If we picture him, as so many do,
seated with the red inquisitors,
seeking heretics in each closet,
proud in righteousness and judgment,

we must not silence in memory the man
who fought with truth as his sharp weapon
and never took a place of power
but kept his mouth a flaming torch;

or the humble priest who heard
the Pope sadly declare that no
longer can we say that silver
and gold have we none (Dominic

knew this to be true; he knew
the stumbling block of bishops’ gold),
quipped that it was also true that
we could not say: Rise and walk.

And if his house upon the hill
was by later brigands burgled
in a quest for holy weapons,
let us still remember this:

the priest who travelled many miles
with his flaming torch in hand
and debated until daybreak
with a burning, reasoning love.

Who was he, do you think, when he shone there that day,

whiter than all the world’s bleach could make him,

when we climbed up the mountain and he was ablaze

and our hearts were dilated within us?

Why was he joined up there, on that stark mountain-top

with those prophets, Elijah and Moses,

who stood there and talked like the oldest of friends

or like servants receiving their orders?

And who then were we three as we stood there and watched,

three ignorant fools stunned with blindness?

Who were we to see such a mighty spectacle,

like three swines gobbling up the finest pearls?

And then what said that voice that boomed there like the ground

was a-shaking with heaven’s vibrations?

When it called him God’s Son, this bright-shining-day Lord,

did our hearts comprehend what it meant then?

I.
David tore his clothes and cried
to God for mercy, though his sin

had dwelt within the heart of him
for many days and years.

For God had said through Nathan that
the sins that he had kept in private

would be shown throughout the lands
when his enemy would take

King David’s wives and take his bed,
and in the King’s now broken mind

a silent cry to future days:
Oh Absalom, my son…

II.
The people cried:
We have no food;
why did we leave
fair Egypt to
starve within this
wilderness?

But God said, Look
to heaven; see
the bread I will
rain down for you.
And from the sky
fell bread and quail,
bread like frost and
quail like rain.

The people ate
and had their fill,
yet in their hearts
they did not long
to eat the bread
of heaven.

III.
Have mercy on me, God, he cried.
Against You only have I sinned.

He had no sacrifice to give
save his broken, contrite heart.

A broken, beaten spirit You
my God will not despise, he said,

and God who broke the bread of life
and saw in every battered heart

lifted up the one bowed low,
did not despise his sacrifice.

IV.
The people followed him around
eagerly in hope for more
bread like he had showered down
on them as they had gathered round,
the pushing, shoving, crowd of thousands
hanging on his words and yet
far keener just to eat his bread.

You come to me for food, he said.
You ate my bread and want some more.
Don’t you know? You think Moses
gave your fathers bread to eat.
Truly, I say unto you:
my Father is the one who gives
the one true bread of heaven.

They did not know of what he spoke,
did not yet see his eyes uplifted
as he broke the bread and gave
thanks for it and passed it round
the crowd of sinners who sat there
at the table of his grace.

Where others had forsaken heaven’s king
on gaining earthly kingdoms or had fled
further into their monastic realm,
Oswald, son of Aethelfrith, though gaining lands
that reached out far and wide, did not forget
the kingdom that no human eye could see.

And one day, so Bede relates, he sat
at table with a silver dish full of dainties
and hearing of the many needy ones
around and begging in the streets for alms,
gave orders for the meat to be cut up
and spread out far and wide among them all.

A bishop sitting then with him laid hold
of his right hand, so Bede says, and blessed
that hand that it might never age or wither.
The story goes that when he died
Oswald’s hand remained yet uncorrupted;
whether true or not, we cannot tell,

Nor can we know for sure if in the field
where Oswald was struck down by pagan kings
infirm men and cattle were there healed.
Our eyes too quickly look for human signs
of greatness, fall in traps like all the kings
who bowed to human lords before they could

Hold in their minds what only faith could see:
the kingdom without border and without
the signs of death or age, and spanning all
human ages and all lands on earth,
the kingdom which King Oswald, rare among
earthly rulers, bowed to as he reigned.

Today the church remembers a French priest of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jean-Baptiste-Marie-Vianney, who helped restore the church after the French Revolution.

Poem for John Baptist Vianney

The years since he had hidden from
The army he’d deserted
Had seen the people dance amidst
The decadence of peace.

The little Corsican Emperor,
Falling down at Waterloo,
Had still this victory to his name:
The church had fallen too.

Sinking with this armistice,
A voice that no revellers heard,
It told them that there was no peace
Between these whitewashed walls.

And so Jean-Baptiste Vianney,
Though weak in voice, they say,
Called out from the wilderness,
Called out to all who’d hear,

To bring fruits meet for repentance,
To listen to the call of peace,
A peace no Emperor could defeat,
Nor Guillotine could kill.

If they believed as through a cloud
or through the mist, tenaciously
clinging onto prodigious light
and glimpses of the city through
the haziness of law and death;

If they lay like Jacob on
their deathbeds, prophesying of
what great lions would grow from
the children he had raised and how
Egypt soon would fade to Canaan;

If they fell like Moses on
that other side of Jordan with
the hope that hope though now deferred
was only rivers from fulfillment,
though they never saw hope’s towers;

Do we who live on the right side
of the law’s now lifting veil
fall like Simeon and Anna, say:
Now dismiss us, Lord, Your servants;
we have now seen our salvation?

I have won the smiles of
the lofty and the proud.
I have had the high priest’s ear,
won favour all around.

Before the Sabbath, I will take
Your hanging body down.

I was righteous by the law;
I have sealed my own defence.
I have stood against them all
and had my words hurled down.

Before Your throne, I will bow down;
I have no other Lord.

So I will clear this garden for You;
I will open up this tomb.
I will cleanse Your body and
offer it this waiting room.

Before I rest, I will bury
all that I held dear before.
Before the night falls, I will nail
my future to Your tree.

For, though our bodies must be trained
and strengthened to withstand the stress
of life and all its straining days,

and though our hearts and lungs must learn
the best rhythm, the smoothest flow,
learnt through all our daily drills,

our spirits too must learn to tell
the good from ill and the true
from that which can but be corrupt,

and all our slumping days must turn
to backs upraised with eager hearts
pumping and enlivening

unless in slackness we grow slouched
and flab and dross drag down our souls,
pulling our deadweight to ground.

He bubbled full of divine joy;
His picture always smiles.
Though overburdened with the world,
He danced on Clapham’s green.

His house was always full of guests;
His table overflowed.
He chased his children round the room
And coughed a quiet knell.

He called for Sunday to consume
Our tokenistic hearts.
He said his piece to one and all
And ran his body dry.

While others went to Opera Night,
He spoke to silent rooms
And voted till his conscience bled
And set the captives free.

He lived without compartments in
His heart or in his home;
What grace had overflowed within
He poured into the world.