Be ye holy
Source: Matthew 27:19Then, when I breathe my last, the one who led me in this limbo will come back to me. Bending over my face, he will breathe in the last air I breathe out. What he takes from me at that moment will never return to me. And the icy shiver going through me will affirm that everything within, from the smooth surface of my skin to the white depths of my bones, knew him already.
Put a handful of salt on my body, and touch the top of my head with your hairy-fingered hands; then set me in the centre of my sacred sleep, where the next second never happens. Do this for the peace of my soul, because the blood that filled my heart was the blood of wounds, and the salt that was lost in my tears is still my only wealth.
Come.
Listen with me to this accursed wind, this relentless brutal suffering that sucks up every vital fluid in the universe; let us inhale this pain that worms its way into everything living; let us breathe deeply, letting the terror of the living sweep through us. Because this dread-filled chasm is where I found a live spring.
Light from light, whose name is mercy.
- So you are a king?
- You say I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.
- What is truth?
- I am the truth, and the way, and the life.
- If you were the truth, everything would change with you: if you changed, the truth would be changed. Only a god can change the nature of the world. Are you a god?
- ...
- Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?
- You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.
So, in a very quiet voice, I drank the cup held out to me, the cup named mercy. I drank those few syllables as if they contained all the magic the universe could muster. By it came the light. And I, who live in the shadow of death and whose path knows no peace, I could join my prayer with his.
That is why, with your mighty hand, you lift me above the waters. You remember my love. And my prayer has no end.
But already my time is running out; the death throes are coming to an end. Still it is there: that moment when shadows will devour my dawn and all light will fade from my human heart. Soon I shall no longer hear, my spirit will be deaf, and in the depth of my dreams I shall moan with hunger, abandoned by the bosom of the universe.
My desires will have no odour, and my cries no breath. From every particle of what I was will come an outcry of unalloyed dread; in my mouth, all things will taste of the blood of the lambs.
Then the ferocious time of the beast will come. During those dark hours, my path of light will be extinguished and my heart will waver in the night. From then on, the ring on my finger will be broken, but the water that once broke out on my forehead will become light. Inextinguishable light. I shall be, I was, I am; light being born in light, dying in light, being in light.
Look at me as I come to you. I saw you die and my spirit was killed with you. And with you it is born again, drawing from your spring the water of an eternal baptism.
Who can go back into that sense of universal suffering that emerges from the world, that is consubstantial with the world? This world where life goes on because life is destroyed. Who?
The one who attempts it discovers the infinite, and that infinite is terror. And you: you stand silent at the centre, where everything comes together.
That is why your true name is mercy. You absorb the world's terror.
So I draw nearer to the world of your silence, as a butterfly approaches a lamp burning under a bushel. I bring the act that will open up the fire, your silence and my night. I bring the memory of the breath, that breath with which you breathed in the flame of my life. The world's suffering softens, its cries become quiet: those who listen to you are healed. I go back into your church. Your peace measures my soul. Look, here is what I did with your talents: I worked with your bread; they fed me. They and I bore fruit.
I listen to the way your name resounds when it brushes the world; because this name is Holy, I know we shall be holy too.
