Juan Manuel García Tejada: "To Jesus on the Cross"

Wednesday in Holy Week 2005

To Jesus on the Cross

To you I hurrying, come, O sacred arms
   That stretch so wide upon the lifted Cross
   As though to cherish me for all my loss,
Nailed all too fast to cause my guilt alarms!
To you, O eyes divine eclipsed in night,
   So filled with tears and blood you can but gaze
   Confused in pardon on my sinful ways
And yet to shame me have so little sight!

To you, poor feet so nailed you cannot spurn;
   To you, bowed head that whispers low my name;
To you, O blood outpoured my grace to earn;
To you, O pierced breast, where mine would turn;
   To you, O priceless nails, whose bonds I claim
In rigid union with Him sweet and stern!

Juan Manuel García Tejada (1774-1845)
tr. from Spanish by Thomas Walsh

The Catholic Anthology: The World's Great Catholic Poetry (revised edition, 1940), ed. Thomas Walsh and George N. Shuster, p. 233.

See also George Barlow: "The Immortal and the Mortal" and John Donne: Holy Sonnets XV.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 03/23/05 06:36:51 AM
Categorized as Literary & Religious.