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Back in 1999 a friend of mine handed me a book and said, “Read this poem.” I sat down and began to read . . . and I was deeply impacted by what I read. I had never seen a poem that captured the power, the mystery, the sheer majesty of the cross the way this one did.

The poem was written by Denise Levertov, and it is entitled On a Theme of Julian’s Chapter XX. Levertov writes the poem as a reflection upon the 20th chapter of Revelations of Divine Love, a book written by Julian of Norwich in the late 14th or early 15th century.

Every Good Friday I like to come back to this poem; it helps me reflect upon the crucifixion of my Lord and to seek a moment of remembrance that is worthy of the sacrifice that he made. The poem asks and answers one simple question: why is the suffering of Jesus different from all other human suffering?

My prayer is that you might read this poem and experience it the way I have experienced it for years. To this day I cannot read it without encountering something of the mystery and of the majesty that is the passion of our Lord.

 

On a Theme of Julian’s Chapter XX
Denise Levertov

Six hours outstretched in the sun, yes,
hot wood, the nails, blood trickling
into the eyes, yes–
but the thieves on their neighbor crosses
survived till after the soldiers
had come to fracture their legs, or longer.
Why single out the agony? What’s
a mere six hours?
Torture then, torture now,
the same, the pain’s the same,
immemorial branding iron,
electric prod.
Hasn’t a child
dazed in the hospital ward they reserve
for the most abused, known worse?
The air we’re breathing,
these very clouds, ephemeral billows
languid upon the sky’s
moody ocean, we share
with women and men who’ve held out
days and weeks on the rack–
and in the ancient dust of the world
what particles
of the long tormented,
what ashes.

But Julian’s lucid spirit leapt
to the difference:
perceived why no awe could measure
that brief day’s endless length,
why among all the tortured
One only is “King of Grief.”
The oneing, she saw, the oneing
with the Godhead opened Him utterly
to the pain of all minds, all bodies
–sands of the sea, of the desert–
from first beginning
to last day. The great wonder is
that the human cells of His flesh and bone
didn’t explode
when utmost Imagination rose
in that flood of knowledge. Unique
in agony, Infinite strength, Incarnate,
empowered Him to endure
inside history,
through those hours when he took to Himself
the sum total of anguish and drank
even the lees of that cup:

within the mesh of the web, Himself
woven within it, yet seeing it,
seeing it whole. Every sorrow and desolation
He saw, and sorrowed in kinship.