Monday - Easter weekday
Resurrections just don't happen, and because
Of this God made some images that show
Us what one might be like; revealing loss
Is often really gain. The imago
Of which a butterfly will duly crawl,
A limp insipid thing at first, but then
(Could you doubt it, Thomas? Yes: so could we all)
It pumps with vital blood and lives again.
And let us not forget, more vital yet
The little resurrections day by day:
The progress by a kid in bottom set;
A sense of God when you've no time to pray.
If Easter's to mean anything at all
To us, it's here - in playground, class and hall.
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Tuesday - St. Peter Chanel
All of the things we've wanted to do or be
for good or ill
are plotted,
Scattered incompatibly on life's graph.
Up here is the priest, the bishop, the bush-doctor,
the poet and painter; the sage and the saint
And down there, the rake
the raver, the rabble-rouser
Also marking their crosses on these
Intersecting lines of time and place
Are things to which we never aspired
And those we continue to fear.
The messy divorce, the estranged child,
the disappointing career
the hard rain during the long run
The kids who want to find our lessons fun, but don't
The faith that makes both all the difference,
and next to none.
And God takes all these points
sprawled in apparent chaos
And draws through them
a line of best fit.
Not, as we think, a compromise
But a figure of near perfection
scored through the clutter of our lives.
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Wednesday - St, Catherine of Siena
Like a deep deep sea
The more I seek you
The more I find
And the more I find you
The more I seek
Like a deep abyss
You fill my soul
And the more you fill
The deeper the abyss
And the deeper the abyss
the more I'm filled
You are the light
in which I see my image
And the brighter that image
The more I reflect you
And the more I reflect you
The brighter is that light
And in this light I know you
As good beyond all good
Beauty beyond beauty
Wisdom past all wisdom
A fire ever burning
But never consuming
A fire, a fire of love.
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Thursday - Pope St. Pius V
"On this rock I will build my church," you said
And with rocks and stones and broken bones
The body of Christ is bludgeoned
In crusade, inquisition, sectarian strife.
"I give you the keys of my kingdom," you said
And those keys lock the cell of the living hell
Felt by those who aren't welcomed
And fail to conform, who don't fit to the norm.
Yet the rock, Christ, still stands
Though the church shifts like sands
And those keys still set free
All who seek honestly.
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Friday - St. Joseph the Worker
The burden of our work makes us so tired:
Remind us what it's like to be inspired.
At Joseph's side you learned to fashion wood:
May the minds we fashion learn all that is good.
At Joseph's side you learned the very skill
That made the cross on which you would be killed.
When our work seems too great a cross to bear
Carry it beside us: be always there.
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