Today is theirs: Recall their names and whisper them into the dark left by the dying of their flames, extinguished now and left no mark except the flare: I close my eyes and see the after image there, and break the hush as faces rise, their names in litany my prayer. These syllables upon my tongue hold volumes more than I can tell. Though some died old and some died young I loved them all before they fell, or else I knew them not at all but loved the ones who loved them here. Then may I will use this day to call their names who lived before my year: O you who trampled death by death, who came as dust to save the dust, hear now the names upon my breath and let not one of them be lost. Amen.
After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. —Revelation 7:9-14
And there I saw around you, each a spark, the multitude you draw and, burning in the dark, on every heart your law, each brow your mark.
Who then are these, their hunger righteousness, in myriad poverties patient until you bless the souls no one else sees in their distress?
They are the ones who, burning with your flame, shine out like lesser suns and brilliant make your name; to go where mercy runs, like you became.
What is the word incised upon them here? The ringing voice they heard, companion drawing near, a hope never deferred but sounding clear:
Your sign, O Christ, in hunger and in thirst, in riches sacrificed, in mercy to the worst, ‘til earth is paradised and last are first.
Now they are blest, their hunger satisfied, their mourning laid to rest in feasting you provide, to see what they confessed there at your side.
It wasn’t long ago you walked on this good earth and felt the sun, but years now other ways you’ve stalked that I will know when mine are done. You are what I am coming to as sunset comes for every dawn. How can I bear to look at you? The features that I knew are gone, your face the face of all who pass, anonymous as reaper Death: “All men shall flourish as the grass and wither at a winter’s breath.” The skin shrinks closer to the bone; the eyes are lost. The eyes are lost but see what I have never known— yet will, when I my days exhaust. Why have you come to me, old friend unrecognizable as such? There is a way we both shall wend: You call me to it with a touch. There is a way we both must find as all men have, time out of mind. There is a guide you walk behind— May he be kind; may he be kind.
Woe to them! They followed the way of Cain, abandoned themselves to Balaam’s error for the sake of gain, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These are blemishes on your love feasts, as they carouse fearlessly and look after themselves. They are waterless clouds blown about by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead and uprooted. They are like wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shameless deeds, wandering stars for whom the gloom of darkness has been reserved forever. —Jude 11-13
O patron of the hopeless lost, St. Jude, take me into your care and save my heart from its despair with mercies I cannot exhaust.
For I have loved a wandering star, rejoicing when he passed in sight and weeping in the empty night when he has strayed to quadrants far.
He bears the image of the sun that pours its life into our clay, and still he shines along his way though brighter passes he may shun.
Let not the image there go dim; let it not gutter out of reach. The sun has surely light for each no matter, no, how far from him.
My star is wandering in the dark: His orbit’s road is long, is long. Then let my hope be strong, be strong against the fading of his spark.
Saint of the hopeless, hope for me that wandering stars may find their way into the sun’s eternal day, and I his shining face may see. Amen.
I go to Mass. The same words every time:
in thought and word and deed how I have sinned,
my grievous fault and my omission’s crime.
This Kyrie will vanish in the wind
like all the others have, its grace rescind,
so to remain unsullied by my grime.
Though all I ever want is to be good,
still all I ever am is not enough.
“Be perfect as your Father—” Lord, who could,
unless you make us of some other stuff?
I do what I should not—my virtue’s bluff—
and do not do the things I know I should.
I have turned back. I am a pillar of salt
forever gazing at the distant flame.
We say the Confiteor. Lame-tongued, I halt
along the words detailing all my shame
‘til someone else trips, fumbles all the blame:
“through my fault, my fault, my most gracious fault.”
And for one second it is Vigil night
as in my darkness this Exultet rings:
O necessary sin that made all bright,
that brought a savior. Even now it brings
a mercy which may fly on swiftest wings
away, yet here a moment did alight.
He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” —Matthew 22:34-40
I do not love you as I ought
or as the law and prophets taught.
O God, though you are all I’ve sought,
I do not love you as I ought:
to love you, heart and mind and soul,
as if those three were one and whole.
How can the imperfect reach that goal,
to love you, heart and mind and soul,
or love my neighbor as myself,
whom I have loved above all else?
I do not love you for yourself
or love my neighbor as myself.
Let my confession come to you:
My love is only partly true.
That it be whole in all I do,
let me confession come to you.
