Sister Oksoon Kim (김옥순 수녀), The Bread of Life from Heaven (하늘에서 내려온 생명의 빵), 2014
Stars sing, light-years deep in silent space.
In a bottle’s neck God’s Ghost sings
as the wine is poured.
Out on the edge of eternity, the Father
sees the Lamb slain ere the world is formed.
A soft cough splits the silence of this room
light-years below the wheeling stars.
A hollow prayer; give it breath, O Ghost,
let roar a wind like that which shook
the bones in Vision Vale.
For vision, God spills bread crumbs on the board.
His stars sing, light-years deep in silent space.
Here, emblems speak a mystery of brokenness:
the shattering of him by whom all things consist.
Keith Patman is an occasional poet whose primary vocation is Bible translation. Since 1982 he has worked for Wycliffe Bible Translators, assisting with the translation of scripture into the languages of West and Central Africa. He lived in Cameroon from 1987 to 1995, working on a Nugunu New Testament, and now serves from the US as part of an international team providing tools and training to African translators. He currently lives in Waynesboro, Virginia, with his wife, Jaci, who is a Presbyterian minister. They have two grown children and six grandchildren.
Lent begins on Wednesday, February 22. I won’t be doing daily Lenten posts like I did last year, though I will be sharing seasonal content once or twice a week. If you want a set of new daily art-driven devotions that are freely accessible online, I’d encourage you to follow The Lent Project, run by the Center for Christianity, Culture, and the Arts at Biola University; each day features a scripture passage, a poem, a visual artwork, a piece of music, and a written reflection. I’d also direct you to my Lent Playlist (new additions at bottom) and Holy Week Playlist on Spotify.
Carl Spitzweg (German, 1808–1885), Ash Wednesday, 1860. Oil on canvas, 21 × 14 cm. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany.
Another spiritual formation resource for Lent is the following series of Arts & Faith videos from Loyola Press, made in 2014–16. Each video features a three-minute commentary by Dr. Daniella Zsupan-Jerome on a historical artwork, chosen based on one of that day’s/week’s scripture readings from the Roman Catholic Mass Lectionary, which is currently in year A. Zsupan-Jerome is the director of ministry formation and field education at Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary in Collegeville, Minnesota. Here she has crafted a “visual prayer experience” inspired by the Ignatian imagination. In his Spiritual Exercises, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), encourages Christians to apply the senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste to our reading of and meditation on the New Testament, imagining ourselves as present in the Gospel scenes.
Go to the “Arts & Faith: Lent” homepage, or see below, where the link on each artwork title will take you to a new tab where the corresponding video commentary is hosted on the Loyola website. I’ve included sample embeds of a few of the videos below.
Craig Goodworth (American, 1977–), Playa Studies, 2017. Site-specific land-based artwork, Great Basin Desert, Oregon. Photograph by the artist.
Craig Goodworth’s practice encompasses installation, poetry, drawing, research, teaching, and farm labor. He holds master’s degrees in fine art, sustainable communities, and divinity, and his interests include land, place, religion, mysticism, and folk traditions.
During a four-week residency in the Great Basin Desert in Oregon, he made a series of land-based artworks called Playa Studies, which he documented through photographs. (A playa is an area of flat, dried-up land.) The shape of this one evokes a grave.
LISTEN: “Aestimatus sum” (I am counted . . .) by Tomás Luis de Victoria, 1585| Performed by Ars Nova Copenhagen, dir. Paul Hillier, 2017
Aestimatus sum cum descendentibus in lacum, factus sum sicut homo sine adjutorio, inter mortuos liber. Versus: Posuerunt me in lacu inferiori, in tenebrosis et in umbra mortis. Factus sum sicut homo sine adjutorio, inter mortuos liber.
English translation:
I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength: free among the dead. Verse: They have laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. I am as a man that hath no strength: free among the dead.
