The pain. The PAIN!
His ravaged flesh, deft scourging-torn,
AFLAME
With raging PAIN!
Upon the Cross
His wasted frame
To spastic shock a prey!
To swarming flies
A feast! a prize! Beelzebub’s gleeful game?
Christ’s throat afire with rampant thirst!
His hands, His feet,
With hungry nails fierce-bitten through,
Athrob
With pulsing pain!
With pulsing, pounding PAIN!
No respite won
For a weariness deep!
Now the very LOVE that had brought Him here
Found itself the sport of the crowd!
That jeering, scoffing, insolent mob
Whose taunting played sequel
To the soldiers’ scorn,
Who pressed, pressed down
On His spit-wreathed head
A crown
Of piercing thorn!
And while the mockery of the many
Was more than countered by the few
Whose courageous love and loyalty
Won the grace that led them to
The Cross
And held them there
Until the very end,
Thus proffered a modicum of comfort
To their Saviour-God and Friend,
Was not such comfort as such friends could bring
Offset by the reach, by the mighty fling
Of a VISION sprung
From a Mind
Divine?
For in Christ God’s nature and that of Man
Are most wondrously entwined!
Such bonding, wrought,
Naught can turn unfraught!
Not Death itself such bonding can untwine!
So it was that in the wake
Of an onslaught of pain foreseen,
Whose ferocity, brute, implacable,
Stabbing deep, made its thrusts felt keen,
Its assault evoking a massive sweat,
A cascade of our Saviour’s blood,
There passed through Christ’s Mind
A parade foreknown,
Vast multitudes strong, an exsurgent flood
— yet for all of that, each person shown
with singularities clear, distinct —
Such who in ages to come with a cold disdain
Would spurn
His offer of LOVE!
And would find in such spurning
No path of return
From their nonchalant saunter towards hell,
Where in the depth of the horrors
Awaiting them there
Foe’s dark caprice
Will obeisance compel!
To which suff’ring add further:
Lost grandeur supreme,
Forgone splendid sharing
In a Splendour Sublime!
For all such
The grim pain
Endured on the Cross
Would prove suffered, alas! in vain!
Past the telling Christ’s grief at their loss!
To all this in reply passed His lips a sigh,
A reluctant “so be it,” deferential to choice.
Then with a voice scant-impaired
By of sleep so little while of pain so much
He proclaimed aloud:
“Father forgive them! For they know not what they do!”
And then: “It is finished!”,
His labors and sufferings done!
Then He breathed forth His spirit
Into His Father’s hands,
Not as the servant submissive to a master’s commands
But as off’ring a free gift of LOVE
From Commensurate Begotten to Omniponent Sire.
All this forewilled ere the earth was made,
Ere Satan’s hosts stood within the fire,
Athwart God’s plan, God’s plea for LOVE!
Then His followers, grieving, took Him down
From the Cross,
Overseen by His grief-stricken Mother,
Who kissed
His thorn-crowned head.
Then they laid Him, enswathed, in a patron’s tomb
And, one by one,
Took reluctant leave,
Most of them crushed, dispirited, despondent,
Hopes once held high plunged deep into gloom;
For the One they had thought could never die
Endless hours set aside to grieve.
But such was not to be.
In three days, as He said,
He arose from the dead
To a glory, a triumph that forever endures,
A triumph in which His loving-kindness ensures
A share to all who stand firm at His side,
Steadfast and true to the end!
Lord Christ, grant that I,
Found my friendship shortfallen,
My service slipshod
—such the reading from the gentlest of tests—
May lay claim nonetheless to Your Mercy,
As denounced, so renounced
Rebel pride!
Grant, so it please You, the gift of forgiveness
With perseverance pressing on to the end!
So that at my judgment I may hear You say:
“Friend, come! Stand at My Right Side”!
