Awake! Arise!

Easter-Day

Thou, whose sad heart and weeping head lyes low,
Whose Cloudy brest cold damps invade,
Who never feel'st the Sun, nor smooth'st thy brow,
But sitt'st oppressed in the shade,
Awake, awake,
And in his Resurrection partake,
Who on this day (that thou might'st rise as he,)
Rose up, and cancell'd two deaths due to thee.

Awake, awake; and, like the Sun disperse
All mists that would usurp this day;
Where are thy Palmes, thy branches, and thy verse?
Hosanna! heark; why doest thou stay?
Arise, arise,
And with his healing bloud anoint thine Eys,
Thy inward Eys; his bloud will cure thy mind,
Whose spittle only could restore the blind.


~Henry Vaughan

Wearing White for Eastertide

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

0 GOD, I love thee, I love thee-

Not out of hope of heaven for me

Nor fearing not to love and be

In the everlasting burning.

Thou, thou, my Jesus, after me

Didst reach thine arms out dying,

For my sake sufferedst nails, and lance,

Mocked and marred countenance,

Sorrows passing number,

Sweat and care and cumber,

Yea and death, and this for me,

And thou couldst see me sinning:

Then I, why should not I love thee,

Jesu, so much in love with me?

Not for heaven's sake;

not to be out of hell by loving thee;

Not for any gains I see;

But just the way that thou didst me

I do love and I will love thee:

What must I love thee, Lord, for then?

For being my king and God. Amen.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

What does Assisi have to do with Loyola? A poem for the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, OFM

A Child My Choice

By Saint Robert Southwell, SJ

Let folly praise that fancy loves, I praise and love that Child

Whose heart no thought, whose tongue no word, whose hand no deed defiled.

I praise Him most, I love Him best, all praise and love is His;

While Him I love, in Him I live, and cannot live amiss.

Love's sweetest mark, laud's highest theme, man's most desired light,

To love Him life, to leave Him death, to live in Him delight.

He mine by gift, I His by debt, thus each to other due;

First friend He was, best friend He is, all times will try Him true.

Though young, yet wise; though small, yet strong; though man, yet God He is:

As wise, He knows; as strong, He can; as God, He loves to bliss.

His knowledge rules, His strength defends, His love doth cherish all;

His birth our joy, His life our light, His death our end of thrall.

Alas! He weeps, He sighs, He pants, yet do His angels sing;

Out of His tears, His sighs and throbs, doth bud a joyful spring.

Almighty Babe, whose tender arms can force all foes to fly,

Correct my faults, protect my life, direct me when I die!

The Choirmaster's Burial

The Choirmaster's Burial
by Thomas Hardy

He often would ask us
That, when he died,
After playing so many
To their last rest,
If out of us any
Should here abide,
And it would not task us,
We would with our lutes
Play over him
By his grave-brim
The psalm he liked best—
The one whose sense suits
"Mount Ephraim"—
And perhaps we should seem
To him, in Death's dream,
Like the seraphim.

As soon as I knew
That his spirit was gone
I thought this his due,
And spoke thereupon.
"I think", said the vicar,
"A read service quicker
Than viols out-of-doors
In these frosts and hoars.
That old-fashioned way
Requires a fine day,
And it seems to me
It had better not be."
Hence, that afternoon,
Though never knew he
That his wish could not be,
To get through it faster
They buried the master
Without any tune.

But 'twas said that, when
At the dead of next night
The vicar looked out,
There struck on his ken
Thronged roundabout,
Where the frost was graying
The headstoned grass,
A band all in white
Like the saints in church-glass,
Singing and playing
The ancient stave
By the choirmaster's grave.

Such the tenor man told
When he had grown old.

"God Doesn't Want to Talk to You Right Now"

A deacon friend and I have a game we like to play sometimes called What Not to Say to a Scrupulous Person in Confession. For some reason we laugh hysterically at such bad pastoral counsel as:

• "God really hates it when you're scrupulous."
• "You know, every time you worry, an angel sheds a tear."
• "It's okay to say 25 novenas a day, but whatever you do, don't let your mind wander."
• "The greatest sin a person can commit is to doubt, even for a second, in the love of God."

Haha! Actually, that last example, tragically, is not so far off the mark of what some confessors might like to say, and really shouldn't.

Last week we invented a new game called How Not to Preach about Perseverance in Prayer:

• If you don't feel God when you pray, that's because God doesn't want to talk to you right now. So don't bother Him; He's busy.
• God would probably prefer to talk with somebody else instead of you.
• Whatever you do, don't try again until God absolutely clearly makes the first move. Even if it takes 20 years, don't bother Him.
• Distract yourself. Instead of spending time reading the Bible or praying in Church, go to the movies! Find a hobby! Whatever it takes to get through life without bothering God.
• Because God probably decided he doesn't like you. And there's nothing you can do about it.

I know, I know, we are warped...

The joke was occasioned by last Sunday's Gospel, in which a person (representing the Christian) wants something in the middle of the night and tries to wake his neighbor (representing God). The moral of the story is, wear out God's doorstep, even if you don't seem to be getting anywhere in your prayer. Knock; ask; seek.

This reminds me of a poem:

YOU, neighbor God, if sometimes in the night
I rouse you with loud knocking, I do so
only because I seldom hear you breathe;
I know: you are alone.
And should you need a drink, no one is there
to reach it to you, groping in the dark.
Always I hearken.
Give but a small sign.
I am quite near.
Between us there is but a narrow wall,
and by sheer chance; for it would take
merely a call from your lips or from mine
to break it down,
and that without a sound.

The wall is built of your images.

They stand before you hiding you like names,
and when the light within me blazes high
that in my inmost soul I know you by,
the radiance is squandered on their frames.

And then my senses, which too soon grow lame,
exiled from you, must go their homeless ways.--Rainer Maria Rilke