O Radix
Jesse, O Root of Jesse!
We cry out
to you O Root from which all springs,
first fecundity
of the Divine!
Come and
restore our fruitfulness so long shrivelled and sin wintered!
For we,
obsessed only
with the
flower that blooms
and is gone
so quickly,
spill our
tears upon the soiled surface
of the
fading petal
and forget
the virtue of the root!
O Root of
Jesse!
Help us
lest we forget that strong growth,
must come
from a strong stock,
to know a flower
that would
outlast the
frost
must come
from deep roots,
long buried,
and anchored
in
the warm
womb
of Mother
Earth
resting
down the long
ages in the
divine dark!
O Root of
Jesse!
Speak to us
of Spring!
Of that new
life you bring,
a
quickening felt through all creation,
a gospeled
spark,
begun in the
deep pulse of a seed
now planted
in that
gateless garden
so long
prepared!
O Root of Jesse!
You are the
point of origin
where all
begins,
where from eternity
time blooms;
where then
comes forth from
Now;
until that
sprouting moment
where all begins
in you anew!
Save us for
your harvest of hope!
O Root of
Jesse!
Mixing your
luminous seed
with the
deep humus
of our
muddied being
you bring
forth new life!
Heal us
and raise
us from our barren sleep
of sin and
self
inviting us
to bloom again
as first
intended and
yet more so
than even this
for now,
our roots
entwined,
grafted to
your Divine stock,
made at
last again
one people,
one plant, one garden
in which
you will walk, delight and dwell.
O Root of
Jesse!
We call to
you in our evening song
as Adam did,
our gardener
father who knew the names of all
and saw your
face reflected in his own
until our
bloom withered in his hand
plucked
from its sustaining root
by selfish
desire.
O Root of
Jesse!
We sing you
our Magnificat,
first sung
by Eve our earth Mother,
long
silenced since the sundering of her stock,
until she
who is Eve and Jesse’s daughter too
became the
place of planting
where you
divine root,
and seed, and stock,
now born in
time and lulled by her hymn
to sleep
before your sorrows
renew in us
your
love so
radical that we are again
delivered into
Eden, rooted in
peace,
God grafted
into grace.
O Root of Jesse,
standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings
will shut their mouths,
to you the nations
will make their prayer:
Come and deliver
us, and delay no longer.
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