This is the eighth responsory for Holy Saturday. Tomás Luis de Victoria [previously] of Spain, one of the principal composers of the late Renaissance, set it to music in 1585. It’s the penultimate motet (a multivoiced musical composition sung without instrumental accompaniment) in a set of eighteen by Victoria, titled Tenebrae Responsories.
The text is taken from Psalm 87:5–7 of the Latin Vulgate (Psalm 88:4–6 in the King James Version and most modern translations). The most depressing psalm in the Psalter, Psalm 88 ends not on a note of hope but with the lament that “darkness has become my only companion.” (Hello darkness, my old friend.)
While the psalmist spoke in metaphors of death, Jesus went there literally. After suffering much affliction, he descended “into the pit” of the earth—his grave. He knew emotional and spiritual darkness, and now he was surrounded by the physical reality. The Light had gone out. The Word was made silent.
Imagine what Jesus’s followers must have felt the day after the Crucifixion. Grief, devastation, loneliness, bewilderment, hopelessness. They were left bereft of their Lord’s presence.
On Holy Saturday, we sit in the pocket of that grief, that loss.
N. T. Wright says, “We cannot be Easter people if we are not first Good Friday people and then Holy Saturday people. Don’t expect even a still, small voice. Stay still yourself, and let the quietness and darkness of the day be your only companions.”
[Transliterated Greek] Símeron kremátai epí xýlou, o en ýdasi tín gín kremásas. Stéfanon ex akanthón peritíthetai, o tón Angélon Vasiléfs. Psevdí porfýran periválletai, o perivállon tón ouranón en nefélais. Rápisma katedéxato, o en Iordáni eleftherósas tón Adám. Ílois prosilóthi, o Nymfíos tís Ekklisías. Lónchi ekentíthi, o Yiós tís Parthénou. Proskynoúmén sou tá Páthi Christé. Proskynoúmén sou tá Páthi Christé. Proskynoúmén sou tá Páthi Christé. Deíxon imín, kaí tín éndoxón sou Anástasin.
[English translation] Today he who hung the earth upon the waters is hung on the tree. The King of the angels is decked with a crown of thorns. He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery. He who freed Adam in the Jordan is slapped on the face. The Bridegroom of the church is affixed to the cross with nails. The Son of the virgin is pierced by a spear. We worship thy passion, O Christ. We worship thy passion, O Christ. We worship thy passion, O Christ. Show us also thy glorious resurrection.
This is the fifteenth antiphon (short hymn) from the Matins service of Great and Holy Friday (as the day is called in the Orthodox tradition), celebrated on Thursday evening.
>> Arranged by Fr. Seraphim Dedes, chanted by Paul Barnes, 2019:
Paul Barnes is both a pianist and a Greek Orthodox chanter. Here he chants the “Simeron Kremate,” starting out in Greek and then using the following English translation:
Today he who suspended the earth on the waters is suspended on a cross. (×3) The King of the angels wears a crown of thorns. He who wraps the sky in clouds is wrapped in a fake purple robe. He who freed Adam in the Jordan accepts to be slapped. The Bridegroom of the church is fixed with nails to the cross. The Son of the virgin is pierced with a spear. We worship your passion, O Christ. (×3) Show us also your glorious resurrection.
Seven of his piano majors from the Glenn Korff School of Music provide the ison (drone note).
>> Simeron Kremate, a solo keyboard work by Victoria Bond based on the Greek Orthodox chant, performed by Paul Barnes, 2019:
Paul Barnes and composer Victoria Bond are longtime collaborators. He introduced her to the “Simeron Kremate” chant, and she built a piano composition around its five-note melody. Struck by its similar melodic contour, she incorporated the Jewish Passover chant “Tal” (Dew), a prayer that life-sustaining dew would water the land. This prayer is traditionally chanted on the first morning of Passover (which is tomorrow; the festival begins this evening). Bond, who is Jewish, notes the thematic resonance between the two chants as well: (in my own words) the one a request for fruitfulness and refreshment, the other a lament for the death of the One whose death bears fruit and brings life. She describes the musical elements of the composition as follows:
The work opens with the traditional apichima of the plagal of the second mode which aurally establishes the musical atmosphere of the mode. Victoria follows this with a Jewish style cantillation (based on the cantillation of the great cantor Yosele Rosenblatt) which leads to the first statement of the “Simeron” chant. These opening notes are then developed in multiple ways before the intimate entry of the “Tal” melody. The work concludes with a ‘tranquillo’ passage of rare beauty ingeniously combining both themes. The work ends tentatively and unresolved as the opening notes of the chant dissipate into eternity.
