Our Morning Offering – 7 July – “Month of the Precious Blood” – Tuesday of the Fourteenth week in Ordinary Time
Good Friday
By Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894)
Published in 1866
Am I a stone and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee.
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly.
Not so the thief was moved.
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.
Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock.
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.
Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English poet who wrote various romantic, devotional and children’s poems. “Goblin Market” and “Remember” remain famous. She wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in the UK: “In the Bleak Midwinter.” later set by Gustav Holst and by Harold Darke and “Love Came Down at Christmas,” set by Harold Darke and by other composers. She was the sister of the well-known ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ Artist and Poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
AnaStpaul 