A poem for Easter Sunday

Sonnet 68

Most glorious Lord of lyfe, that on this day,

Didst make thy triumph over death and sin:

And having harrowd hell, didst bring away

Captivity thence captive us to win:

This joyous day, deare Lord, with joy begin,

And grant that we for whom thou diddest dye

Being with thy deare blood clene washt from sin,

May live for ever in felicity.

And that thy love we weighing worthily,

May likewise love thee for the same againe:

And for thy sake that all lyke deare didst buy,

With love may one another entertayne.

So let us love, deare love, lyke as we ought,

Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

Edmund Spenser

A poem for Holy Saturday

Limbo by Sister Mary Ada, OSJ

The ancient grayness shifted

Suddenly and thinned

Like mist upon the moors

Before a wind.

An old, old prophet lifted

A shining face and said:

“He will be coming soon.

The Son of God is dead;

He died this afternoon.”

A murmurous excitement stirred

All souls.

They wondered if they dreamed –

Save one old man who seemed

Not even to have heard.

And Moses, standing,

Hushed them all to ask

If any had a welcome song prepared.

If not, would David take the task?

And if they cared

Could not the three young children sing

The Benedicite, the canticle of praise

They made when God kept them from perishing

In the fiery blaze?

A breath of spring surprised them,

Stilling Moses’ words.

No one could speak, remembering

The first fresh flowers,

The little singing birds.

Still others thought of fields new ploughed

Or apple trees

All blossom-boughed.

Or some, the way a dried bed fills

With water

Laughing down green hills.

The fisherfolk dreamed of the foam

On bright blue seas.

The one old man who had not stirred

Remembered home.

And there He was

Splendid as the morning sun and fair

As only God is fair.

And they, confused with joy,

Knelt to adore

Seeing that He wore

Five crimson stars

He never had before.

No canticle at all was sung

None toned a psalm, or raised a greeting song,

A silent man alone

Of all that throng

Found tongue –

Not any other.

Close to His heart

When the embrace was done,

Old Joseph said,

“How is Your Mother,

How is Your Mother, Son?”

A poem for Good Friday

The Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot

East Coker, IV

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we fell

The sharp compassion of the healer’s art

Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease

If we obey the dying nurse

Whose constant care is not to please

But to remind of our, and Adam’s, curse,

And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital

Endowed by the ruined millionaire,

Wherein, if we do well, we shall

Die of the absolute paternal care

That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,

The fever sings in mental wires.

If to be warmed, then I must freeze

And quake in frigid purgatorial fires

Of which the flame is roses and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,

The bloody flesh our only food;

In spite of which we like to think

That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood–

Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

EXCERPTED FROM THE FOUR QUARTETS, HARVEST BOOKS, 1971