The poem presented here is the joint work of two brothers in Christ-- Tyler and Henrik--who love writing poetry for the glory of God. We set out on our first collaboration back in January with this concept: “To live is to change, to be perfect is to change often” - St. J.H. Newman
So, without further adieu, this is TETELESTAI:
O man, behold!
magnanimous marble
hewn from follies untold,
happy faults innumerable.
Cephas, fire-born
of catalytic conflagration:
ongoing purification
of the false and forlorn.
Passion’s pressured —
O burning, boastful exaltation
O cooling, char-grined humiliation!
In the forge, patience refashions.
Hating meter rhymed,
lapsed, listless, maligned,
Heart - half - alive–
Empty and confined.
From the depths I have cried:
“O chisel, O hammer, release me!
then shall I rhyme all the time,
singing as a docile windchime
with the celestial symphony.”
Released —
by the Artisan, I am chiseled,
formidable fears now fizzled.
Old man cast off — Deceased.
Hell harrowed:
Our Father hallowed
Be Your Name,
The Living Flame.
Filled and breathing,
Still I am — healing.
Inhale, I am resting;
Exhale, I am moving.
Loving meter, I rhyme,
vibrant verses vivify
Heart now fully alive,
as a sweet, honey-filled hive.
I am a hymn, harmonized;
the new man from marble.
O what a marvel!
to be like Him, humanized.
Made in His Image, a sculpture
raised new from that blessed sepulcher,
naturally broken, now made to perfection
I am Love’s own stunning reflection.
St Gregory of Nyssa, influential excerpts from On Perfection:
"If we learn the art of painting, our teacher gives us a certain beautiful form on a tablet: each person's painting must imitate that form's beauty so that all our tablets might share the model of beauty set before us. If each picture is one's own life while the choice of this work is the artist's and the colors are virtues which express the image, there is a danger that the archetypal beauty's imitation can be remodeled into an ugly, deformed face; instead of the Lord's form we shadow it over with the marks of evil by means of unattractive colors.
But it is possible for the virtues' pure colors skillfully combined with each other to imitate beauty that we might be an image of the Image, expressing through our works the prototype's beauty by imitation, as it were, as Paul has done who had become an imitator of Christ by a virtuous life (1Cor 4.16)."
In my judgment this is the perfection of the Christian life: the name of Christ which demonstrates all his other names shares in our soul, words and life's activities so that the holiness praised by Paul (1Ths 5.23) may be constantly kept in the entire body, mind and spirit with no admixture of evil.
If anyone says that the good is difficult to attain--for the Lord of creation is alone immutable while human nature is mutable and inclined to change--how can a mutable nature realize what is fixed and stable in the good? My response is that a person who does not lawfully strive in a contest cannot be crowned (1Tim 2.5); he would not be a legitimate athlete if an opponent were lacking. Without an opponent there is no crown, for victory against oneself is lacking if there is no weakness. Hence, let us struggle against our nature's mutability as though against an adversary; wrestling with our reason makes us victors not by casting it down but by not consenting to the fall. Man can change not only for evil; if he had a natural inclination only to evil it would be impossible to turn to the good.
Now the most beautiful effect of alteration is growth in the good since change to a more divine state is always remaking the man changing for the better. What seems fearful (I mean our mutable nature) can serve as a wing for flight to better things, since it is to our disgrace if we cannot change for the better. No one should lament his mutable nature; rather, by always being changed to what is better and by being transformed from glory to glory (2Cor 3.18), let him so be changed. By daily growth he always becomes better and is always being perfected yet never attains perfection's goal. Perfection consists in never stopping our growth towards the good nor in circumscribing perfection.”