The Rising Word

The Word that spoke the light
gave up his final breath
into the waiting hands of God,
but, oh, the light still shines.
The Word now speaks again,
its mighty echoes rolling on.

Before the stars shone down,
before the mountains rose,
he was, before the world began,
and after stars burn out,
when mountains are no more,
he is, beyond our human span.

But human he became,
a moment and a pulse:
Eternity would live and die.
A fingerprint, a name,
to feel earth's downward pull,
and yet, beyond all hope, to rise.

The author of all life
rewrites the book of death
upon the pages of our hearts.
All glory be to Christ,
world without end, amen,
who pulls us into endless song.

Christ Pantocrator By Unknown author – Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5820582

Unheard

Based on Jesus Through Medieval Eyes (the chapter on Christ as Word) and the O antiphons:

The Father's gathered syllables,

one long, unbroken Word

has lain these months invisible,

unspeaking and unheard.



E'er since the angel said it last,

the silent Word is cloaked

within the woman who said yes,

beneath her heart invoked.



To weave a word's embodiment—

eyes, hands, and lips and breath—

his mother is the sacred tent

of birth and life and death.



Unheard, yet he is not unknown;

unseen, yet still in mind,

a secret held by her alone

until the hours unwind.



Until he's born into the world,

no treatise but a child:

God's plan in him in her arms curled;

God's wisdom in her smile.



And how our silence aches to hear

his echoes in the dark,

for when he cries out, loud and clear,

the sky fills up with sparks.

Verso of folio 30 from The Poissy Antiphonal, a certified Dominican antiphonal of 428 folios from Poissy, written 1335-1345, with a complete annual cycle of chants for the Divine Office (Temporal, Sanctoral and Commons) and a hymnal. By Unknown author – La Trobe University Library, Medieval Music Database, The Poissy Antiphonal, folio 30v., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8660919

Come, Light

To the tune NON DIGNUS (“O Lord, I Am Not Worthy”):

Come, Light; dispel our darkness
and drive our gloom away.
Shine on the brokenhearted
and bring us into day.

Speak, Word, into our silence
and let the echoes ring.
Still all cries of violence
and teach our hearts to sing.

As grace on grace come fill us,
unfailing stream that flows
from God's eternal stillness:
Come, overflow our souls.

God's only Son, begotten
before the deeps of time,
come claim all we've forgotten
and bring them into life.

Come, wellspring of creation:
Your wonders wait for you.
Come with their restoration—
oh, come; make all things new!

And in the endless dawning
of your now-breaking day
rise in our hearts as morning,
and ever shining stay.