By Philip Quirke
Pobal Dé and Priest pray familiar mantric lines
weighty with poetry, paradox and pain:
word made flesh, god-man, dead and risen.
Enactment. Again. Recapitulation:
Love, Cross, Sacrifice. Reconciliation.
In a cloud of incense prayers rise on music.
Enthused, bored, bland: we stand together,
hopeful, broken, needy community.
Scripture, sermon, biddings.
Consecration, kiss of peace, communion
with sacred bread, with friends, and enemies.
Then go. Witness to this with your lives.
A ritual of thanksgiving two thousand years
in the making, since Jesus broke bread with his friends.
“Remember me by doing this”. And so we do,
striving in our own way to be true to him,
to cut though the trappings of ritual and rubric
and feel the searing heat of God’s love for us.