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The Passion:
On the Passion of Christ
by Thomas à Kempis |
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Passages, Preaching, Poems, Prayers:
Holy Week - Palm Sunday through Holy Saturday
And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull, they gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.
And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots. . .And sitting down they watched him there…
Matthew 27:33-36
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.
Lamentations 1:12
From “The Blind Watchers at the Cross”
Any one who looks at that cross, and sees nothing but a pure and perfect man dying upon it, is very nearly as blind as the Roman legionaries. Any one to whom it is only an example of perfect innocence and patient suffering has only seen an inch into the Infinite; and the depths of it are as much concealed from him as they were from them. Any one who looks with an unmoved heart, without one thrill of gratitude, is nearly as blind as the rough soldiers.
He that looks and does not say—
‘My faith would lay her hand
On that dear head of Thine;
While like a penitent I stand
And there confess my sin,'
has not learned more of the meaning of the Cross than they did. And any one who looks to it, and then turns away and forgets, or who looks at it and fails to recognise in it the law of his own life and pattern for his own conduct, has yet to see more deeply into it before he sees even such portion of its meaning as here we can apprehend. Oh! dear friends, we all of us, as the apostle says in one of his letters, have had this Christ ‘manifestly set forth before us as if painted upon a placard upon a wall' (for that is the meaning of the picturesque words that he employs). And if we look with calm, unmoved hearts; if we look without personal appropriation of that Cross and dying love to ourselves, and if we look without our hearts going out in thankfulness and laying themselves at His feet in a calm rapture of life-long devotion, then we need not wonder that four ignorant heathen men sat and looked at Him for four long hours and saw nothing, for we are as blind as ever they were.
Alexander MacLaren
Palm Sunday:
Lord, Come Away
Lord, come away!
Why dost Thou stay?
Thy road is ready; and Thy paths, made straight
With longing expectation, wait
The consecration of Thy beauteous feet.
Ride on triumphantly:
behold we lay
Our lusts and proud wills in Thy way.
Hosanna!
Welcome to our hearts: Lord, here
Thou hast a temple too; and full as dear
As that of Sion, and as full of sin—
Nothing but thieves and robbers dwell therein;
Enter, and chase them forth, and cleanse the floor!
Crucify them, that they may never more
Profane that holy place
Where Thou hast chose to set Thy face.
And then, if our stiff tongues shall be
Mute in the praises of Thy Deity,
The stones out of the temple wall
Shall cry aloud and call
Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna!
And Thy glorious footsteps greet!
Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)
Gethsemane:
The most famous poem of the American poet Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) is “The Marshes of Glynn,” which was the fourth poem in a sequence entitled “Hymns of the Marshes.” Perhaps his next best-known poem is “The Ballad of Trees and the Master.” But it is not well known that Lanier originally conceived and published this latter poem as an interlude in the first of the “Hymns of the Marshes” entitled “Sunrise.” Though, for some reason, he removed the ballad from “Sunrise ,” which some consider his greatest poem, we think the ballad's message is deepened when read in its original place.
On the second page of “Sunrise” Lanier communes with the comforting leaves of the trees that surround him in the marsh. Then his thoughts turn to Jesus and the Mount of Olives.
Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms,
Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms,
Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves,
Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves,
Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain me
Wisdom ye winnow from winds that pain me,—
Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet
That advise me of more than they bring, —repeat
Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought breath
From the heaven-side bank of the river of death, —
Teach me the terms of silence, —preach me
The passion of patience, —sift me, —impeach me, —
And there, oh there
As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air,
Pray me a myriad prayer.
Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.
Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
‘Twas on a tree they slew Him—last
When out of the woods He came.
Sidney Lanier (1842-1881)
The Crucifixion:
Good Friday
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky.
A horror of great darkness at broad noon—
I, only I.
Yet give not o'er
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.
Christina Rossetti, 1830-1894
By virtue of Thy victory give us also, I entreat Thee, victory.
Let Thy pierced Heart win us to love Thee,
Thy torn Hands incite us to every good work,
Thy wounded Feet urge us on errands of mercy,
Thy crown of thorns prick us out of sloth,
Thy thirst draw us to thirst after the Living Water Thou givest.
Let Thy Life be our pattern while we live,
And Thy death our triumph over death when we come to die.
Amen.
Christina Rossetti, 1830-1894
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