Sing

For Holy Thursday, to the PANGE LINGUA:

Sing, my tongue, the saving wonders,
mysteries too great for words.
Sing, through all your stops and blunders,
though the most remains unheard.
Though your voice is drowned in thunders,
sing like any spring-struck bird.

Sing through all your earthly sorrows,
through the shadows that appall.
Christ's own earthly singing borrow:
Loudly on the Father call,
though you know you die tomorrow,
though your words will silent fall.

Though he knew what he would suffer,
Christ at supper sang the hymns.
Knowlingly himself he offered
for the flock that fled from him.
Every word of law and prophet
in his song new voice is giv'n.

Then, my tongue, through notes that falter,
sing a love too great to tell.
Sing the joys that fill the psalter;
sing the sorrows of the knell.
Christ is laid upon the altar:
Ring creation as his bell!

A Kremikovtsi Monastery fresco (15th century) depicting the Last Supper celebrated by Jesus and his disciples. The early Christians too would have celebrated this meal to commemorate Jesus’ death and subsequent resurrection. By Edal Anton Lefterov – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15129262

Cast Out From Every Eden

For Holy Thursday:

Cast out from every Eden,
adrift on every flood,
sold into our own Egypts,
we cried out to our God
who came to share it with us,
to dwell in flesh and blood:
The bread of our affliction
becomes the feast of love.

Our bodies fail and falter:
His own is just as weak.
We die, as we were born to:
He watches us and weeps.
Eternal and immortal,
he joins us in our death,
but on the night before it
he shares our broken bread.

So hunger turns to fullness,
and peace transforms our strife;
our darkness is refulgent,
and death becomes our life.
And we can be as God is,
who fills us, flesh and soul:
Mere bread becomes the body
that makes our being whole.

The Last Supper by Dieric Bouts – Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15451860

Passion Play

The silver coins are clinking as he counts them;
they're winking as he lines them up in stacks.
They slide down when he piles them as a mountain
while Judas twirls his villainous mustache.

But Christ has laid himself upon these traintracks
and doesn't call for Dudley Do-Right's help,
for he who holds the trolley on those same tracks
will lie there still, abandoning himself.

He will not keep the train from its appointment,
but silently he waits before the wheels.
When peace and justice end their long disjointment,
they crush his flesh.  There will be no appeals.

And we will shatter in that great collision,
while all we thought we knew has flown away.
When power bends its neck in meek submission,
the lights come up and end the matinée.

We come out of the dim, sepulchral theater
and stand there blinking in the day made bright
to shed our costumes, wash away our greasepaint,
and greet each other in the brand-new light.

Then Christ himself shall lead us in our revels,
while Judas weeps for joy to see him rise,
and Peter tells his master's name forever,
and we will see ourselves with open eyes.

This elaborate image, Representation of a Pageant Vehicle at the time of Performance, was commissioned as the frontispiece to A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries Anciently Performed at Coventry by the Trading Companies of that City, (1825) by Thomas Sharp, (1770-1841). The image was designed and executed in copper engraving by David Gee (1793-1872). It recreates a 15th-century Passion play (The Trial and Crucifixion of Christ) by the Smiths’ Company of Coventry. Many of the details are based on written accounts, including pageant wagon design itself and the people in the street. The scene on stage depicts Christ, with hands bound, before an enthroned Pilate. Annas and Caiaphas are shown in mitred hats, and a boy carries a bowl of water for Pilate to wash his hands. Although somewhat speculative, the image has been influential and is often reproduced. By David Gee – Image scanned from first edition of the Chambers Book of Days (1864) by Robert Chambers (died 1871)., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=235897

Pilate’s Wife

While [Pilate] was still seated on the bench,
his wife sent him a message,
“Have nothing to do with that righteous man.
I suffered much in a dream today because of him.”
Matthew 27:19

Lately in a dream I saw him
riding on the coming storm.
Harnessed lightning drew him onward
like a son of Saturn born.

Mother Earth with dread was shaking
at the thunder of his touch;
Atlas' mighty shoulders shaking
fumbled heaven's every torch.

So they fell like sparks in shadows,
briefest flashes in the dark—
darkness deepened past all fathoms,
swallowing my stricken heart.

There I saw the son of Saturn
binding Pluto in his chains,
turning back the ship of Charon,
emptying death's great domains.

Then he turned on me his notice:
Jupiter shed his disguise,
spoke of love in words I knew not,
drowned me in his mortal eyes.

So was I Semele burning
in the glory I was shown.
Now I send you urgent warning:
Leave the righteous man alone.

The Message of Pilate’s Wife (1886–94) by James Tissot (Brooklyn Museum) – Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum; Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2008, 00.159.260a_PS2.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10957662

Hosanna!

For Palm Sunday:

When horse and chariot sink into the sea
while shattered armies scatter on the run,
he rides a beast of burden in the street.
Hosanna to the king, to David's son!

While idols crack beneath the people's gaze
and watch their nations crumble, blind and dumb,
he enters on the noise of children's praise:
Hosanna!  Blessèd is the king who comes!

