This poem was written by John Graber, one of my dear friends, and arranged for solo and later choir by Will Chiles.  It is one of the most beautiful poems I have ever read, and the choral arrangement makes me cry each time I hear it.  It is my soundtrack for Holy Week.  If you use the text or music for any purpose, kindly credit the authors.


While in St. Peter’s, Rome (to listen to the music, click the link - it's worth the click!)*

I think the world
is like the feet of the Pieta
and shines out of the dark arches only
when touched by hands that believe in it.
I think that when the feet
are worn away by touch,
people will climb up the body of Christ
until he’s worn onto a world of hands,
a shining marble dust,
and then the night’s white, worn pearl,
river stone moon Mary will smile,
and we’ll all be home.
--John Graber

*Michelangelo’s Pieta is a marble sculpture of Mary holding Jesus after the crucifixion. It stands within a giant cathedral. For five hundred years believers on pilgrimage could reach just high enough to touch Jesus’ feet for a blessing. This reverent touch wore them down like stone stairs in old building


Texts:

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm 70

Hebrews 12:1-3

John 13:21-32

The cloud of witnesses draws near with baited breath to watch as we enter Holy Week, the saints pray with the sinners, and we enter the Three Day Feast, a feast that points not to fullness, but to hunger, in order that we might learn what it is to be fed.  The starkness of the Pieta (really, go listen to it on Will's page) draws the emotions of the week for me.  It points directly at the vulnerability of the picture of humanity literally climbing up the body of Christ.  

Linked more deeply together this week, the veil between Creator and creature is torn in two.  We peer through and our breath catches as we realize it is our Savior and Lord that washes our feet.  It is our Savior and Lord that offers his body, so that we might be his body. The beauty and the terror meld together, pushing and pulling our souls into the beauty and terror that it is to be creature and the beauty and terror of having a God who desires an intimacy only experienced by the most tender of love.

Let us resist the temptation to jump to the resurrection.  As we grasp the feet of our savior, wearing them away with our touch, let us marvel at the stark beauty of God made man.  Let us go with the crowds, remembering the times we have forgotten to see what is in front of us, remembering the times our desires for self-preservation has cost another their self-preservation, remembering the times our pride cost somebody else their pride, and remembering the times our lives cost someone theirs.

Mary will smile,
and we’ll all be home.

Our home is at the feet of Christ under the shadow of the cross, to which we cling in our ugliness and our despair because there is, finally, no other place we can go.  Let us watch with the martyrs, with the angels, with the saints, with the sinners, as our God does for us the unspeakable.  And let us, finally, be silent.