To remember only sorrow, or better yet,

To feel nothing at all,

Than surrender to sky, star sky,

Grievous sky of radiant daybreak.

Is there one, is there anywhere

One Who will bend sky down, rend

Its awful vastness and descend,

The day reined in within His ardent 

Glance, His wounds the burning stars

Which cover me with constellations

Of compassion, and be, Himself

My firmament and friend?

--Gregory Elmer O.S.B, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, June 5, 1995, prayer found at St. Andrew's Abbey

Ave Generosa

I behold you,
noble, glorious and whole woman,
the pupil of purity.
You are the sacred matrix
in which God takes great pleasure.
The essences of Heaven flooded into you,
and the Great Word of God dressed itself in flesh.
You appeared as a shining white lily,
as God looked upon you before all of Creation.

O lovely and tender one,
how greatly has God delighted in you.
For He has placed His passionate embrace within you,
so that His Son might nurse at your breast.

Your womb held joy,
with all the celestial symphony sounding through you,
Virgin, who bore the Son of God,
when your purity became luminous in God.

Your flesh held joy,
like grass upon which dew falls,
pouring its life-green into it,
and so it is true in you also,
o Mother of all delight.

Now let all Ecclesia shine in joy
and sound in symphony
praising the most tender woman,
Mary, the bequeather/seed-source of God.

Amen.

--Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), German Benedictine abbess, religious philosopher, poet, composer, musician, playwright, and visionary. Her feast day is today.


Image: Icon of Hildegard von Bingen, from Our Lady of the Mountains Roman Catholic parish in Jasper, GA.

With my mouth, God says

'With my mouth,'

God says,

'I kiss my own chosen creation.

I uniquely,

lovingly,

embrace every image

I have made

out of the earth’s clay.

With a fiery spirit

I transform it

into a body

to serve all the world.'

-- Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), German Benedictine abbess, mystic, compose, poet, saint, Doctor of the Church, scientist, playwright, and visionary

Loving tenderness

Loving tenderness abounds for all
from the darkest
to the most eminent one beyond the stars,
Exquisitely loving all
she bequeaths the kiss of peace
upon the ultimate King.

--Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), German Benedictine abbess, religious philosopher, poet, composer, musician, playwright, and visionary.


Image: Painting of Hildegard von Bingen, modern.

Love

You have said, O Lord:

blest are the pure in heart,

for they shall see You.

O sight to be wished, desired and longed for;

because once to have seen You

is to have learnt all things.

Nothing can bring us to this sight but love.

But what love must it be?

Not a sensible love or a childish love,

a love that seeks itself more than the beloved.

It must be an ardent love,

a constant love:

not worn out with labours,

not daunted with any difficulties.

For the soul that has set her whole love and desire on You

shall never find any true satisfaction,

but only in You.

--Dame Gertrude More (1606-1633) English Benedictine nun and founder of Stanbrook Abbey, collected by Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), in Evelyn Underhill's Prayer Book.