The Christ of St. John of the Cross

Down toward the beauteous water, mountains, air,

This mercy straining,

This love that pleasures to have told itself

Even (and most of all) in agony,

Carved from the wood to find a prayer, 

Oh, any prayer to hear and answer,

Tortured with ripeness and yet held to a tree.

This love that shouts with a God’s cry for the 

right to loose itself, to be redeeming,

Painfully, brokenly,

Pleading to let its godhood drop like blood, 

soak like blood 

into the souls of all doomed creatures

Whom its own hand set free.

O Jesus, Jesus, bound Divinity...

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD

(Jessica Powers)