‘Pan-Cosmic Liturgy’

Throughout the created

Cosmos the logoi

Spiral ever

Closer to the

Logos Who spoke them

Into being,

Singing silent

Hymns to the

Author of Life.

 

But the malice of man

Disturbs their orderly

Circular steps

And disrupts their

Harmonious songs:

 

War and famine

Followed hard by

Hail and lightning strike

Giving birth to

Plague and earthen-quake.

 

Then on a hundred

Thousand altars

The Christian priests

Of Orthodox kirks

Beseech the Holy Ghost

To repeat the wonder

Of the Incarnation,

To make present

In the world once again

The Holy Body and Blood

Of Jesus Christ

In the people’s gifts

Of wheat and wine.

 

And straight away

The Spirit’s Grace

Flows gently down upon

His footstool-altars

And ripples out

Across creation—

Drawing the words

Of God the Word

Roosting in the heart

Of each created thing

Back to Himself—

Returning the harmony

Marred by fallen man,

Restoring the pan-cosmic

Liturgy Divine:

 

Snake and snail, wolf and whale,

Participating with

Bear and bee, flax and flea,

Rejoicing beside

Gold and gar, sea and star.

 

A renewed mankind,

Re-instated

As priest and king

Of everything

With breath and being

By the Wondrous Trinity,

Is leading all the worlds

Ever nearer

To the consummation

Of created life:

The commingling

Of all that is

With the deifying

Light of Him Who called them

Forth from nothing

Into creaturehood

For the sake of His

Deep and boundless,

Overflowing,

World-creating,

Death-destroying,

All-Perfecting

Love.

--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!