close your eyes to this world
and contemplate what it is inside
that holds you back from tears
along side Mary, the mother of God
on this the day when creation
held its breath, waiting, heaving
unbelieving that the Son of God
should die.
It should not have been so:
We belong to its travesty.
We belong to two thousand nails
struck hard into knotted wood
crossed and splintered by
ignorance talking, hatefulness walking
on a path rutted by many, many tears.
God, when you hear us
on this day tell us what you meant
by a Savior convulsed and broken,
a little lamb cut down
and laid to rest.
There must have been
some other way
— Mary’s devastation
persuades us so —
unless there is a strength
to submission, a balm
for fear, a dawn in the darkness
unlike any we have ever known.
–The Rev. Colin Mathewson
