St. Dismas

 

St. Dismas

I think of you as the prince carried home, lord, lion
With a thorn mane riding on the thumbs
Of hunters in the black air smiling,
So hungry. You’re bleeding. I need to believe in
So I believe in your blood, the long down-rivers of your waist.
Listen, is this how fathers love?
I hear your chest try to escape its ruined field,
I hear how your cheek lolls in the dark
Of your neck. Forgive parts the dry lips, lord,
Can we all live in that murmur, the slight press of tooth
To tongue. Do we speak to them, down there? Spit and split
The moonlight. Your mother’s hands float on our feet like water.
I want that you remember me when you get there,
Take me through the shock, roped by biceps,
Already part way up the sky.
Who dies first. Who dies in the lanternlight swinging.
I begin to love you deep
In the valve your father pinned
In my heart

-- Eve Jones, poet, photographer, and professor at Lindenwood University (MFA UMSL), from Dappled Things journal

39One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" 40But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." 42Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 43He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."-- Luke 23:39-43

Scripture Reference: Luke 22:14-23:56 (The Passion Narrative), Palm/Passion Sunday, Good Friday; Reign of Christ C Proper 29C

Image: Remember Me, Barbara de Reus Kamma, New Guinean/Dutch, chamois leather and scrap wood, story can be found here at artway.eu.

Taize: "Jesus, Remember Me..."

Sunset on Calvary

Now gooth sunne under wode:
Me reweth, Marye, thy faire rode.
Now gooth sunne under tree:
Me reweth, Marye, thy sone and thee.

-- anonymous, written in Middle English

Now goes the sun under wood;
I rue, Mary, thy fair face.
Now goes the sun under the tree;
I rue, Mary, thy son and thee.

--Modern translation (Leland Ryken)

Sestina for the Passion of Christ

(Matthew 26:14 – 27:66 or John 18:1 – 19:42)

 

He is alone in prayer in the garden, knowing the cost.
His followers care, but flesh is frail and they fail
to fend off sleep as Jesus endures his mortal fear
with faithfulness. This night will bring betrayal,
abandonment, suffering, and ultimately, a cross.
But he will not turn from obeying the will of God.

He is alone in facing trial for blaspheming God.
The religious rulers are determined at any cost
to be rid of this nuisance Jesus. But though they cross
words, set their traps for him, they almost fail.
Judas’ earlier duplicity is matched by betrayal
of truth; and the rest of Jesus’ followers have fled in fear.

He is alone in front of Pilate, but showing no fear.
Is he King of the Jews? Is he somehow from God?
Pilate doesn’t know, doesn’t really care. Betrayal
of justice doesn’t bother him much, the only cost
he worries about is the empire’s peace. Fail
and he’d pay the price; so send this King to the cross,

it’s an easy call. Kill the pest, quiet the Jews. The cross
is just another tool when you rule by fear,
after all, so why be worried about truth? (This fails,
somehow, to ease his mind; but he holds the power of God,
of life and death, so death it will be, at Jesus’ cost.)
And Pilate’s lethal injustice is the final betrayal.

Jesus is alone, crowned with the thorns of betrayals.
He is mocked and whipped and abused, and the cross
is placed on his shoulders, and the high cost
of love mounts the hill of the Skull. Fear
only forgetting love’s suffering; forget not the grief of God,
as the sky grows dark as if the sun itself has failed.

Do the women wonder if faith has failed
as Jesus is laid in the tomb? Is hope’s betrayal
on Joseph’s mind, as he wraps this man from God
in burial cloth? The death of Christ on the cross
for many meant grief, despair and fear;
only later would they understand what was worth the cost:

that we are not alone in times of fear, nor when we fail
– bearing the costs of our small and large betrayals –
nor even in death: for Jesus, God’s Son, died for us on the cross.

--Andrew King, from his blog A Poetic Kind of Place

Image: Crucifixion, by Greg Weatherby

Palm Sunday

And He answered and said unto them, I tell you, that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. St. Luke xix. 40.

YE whose hearts are beating high 

With the pulse of Poesy,
Heirs of more than royal race,
Fram’d by Heaven’s peculiar grace,
God’s own work to do on earth,
(If the word be not too bold,)
Giving virtue a new birth,
And a life that ne’er grows old—

Sovereign masters of all hearts!
Know ye, who hath set your parts?
He who gave you breath to sing,
By whose strength ye sweep the string,
He hath chosen you, to lead
His Hosannas here below;—
Mount, and claim your glorious meed;
Linger not with sin and woe.

But if ye should hold your peace,
Deem not that the song would cease—
Angels round his glory-throne,
Stars, His guiding hand that own,
Flowers, that grow beneath our feet,
Stones in earth’s dark womb that rest,
High and low in choir shall meet,
Ere His Name shall be unblest.

