Thursday, December 26, 2019

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


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