The notion of Christ’s empathy for sinners is becoming something of a theme in my recent thinking, and it looks like I might be producing something like a series of poems in this vein. The theme interests me for a number of reasons. As I have written elsewhere, I often think of the resurrection of the dead as something like a reincarnation of Christ himself in our bodies, such that our entire selves will be, so to speak, “taken over” by Christ himself. He will dwell in us, such that it will be truer to say that Christ lives in me than that I live. It will be truer to say Christ knows and loves through me than that I know and love. Along these lines, I often think of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” (quoted in the second poem below), in which:
I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is — Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men's faces.
Christ plays in ten thousand places: he plays in the just man, for in God’s eye the just man is Christ — even though, paradoxically, Christ is lovely in limbs and eyes that are “not his.” There is both an identification and a disjunction between Christ and the just man, but the emphasis is clearly on identification: Christ is the Just Man, and is manifested as such in ten thousand places, through the features and faces, limbs and eyes, of all just men. The just man is thus, in a manner of speaking, a reincarnation of Christ.
Recently, however, I thought of a curious inversion of this idea. Christ by becoming man did not just make it possible for men to rise anew as reincarnations of himself. He also descended into men’s weakness so as to know all their pain—the pain that had resulted from their sinfulness. Christ “became sin.” He experienced our broken humanity for himself, in a way that approaches identification with that very brokenness—though ultimately, in the last analysis, he is not identified with sinful humanity the way he is with resurrected humanity. Nonetheless, he experiences our brokenness, our shame, and even our sinfulness “vicariously,” so to speak, as if it were his own, even though it actually isn’t. I’ve been trying to explore what that might mean psychologically for Christ (ridiculously hubristic as it might seem to explore the God-Man’s personal psychology), and the best concept I can identify for this is that of empathy. In that vein, my earlier poem “The Empathy of the Son of God” opened up a whole range of possible avenues for poetic and philosophic exploration. I want to meditate on what it means for Christ to experience the entire spectrum of human guilt and shame (without himself being actually guilty), and how the desperately human experience of such shame might itself serve (paradoxically) as a metaphor by which we ourselves can understand Christ’s radical sacrifice—his self-immolation—for us.
Below are just two small and quite imperfect samples that I’ve produced so far. The first poem is written in the voice of Christ as the Second Adam, but with the added complication that he “remembers” also being the First Adam—this being his act of empathy. The effect resembles that of “reincarnation” again, where a single consciousness at different points in history seems to inhabit the persons of Adam and of Christ… This is poetic, and not to be taken as literal theology. The narrator, “Christ-Adam,” is addressing an unnamed second person, “you,” whose identity can be easily guessed from reading. The setting of the poem is in two gardens, the gardens in which the two Adams worked our damnation and our redemption, respectively.
The second poem is in two parts, one in the voice of Christ and the other in the voice of the Soul, and centers upon the theme of Christ’s disfigured loveliness, his “unloveliness,” which he seemingly inflicts upon himself by dwelling empathetically and “vicariously” in the psyches of sinners. Why does he do this? Why does he appear to inflict such pain upon himself? Why does he lay his own life down, in such a violent act of self-immolation? The only answer is: to demonstrate his love and to win our love. Readers may notice some resonances between the Soul’s lines in this poem and the poetry of St. John of the Cross, e.g. the distraught soul seeking for her beloved—but obviously here I’ve taken a very different spin. It’s also a kind of inversion of the relationship described by John Donne’s sonnet, “Batter My Heart,” where it is the soul who is battered into loving God more perfectly. Here it is rather Christ who batters himself in order to win our love. Of course, ultimately these are related, because we are only battered by our participation in Christ’s self-battering… and this is the whole point of Christ’s empathy for us, his descent into our lowliness and our pain, so that he might draw us out of it with himself.
I’ve got some much bigger ideas along these same lines up my sleeve, but those might take a much longer while to complete.
Adam Reincarnated
First I was Adam, and awoke in that first garden, the garden of innocence, temptation, and damnation. Through Adam’s eyes, I met you there for the first time, as round the tree limbs in your elegant way you weaved. The woman was the first whose guiltless heart you hardened, whispering false assurances of exaltation, promises of divinity in return for crime. And I did take the apple from the hand of Eve. Centuries later, I met you in a garden again, the garden of sinfulness, temptation, and redemption. There I heard you whisper in my burdened ear Not promises of glory or of majesty, As once you tempted me upon the desert plain, But words of fear, despair, disgrace, and desolation. Yet under your dread pressure did I persevere, Redeeming Adam’s sin by my life’s tragedy.
The Love Note
I. Christ, Unlovely Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his Having neither form nor comeliness The Lord hath bruised him in infirmity And he shall bear up our iniquity No more am I lovely in those eyes not mine for through the eyes of men have I beheld the works of wickedness that they have wrought. No more am I lovely, for through those eyes I saw what men have seen with eyes of lust. Nor am I lovely in those limbs not mine, for through those limbs, those crafty sinner’s hands, I felt that I had done those sinner’s deeds. Defiled am I, for by praetorian hands I flogged myself upon the torture rack and wove from brambles a mock-monarch’s crown and laid their sins upon my flesh-torn back. Those limbs and eyes not mine I made my own, to live vicariously through sinner’s lives, to stand in sinner’s shoes and know their ways. Disfigured now am I, for I have played the principal part in my disfigurement. I was not killed, but laid my own life down, as if by my own members I was maimed, by my own mouth was shamed, blasphemed, and blamed. II. The Soul, Only Alone, I loitered in the empty church seeking comfort or forgiveness, or I knew not what. I was lonely, for in anger I had shunned my own beloved, turned him out, expelled him lovelessly. Dejected, out into the dark he went, and I looked out, and saw him bleeding, breaking with a lash his flawless flesh— and then he vanished in the nameless gloom. I knew not who did wrong, myself or he. One thing alone I knew: for him alone I longed, and for the comforting caresses of his gentle hands, the loving gazes of his comely and forgiving eyes. Alone, I loitered in the empty church seeking him I loved, and found him not. My eyes alighted on the tabernacle, and, alarmed, I saw the door ajar— and inside was no holy sacrament, but just a note, on which was writ these words: For you, my dear, and for you only would I flog myself to make you know me would I make myself unlovely just to hear you tell me that you love me
Stunning... truly lovely. This is the gospel “He had no beauty that we should desire Him”
Thanks for the gift that is this piece