Lord, by every minstrel tongue
Be thy praise so duly sung,
That thine angels’ harps may ne’er
Fail to find fit echoing here:
We the while, of meaner birth,
Who in that divinest spell
Dare not hope to join on earth,
Give us grace to listen well.

But should thankless silence seal
Lips, that might half Heaven reveal,
Should bards in idol-hymns profane
The sacred soul-enthralling strain,
(As in this bad world below
Nobles things find vilest using,)
Then, thy power and mercy shew,
In vile things noble breath infusing;

Then waken into sound divine
The very pavement of thy shrine,
Till we, like Heaven’s star-sprinkled floor,
Faintly give back what we adore.
Childlike though the voices be,
And untunable the parts,
Thou wilt own the minstrelsy,
If it flow from childlike hearts.


--John Keble (1792-1866), English Anglican priest and poet, one of the leaders of the Oxford movement, from The Christian Year.

Pieta

Always the same hills

Crowd the horizon,
Remote witness
Of the still scene.

And in the foreground
The tall Cross,
Sombre, untenanted,
Aches for the Body
That is the back in the cradle
Of a maid's arms

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet and Anglican priest

I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw, ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)- poet, English supporter of the Oxford movement, convert to Catholicism, Jesuit priest

Bidding Prayer for Holy Thursday

Maundy Thursday

The Priest introduces the prayers:
Jesus said, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you. To show our love for all God's creation, let us pray now for the Church and for the world.


Reader:
On the night he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ washed his disciples' feet. We commit ourselves to follow the example of love and service.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he prayed for his disciples to be one.
We pray for the unity of the Church.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he prayed for those who were to believe through their message. We pray for the mission of the Church.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he gave us the Eucharist.
We pray for our Eucharistic Ministers, and those preparing to receive his body and blood.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he commanded them to love, but suffered rejection himself. We pray for the rejected and unloved.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he reminded them that if the world hated them it hated him first. We pray for those who are persecuted for their faith.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he laid down his life for us. We pray for the holy souls, that they may take up the new life of his resurrection.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

We pray with Mary, Mother of the Church. Hail Mary....

Let us pray for a moment in silence.


The Priest concludes the prayers:
Lord God, your Son taught us that what we do for the least of our brethren we do also for him: give us the will to be the servant of others as he was the servant of all, and gave up his life and died for us for us, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

-- The Rev. Peter Weatherby, priest at St. Margaret's, Cannock, UK from this blog.

The Porch

Do you want to know his name?
It is forgotten. Would you learn
what he was like? He was like
anyone else, a man with ears
and eyes. Be it sufficient
that in a church porch on an evening
in winter, the moon rising, the frost
sharp, he was driven to his knees and for no reason
he knew. The cold came at him;
his breath was carved angularly
as the tombstones; an owl screamed.

He had no power to pray.
His back turned on the interior
he looked out on a universe
that was without knowledge
of him and kept his place
there for an hour on that lean
threshold, neither outside nor in.

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet and Anglican priest

Image: detail from a door from the Passion side of La Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain.

The Pulley (For All Clergy During Holy Week)

     When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
‘Let us’ (said he) ‘pour on him all we can;
‘Let the world's richest, which dispersed lie,
     Contract into a span.’

     So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flow’d, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
     Rest at the bottom lay.

     ‘For if I should (said he)
‘Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
     so both should losers be.

     ‘Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
     May toss him to my breast.’

--George Herbert (1593-1633), Welsh-born Anglican priest, parson, preacher, and poet.

Image: Jesus Prays in Gethsemane, David Popiashvili, Georgian artist based in Tbilisi.

The Feet of Judas

CHRIST washed the feet of Judas!
The dark and evil passions of his soul,
His secret plot, and sordidness complete,
His hate, his purposing, Christ knew the whole,
And still in love he stooped and washed his feet.
Christ washed the feet of Judas!
Yet all his lurking sin was bare to him,
His bargain with the priest, and more than this,
In Olivet, beneath the moonlight dim,
Aforehand knew and felt his treacherous kiss.
Christ washed the feet of Judas!
And so ineffable his love ’twas meet,
That pity fill his great forgiving heart,
And tenderly to wash the traitor’s feet,
Who in his Lord had basely sold his part.
Christ washed the feet of Judas!
And thus a girded servant, self-abased,
Taught that no wrong this side the gate of heaven
Was ever too great to wholly be effaced,
And though unasked, in spirit be forgiven.
And so if we have ever felt the wrong
Of Trampled rights, of caste, it matters not,
What e’er the soul has felt or suffered long,
Oh, heart! this one thing should not be forgot:
Christ washed the feet of Judas.

