The Killing
Diego Velázquez. Christ Crucified (oil on canvas), c. 1632.
Prado Museum, Madrid.
(Listen to an audio version of the blog below!)
I pray the Breviarium Romanum, the Roman Catholic Breviary, or Liturgy of the Hours, a liturgical book that today consists of four volumes, which span the entire liturgical year. They include hymns, prayers, psalms, and readings to be prayed during the five canonical hours of each day: the Office of Readings, Morning Prayer, Daytime Prayer, Evening Prayer and Night Prayer. The two most important or “hinge” Hours are Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. In the liturgical churches praying the Liturgy of the Hours fulfills the scriptural admonition to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18). Right now we are in Volume 2, the “Lenten and Easter Season.” At the back of the volume is a “Poetry Appendix,” and I often turn to it during the day. There you’ll find a poem by Edwin Muir (1887-1959) titled “The Killing,” which I particularly like to ponder during this Lenten season.
I’d like to share it with you in today’s blog, so here it is:
The Killing
“That was the day they killed the Son of God
On a squat hill-top by Jerusalem.
Zion was bare, her children from their maze
Sucked by the dream of curiosity
Clean through the gates. The very halt and blind
Had somehow got themselves up to the hill.
After the ceremonial preparation,
The scourging, nailing, nailing against the wood,
Erection of the main-trees with their burden,
While from the hill rose an orchestral wailing,
They were there at last, high up in the soft spring day.
We watched the writhings, heard the moanings, saw
The three heads turning on their separate axles
Like broken wheels left spinning. Round his head
Was loosely bound a crown of plaited thorn
That hurt at random, stinging temple and brow
As the pain swung into its envious circle.
In front the wreath was gathered in a knot
That as he gazed looked like the last stump left
Of a death-wounded deer's great antlers. Some
Who came to stare grew silent as they looked,
Indignant or sorry. But the hardened old
And the hard-hearted young, although at odds
From the first morning, cursed him with one curse,
Having prayed for a Rabbi or an armed Messiah
And found the Son of God. What use to them
Was a God or a Son of God? Of what avail
For purposes such as theirs? Beside the cross-foot,
Alone, four women stood and did not move
All day. The sun revolved, the shadows wheeled,
The evening fell. His head lay on his breast,
But in his breast they watched his heart move on
By itself alone, accomplishing its journey.
Their taunts grew louder, sharpened by the knowledge
That he was walking in the park of death,
Far from their rage. Yet all grew stale at last,
Spite, curiosity, envy, hate itself.
They waited only for death and death was slow
And came so quietly they scarce could mark it.
They were angry then with death and death's deceit.
I was a stranger, could not read these people
Or this outlandish deity. Did a God
Indeed in dying cross my life that day
By chance, he on his road and I on mine?”
That is a really fine poem, I think. One that I read and ponder repeatedly during this Lenten season. We read in the Gospel according to John that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . and the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1, 14). In the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, God put on a face and walked among us.
And we killed him.