A Sign of Contradiction

     Here are the next two poems in Father Donaghy's series of sonnets on the fourteen Stations of the Cross.  I may be wrong about this, but it seems that Christian lyricists these days appropriate the victory before they carry the Cross; or they will rejoice that Jesus bore the bitter wood for our sins, but do not consider that every one of our sins was a thorn upon his brow, or a jagged stone to cut his feet as he fought his slow way up to the Skull Place.  For me, the most moving use of the first person pronoun in any congregational hymn occurs in the haunting Ah, Holy Jesus, to the tune Herzliebster Jesu:

     Who was the guilty?  Who brought this upon thee?
     Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
     'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;
          I crucified thee.

What man in his own right is worth a single drop of blood shed as the lash, weighted with shards of glass and iron, stripped the flesh from Jesus' back?  Yet for such as we are, he bore that lash, the mockery, the crown, the Cross.  In our own right we are that barren fig tree, the great and religious city of Jerusalem, worse than fruitless, because what Jerusalem gave and what we give is the bare stock, the heavy yoke of a dead tree; not only do we fail to give life, we give death.  And, in a wondrous reversal that only the transcendent God could bring about, that same Tree becomes vital, sends its roots down into the history of man, and bears glorious fruit: of the Japanese Catholics martyred by the shoguns at Nagasaki (the poem is written in 1943; it cannot refer to the atom bomb), the priests sent to the gallows at Tyburn by Elizabeth (the writer is, after all, a Jesuit priest), and the missionaries butchered by the Iroquois at Auriesville.

     There's a charming story about the warlord Clovis just before he converted to Christianity.  Hearing of the crucifixion, Clovis set his jaw and said, "Ah, if only I had been there with my Franks!"  Given his continued barbarity after his baptism, I don't suppose Clovis would have been any help at all.  Nor would we have been any help, we Christians.  Let's not fool ourselves.  Had we been there -- what?  Would we have been able to resist the mighty current of the crowd?  In how many ways do we even now, in comfort, without the soldiers and centurions around us, without the threatening glares of scribe and Pharisee, distance ourselves from the embarrassment of the Cross and the pathetic figure beneath it, not to mention the sobbing and inconsolable mother?  We won't be a scandal to a school committee or a coffee klatsch, but we would rise to the occasion and be a scandal to the world?  Hardly -- and that is the bitter insight of the third poem.

II. He Carries His Cross

No parable my heart so cruelly cleaves--
The Prodigal among the snorting hogs,
Nor Lazarus doctored by the kindly dogs,
The stranger beaten, stripped and bruised by thieves,
The thorn-torn Shepherd seeking, as he grieves,
Some lost sheep bleating in the briars and bogs--
Sadder to me than all these analogues,
The fruitless fig-tree stands with leathern leaves.

For this is all the kingly city gives,
A cursed fig-tree; and a tree of blood
Denuded, ribald, it no longer lives,
Bereft of branches, shorn of bark and bud;
And yet its roots are slumbering, vital still,
At Nagasaki, Tyburn, Auriesville.


III. He Falls

The crowd is thrilled to see a fighter downed,
Battered and bloody, sprawled upon the floor,
Like multitudinous surfs upon the shore
Its shout arises; so the sickening sound
Of splintering wood upon the flinty ground
Brings from this mob a swelling, bestial roar.
What though the fall renewed the wounds and tore
His flesh, and jarred His head so crudely crowned.

These worthy citizens are men of name,
Respectable, judicious, just, discreet;
I cannot bear to have them know my shame--
My brother dying in a public street--
And though I hear our mother's choking sob,
I turn and shout "My brothers!" to the mob.

Comments

[Beth]

These are stunning.

I hope someone can find where these have been published so that we can get a copy of the whole set.

I'll be using these as meditations in some of my classes this week.

[James A. Altena]

"For me, the most moving use of the first person pronoun in any congregational hymn occurs in the haunting 'Ah, Holy Jesus', to the tune 'Herzliebster Jesu':"

One of my very favorite text and hymn tune combinations. Keep the sonnets coming!

[DGP]

In case it's of interest to searchers, the Fr. Donaghy in question is Fr. William Andrew Donaghy, S.J.

http://www.holycross.edu/departments/library/website/archives/donaghy.html

A frequent search result will yield *The Questing Spirit," an anthology containing two of Fr. Donaghy's poems from the Stations.

Perhaps somebody near Holy Cross might be willing to dig up local records to see if the complete set was ever published.

[Kathy Hanneman]

One of the things I miss most from my thirty-some years as an Episcopalian (I became Orthodox several years ago) is the congregational singing of "Ah, Holy Jesus" each Good Friday. Those same words that Anthony quoted always brought me close to tears. Alas, I wonder how many churches actually use that hymn anymore. We wouldn't want to damage someone's fragile self-esteem.

[Judy Warner]

We sang it last week, on Passion Sunday. You could always visit a Continuing Anglican church, Kathy, if you want to hear that hymn and the other great hymns from the 1940 hymnal.

[Isamashii Yuubi (Courageous Grace)]

We sang it today, for Palm Sunday. I was trying not to choke up while singing it (as a choir member, it's usually not the best for a singer to choke on her own tears), and had tears streaming down my face the whole hymn. Such a terribly haunting image...

[James A. Altena]

We also sang it today in my parish.

[Fr.D]

Holy Cross very kindly copied all of the Sonnets for me, which I have sent over to Dr.Esolen, so I'm sure you stand a chance of seeing all of them here.

Fr.David Standen

[Fr.D]

The complete set of Sonnets is available at http://mahwahreview.blogspot.com/

[Beth]

Blessings on you, Fr. D., and thanks so much to Holy Cross!