I'm posting a poem and a picture for each day of Holy Week this year. Today Good Friday falls on the Feast of the Annunciation, when Gabriel appeared to Mary. Today's poem was written on a similar Good Friday, and I've heard many people talking about it already today. If you're full-up on this poem already, let me direct you to Donne's other (maybe better) Good Friday poem, here.
But if not, please direct your attention to this beauty. (As my priest pointed out this morning: the gorgeous wording is Donne's, but the amazing content was all put there in the world by God Himself.)
Upon The Annunciation and Passion Falling Upon One Day, 1608
by John Donne
Tamely, frail body, abstain to-day; to-day
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees Him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came, and went away.
She sees Him nothing, twice at once, who’s all;
She sees a Cedar plant itself, and fall;
Her Maker put to making, and the Head
Of life, at once, not yet alive, yet dead.
She sees at once the Virgin Mother stay
Reclused at home, public at Golgotha;
Sad and rejoiced she’s seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty, and at scarce fifteen.
At once a Son is promised her, and gone;
Gabriell gives Christ to her, He her to John;
Not fully a mother, She’s in orbity;
At once receiver and the legacy.
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
Th’ abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one–
As in plain maps, the furthest west is east–
Of th’ angels Ave, and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God’s Court of Faculties
Deals, in sometimes, and seldom joining these!
As by the self-fix’d Pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where th’other is, and which we say
–Because it strays not far–doth never stray;
So God by His Church, nearest to Him, we know
And stand firm, if we by her motion go;
His Spirit, as His fiery pillar, doth
Leade, and His Church, as cloud; to one end both.
This Church, by letting those days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one;
Or ’twas in Him the same humility,
That He would be a man, and leave to be;
Or as creation He hath made, as God,
With the last judgement, but one period,
His imitating Spouse would join in one
Manhood’s extremes: He shall come, He is gone;
Or as though one blood drop, which thence did fall,
Accepted, would have served, He yet shed all,
So though the least of His pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords;
This treasure then, in gross, my soul, uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.
