St. John Vianney

by Jeffrey Essmann | July 31, 2024 1:00 am

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This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Sarah Law.

St John Vianney

He beckons from his alcove –
it’s warm, like a cardiac chamber
plush with blood, carnation red –

offering the moon-white host
above a silver cup. The moment
stills me, its sliver of eternity

paused beyond liturgical refrain.
Unlike the martyrs, he’s old –
grey-haired, and neatly robed.

They say he sat whole days in the confessional,
shedding tears over his penitents
who gathered, snagged by love, into his fold.

They say he was demon-tormented –
weathering their ravages; forcing back
the worst of them by uttering the Word.

O threshold soul, ascetic and persistent –
I am looking for your likeness in the living.
Should I trust you with my worries, I am certain

you would whisper back: behold.

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Sarah Law lives in Norwich, UK, where she is an associate lecturer for the Open University. She edits the online Amethyst Review[2], a journal for new writing engaging with the sacred. She is a published poet, with six full length collections and contributions in various journals and anthologies. Her collection, Therese: Poems[3], was published by Paraclete Press in 2020. Her novel, Sketches from a Sunlit Heaven[4] (Wipf and Stock, 2022) is a 2023 Illumination Book Award silver medal winner. Her essay on Julian of Norwich and the City of Norwich, ‘The Soul A City’, has been selected for inclusion in the Orison anthology of Best Spiritual Literature 2023[5].

Source URL: https://integratedcatholiclife.org/2024/07/poetry-st-john-vianney/

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