Is Lent a time for giving up, or for taking up?
Herbert's 'Agonie' forces consideration of both;
he identifies the two furthest poles
of life's most excruciating tensions.
We are stretched in crucifixion,
by the claims of sin on the one hand
and the demands of love on the other hand.
Lent is an invitation and a demand
to recalibrate the relation between sin and love.
We give up sin, we take up love,
and thus God restores the equilibrium of life.
Motivation is found in the same darkly illumined places,
Gethsemane and Calvary.
Lent is the time to visit those two places,
where sin meets love in a garden
and mercy bears judgement
on a rubbish-strewn landfill
Observing Lent helps us get the measure of things.
To know sin in ourselves,
and to know that we are fully known
and fully loved by by a Love beyond knowing.
The Agonie
Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love.
Who would know Sinne, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skinne, his garments bloudie be.
Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein.
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love in that liquour sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.
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