I would like to offer you a poem that I like very much. It’s called The Burning Babe, by Saint Robert Southwell, S.J.
As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, [...]
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.
Saint Robert Southwell was a Jesuit and martyr in Protestant England during the time of Queen Elizabeth I. He had to minister as priest from hiding because Catholicism was outlawed. He wrote these verses before he was then tortured brutally and hung in 1595.
This is usually considered a Christmas poem but it is just as much a Holy Week poem. The Burning Babe is Christ… The poem is about His Sacred Heart! The Burning Babe is Christ hanging on the Cross! The Burning Babe is Christ in Resurrected glory. "Love is the fire."
In the readings today and all this week from Chapter 8 of John’s Gospels Christ want us to see that He is the Light of the World, the Truth that sets us free, God with us…
Yet many do not accept him. He is the Light and Love is the source, the fire!
In His Passion He burns for the victims and the refugees in the Ukraine. For the poor and rejected everywhere, for those plagued now by fear and anxiety, for all who suffer. For all who sin! Love is the transforming fire!
Our Lady stands by Him at the foot of the Cross, united with Him. They call us to come close and stand with them, during Holy Week - and always. Love is the fire!
