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479 - A Late Miracle |
A Late Miracle
From miracle to miracle, Christ won hearts
And taught frail men and women how august
And tender God is. Then came Golgotha.
Fallings away, inevitable to our dust,
Followed; yet something remained of the first trust.The instrument of death, sublimed to a sign,
Blazed out three centuries later. We are told
How at Jerusalem a Cross appeared,
Gigantic, and most terrible to behold,
Circled by haloes flashing white and gold.Right over the Golgotha chapel it stretched out
As far as to the Mount of Olives. All
Within the city saw it, and all ran,
Pagan or Christian, toward the altar, to fall
Upon their knees, and on the Savior call.The seventh of May it was, at the third hour,
When it appeared. And the whole morning long
It glowed and flashed, and some expected then
The Final Judgment, Christ the Judge among
Ten thousand angels, throned on the winged throng.The time had not yet come. A multitude
Did, nevertheless, praise God with one accord
And raise their voices to declare their thanks
To "Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord,"
The one miraculous miracle-working Word.And so St. Cyril, strengthened by this proof
Of the Paraclete's abiding presence here,
Dared write an Arian emperor that he should
Embrace the Nicene Creed in holy fear,
Knowing the divine Trinity is always near.
Harold McCurdy is Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Poetry is his retirement avocation, and he has published three volumes of poems, some of which have appeared in THEOLOGY TODAY. Dr. McCurdy adds a footnote to this present poem: "For the event in 351 A.D., see A Letter of Saint Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem, Written on the Seventh of May to the Most Religious Sovereign, Constantius, Concerning the Portent of a Cross of Light that Appeared in the Sky and was Seen from Jerusalem (The Library of Christian Classics, Vol. IV, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1955). Thirteen centuries later, Descartes, the first to do so, explained this and other such solar phenomena as due to ice-crystals in the upper air."