409 - Good Friday and Easter. Two Sonnets for Mary

Good Friday and Easter
Two Sonnets for Mary
By Ann W. Astell

Looking ahead, as the church calendar prompts us to do, Lent, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday stretch out before us. We print in this mid-winter issue two sonnets to help anticipate what ties ahead.

Ann W. Astell is a member of the Secular Institute of the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and has a master's degree from Marquette University. At the present time, she is in the doctoral program on Renaissance literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The accompanying Pietá print is Michelangelo's famous sculpture in St. Peter's Rome. (1499). The reproduction of "The Marys at the Tomb," by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1260-1319), is from the Opera del Duomo, Siena.

PIETÁ

O Michelangelo! Why did you carve
such calm in her and leave her cheek so smooth?
Is she unaging then? Have grief and time
no power to affect her flesh, to prove
her old? The fold of stone reveals her youth-
the untouched brow, the lender, open hand,
the firm, light fingers, sheltering and still,
and on her lap the body of a man
who's caught in all the silence of the stone-
her Son, her Savior, and her God in stark
repose, unclothed, and wrung into His rest.
Her countenance contemplative to mark
His wounds, this marble Mary moves to tears
for sorrow undiminished by the years.

410 - Good Friday and Easter. Two Sonnets for Mary

411 - Good Friday and Easter. Two Sonnets for Mary

MOTHER'S SECRET

You Evangelists! Why do you not
agree in your accounts? Was something lost
when John, in haste, went running to the tomb?
Or were emotions mixed, and hearts so tossed
with grief and joy unspeakable, with fear
and love and inexplicable belief
that all the Gospels babble when they tell
of the rock rolled back, and light, and your relief
to see Him risen through your tears? And why
is nothing written of the woman who
was standing there beneath the cross? Did He
not go and show Himself to Mary too?
Or did she keep her secret all too well--
the Christ-encounter none but she could tell?