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Exsultet

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With tread unsteady
Breaking winter’s grasp, we thirst.
Calvary looms blood red
Felix culpa
Joyful torments of this death.

Shouldering cruel beams
Wood of destruction and rebirth
Heaving steps
Faltering, falls
What drives Him on
Drinking to the dregs?

This intersection
Of real and ethereal
Nature and grace
Visceral and Divine
A thunderous collision of “no” and “YES”
Nailed heaven to the world.

The wood burns white hot
Ignited by His Passion
Purging that which stains and rends
Redeeming unredeemable
Branding dignity into men.
Into men.

Existence, undeserved
But lived
Our journey through this veil of tears
Each moment, every breath
A life for Him? For this?

From whence do we draw strength for our assent?
Pushing onward, upward
Power not ours but His
Who Was, and Is
Who blazed the path
Flesh torn by scourges and by thorns
Golgotha made present now
Again
Always again
In symbols and in veils.

“Oh grave, where is they victory?
Oh death, where is thy sting?”
The Master of the Springtime blooms
In salt and water
Cross and altar
Bread and wine and smoke.

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