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Sonnets to Enhance the Lectionary Based on the Gospel Readings (Lent Year B) by The Venerable Harold Macdonald |
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Ash Wednesday
My heart is ready, Yes! My heart is ready! like a desert I am parched. My soul of sand soaks up the rain at once is dry again, and the inner fount of life is rank and deadly. In such abysmal straits, remind the self that we are loved, for all our self-despair; that Jesus Christ has sought us out, that care will open up the inner streams of health. God’s love is real and God’s affection never spent. So, be watered, tended; be refreshed, this Lent.
Lent 1
No more the deluge washing hope away, No more the cosmic punishment descends No more the downward droop, the future’s bend but open heavens, the eternal Day! Creator Spirit bursts the covering sky a gentle dove, yet power beyond the telling. A love to glorify! All evil quelling; all ills to heal, all good again is neigh. The time is now; the gift is here this day! Repent! Quick comes the Good News on its way!
Lent 2
Two paths denote the way ahead, the choice is stark the one a prudent road, a cautious route; the other, no easy place to put one’s foot ascends the heights, arises from the dark - like Abraham embarks at ninety nine - a new adventure of obedience; or Jesus’ final cry, which heaven rends. The hidden way, of ambiguity, a sign. Outcome unclear until the course is done All is revealed but not until you’ve won.
Lent 3
Change from one state to the next ’sno piece of cake! We cross our Passover, then seek return! Bridges passed, we wish we had not burned. We think “It’s only change for change’s sake”! Now the former temple is whipped clean; being purified, prepared for its demise. In Christ’s body, the temple will arise his wounds, the windows; death, the altar screen. Worship anew, (beyond the edifice), the living God in every living one of us.
Lent 4
Jesus Christ displays what God has done: - lifted up for us upon the cruel cross: lifted up from death, erasing every loss: lifted up to God’s right hand, triumphant Son. In one event, three mighty truths occur: our suffering shared, in death he is disgraced: surpassing love, replenishes the waste: and, God’s right hand, makes our salvation sure. With him we died, we rose again, ascended and, hid with Christ in God, our life’s unended.
Lent 5
Tree of glory, where the Lord was crucified! Your outstretched arms uphold him, God and man embracing all that is, within its span and He for all, in death, is glorified. Tree of shame, epitome of human ill! Our hatred, horror, boldly on display cannot weaken love or win the day. He dies, love lives, upon that distant hill. At the hub of all that is, that was, and will be Stands this blood-stained monument; this tree!
The Sunday of the Passion
The “everyday” surrounds Him as His time arrives a colt tied by a door, will serve sufficiently, the plainest cloak will be his heraldry yet “Hosannas” are the many people’s cries. Do you know a humbler king, a rule more meek? So pathetic seems this mighty Lord! Yet by cheering crowds He is adored, a conqueror who turns the other cheek! A cross with criminals, His final sign! These mean forms alone express his truth divine.
Maundy Thursday
He kneels, and servant-like, he takes my feet to wash, and then to gently wipe them clean and I am purified by his esteem. Intimate, his hands my loneliness defeat. I feel discomfort, my unease is much accustomed to the dust and soil-ed end. But He, from God, would have me as his friend! No fantasy! Who could forget his touch? Gently wash my heart and mind - the whole of me; and forever, I your dearest friend, will be.
Good Friday
Again we listen to the tortured tale of Jesus’ final hours, his cruel death; abandoned, one by one; we watch His final breath the blood and water from his side impaled His passion, read like this, ten million times (once, for every victim of the holocaust) when read, the more the sorrow, more the cost as He again in love surrenders to our crimes. This tale descends down to the lowest rung; God dies; where lifeless on the tree He’s hung.
Holy Saturday
They place a guard at Jesus’ tomb, for fear that life will somehow enter in and spoil their deadly work, their presumptuous toil! But God will not abandon, Whom God holds dear, and soon the dead leaves rustle in the night the Spirit-wind invigorates stale air; tombs burst open, life is everywhere! And Jesus Christ is risen in God’s might1 God abhors the vacuum that is death will fill it soon with Love’s all-powerful breath.
Easter Day
The women have the sense to be afraid seized by amazement at God’s Easter act, not insulated from the resurrection fact from the awesome emptiness where Christ was laid. He has been raised! They marvel at the news; a fantasy beyond the mind to cope beyond all possibility, all hope! These new, supreme, unconquerable truths! The grinding wheel of sin and death is broken In Jesus Christ the living God has spoken.
Introductions to the Lenten Gospels - Harold Macdonald (MSWORD file) Harold Macdonald's Lenten Poetry
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My Heart is Ready