Showing posts with label T.S. Eliot East Coker IV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label T.S. Eliot East Coker IV. Show all posts

Friday, April 15, 2022

Good Friday

 



The Altars are stripped, consumatum est, it is finished, and TS Eliot writes:


The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

 

Yes, behold the wood of the Cross on which hung the savior of the world. And you might remember the Reproaches, suppressed by the wicked heretic Cranmer and the latter day Roman Church. Here they are:





Seriously, what kind of satanic evil would cancel such music? The same wickedness, perhaps, that smashed altars, windows, monasteries and shrines, that killed bishops, priests and religious in an unholy spasm of destructive hatred. The same evil crew which shouted out Crucify Him! for their own profit.

We saw it in 17th century England, again at the Bolshevik terror in 1917 and originally on Calvary itself. On the sixth hour of the sixth day the followers of the False Prophet Caiaphas stamped themselves with the mark of the Beast as they cried out "we have no king but Caesar."

We know how this mutiny ends. In the meanwhile, repent, like the Prodigal and the Thief, and be lifted up upon the Cross which is the gateway to life itself.

Vincit,

LSP