Fr Peter Helman

A poem by R. S. Thomas

The Coming

And God held in his hand
A small globe.  Look, he said.
The son looked.
Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.

On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky.  Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs.  The Son watched
Them.  Let me go there, he said.

+

Dear friend,

I love this poem by the Welsh poet and Anglican priest R. S. Thomas.  Like clockwork it comes to mind every year on Palm Sunday, and I woke to it in my head this past week as I prayed God to draw near to my heart and open my eyes to his nearness.  Thomas's poem paints an image of God who pursues the world for the sake of love. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son," as the evangelist writes (John 3:16). God saw the world he made from afar and drew near to it to make of death a spectacle. 

Here are three questions to guide our prayers today:

(1) Who is the one who pursues us?
(2) Whom does He pursue?
(3) Why does He pursue us?

The one who pursues us in love is Jesus, who makes himself our guide, our voice, our truth and life, on the way to eternity, by his presence among us, to give us back the life of our souls, to be the people he intended us to be from the foundation of the world.

The one who pursues us in love comes to those whose souls are possessed of praise for seeing themselves so loved as never to be forsaken.

The one who pursues us in love comes to say to you and me, "I have compassion on your soul for I have made you my child and set you before my face forever. Nothing will diminish the ardor of my love for you. I will turn the coldness of your heart into a living flame of love. I have heard the sighs of your heart when life is wearisome and I will give you life again."

We pray, then, with all people of God: "Come, O Lord, for the sake of your love, have pity and give me yourself. Draw me close that I may not fall from you, for I can do nothing without you. Give me the assurance of your nearness, the gift of that joy from which nothing in heaven and on earth or under the earth can ever separate me."

Today, in every moment, our Lord stands at the door of our hearts and knocks, and when we hear him let us undo the latch and invite him in.


Peace in Christ,
Fr. Peter