Holy Thursday 2007

To Our Lord in the Sacrament

Hail! Christ's pure Body—born of the Holy Virgin—
   Living flesh, and true Man, and perfect Godhead!
Hail! Fount of health, of life—the Way, the world's redemption—
   Thy mighty right hand free us from all evil!

Hail! Christ's pure Blood. Hail! hallowed Draught of Heaven,
   Life-giving Wave that cleanseth all offenses!
From Christ's own Heart—while on the Cross He dieth—
   Thou gushest forth! O, hail! Fount of salvation!

St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)
tr. from Latin by Romano Rios, OSB

The Catholic Anthology: The World's Great Catholic Poetry (1940), ed. Thomas Walsh and George N. Shuster, p. 47.

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Corpus Christi

Come, dear Heart!
The fields are white to harvest: come and see
As in a glass the timeless mystery
Of love, whereby we feed
On God, our bread indeed.
Torn by the sickles, see him share the smart
Of travailing Creation: maimed, despised,
Yet by his lovers the more dearly prized
Because for us he lays his beauty down—
Last toll paid by Perfection for our loss!
Trace on these fields his everlasting Cross,
And o'er the stricken sheaves the Immortal Victim's crown.

From far horizons came a Voice that said,
"Lo! from the hand of Death take thou thy daily bread."
Then I, awakening, saw
A splendour burning in the heart of things:
The flame of living love which lights the law
Of mystic death that works the mystic birth.
I knew the patient passion of the earth,
Maternal, everlasting, whence there springs
The Bread of Angels and the life of man.

Now in each blade
I, blind no longer, see
The glory of God's growth: know it to be
An earnest of the Immemorial Plan.
Yea, I have understood
How all things are one great oblation made:
He on our altars, we on the world's rood.
Even as this corn,
Earth-born,
We are snatched from the sod;
Reaped, ground to grist,
Crushed and tormented in the Mills of God,
And offered at Life's hands, a living Eucharist.

Evelyn Underhill (Mrs. Stuart Moore) (b. 1875)

The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917), ed. D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee, pp. 530f.

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Holy Sonnets XIV

Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue,
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie,
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

John Donne

The Complete English Poems (1985), ed. C. A. Patrides, p. 443.

(See also modernized.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/05/07 05:52:14 AM
Categorized as Literary & Religious.