Hélène Mugot (French, 1953–), Du sang et des larmes (Blood and Tears), 2004. Triptych of 300 crystal drops and 200 red glass drops, 350 × 900 cm. Exhibition view from Icare encore at the Mandet Museum, Riom, France, October 22, 2011–January 22, 2012. (Foreground: Pour la gloire… [For the Glory…], 2011.)
When Jesus went out to the garden of Gethsemane to pray the night of his arrest, he pled with the Father to let the cup of suffering pass. Luke says he sweated drops of blood (22:44). He was in agony. He probably dreaded the physical torture he knew was coming, and maybe even more his disciples’ abandoning him. Perhaps he wept for the mother and friends he would leave behind in this next phase of ministry—or, with a mixture of grief and frustration, for the world’s failure to see who he truly was.
Hélène Mugot’s Du sang et des larmes, which translates to Blood and Tears, is an installation of glass pieces made to look like bodily fluids. They hang on the wall in the shape of a three-paneled altarpiece—blood in the center, tears on the wings. The globular forms catch the light from the room and shine.
When Du sang et des larmes was exhibited at the Mandet Museum in 2011, it was part of a larger show of Mugot’s work. On the floor in front of it was her Pour la gloire… (For the Glory…), a menacingly large braided wreath of thick, knotted, blackened vines whose stumps are dotted with red wax of the type used to seal wine bottles—both bandage and wound here, Mugot says. The piece is meant to evoke Jesus’s crown of thorns.
Hélène Mugot (French, 1953–), Pour la gloire… (For the Glory…), 2011. Old vines and red sealing wax, outside diameter 275 cm, height 50 cm. Exhibited at the Mandet Museum, Riom, France, 2011. Photo: Patrick André.
In 2013 Du sang et des larmes joined the collection of the Musée du Hiéron in Paray-le-Monial, France, a museum of Christian art from the Middle Ages to today. There it is staged as the backsplash to a seventeenth-century Virgin and Child statuette carved in wood, thus prompting us to read Christ’s infancy in light of his passion, and vice versa—the Incarnation as a total event, spanning birth to death. (Cue Simeon’s “A sword will pierce your soul . . .”)
Virgin and Child, 17th century; Du sang et des larmes by Hélène Mugot. Collection of the Musée du Hiéron, Paray-le-Monial, France. Photo: Jean-Pierre Gobillot.
To fit the space, the number of droplets and overall size changed slightly from the piece’s first few installations: at the Hiéron there are 311 crystal drops and 267 red glass drops, and the dimensions are 420 × 650 cm.
LISTEN: “Flow, My Tears”by Toivo Tulev, 2007 | Text based on a 1600 air by John Dowland and the Improperia (aka, the Reproaches), a series of antiphons and responses expressing the remonstrance of Jesus Christ with his people | Performed by the Latvian Radio Choir, dir. Kaspars Putniņš, on Tulev: Magnificat, 2018
Flow, my tears, fall from your springs, flow my tears, fall from your . . . Flow my tears, fall from your springs, fall, fall, fall, flow, flow, my tears, flow.
Down, vain lights, shine no more, no nights are dark enough, no lights, shine no more, flow no more, no more. Flow down, vain lights, shine no more, shine you no more.
I led you in a pillar of cloud but you led me to . . . I gave you saving water, but you gave me gall and you gave vinegar. My people, what have I done to you? What have I done to you? Answer me. How have I offended you, you, you? I opened the sea before you, I opened the sea, but you opened my side with a spear.
