Mysteries of Light
By Jeannine Pitas - Toronto, Ontario, Canada - 15 September 2013
In Memoriam Blessed John Paul II
He stared transfixed at the brightness of water
and saw his Savior baptized in the dust
of extinguished stars.
He witnessed his Lord, luminous, transfigured over
heaps of rubble. Though bombs fell all
around him, he refused to look down from that light.
As human walls began to crumble, he heard
the Kingdom proclaimed. “Nie lękajcie się!”
he cried out to his people, then opened
the Jubilee Door.
All the world he invited
to Cana, his words the wine that promised
feasts of peace.
In theatres and quarries, factories and
schools, he met our Simons and Veronicas --
actors, typists, surveyors who carried
the world's great cross, who wiped
its bleeding face.
His feet searched grass, cobblestones, sand. He knew
all human steps left but a single footprint -- a thought he
kissed at each journey's beginning, Christ's body
stretched out between villages.
To him, we were all most precious fruits
of the same wounded tree
sprouting in soil fertilized by human need.
To him, the choirs of angels
were but an echo
of the smallest child's voice.
In market squares, in parks and plazas,
beneath our steeples and minarets
again and again he stretched out his hands
and joined us as we sang
in the one eternal Eucharist
of the worlds.