Anaphora of Basil the Late

Poetry, VOLUME 12 Lectionary Poetry – Christmas Week 2 (Year A) December 30, 2019 3:19 pmViews: 490 With the dawn of a new church year, we are launching a new feature on our website, a weekly post of poetry that resonates with the lectionary readings for that week (Revised Common Lectionary). Lectionary Reading: Ephesians 1:3-14 Anaphora of Basil the Late Scott Cairns Found in Anaphora: Poems O Holy. O Holy Silent Father Inexpressive. O Mother All Compassionate. O Most Adorable and, yea, allegedly, Most Adoring! O Most Still! We deem it proper, meet, and right enough to speak to You more or less directly—duly or not assuming some interest on your part. We speak to You concerning much You must already know. We often praise the majesty of Your holiness, knowing next to naught of holiness; of holiness we possess scant context. Regardless, we dare to praise You for the sometime sweetness of the many gifts apparently bestowed, and—despite our more common habits of complaint—we praise You, giddy, and blinking still at the intermittent, quiet, subtle, altogether inexplicable pulse of joy rising, compensating recurrent daily pain. We acknowledge that we should yet exalt Your dear, capacious names, Your One and Holy Name. We hasten yet to bless You, worship You, offer meager thanks to You, and glorify You, the God Who is, Who is, Who alone occasions life, insofar as we can say. We apprehend with contrite heart, humble spirit, that we should pledge to You our will, our wits, our breath, for it is You Who have thus far deigned to bestow on us some little bit of truth. Who among us can speak of all Your mighty works or of your silence? Who make Your praises heard? Who can tell of the odd miracle at sundry times or Your famous disinclination to meddle in ways detectable? O Master of All, of heaven and earth and of all dim created beings, both the apparent and undisclosed, You sit upon the throne of glory, look upon all depths. You are invisible, unknowable, ineffable, without beginning, without change, Fathering our Lord Jesus Christ, our God, our Savior, Whom we call our Hope, Who—in Himself—reveals You, our Maker. In Himself, He proves the living, Unwritten Word, true God, Wisdom before time, through Whom has come the Holy Spirit to be revealed, which Spirit remains the Spirit of Truth, the Gift of our late, filial adoption, pledge of an inheritance yet to arrive. Despite our grim, our gloom, remember us. from Anaphora: Poems by Scott Cairns Copyright © 2018 by Scott Cairns Used by permission of Paraclete Press www.paracletepress.com <<<<<< PREV. POEM | NEXT POEM >>>>>>