-- By George Marion McClellan (1860-1934) African American Congregationalist minister, teacher, novelist, principal, and poet

Scripture Reference: John 13:1-17, Maundy Thursday

Image: Jesus Washes the Disciples' Feet, by Laura James. Go buy some of her artwork!!!

If It Be Your Will

If it be your will 

That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

--Leonard Cohen (1934-2016), genius American singer-songwriter, troubadour, and mystic.

Scripture Reference: Matthew 26:36-46, Garden of Gethsemane

Image: Gethsemane, by He Qi

A cover of this song by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and his daughter Romany playing the Irish harp:

The Last Supper

They are assembled, astonished and disturbed

round him, who like a sage resolved his fate,
and now leaves those to whom he most belonged,
leaving and passing by them like a stranger.
The loneliness of old comes over him
which helped mature him for his deepest acts;
now will he once again walk through the olive grove,
and those who love him still will flee before his sight.

To this last supper he has summoned them,
and (like a shot that scatters birds from trees)
their hands draw back from reaching for the loaves
upon his word: they fly across to him;
they flutter, frightened, round the supper table
searching for an escape. But he is present
everywhere like an all-pervading twilight-hour.

Here they are gathered, wondering and deranged,
Round Him, who wisely doth Himself inclose,
And who now takes Himself away, estranged,
From those who owned Him once, and past them flows.
He feels the ancient loneliness to-day
That taught Him all His deepest acts of love;
Now in the olive groves He soon will rove,
And these who love Him all will flee away.

To the last supper table He hath led.
As birds are frightened from a garden-bed
By shots, so He their hands forth from the bread
Doth frighten by His word: to Him they flee;
Then flutter round the table in their fright
And seek a passage from the hall. But He
Is everywhere, like dusk at fall of night.


--Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Austrian poet and novelist

Image: The Last Supper, by Vladimir Zuzurin

Judas, Peter

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves

but if we find grace
to cry and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break out hearts
he will be there
to ask us each again
do you love me?


--Luci Shaw (1928- ), British born American poet, retreat leader, teacher, and Episcopalian

Saint Judas

When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.

Banished from heaven, I found this victim beaten,
Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping my rope
Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:
Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten,
The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without hope,
I held the man for nothing in my arms. 

-- James Wright (1927-1980), American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner for his Collected Poems.

Still Falls the Rain

(The Raids, 1940. Night and Dawn)

Still falls the Rain –
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss –
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potters’ Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us –
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain –
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side
He bears in his Heart all wounds, – those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear, –
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh ... the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain –
Then – O I'll leape up to my God: who pulles me doune –
See, see where Christ’s blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree
Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world, – dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar’s laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain –
“Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.”


~ Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) English poet


From my friend Caroline Carson, some explanation:

Sitwell compares the Nazi bombing of London to the Crucifixion. As befits the historical context, this is a bleak poem about the sinfulness of humanity. Each year since Christ’s birth become another nail that humanity has driven into his body on the cross (“nineteen hundred and forty nails”), and the poem alludes to famous betrayers, murderers, and sinners from the Bible and literature. But there is a turn in the final stanza, as Jesus continues to shed his blood willingly for sinful humanity. (Composer Benjamin Britten wrote a musical setting for this poem in 1955.)
~ Potter’s Field” – a burial ground for poor and unknown people. From Matthew, in which Judas’s thirty pieces of silver for betraying Jesus are used to buy a potter’s field for burying foreigners (Matthew 27:7-8).
--“Field of Blood” – the name given to the potter’s field in Matthew 27:7-8, because it is bought with Judas’s “blood money.”
--“Cain” – the Bible’s first murderer, who kills his brother Abel (Genesis 4).
--“Dives and Lazarus” – the rich man and the poor man in Jesus’s parable about judgment and the afterlife. Dives (Latin for “rich man”) ignores the suffering of Lazarus, a beggar at his gate; when both men die, Lazarus ascends to heaven while Dives is sent to hell (Luke 16:19-31). In the poem’s next line, “the sore” refers to Lazarus, who was afflicted with terrible sores while on earth, and “the gold” refers to Dives.

And in the next to last stanza there is a reference to Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe:
FAUSTUS: Ah, Faustus,
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn’d perpetually!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn’d.
O, I’ll leap up to my God! – Who pulls me down? –
See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ! –
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!

Benjamin Britten's setting of the poem from 1955:

He Bore Our Griefs

No, it was not the Jews who crucified,
Nor who betrayed You in judgment place,
Nor who, Lord Jesus, spat into Your face,
Nor who with buffets struck You as You died.
No, it was not the soldiers fisted bold
Who lifted up the hammer and nail,
Or raised the cursed cross on Calvary’s hill,
Or, gambling, tossed the dice to win Your robe.
I am the one, O Lord, who brought You there,
I am the heavy cross You had to bear,
I am the rope that bound You to the tree,
The whip, the nail, the hammer, and the spear,
The blood-stained crown of thorns You had to wear:
It was my sin, alas, it was for me.


