Meditation

Dear Spiritual Friends in God,

The Beloved and the loved one searching for each other, longing for union, is the centripetal theme in the Song of Songs that sings the pathos of its melody through the centuries, into this Holy Week. This eternal love song calls us to enter still deeper into the sacred rhythm of the paschal mystery.   The veil between time and eternity becomes intensely fine as we live each moment of the wounding of our Beloved Jesus in the passion, dying, time in the tomb and resurrection.

This year, the eternal wound of divine-human loving feels very raw and open.  Our Loved One is inviting us anew, to enter into the ever-loving infusing of our oneing, in this wound. He is showing us how to enter into the depths of our shared pain, in a way that dissolves, metamorphizes and makes us intensely and densely one.

Recently, I was in the Royal Library of Belgium, spending time with the early manuscripts of mystic’s texts.  These exquisite sacred pages have a presence that touches us at the depths of our being and awakens our eternal knowing of love. As we gaze and behold the sacred pages, we are drawn into the same sense and ground of loving from which the words on the page flowed. One of the texts I opened, was an early hand-written copy of some of Bonaventure’s writings that lovingly recorded the medieval prayer Membra Christi, a sevenfold litany of lament meditating on the feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and face of the wounded Jesus.  Each prayer draws us to compassionately enter into the wound of Jesus, the one we love, who is wounded for love.

As I gazed and beheld, the affectionately scribed words, oozing with tenderness, touched my soul.  They quivered within me and became part of me.  Absorbed in love, I found myself tangibly feeling how these words on the page, were words that arise from the wounded Word.  They took, and continue to take me, and all of us, into the wound they portrait.  They wrap us in silence and unknowing, and leave us there weeping, until in the yielding, releasing, and loving in our oneing in tears, with all the pain of the universe, we know irrevocably, we are one in love.

This wound litany is powerfully expressed in the beautiful Membra Jesu Nostri composed by Dietrich Buxtehude (1680) where he created a cycle of seven cantatas, one for each wound.   The original text of the prayer is thought to be composed by the 13th-century poet, Arnulf of Louvain (d. ca. 1250). It is interesting though, that it is in the selection of prayers for the preparation for Eucharist by Bonaventure (1221-1274), who was alive at the same time as Arnulf. I had the delight of attending a sublime performance of Membra Jesu Nostri by Pinchgut Opera in Sydney a few Easters ago.  Pinchgut have generously given me permission to use their recording of Cantata IV, Ad Cor: To the Heart.

On this video, Our Jesus, which goes for about ten minutes, I offer you a version of this Latin cantata, with my English translations, which have been inspired by my prayer with the manuscripts.  This is a very ancient prayer, that feels so ripe for our time.  It receives us wherever we are.  The prayer begins with the sacred O enfolding the pieta, radiant with total self-giving love, intoning our eternal longing and weeping, to be one with our wounded Beloved, who holds the wounds of the universe.  We then enter into the dissolving flow of Membra Jesus Nostri, as we are placed on the mountain, in the footprints of the one who brings good news and announces peace. (Is 52:7; Nah 1:15).  We are grounded in earth and embodied as we are drawn to the wounded feet of our crucified Beloved, moving through to the knees and hands.

Gradually, delicately, we sense a crescendo rising, as we are drawn into the side, the breast and the heart of crucified love. The heart centres us and preparers us to enter into the flowering radiance of the wounded face.  Face to face unfolds into face in face, into only one face of love transforming all suffering into resurrection radiance. The pathos, the suffering, the music, the beauty, the love, lead us into the divine silence, where only love can go.

You may like to pray with this reflection during this Holy Week, if you feel moved to do so.

May entering into the wound of our Beloved Jesus this Easter in oneing love, open into a beautiful awareness of our oneness in suffering, love and joy, in a way that enables us to awaken in resurrection light.

One in our wounding, our loving and our rising, Kerrie Hide.