The poem this Sunday is another by Luci Shaw:
Of consolation
It is down
makes
up seem
taller
black
sharpens white
flight
firms earth
underfoot
labor
blesses birth
with
later sleep
After silence
each sound
sings
dull clay
shines the
bright coin
in the pot
lemon
honeys
its sweet sequel
and my dark
distress
shows comfort
to be doubly
heaven-sent.
“The Garments of God”, a poem by Jessica Powers.
The poem I have to share with you this Sunday is another by Jessica Powers:
The Garments of God
God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.
He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.
I sit at His feet, a child in the dark beside Him;
my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted
to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me.
He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments–
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am but dust.
Here is the loud profession of my trust.
I need not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.
I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.
A Jessica Powers’ poem on Mary Magdalen.
I’ve done a lot of meditating over the years on today’s gospel. For many long seasons of my life, I have felt that I have been with Mary weeping outside the tomb, Jesus calling my name, but I keep failing to recognize Him. Learning to trust Him when I think He’s gone and I can’t recognize Him. (See “While it was still dark”)
Two paintings here of Mary before and after her conversion:
On another note, this poem by Jessica Powers came to mind today. In this poem, she writes about Mary’s encounter with Christ on the Cross and then her later life, where she lived as a contemplative hermit:
The Blood’s Mystic
Grace guards that moment when the spirit halts
to watch the Magdalen
in the mad turbulence that was her love.
Light hallows those who think about her when
she broke through crowds to the Master’s feet
or ran on Easter morning,
her hair wind-tumbled and cloak awry.
What to her need were the restrictions of
earth’s vain formalities?
She sought, as love so often seeks and finds,
a Radiance that died or seemed to die.
One can surmise she went to Calvary
distraught and weeping, and with loud lament
clung to the cross and beat upon its wood
till Christ’s torn veins spread a soft covering
over her hair and face and colored gown.
She took her First Communion in His Blood.
O the tumultuous Magdalen! But those
who come upon her in the hush of love
claim the last graces. A wild parakeet
ceded its being to a mourning dove,
as Bethany had prophesied. We give
to Old Provence that solitude’s location
where her love brooded, too contemplative
to lift the brief distraction of a wing.
There she became a living consecration
to one remembering.
Magdalen, first to drink the fountained Christ
Whose crimson-signing stills our creature stir,
is the Blood’s mystic. Was it not the weight
of the warm Blood that slowed and silenced her?
Luci Shaw’s poem, “Reluctant Prophet.”
Continuing in my share-a-poem-with-you-on-Sunday tradition, here’s another one by Luci Shaw:
Reluctant Prophet
Both were dwellers
in deep places
(one in the dark
bowels of ships
and great fish
and wounded pride.
The other–
in the silvery belly
of the seas).Both heard God saying
“Go!”
but the whale
did as he was told.
A Sunday poem.
I love poetry, so I think Sundays are going to be my share-a-poem-with-you days. Here’s one–a short one–by Luci Shaw:
forecast
planting
seeds
inevitably
changes my
feelings
about
rain
All of our life is but a response to Someone who has always loved us first.
On the occasion of my 25th anniversary of my Final Profession, I had the opportunity of choosing the music for the Mass of celebration. For the closing hymn, I chose the following song. It’s an anonymous poem put to music by one of our sisters. The language is a little quaint, but the message is so true for each of us–and yet we forget it all too often. All of our life is but a response to Someone who has always loved us first.
I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
he moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me.
It was not I that found, O Savior true.
No, I was found, found by Thee.Thou didst reach forth Thy hand and mine enfold.
I walked and sank not on the stormy sea.
‘Twas not so much that I on Thee took hold,
as Thou, dear Lord, on me.I find, I walk, I love, but O the whole
of love is but my answer, Lord, to Thee!
For Thou were long beforehand with my soul.
Always Thou lovedst me.
Always He loves you.
Heaven’s response at our penitence.
This poem by Mother Mary Francis, a poor Clare, has been on my mind this morning:
Choreography for Angels
“I say to you, that there is joy among the angels
in heaven upon one sinner doing penance . . . ”
(Luke 15:10)
Who spun these Angels into dance
When wars are needing all artillery
Of spirits’ cannonading. Armistice
Wants first the over-powering wings, and they
Are occupied with pirouettes! Who did this?
Gone penitent, I caused it. I confess it.
Who tilted flames of Seraphim
In arabesques of pure delightedness?
Is not the cosmic crisis begging fire
For full destruction of hate’s hazarding!
Why Seraphs swirling flames on floors of heaven?
I lit the heavens, when I bent my head.
Who lined mystic corps-de-ballet
Of Cherubim? Who set in pas-de-deux
This Power with this Principality?
Why these Archangels not on mission sent
Today, but waltzing on the stars, and singing?
I am the one who did this. I confess it.
I smote my errant heart, and Angels danced.
May we remember this is the reality of the Heart of God.
I was thinking this morning of introducing you to Jessica Powers, a discalced Carmelite nun who wrote poetry. Which poem to share with you first, for whichever I choose will form an opinion of her? I’ll start with the first in the compilation, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers:
The Mercy of God
I am copying down in a book from my heart’s archives
the day that I ceased to fear God with a shadowy fear.
Would you name it the day that I measured my column of virtue
and sighted through windows of merit a crown that was near?
Ah, no, it was rather the day I began to see truly
that I came forth from nothing and ever toward nothingness tend,
that the works of my hands are a foolishness wrought in the presence
of the worthiest king in a kingdom that shall never end.
I rose up from the acres of self that I tended with passion
and defended with flurries of pride;
I walked out of myself and went into the woods of God’s mercy,
and here I abide.
There is greenness and calmness and coolness, a soft leafy covering
from the judgment of sun overhead,
and the hush of His peace, and the moss of His mercy to tread.
I have naught but my will seeking God; even love burning in me
is a fragment of infinite loving and never my own.
And I fear God no more; I go forward to wander forever
in a wilderness made of His infinite mercy alone.(1949)
Witnesses to Hope 