Though heart and mind may come undone,
the race before me must be run.
Then hear, all things: The Lord is one
though heart and mind may come undone,
and love shall make us one in him.
When here our fractured sight goes dim,
his light each face shall newly limn,
and love shall make us one in him.
Look on us as we lift these empty hands
filled but with air and cupped around our lack.
We have no incense for your burning brands,
no fragrant smoke to stain the rafters black;
only our prayers rise up from lips that crack.
On legs that will not bend, the suppliant stands.
See all our perfect offerings are lost:
We would come walking to you on our knees
but that arthritis gnarls us in its frost,
would sing your praise through an asthmatic wheeze
but cough and choke. Look down, O God who sees,
on what we would have given, bar the cost.
Here are the widow’s mites: body and soul—
what’s left of them to watch the setting sun—
as cracked and hollow as a broken bowl,
so shattered—were these fragments ever one?
Now we hold nothing, and the day is done,
nothing, O Lord, unless you make us whole.
If you will not, you must be satisfied
to take the mere intention for the deed.
Do not forget we tried, O God, we tried.
What can we bring when all we have is need?
Yet here we are: Oh, let us come and feed
on what your love alone can now provide. Amen.
As numerous as grains of sand
that slip unnoticed through the hand
or as the stars that fill the dark,
each brief and bright as any spark,
we flower and flare upon the earth
only a moment from our birth
and then are gone. O Lord, we pray
that you would keep us all this day.
Look down upon us here and bless
our hunger and our nothingness,
and give us what we need to live.
Also in mercy, Lord, forgive.
We cannot hide, and so you see
our foolishness and cruelty,
but you can by your grace restore
the images we were before.
For you made us to be like you
though we are gone with morning’s dew.
As dust when any stormwind blows
we pass on pathways no one knows—
no one but you, almighty God,
for you alone all ways have trod.
Then heal our souls, our bodies mend,
and bring us where all pathways end:
in your bright heart, when stars are born
and fade not in the brightening morn.
Bring us all there, though sparks are we,
to shine in you eternally. Amen.
Spray of sparks from a Bessemer converter as air is blown through the molten metal By Alfred T. Palmer – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID fsac.1a35063.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8094060
Then they handed him the Roman coin. He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” At that he said to them, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” —Matthew 22:15-21
No Caesar holds the spinning world
within his hand, a seedlife curled,
but God alone made heaven and earth
and breathed into me at my birth.
Of all that world, I pay him this:
God gave me life; my death is his.
The armies at the ready stand
to guard the furrows of the land:
Since this is Caesar’s, his to take
an honest share of what I make.
My tithe of tax: to Caesar this.
God gave me life; my death is his.
For Caesar holds not life and death
and cannot give one single breath
or slow the speeding of the sun,
and all his days are swiftly done.
Then let him be content with this.
God gave me life; my death is his.
Let armies wage their feats of might—
I owe no act but what is right—
Let empires in their progress roll—
I owe no earthly king my soul.
Let Caesar fall—it comes to this.
God gave me life; my death is his.
Ignatius Before the Lions
To all my brethren, all I leave behind,
I here bequeath and leave my one desire:
that they may be together of one mind,
harmonious within the maker’s choir,
joined in the Son, Incarnate of our kind,
to sing through him one note ascending higher.
Though Caesar here exacts his bloody toll,
I render all to God, who came before.
As he who made my body heals my soul,
he shall that body once again restore,
and what is rent shall someday be made whole,
and what is dead shall live forevermore.
The door to heaven is edged with lion’s teeth:
I will pass through, as they will pass through me,
God’s hand the lion’s paw I die beneath
that by his blessing makes me wholly free.
My soul flies out, a sword leaving its sheath,
and plunges into God’s infinity.
From the darkness that sweetly entices, from cold comfort drawing you in, from the mind’s labyrinthine devices and the war that you never can win,
come back to the flour on your fingers, to the rhythm of kneading the dough, to the scent of the yeast as it lingers where its life is beginning to grow.
Come back to the stove and the oven. Though inward you drown in the storm, stand here where despair is forgiven and soup and its comforts are warm.
The soup, with its onion and carrot, is life beating strong in the vein. For all of its weight, you can bear it, the soup and the bread and the pain.
There isn’t a cure for the aching, but there is the soup and the bread and all of the good to be making. Come back to the world and be fed.