--Jacobus Revius (1586-1658) Dutch theologian and poet, translated ny Dr. Henrietta ten Harmsel

Image: Christ Before Pilate, Mihaly Munkhacsy, 1881

The Donkey

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born;

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.


-- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English critic, novelist, poet, and convert to Roman Catholicism

Scripture Reference: Matthew 21:1-11, Palm Sunday, Lent A

Crucifixion

"Weep not for Me, Mother,
in the grave I have life."

I.

The choir of angels glorified the great hour,
the heavens melted in flames.
He said to His Father: "Why hast Thou forsaken me?"
and to His Mother: "Oh, weep not for Me..."

II.

Mary Magdalene smote her breast and wept,
the disciple whom He loved turned to stone,
but where the Mother stood in silence
nobody even dared look.

-- Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966), Russian poet

Image: Crucifixion: Haiti, Sister Helen David Brancato

The Passion of Our Lady

For the past three days she had been wandering, and following.
She followed the people.
She followed the events.
She seemed to be following a funeral.
But it was a living man’s funeral.
She followed like a follower.
Like a servant.
Like a weeper at a Roman funeral.
As if it had been her only occupation.
To weep.
That is what he had done to his mother.
Since the day when he had begun his mission.
You saw her everywhere.
With the people and a little apart from the people.
Under the porticoes, under the arcades, in drafty places.
In the temples, in the palaces.
In the streets.
In the yards and in the back-yards.
And she had also gone up to Calvary.
She too had climbed up Calvary.
A very steep hill.
And she did not even feel that she was walking.
She did not even feel that her feet were carrying her.
She too had gone up her Calvary.
She too had gone up and up
In the general confusion, lagging a little behind...
She wept and wept under a big linen veil.
A big blue veil.
A little faded.
She wept as will never be granted to a woman to weep.
As it will never be asked
Of a woman to weep on this earth.
Never at any time.
What was very strange was that everyone respected her.
People greatly respect the parents of the condemned.
They even said: Poor woman.
And at the same time they struck at her son.
Because man is like that.
The world is like that.
Men are what they are and you never can change them.
She did not know that, on the contrary, he had come to change man.
That he had come to change the world.
She followed and wept.
Everybody respected her.
Everybody pitied her.
They said: Poor woman.
Because they weren’t bad at heart.
They fulfilled the Scriptures.
They honored, respected, and admired her grief.
They didn’t make her go away,
they pushed her back only a little with special attentions
Because she was the mother of the condemned.
They thought: It’s the family of the condemned.
They even said so in a low voice.
They said it among themselves
With a secret admiration.

She followed and wept, and didn’t understand very well.
But she understood quite well that the government was against her boy.
And that is a very bad business.
She understood that all the governments were together against her boy.
The government of the Jews and the government of the Romans.
The government of judges and the government of priests.
The government of soldiers and the government of parsons.
He could never get out of it.
Certainly not.
What was strange was that all derision was heaped on him.
Not on her at all.
There was only respect for her.
For her grief.
They didn’t insult her.
On the contrary.
People even refrained from looking at her too much.
All the more to respect her.
So she too had gone up.
Gone up with everybody else.
Up to the very top of the hill.
Without even being aware of it.
Her legs had carried her and she did not even know it.
She too had made the Way of the Cross.
The fourteen stations of the Way of the Cross.
Were there fourteen stations?
Were there really fourteen stations?
She didn’t know for sure.
She couldn’t remember.
Yet she had not missed one.
She was sure of that.
But you can always make a mistake.
In moments like that your head swims.
Everybody was against him.
Everybody wanted him to die.
It is strange.
People who are not usually together.
The government and the people.
That was awful luck.
When you have someone for you and someone against you,
sometimes you can get out of it.
You can scramble out of it.
But he wouldn’t.
Certainly he wouldn’t.
When you have everyone against you.
But what had he done to everyone?

I’ll tell you.
He had saved the world.

--Charles Peguy (1873-1914), French poet, essayist, journalist, and editor, Socialist and fervent Roman Catholic, who died at the Battle of the Marne Translated from the French by Julian Green.

Brier (Good Friday)

Because, dear Christ, your tender, wounded arm 

Bends back the brier that edges life’s long way, 

That no hurt comes to heart, to soul no harm,
I do not feel the thorns so much to-day.

Because I never knew your care to tire,
Your hand to weary guiding me aright, 

Because you walk before and crush the brier, 

It does not pierce my feet so much to-night.

Because so often you have hearkened to
My selfish prayers, I ask but one thing now, 

That these harsh hands of mine add not unto 

The crown of thorns upon your bleeding brow.

-- E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (1861-1913), Canadian and Mohawk poet, performer, and feminist