TOTAL VIRGIN

TOTAL VIRGIN

“She was a virgin even of herself.” – Père Francoise OCD

In a house of mirrors that coveted her image

she never walked

with her own beauty

nor made a feast of her goodness,

inviting friends from the far and wide.

She never sat down with her own innocence

to dialogue together,

nor called a stranger in

to sit at her hearth and be glorified.

She was a maiden promised to one lover

whom she was always seeking.

Though he hid in her heartbeat and settled himself

behind her breath,

he was distance, too.  Journeys dwindled to places

beside her own, and miles melted beneath

her steps of wanting.  She could by-pass all

meadows that trap us with their poisonous flowers

and their soliciting pools

and winding lanes that skirt the only death.

She was out on a road alone, hastening onward,

gathering  all as a gift, the small and great

fragments of mystery and reality.

Everything was for Him, even her own being.

Since love marks neither measurement nor weight

she carried all, without touching or tasting.

Life, which comes as a virgin to us all,

most safely came to her.

Time, when she passed, remained inviolate.

                                                            (1976; 1984)

Jessica Powers (Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit OCD)

From: The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers.  Page 57.

Published by ICS Publications, Washingon DC.

All copyrights, Carmelite Monastery, Milwaukee, WI.

Used with permission.

THE POOL OF GOD

THE POOL OF GOD

There was nothing in the Virgin’s soul

that belonged to the Virgin –

no word, no thought, no image, no intent.

She was a pure, transparent pool reflecting

God, only God.

She held His burnished day; she held His night

of planet-glow or shade inscrutable.

God was her sky and she who mirrored Him

became His firmament.

When I so much as turn my thoughts toward her

my spirit is enisled in her repose.

And when I gaze into her selfless depths

an anguish in me grows

to hold such blueness and to hold such fire.

I pray to hollow out my earth and be

filled with these waters of transparency.

I think that one could die of this desire,

seeing oneself dry earth or stubborn sod.

Oh, to become a pure pool like the Virgin,

water that lost the semblances of water

and was a sky like God.

                                                                                                            (1950;1984)

                                                            Jessica Powers (Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit OCD)

                                                            From: The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers. Page 63.

                                                                         Published by ICS Publications, Washington, D.C.

                                                                        All copyrights, Carmelite Monastery, Milwaukee, WI.                                                                                                  Used with permission

THE IMMACULATE HEART

THE IMMACULATE HEART
Light is intensely the inhabitant

of this unsullied place of consecration,

the  Virgin’s heart.  Light is itself the air

and firmament and sea and foliage.

Her thoughts are Godward mirrors, one in their

orientation.

I enter this pure area where light

dwells by divine election, and I go

into the long noon of her adoration

where an eternal silence drifts like snow.

There are no words here save the Word of God,

pondered on without syllable or stir,

nor do I speak, save by determined presence.

I kneel down in the Virgin’s radiation

and gaze at God with her.

                                               

Jessica Powers (Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit OCD)

From: The House at Rest, page 47.

Published by the Carmelite Monastery, Milwaukee, WI. 

All copyrights, Carmelite Monastery, Milwaukee, WI.

Used with permission

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MARIAN PRAISE READERS

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MARIAN PRAISE READERS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9VyT9sY_Dc

With thanks to Youtube

A CHRISTMAS PRAYER

A CHRISTMAS PRAYER

Across the miles, dear friend, I send

a shining Christmas prayer

wrapped in a flame of starlight

and blue-white crystal air.

It sings of a royal Baby

with heaven in His eyes,

of little eager gestures

and glances angel-wise.

It sings of a darling Lady

whose smile is shadowed sun,

telling of Love’s sweet loving

and a grief it has begun.

It sings the noble quiet

of rough, brown, tender hands

whose wealth is their great yearning

to do her dear commands.

And when this prayer has reached you,

Oh, tell the Glorious Three

that you have received my message,

and send one back to me.

Sister Michael Marie IWBS

Sign.  December 1946

“BEHOLD, WE GO UP –"

“BEHOLD, WE GO UP –“

We who companion Christ brave death with Him

and seal upon our souls His tragic story;

as Mary pondered on no golden dream,

but a clear vision, tinged with blood and glory.

Yet in Gethsemane we fall asleep

but a stone’s throw from where His blood is sweat,

or seek the fires of an outer court

and all our vaunted loyalties forget.

O Mary, sure of sight and strong of soul,

lend us thy constancy in seeing far.

Fulfil of sorrowing our mystic seven;

redeem our holocaust and make it whole

lest the night find us, clutching some cold star,

slain in the very vestibule of heaven.

Sister M Michael SSJ

Spirit.  September 1949

Used with permission

TO THE QUEEN OF DOLOURS

TO THE QUEEN OF DOLOURS

Seven times seven

the beads I toll, [1]

chiming the music of your griefs

about my soul.

