In Word and Sacrament

A look at how poetry can reveal what we believe about the Eucharist.

Poetry is an often untapped source for theological reflection. Religious and liturgical poetry can provide deep and fruitful meditation on topics such as Mary and the Eucharist. Poetry as a genre does this by bringing the reality before our eyes through its use of highly material language and playful rhythms that allows the subject of the poem to be made present before the mind of the reader. Poetry's reliance on "primordial" or concrete and material language is what makes Eucharistic poems especially beautiful and fruitful pieces for contemplation.

Two poems I think do this particularly well are Christs bloody sweate by Robert Southwell and Adoro Te Devote by St. Thomas Aquinas (this links to the English translation by Gerald Manley Hopkins, but you can also find the Latin on the same site). Both of these poems call before us Christ in the Eucharist and link His sacrifice on the cross to the sacrament on the altar, and invite us to contemplate with the poets what it means to receive this mystery and unite oneself to it.

At the beginning of Christs bloody sweate, we read through a matrix of images that can be read in a variety of ways, both side to side and up and down. Southwell presents Eucharistic images of grapes, wine, vines, water, and oil that bear fruit of their own accord and bring to mind the Last Supper and sacrifice when one moves to the next line describing the Agony in the Garden where Christ sweat blood, "Thus Christ unforc'd preventes in shedding bloode", followed by the line describing the instruments of Jesus' crucifixion, "The whippes the thornes the nailes the speare and roode", thus linking Eucharistic imagery with Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

One image that comes up again and again in Southwell's poetry is the image of fire and water that here questions how a blood- soaked Christ can burn. Here Christ is described as a Phoenix and a Pelican "Whome flames consume whom streames enforce to die". Southwell describes the fames in the next line as flames of love, an image also used in another of his poems, The Burning Babe. Christ is on fire with love and so He sacrifices Himself for us, giving us Himself to eat.

The Phoenix, the mythical bird that burns itself and is raised up again is an image of the resurrection. The Pelican was traditionally thought to feed its young with its own blood when there was no food to be found. Because of this, the ancient Church saw it as a symbol of Christ in the Eucharist because He gives us His own Flesh to eat:

"Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you." -John 6:53

St. Thomas Aquinas also uses this image in his great Eucharistic hymn Adoro Te Devote, which we will consider next. But, let's return to Southwell for a moment because in the next stanza he turns to Scripture to show us how something drenched with water and blood as Christ was in His Passion can burn.

He tells the story of how Elijah (or in Latin Elias) proved God was the true God through his contest with the priests of Baal. Despite Elijah's altar being soaked three times with four giant jugs of water in addition to the blood of the sacrificed bull, the altar is inflamed with fire from heaven, thus proving that the real God is the God of Israel. Southwell then turns to prayer, asking that he be consumed with the fire of love becoming himself a sacrifice of love for Jesus that he may receive the Flesh and Blood of his Lord. This is an image of true Eucharistic eating that in the act of consuming one is oneself consumed, becoming one with the Love we eat.

In Adoro Te Devote, St. Thomas Aquinas works with the same idea from a slightly different angle. St. Thomas begins by addressing the Eucharist, inviting us to ponder with him what exactly is before us because it certainly doesn't look like God. If it is God, our senses of sight, touch, and taste are deceived because the Eucharist looks like bread, feels like bread, and tastes like bread, but the Lord says it is Himself and if Christ, the Truth says so then it must be true.

St. Thomas then takes us to the crucifixion where appearances seem to deceive our senses. Christ on the cross certainly does not look like God, yet Christ is fully God and fully man and we are invited with St. Thomas Aquinas and the apostle St. Thomas to profess this belief that Jesus is truly "My Lord and my God" even though we, like St. Thomas Aquinas cannot see or touch Christ's wounds.

St. Thomas now turns back to the Eucharist, praying, like Southwell for Christ to come, to "feed and feast my mind" and "bathe me, Jesus, Lord, in what thy bosom ran". We again pray to enter into the Eucharist, to receive the Lord and become one with Him so closely as to bathe in His Precious Blood so that one day we may be even more closely united to Him in heaven.

These two poems contain so much rich theological reflection on the Eucharist. With Southwell we ponder the Eucharist as Christ's burning sacrifice of love that when we partake in it, we desire to burn with the same love. With St. Thomas, we poetically ponder the doctrine of the Real Presence, that even though the Eucharist does not look, feel, or taste like Jesus, Jesus, God Himself, really is there and wants to be one with us even more than we desire to be one with Him. What a truly beautiful way to encounter the Eucharist!