Come Lord and help your people, bought with the price of your own blood, and bring us with your saints to glory everlasting.[i]
In our last post, we wrote about the importance of recovering the capacity to see. With the philosopher Josef Pieper we considered the concern that exists for the fact that human beings are beginning to lose the ability to see because of the modern inundation of noise and images. This limits our ability to take in and make appropriate judgments about the reality we see; it inhibits our natural capacity for pondering beauty and for contemplation of the truth.
This post is an opportunity to look at a stirring poem by St. John of the Cross that has been translated into English. St. John of the Cross wrote this poem, called Romance, with nine sections that span from the inner life of the Trinity through creation and into the Incarnation. I have chosen the selection, Of the Creation: Romance V, because I think it particularly apropos for our time. The cry of humanity from the depths of the human soul after the fall, through the patriarchs, even up to today begs for the coming of the Kingdom in its fullness. As you ponder these words of St. John of the Cross, let that desire become your own.
With the blest hope of this union
Coming to them from on high,
All the tedium of their labor
Seem to glide more lightly by.
But the length of endless waiting
And the increase of desire
To enjoy the blessed Bridegroom
Was to them affliction dire.
So they made continual prayer
With sighs of piteous dismay,
And with groans and lamentations
Pleaded with him night and day.
That he would decide with them
To share His company at last.
‘Oh if but this thing could happen,’
They cried, before our time be past.
Others cried: ‘Come Lord and end it!
Him You have promised, send Him now!’
Others: ‘If only You would sunder
Those skies, and to my sight allow
‘The vision of Yourself descending
To make my lamentations cease;
Cloud in the height, rain down upon us
That the earth may find release.
‘Let the earth be cleft a wide open
That bore us thorns so sharp and sour
And now at last produce the Blossom
With which it was ordained to flower.’
Others said: ‘Oh happy people
Who will be living in those years
And will deserve to see the Bridegroom
With their own eyes when he appears:
‘Who with their own hands then will touch him,
And walking friendship by his side,
And there enjoying the sacred mysteries,
That in his reign He will provide.’ [ii]
Image Credits:
van Cleve, Joos. Presentation of Jesus Christ at the Temple. May 25, 2017. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cleve_Presentation_in_the_Temple_(detail)_02.jpg.
[i] “Te Deum.” iBreviary. Accessed November 25, 2020. http://www.ibreviary.com/m2/preghiere.php?tipo=Preghiera.
[ii] Saint John of the Cross. “Of the Creation: Romance V.” Essay. In St John of the Cross Poems: with a Translation by Roy Campbell, translated by Roy Campbell, 80–83. London: Penguin, 1951.
