Sunday Prayer

On this glorious day, as we celebrate the resurrection and our new life in Christ I offer this poem by Symeon the New Theologian (919-1022)

We awaken in Christ's body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes CHrist, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamles in His Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? -Then
open your heart to Him

and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ's body

where all our body, all over
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly real,

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
we awaken as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

(The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, edited by Stephen Mitchell)

May we, the whole creation, on this day, this Easter awaken as Christ's body, made whole again. Amen.