When holiness is bought and sold for alms,
salvation is a reckoning of sums,
he rides on borrowed robes and foraged palms:
Hosanna!  In the name of God he comes!

And we shall crown him as a victor king
and see him lifted up in all his might
as from his fullness we take everything.
Hosanna!  Oh, hosanna in the height!

He comes to found a kingdom of the poor,
to show the face of God to all the world,
to cancel every debt.  Lift up, you doors!
Hosanna!  Oh, hosanna to the Lord!

Palmesel (figure of Christ on a donkey, mounted on a wheeled platform). Art from Southern Germany, perhaps Swabia. By Marie-Lan Nguyen (2012), CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18285774

Pietà

Did Eve hold Abel thus,
ev'n as she ached for Cain?
Was it for this she came of dust,
for this bore them of pain?

So Mary holds her son,
a swordpoint in her heart.
All prophecies are clanging gongs,
and silent stone cries out!

Yet even to this end,
our second-oldest tale,
even to this does God descend,
where weeping mothers wail.

So shall he fill the first,
our coming from the dust.
So shall he raise us from the dirt
who has lain there with us.

And tears shall turn to floods
that make the deserts bloom.
There will be no more Niles of blood,
when death has been entombed.

But, oh, how long, how long
shall Eve for Abel weep,
shall Mary hold her lifeless son,
and God his silence keep?

Michelangelo Buonarroti’s La Madonna della Pietà in Saint Peter’s Basilica, 1498–1499. Pontifically crowned by Pope Urban VIII in 1637. By Stanislav Traykov – Edited version of (cloned object out of background) Image:Michelangelo’s Pieta 5450 cropncleaned.jpg), CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3653602

As We Look On Death

Martha said to Jesus,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,
God will give you.”
Jesus said to her,
“Your brother will rise.”
Martha said to him,
“I know he will rise,
in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord.
I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”
John 11:1-45

You ask us, as we look on death,
to trust in resurrection;
to hope, beyond the end of breath,
that all our sighs are reckoned;
to love, though there is nothing left,
and say someone still beckons.

You stand with us outside the tomb
to mourn the one within it—
O, call him out again to you!
O'erturn the grave and spill it!
For we shall all go that way soon,
and you yourself shall fill it.

Here where the ground gapes open wide
and swallows all in shadow,
you come with us.  You step inside,
descend into death's furrow;
a seed stripped bare of pow'r or pride
is buried by the harrow.

You who had shaped us out of dust
as brief and weak as grass is,
who breathed your life into our mud,
are with us as it passes.
It fades, but you are still with us:
Breathe life into these ashes.

The Raising of Lazarus, 1310–11, By Duccio di Buoninsegna – Kimbell Art Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7125641

Annunciation 2023

For these readings:

As deep as the nether world
and as high as the sky,
here in her body curled
and hid from all eyes,

the Word that spoke everything,
all that is, in six days,
as silent as angels' wings
in her waters plays.

He vibrates to hear her now,
her heart and her voice,
the maid to whom angels bow
and sing out, “Rejoice!”

As all earth will tremble soon,
feel him flutter inside,
when darkness shall come at noon
and graves open wide:

So shall the world groan with her
when the moment draws near.
The Word will cry out for her
in blood and in tears.

Alla 18. Esposizione Biennale Internazionale di Arte del 1932 è presente con otto opere, tra cui l’Annunciazione in un Tempio d’Aria esempio di Arte Sacra e Futurismo. By Mlemmi – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113266814

Not As We See

Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this
and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?”
Jesus said to them,
“If you were blind, you would have no sin;
but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.
John 9:1-41

Not as we see do you see us,
we who always look at sin.
You look at the heart, O Jesus,
seeing all that lies within.

You, who worked in the beginning,
formed our eyes to see your face.
Work in us again, Redeemer:
We have lost the light of grace.

Squinting at your great creation
we see only spit and dust.
These you take, O Incarnation,
healing all that's blind in us.

Where we see but muck or beauty,
not the substance underneath,
come to us, O Word, refuting
all our willful disbelief.

Let us see as you have seen us
when you look beneath our skin:
children of the Father's goodness,
sinning, and yet more than sin.

You who made the eyes, restore them;
earth and water shape anew
so to see who stands before them:
Son of Man, let us see you.

Healing the blind who was blinded since birth By Pehr Hörberg – National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97998397

Strike the Stone

For the third Sunday of Lent, Year A, for which the readings are about water in the desert and the Samaritan Woman:

Strike the stone, it flows with water;
strike the river, it is blood.
Strike the hearts of sons and daughters:
Turn us back to you, O God.

All our efforts unavailing,
all our labors merely vain:
Only you can re-create us;
you can make us whole again.

Take the half-truths we have cherished,
hearts divided, bodies sore:
Make them whole before we perish.
Heal us in our wounds, O Lord.

Not one place, but all creation,
then shall be your altar stone
where you offer us salvation,
where we worship you alone.

Not one body, one believer,
but all bodies joined as one,
whole in every part, O Jesus,
when your streams of mercy run.

Life eternal welling in us:
Let us drink and thirst no more.
Pour you healing grace upon us;
give us living water, Lord.