Poem on the Lord's Passion (complete)

Whoever you are who come near and pass under the threshold of the middle of the temple, stop a little, and look on me, who, innocent, suffered for your crime; lay me up in your mind, keep me in your heart. I am he who, pitying the bitter misfortunes of men, came here as the messenger of the promised peace, and with full pardon for the common guilt: here the brightest light from on high is restored to the earth, here is the kindly image of salvation, here I am your rest, the right way, the true redemption, and the standard of God, a sign and memorial of destiny. For your sake and for your life I entered the virgin's womb, I was made man and suffered a dreadful death; nor did I find rest anywhere in the bounds of the earth, but everywhere threats and everywhere toils. Rough huts of Judah were my first lodging on earth at my birth, and for my mother who shared it:

here dry grass, strewn among the dumb beasts, gave me my first bed in a narrow manger. In the regions of Pharos I lived my first years, a fugitive from Herod's kingdom; and when I returned to Judea I followed always fasting, always poverty itself at its extreme, and the lowest of things, always urging human minds, with the healthful warnings of the kindly teaching, toward the pursuit of goodness, and adding to that healthful teaching very many open miracles. For this reason ungodly Jerusalem, driven by the raging cares of envy and by cruel hatreds, and blind with fury, dared to seek for me, the innocent, by deadly punishments, a bloody death on the terrible cross. If I myself should wish to set these things out more fully, and if it pleases you to go through all the groans with me and to feel the sorrows, gather up the plots or the snares, and the abominable price of my innocent blood, and the feigned

kisses of the follower, and the insults and abuse of the cruel crowd. Fix in your mind, besides, the scourges, the tongues ready for accusations, the witnesses, and the abominable judgments of blind Pilate, and the huge cross pressing on my shoulders and weary back, and the heavy steps toward a dreadful death. Now look over me, now indeed forsaken and enduring the last punishments, and lifted up far from my sweet mother; look over me from head to feet: see my hair matted with blood, and my neck bloodied beneath the very locks, and my head pierced by cruel thorns, pouring living blood on every side over my divine face. Look at my eyes, pressed shut and lacking light, and my stricken cheeks; look up at my parched tongue, poisoned with gall, and my face pale in death.

See my hands fixed with nails and my arms stretched out, and the great wound in my side; see the stream of blood flowing from it, and my pierced feet and bloody limbs. Bend your knee and, weeping, adore the venerable wood of the cross, and seeking with lowly face the earth wet with innocent blood, bathe it with rising tears; and sometimes carry me and my warnings in a devoted heart. Follow the footsteps of my life, and, looking on the very punishments and the harsh death, remembering the countless sorrows of body and mind, learn to endure adversity and to watch over your own salvation. If ever it pleases you to turn over these memorials in your mind, if by chance there is any faith in my words in your mind, if due devotion and fitting gratitude for my labors arise, they will be goads of true virtue, and they will be shields against the snares of the enemy; with them you will be bold and safe in every contest, and as victor you will carry off the palm.

If these memorials turn your feelings, friendly to the slipping world, away from the fleeting shadow of worldly beauty, they will see to it that, caught by empty hope, you do not dare to trust the setting things of fickle fortune, or to hope for life in fleeting years. But you, seeing indeed that these ages are thus perishable, and stripped, by love of a better fatherland, of the wealth of the world and the use of things, the prayers of those before you will lift up by holy ways of life; and with the hope of a blessed life they will cherish you amid harsh pains with heavenly dew, and feed you with the sweetness of the promised good, until, after the last fate, when the body is left behind, the great grace of God will call the soul back to the bright breezes on high. Then, stripped of all toil, then joyful, beholding the angelic choirs and the blessed ranks of the saints, the delights of eternal peace, it will reign happily with me for ever in the hall.