Flow, flow, flow down. Rain, drop down, cover the ground, drop down, my blood, flow, flow down, drop down, drop down, drop, flow, flow, flow, shine, flow, flow, shine! Flow, my blood, flow, flow, drop, flow down.
My blood spills from your wounds, drop, drop, drop, your wounds, flow, flow, flow down, flow, shine, drop, flow. Flow my tears, fall from your springs, flow, my blood. My blood, my blood spills from your wounds, my wounds, my blood, flow, blood, flow, flow, shine! Spills from your wounds my blood, shine! My wounds, my wounds, drop down, shine! From your, from my wounds, shine! Flow, drop down, shine! Flow, shine! My, your blood, shine!
My blood, flow, shine, flow, shine! shine! Fall, shine, fall, shine, fall from your . . . flow, fall . . . Shine! Shine! [source]
Toivo Tulev is an Estonian composer born in 1958. In this choral composition for twelve solo voices, he has combined words from a secular Renaissance lute song and the Christian Holy Week liturgy. It’s ponderous and grating, capturing well Jesus’s psychological affliction.
While in the first half the speaker, Jesus, wishes for light to “shine no more” so that he be left alone in darkness, that imperative eventually evolves into the affirmative: “Shine!” Blood: shine! Tears: shine! Tulev’s clever manipulation of his lyrical source material creates allusions to the glory, the illumination, that is to come. Paradoxically, when the sun is eclipsed from noon to three on the day of crucifixion, God’s love shines brighter than ever.
One line that stands out to me is “My blood spills from your wounds.” Who is the “your”? Earlier Jesus is talking to his people, but I interpret a shift here to God the Father as the addressee. Even though he sees through to the other side, he, too, is tremendously pained by what is unfolding—his only Son, killed. It’s as if Jesus’s wounds are his own (much like any parent would tell you, when their child is suffering). The unity of these two persons of the Godhead in the poetry of this song is really beautiful. Their heart is one.
While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
—Matthew 26:26–28 (cf. Mark 14:22–24; Luke 22:17–20)
The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is foryou. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
—1 Corinthians 11:23b–26
LOOK: TheLast Supper III by Bruce Onobrakpeya
Bruce Onobrakpeya (Nigerian, 1932–), The Last Supper III. Lino engraving on rice paper, 58 × 62 3/4 in. (147 × 195 cm). Edition 1/15.
A pioneer of modern African art, Bruce Onobrakpeya is an internationally renowned Nigerian printmaker, painter, and sculptor of Urhobo heritage. He was raised Christian and has fulfilled several commissions on Christian themes, especially from 1967 to 1981. (I wrote about his Stations of the Cross series of colored linocut prints on my old blog.) His work also explores Urhobo traditional religion, culture, and history and the modern world of Nigeria.
In Onobrakpeya’s Last Supper III, Jesus sits at the head of an oblong table with his twelve disciples, making eye contact with the viewer. The food and drink are highly stylized, but the men appear to be breaking bread. The background features the Ibiebe alphabet, a script of ideographic geometric and curvilinear glyphs that Onobrakpeya developed.
LISTEN: Adagio in G minor for violin, strings, and organ | Attributed to Tomaso Albioni, 18th century, but possibly entirely by Albioni biographer Remo Giazotto, 1958 | Performed by the Budapest Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra
Today is the second day of Holy Week, the final week of Jesus’s life. One event that takes place during this period, on Wednesday, is a woman’s anointing Jesus with oil. All four Gospel writers include the story, with variations (and Luke places it earlier in Jesus’s ministry). Love, hospitality, sacrifice, and honor are key themes. The woman is unnamed in the Synoptic Gospels, but John identifies her as Mary Magdalene. Praising her initiative, Jesus clarifies to those gathered that she anoints him in preparation for his burial (Matt. 26:12; Mark 14:8; John 12:7). It was a solemn act.
