How did it feel to hang by nails and wait for a death You were born to endure?
Created by The Father as a symbol of His power to save a crumbling humanity,
He gave you life for it to be ripped from your body. No saving grace for you,
no end to the pain, no Lord to help you. The Father, protector, divine Creator,
silently watching as your all too human pain poured from your all too human body.

Did you suffer a lifetime for every second that you remained in that earthly body,
punctured by earthly hands, jeered by earthly voices, cried for by earthly women?
Did Mary know the gift weaned on her bosom would depart this world so heinously?
Did She trust in the promise of heaven, did She believe in the prophecy of angels,
at the end, when your screams shuck the heavens? Did You question His promise
of a seat by His side while the cold nails split you and the steel blade slaughtered you?

A jew hated by jews, a jew betrayed by jews. Did you foresee that day, on that cross,
how the world would shake in your aftermath? He sacrificed you for the salvation
of humanity but ever since that salvation has waged wars in your Father’s name.
He first split the earth from the heavens and then he let man split the earth in two.

Did you die in vain, that day, or did you die to show that the innocent must suffer?
But what is lost most through suffering is innocence; when eyelids are stitched open
so no pain goes unseen, when the voices are raised so we hear the pain in each scream.
 
Today all the crosses that hang around our necks are adorned with jewels and pearls.
That day, on the cross, as you rose from humanity, did You foresee the war of the world?

All Words and Pictures by Damien B. Donnelly