Holy Week, Monday: Jesus Weeps Over Jerusalem

A sonnet for each day of Holy Week by a poet interested in the intersection of religion and the arts in such writers as Tolkien and Lewis.

From The Imaginative Conservative

By Malcolm Guite

This strange Holy Week has begun in tears: tears of frustration, tears of lament, and for so many who have been cruelly bereaves, tears of grief. It’s hard to see through tears, but sometimes its the only way to see. Tears may be the turning point, the springs of renewal, and to know you have been wept for is to know that you are loved. ‘Jesus Wept’ is the shortest, sharpest, and most moving sentence in Scripture.

I have a God who weeps for me, weeps with me, understands to the depths and from the inside the rerum lachrymae, the tears of things.

This sonnet, and the others I will be posting for Holy Week are all drawn from my collection Sounding the Seasons.

You can hear me read the poem by clicking on the title:

Jesus weeps

Jesus comes near and he beholds the city

And looks on us with tears in his eyes,

And wells of mercy, streams of love and pity

Flow from the fountain whence all things arise.

He loved us into life and longs to gather

And meet with his beloved face to face

How often has he called, a careful mother,

And wept for our refusals of his grace,

Wept for a world that, weary with its weeping,

Benumbed and stumbling, turns the other way,

Fatigued compassion is already sleeping

Whilst her worst nightmares stalk the light of day.

But we might waken yet, and face those fears,

If we could see ourselves through Jesus’ tears.