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Holy Week Poems 3: O vos omnes....

by Sr Tamsin Mary o.p.

His trying took three days.  No, not a day:

his execution lasted some short hours.

Granted, He suffered, but how can you say

His pain and grief was greater than all ours,

who here upon the rack of this world's woe

live years of suffering and bitter pain?

Because He suffered what we hardly know:

What goodness suffers from the touch of sin;

because He knew, before He suffered death,

how He would suffer, struggling for breath

on nail-torn hands and slipping iron bonds

the splinters of the Cross in scourged wounds.

And with His mother's milk He tasted gall,

and swaddled sweetly knew the tomb and pall.