The Breath of Prayer

Dear Friend,

As we seek to grow in our understanding and love of the Eucharist, artists and poets can help us. Emma Mason, writing in the magazine, The Tablet, writes that hearing the ‘breath of prayer’ in this poem revives those open to it like the Mass itself, both experiences of vision, creation, imagination, and transformation.” Would you agree?

Consecration (I)

It all happens so slowly. A few words

Are spoken. Such tiny words

Full of more than this world can ever contain

In its random occasions, its pell-mell actions which we

Have brought about. It is to change what we see

And hear all about us that this Round of Bread

Is changed, becomes Christ’s life on earth when he

Chose to move among us all, to free

Our trammelled spirits. He loves liberty

So he became for a time what all of us are

All the time. His words go on echoing where

Any will listen. One simple breath of prayer

Will break our chains, abandon our daily fear.

For this he arrived and stays on our desperate star

— Elizabeth Jennings, 1996

I can’t help but think that Jennings is expressing what drew so many to Jesus, and what so many who find themselves far from Christ might be longing to come home to.

Gratefully,

Fr. Dan ofm, Pastor