O Root of Jesse
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December 19, 2019O Root of Jesse, standard raised for all people—kings will stand dumb in your presence, the Gentiles will pay you homage: come! Deliver us! No longer delay!
O Radix
All of us sprung from one deep-hidden seed,
Rose from a root invisible to all.
We knew the virtues once of every weed,
But, severed from the roots of ritual,
We surf the surface of a wide-screen world
And find no virtue in the virtual.
We shrivel on the edges of a wood
Whose heart we once inhabited in love,
Now we have need of you, forgotten Root
The stock and stem of every living thing
Whom once we worshiped in the sacred grove,
For now is winter, now is withering
Unless we let you root us deep within,
Under the ground of being, graft us in.
Poem: Malcolm Guite; Image: Adam Boulter
Jesus is our root and destiny, the One who was in the beginning, is now and will be forever. Let us know ourselves rooted and grounded, belonging to generations past in long succession of names to the first, and destined to future flowering in descendants yet unknown until the last. Let us burrow deep into this earth of ours, not seeking satisfaction on the surface of things, but finding seeds of Christ in everything and everyone. Let us know ourselves signed with the seal of his irrepressible life, and so learn the lesson of the seasons: that life always, always triumphs over death. May our roots reach down to the source of living water – “whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14) – and so may we bear fruit for the kingdom.
