Good Friday, a day of devotions such as the veneration of the Cross and the Stations, is also a day for extended silent meditation. I offer two poems for reflection, one tied to devotion to the Cross, and the other more personal in nature.
We know St. Thomas Aquinas’ version of the Pange Lingua Gloriosi as part of our Holy Thursday and Corpus Christi processions. He borrowed the title from a much older hymn, however, sung during the veneration/creeping of the Cross on Good Friday. The original liturgical poem was written by Bl. Venantius Fortunatus (530 – c. 609), who began his career as a traveling minstrel and court composer for the Merovingian Franks, but ended up as bishop of Poitiers. He wrote a wide range of poetry, but we know him best for his Pange Lingua and another hymn, Vexilla Regis prodeunt, also honoring the Cross, originally composed to honor the relics of the true Cross and now used for Vespers during Holy Week. Here is the first of the two, associated with Good Friday:
Pange Lingua Gloriosi Proelium Certaminis
Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle,
With completed victory rife:
And above the Cross’s trophy
Tell the triumph of the strife:
How the world’s Redeemer conquer’d
By surrendering of His Life.
God his Maker, sorely grieving
That the first-made Adam fell,
When he ate the fruit of sorrow,
Whose reward was death and hell,
Noted then this Wood, the ruin
Of the ancient wood to quell.
For the work of our Salvation
Needs would have his order so,
And the multiform deceiver’s
Art by art would overthrow,
And from thence would bring the med’cine
Whence the insult of the foe.
Wherefore, when the sacred fulness
Of th’ appointed time was come,
This world’s Maker left His Father,
Sent the Heavenly Mansion from,
And proceeded, God Incarnate,
Of the Virgin’s Holy Womb.
Weeps the Infant in the manger
That in Bethlehem’s stable stands;
And His Limbs the Virgin Mother
Doth compose in swaddling bands,
Meetly thus in linen folding
Of her God the feet and hands.
Thirty years among us dwelling,
His appointed time fulfill’d,
Born for this, He meets his Passion,
For that this He freely will’d:
On the Cross the Lamb is lifted,
Where His life-blood shall be spilled.
He endured the nails, the spitting,
Vinegar, and spear, and reed;
From that Holy Body broken
Blood and water forth proceed:
Earth, and stars, and sky, and ocean,
By that flood from stain are freed.
Faithful Cross! above all other,
One and only noble tree!
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit thy peers may be:
Sweetest Wood, and sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on thee.
Bend thy boughs, O Tree of Glory!
Thy relaxing sinews bend;
For awhile the ancient rigour,
That thy birth bestowed, suspend;
And the King of Heavenly Beauty
On thy bosom gently tend!
Thou alone wast counted worthy
This world’s ransom to uphold;
For a shipwrecked race preparing
Harbour, like the Ark of old;
With the sacred Blood anointed
From the smitten Lamb that roll’d.
To the Trinity be glory
Everlasting, as is meet:
Equal to the Father, equal
To the Son, and Paraclete:
Trinal Unity, Whose praises
All created things repeat. Amen.
And now for a second poem, more focused on personal devotion.
Although not a Catholic, the Anglican pastor George Herbert wrote a moving poem, fit for meditation on Good Friday. One of the metaphysical poets and a chief composer of devotional poetry in the English language. “Good Friday” forms part of the volume of his poetic masterpiece The Temple. Its poems reflect a liturgical sensibility, both of feasts and seasons, as well as the structure of the church, but focus ultimately on drawing us into a deeper devotion of the heart.
Good Friday (1633)
O My chief good,
How shall I measure out thy bloud?
How shall I count what thee befell,
And each grief tell?
Shall I thy woes
Number according to thy foes?
Or, since one starre show’d thy first breath,
Shall all thy death?
Or shall each leaf,
Which falls in Autumne, score a grief?
Or cannot leaves, but fruit, be signe
Of the true vine?
Then let each houre
Of my whole life one grief devoure;
That thy distresse through all may runne,
And be my sunne.
Or rather let
My severall sinnes their sorrows get;
That as each beast his cure doth know,
Each sinne may so.
Since bloud is fittest, Lord, to write
Thy sorrows in, and bloudie sight;
My heart hath store, write there, where in
One box doth lie both ink and sinne:
That when sinne spies so many foes,
Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes,
All come to lodge there, sinne may say,
No room for me, and flie away.
Sinne being gone, oh fill the place,
And keep possession with thy grace;
Lest sinne take courage and return,
And all the writings blot or burn.
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