Long since my sires

and their sires before

changed their charms against the storm,

against the hoar.

Charm for the foal,

a charm against rain

potent potion for the new-bud life, and

woman in pain.

Poor were my sires

with never a bead

to fling at the Ivory Tower  [2]

and cry their need.

Seven times seven                                                                   the beads I press,

succour the seed of my sires, Queen,                                  

in this distress.                                                                         

                                                                                   

Sister Maura SSND

Initiate the heart.  1946

Used with permission

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[1] This is a reference to the dolours rosary, which consists of seven sets of seven beads.  Each set represents one of the seven sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

[2] “Tower of Ivory” is one of the titles of praise used in the Litany to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The poet is sorrowful because her pagan ancestors, though loyal to their own pagan deities, were deprived of the solace she finds in turning to God’s mother for comfort.

THIS SIDE OF THE CLOISTER

THIS SIDE OF THE CLOISTER

This is not a background picturesque;

(flats and sets) for cloister garth in novel or in play:

suggestion of the medieval in the costume; frustration in the spirit;

“sad and serene” in a half-resisted, half-desired hideaway.

Curl of a copper-foil moon

On a Christmas tree; no stars.  The starched white frame

Of wimple and of veil a cyclotron

Where ash-gray, jewel wings cavort in candle flame

Warm, stammering light.

The nuns walk in processional

Between the hydrangea blossoms cowled in heat,

Crisp holly and smooth-leaved rhododendron shrubs.

Twigs and broken brush snap like puppies at the slow-paced feet;

Wax melts to candle wyvern [1] and to gargoyle.

The nuns pray, “Hail Mary ... Holy Mary ...”

And the valley prays; the tennis court; the parking lot;

Terrace and lawn and road; the sweet gum prays;

The hawthorn; Spanish oak; yew and maple trees; the knot

Of new-born mockingbirds nestling in the lime; a family of owls,

The squirrels, the kitten and the dog.  “Hail Mary full of grace ... Holy Mary ...”

This is nothing like the neat enclosure

(sets and flats) of Spanish “Cradle Song,” or – French and quaint –

the nuns of “Cyrano de Bergerac.”  These are not nuns of time or place,

but God.

Queen and Lady, though nuns and night and prayer

Are mummers at your throne, it is you who walk with them,

It is you who carry light – a quiet semaphore to God;

It is your country lane they walk; your Bethlehem;

Your Nazareth; Gethsemane; and Ephesus.

Lady, it is your silence

In which they walk back to the cloister, to stifling cell

-          and hot and heavy muslin of the bed.

Lady, it is your joy

That rocks the campus like a cradle

through the summer night, so that the Little Boy

(still in exile) does not weep,

but laughs in His Father’s providence, and falls

(as Péguy [2] says men should) content to sleep.

Sister Maura SSND

Spirit.  1953-54

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[1] monstrous image

[2] Charles Péguy (1873-1914), Catholic writer, publisher and poet.  His works include a collection of poems in praise of the Blessed Virgin.

THE VIRGIN MOTHER

THE VIRGIN MOTHER

This is the Virgin Mother.  How young she is.

Only as old as prophecy: seven swords ...

and the Child for the rise and fall of many; [1] as

young as the joy of mothering God.  No words

On her lips, but the eyes lowered to the Child in her arms,

And children to the last generation of all.  The veil

And hair blown back by desert simoom, the storms

Of heat and sand swirling past the Nile.

But everything is tranquil in this carven face,

This woman’s poise, these cradling hands that hold

Redemption like a Little One.  Peace

Is the triumph of faith.  If the virginal veil is belled

To the winds, the heart is undisturbed.  And I,

Kneeling, read this braille – wood, and know why.

Sister Maura SSND

Spiritual Life.  1959.  Used with permission

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[1] Luke II:34

PRAYER

PRAYER

Once I looked up: Hail Mary.  It means

Ave Maria, 1 & 2.  A quote

from Poe? [1]  or Scott [2] has some romantic lines

on it.  No.  Schubert, [3] of course.  Trite

as melodies go, but good for popular appeal.

1. the salutation of the angel;  2.

 one of the small beads on a rosary.  That is all

      the dictionary tells.  My mother knew

another meaning.  She gave it to me with

singing, skipping, laughing, listening, and waiting

for birthdays.  She read the tidings to me, breath

gentled to the sound of Gabriel’s greeting.

Hail Mary.  Two words to say and know

God walked in Paradise and thought of you.

Sister Maura SSND

Spirit.  1967-1968

Used with permission

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[1] Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) wrote a Marian praise poem entitled “Hymn”.

[2] Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) wrote a Marian praise poem entitled “Ave Maria”.  It is found in Canto IV of  “The Lady of the Lake”.

[3] The composer Franz Schubert ( 1797-1828) set the “Ave Maria” by Scott in its German translation to music.  The composition to this day enjoys great popular appeal.