Love Poem by St. John of the Cross Highlights Jesus’ Good Friday Sacrifice

By Fr. Alex Ezechukwu, OCD

Now that we are drawing close to Holy Week, when we reflect on Christ’s sacred passion, has your Lent drawn you closer to Our Lord?

Lent of course is a time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving – of intensifying the living out of our Christian lives. As we draw close to Good Friday, we want to meditate more intensely on Christ’s suffering for us, from the Garden of Gethsemane to his death on the cross.

Such prayers and meditation will help us imitate Christ’s life more perfectly. The great Carmelite mystic, St. John of the Cross, in his Ascent of Mount Carmel, advises us in this general way:

“[L]et him have an habitual desire to imitate Christ in everything that he does, conforming himself to His life; upon which life he must meditate so that he may know how to imitate it, and to behave in all things as Christ would behave.”

What better way to meditate on the life of Jesus Christ than with one of St. John of the Cross’s poems?

In “His Heart an Open Wound,” a young shepherd’s yearning for a shepherd-girl is a metaphor for God’s love for us. See how the saint uses this to broaden our understanding of God’s love for us.

His Heart An Open Wound

A lone young shepherd lived in pain

withdrawn from pleasure and contentment,

his thoughts fixed on a shepherd-girl

his heart an open wound with love.

 

He weeps, but not from the wound of love,

there is no pain in such affliction,

even though the heart is pierced;

he weeps in knowing he’s been forgotten.

 

That one thought: his shining one

has forgotten him, is such great pain

that he bows to brutal handling in a foreign land,

his heart an open wound with love.

 

The shepherd says: I pity the one

who draws herself back from my love,

and does not seek the joy of my presence

though my heart is an open wound with love for her.

 

After a long time he climbed a tree,

and spread his shining arms,

and hung by them, and died,

his heart an open wound with love.

How did this poem strike you? Did it give you insights that you did not have before?

To learn about the different themes in this poem, take our short survey. You will widen your spiritual eyes!

Take Our “Open Wound” Survey

Click on, “His Heart An Open Wound.”

(We find that when people take our surveys, it opens doors to their minds, and they come to a deeper understanding of their relationship to God.)