Since the prophet in the Old Testament anointed the head of the Jewish king, the anointing of Jesus’ head must have been understood immediately as the prophetic recognition of Jesus, the Anointed, the Messiah, the Christ. According to the tradition it was a woman who named Jesus by and through her prophetic sign-action. It was politically a dangerous story. (xiv)
Sometimes it was a priest who anointed the new king, so the act could be read as not only prophetic but also sacramental. That is, Mary serving here as prophet and priest.
Someone, I forget who, once noted that Jesus would have gone to the cross with this aromatic fragrance still on him. The smell would have lingered with his sweat and blood and was perhaps a comfort to him in his hours of deepest distress, reminding him of the loving devotion of one of his disciples. It was also a proclamation to all the actors and bystanders, as he moved up Golgotha’s hill and was crucified, that he is indeed the Anointed One of God.
O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!
Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”
. . .
Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD.
This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it.
I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Save us, we beseech you, O LORD! O LORD, we beseech you, give us success!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. We bless you from the house of the LORD. The LORD is God, and he has given us light. Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar.
You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God, I will extol you.
O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.
—Psalm 118:1–2, 19–29
The crowds that went ahead of [Jesus] and that followed were shouting,
“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
—Matthew 21:9
LOOK: Palm Sunday, Home Depot Parking Lot by Gary Bergel
Gary Bergel (American, 1943–), Palm Sunday, Home Depot Parking Lot. Digital photograph. Part of the traveling CIVA exhibition Again & Again.
Edgar G. Boevé (American, 1929–2019), Phoenix, Death, ca. 1980. Oil and acrylic on tea chest paper. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones, at the Center Art Gallery, Calvin University, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2015.
Fat soil, full spring, sweet olive, grape of bliss, That yields, that streams, that pours, that doth distill; Untilled, undrawn, unstamped, untouched of press, Dear fruit, clear brooks, fair oil, sweet wine at will! Thus Christ prevents, unforced, in shedding blood, The whips, the thorns, the nails, the spear, and rood.
He pelican’s, he phoenix’, fate doth prove, Whom flames consume, whom streams enforce to die: How burneth blood, how bleedeth burning love? Can one in flame and stream both bathe and fry? How could he join a phoenix’ fiery pains, In fainting pelican’s still bleeding veins?
Elias once, to prove God’s sovereign power, By prayer procured a fire of wondrous force That blood and wood and water did devour, Yea stones and dust beyond all nature’s course: Such fire is love, that, fed with gory blood, Doth burn no less than in the driest wood.
O sacred fire! come, show thy force on me, That sacrifice to Christ I may return: If withered wood for fuel fittest be, If stones and dust, if flesh and blood will burn, I withered am, and stony to all good, A sack of dust, a mass of flesh and blood.
Note: I modernized the spellings of this poem for readability, but there is a beauty to the early modern English; see the original here.
Robert Southwell (ca. 1561–1595) was an English Catholic priest and poet living during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Educated at Jesuit colleges in France and Italy, he returned to his native England as a missionary in 1586. But he suffered persecution under the country’s Protestant regime, and had to conduct his ministry in concealment. In his early thirties he was caught celebrating the Mass and was subsequently imprisoned, tortured, and hanged for treason. None of his English poems was published in his lifetime, but many of them circulated as manuscripts. He probably wrote this one sometime during his three years in the Tower of London, awaiting execution.
“Christ’s Bloody Sweat” opens with a reflection on Christ’s agony in the garden of Gethsemane the night before the Crucifixion, when “in his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground” (Luke 22:44). This bloody sweat may be a figure of speech Luke uses to convey the intensity of the moment, or it may be an actual condition called hematidrosis, in which capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture, causing them to exude blood—something that can occur in rare cases when a person is under extreme physical or emotional stress.
In the first stanza of the poem, “Southwell introduces various fluids that represent the creative effusions of Christ’s love, with an extravagant reiteration of images that emphasises the extravagance of that love,” writes the Rev. Patrick Comerford in his commentary on the poem.
Fat soil, full spring, sweet olive, grape of bliss, That yields, that streams, that pours, that doth distill; Untilled, undrawn, unstamped, untouched of press, Dear fruit, clear brooks, fair oil, sweet wine at will! Thus Christ prevents, unforced, in shedding blood, The whips, the thorns, the nails, the spear, and rood.
