Evening confession.
Outpourings of a blind old Greek with a Jew's heart,
rich in his poverty,
owning nothing but his own sinfulness,
seeking no one but the Eternal,
even knowing that finding Him
is the losing of himself.
The end of all things is nigh,
but not as prophesied by bibliolators
or boasted by Sabine women clothed in the sun
who use the moon as a swing.
The dragon that seeks to swallow the Man Child
is not the same as the dragon
whose year has just begun,
that harmless creature
who carries the Son of Heaven home
when his mandate is foreclosed.
Infinite Mercy stands waiting,
hidden behind our walls, to reveal Himself,
at every moment knowing exactly where we need Him most,
and why we are in need.
He does not wait as we wait.
He is ready when we call,
echoing unknowingly His calling us.
His forgiveness covers even our audacity
in believing we are God,
that we do not need Him,
that our freedom originates in ourselves.
His salvation in bathing us
does not drown us in the process,
but makes us clean again,
forgetting our uncleanness forever.
Yes, and the Woman clothed with the sun,
yes, we will find out exactly who She is.
x
The Word of God written in two tongues,
Hebrew and Greek,
two languages
could not be more different from each other,
the one grounded in bedrock,
the other rushing ahead of the irresistible wind
that sends men to seek life on the high ‘seas of leaving,’
yes, leaving all behind,
yet losing nothing.
Christ the divine Man and the human God,
mortised in the granite of eternity, yet supple
to bear the only nourishing fruit that can make us immortal:
He is what all religion that is true leads us into.
Everything else is mere barbaric yawp.
Holy Triad the mystery,
Sotiría the progression,
Théosis the perfection.
How can we ascend by our own wings?
Only as the angels,
whose wings are ‘not made by human hands,’
but by the Most-High,
only as the angels can we approach the Son without melting.
Yes, ‘we can know God easily
so long as we do not feel it necessary to define Him.’
Lord,
help us to learn to speak Your language,
Your words,
and purify us thereby,
by the Spirit
in whom we live and move and have our being.
Teach us,
only Rabbi of mankind,
the meaning of Your words we utter.
Satisfy us with the wild rock honey,
let our crowns burst into flower.
x