Southwell describes Christ as rich, fertile soil that yields sweet fruit; a spring of living water; an olive from which consecrated oil is distilled (for the anointing of the newly baptized and newly ordained); and a grape that yields fine wine. It may help you to read each phrase vertically down the first four lines: “Fat soil that yields, untilled, dear fruit”; “full spring that streams, undrawn, clear brooks”; “sweet olive that pours, unstamped, fair oil”; “grape of bliss that doth distill, untouched of press, sweet wine at will!”
“Prevent” in this context means to go before. In other words, even before Jesus is captured by the Roman soldiers, tortured, and led to Calvary to be crucified, he sheds his blood in Gethsemane. Without any physical forces acting upon him. “Rood” is an archaic word for the cross.
Stanza 2 references two birds of lore that were popular symbols of Christ: the pelican and the phoenix.
He pelican’s, he phoenix’, fate doth prove, Whom flames consume, whom streams enforce to die: How burneth blood, how bleedeth burning love? Can one in flame and stream both bathe and fry? How could he join a phoenix’ fiery pains, In fainting pelican’s still bleeding veins?
The pelican was said (by Epiphanius, Augustine, and other church fathers) to revive or feed her young with her own blood; she would peck at her breast until she died so that her little ones might have life. The phoenix is a fantastical bird from classical mythology that burns itself to ashes on a funeral pyre ignited by the sun but then rises up out of those ashes, renewed.
Southwell ponders how Christ can be both pelican and phoenix. Did he bleed to death (losing streams of blood), or did he die by burning? The image in line 10 is quite gruesome: Christ simultaneously is “bathe[d]” in blood and fries in flames. The fire is, of course, metaphoric. But it becomes here, along with the blood, an emblem of divine love. A love that bleeds and burns, and that is all-consuming.
The fire and blood imagery continues in stanza 3, where Southwell refers to the famous contest on Mount Carmel between Elijah (a prophet of Yahweh) and the prophets of Baal (see 1 Kings 18).
Elias once, to prove God’s sovereign power, By prayer procured a fire of wondrous force That blood and wood and water did devour, Yea stones and dust beyond all nature’s course: Such fire is love, that, fed with gory blood, Doth burn no less than in the driest wood.
To prove the supremacy of the God of Israel over Baal, Elijah issues a challenge. He and Baal’s prophets would each prepare a bull for sacrifice and lay it on a stone altar but light no fire. They would then pray each to their own god and see which god answers by sending fire from heaven to consume their sacrifice. The prophets of Baal accept the challenge, but no fire comes to light their altar, despite their most fervent entreaties. Elijah, to increase the stakes, even soaks his bull and the wood it lies on in water, three times over—and still fire comes from above, devouring, as Southwell writes, “blood and wood and water . . . [and] stones and dust beyond all nature’s course.”
God’s love is like that fire, Southwell says. The implication, I think, is that on the cross, the love of the Son (who gives himself as a sacrifice) and the love of the Father (who accepts the sacrifice) meet. (I know there are varying interpretations of the nature of the atonement and the role of the Father in the Crucifixion, but I’m simply trying to interpret Southwell here.)
In the poem’s final stanza, Southwell considers how he ought to respond to divine love as expressed in Christ’s passion.
O sacred fire! come, show thy force on me, That sacrifice to Christ I may return: If withered wood for fuel fittest be, If stones and dust, if flesh and blood will burn, I withered am, and stony to all good, A sack of dust, a mass of flesh and blood.
He calls on God to accept, in return, his sacrifice—of praise and thanksgiving and obedience (Heb. 13:15–16; Ps. 50:23) and of his very self (Rom. 12:1–2). He probably had his martyrdom in mind. He acknowledges that he is but a withered, soggy, stony-hearted “sack of dust” but prays that God would make him fit to receive and broadcast the fire of love from on high.
Art & Theology 