A Stylist Submits
Pianissimo
The Fast and the Feast
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The Fast and the Feast

A Maundy Thursday Poem by William Collen

The Fast and the Feast

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“During Holy Week we eat only bread and water and uncooked vegetables, and that with restraint. On Great and Holy Friday we eat nothing, and on Great Saturday, too, we fast until the third hour and then have a little bread and water and one cup of wine.” —The Brothers Karamazov, 2.4.1

How strange it is to think that on this week,
so many years ago, our Savior rode
into Jerusalem, just like a king,
and, dying for us, rose, defeating death.
Has any stranger thing occurred at all?
Events transpired at a rapid rate that final week;
the tempo of the life of God’s own Son
increasing swiftly to the point
of his humiliation, and the pause
before his resurrection.

That tempo is reflected in the food
some rustic monks were said to eat in one
of our old novels: first the simple bread,
which, by the week’s end, gave way to a fast.
The fast was slowly broken on the day
When His disciples would have mourned their loss—
but notice that the monks, who knew the end,
allowed themselves some wine, a small foretaste
of what was soon to come; a subtle glimpse
of hope fulfilled, which His own twelve dared not
to give themselves. Indeed they knew,
those monks, what we in hindsight also know—
the end, the glorious triumph over death!
Their hunger on the Friday symbolized
his absence—a great emptiness.
And, feasting, on the Sunday those monks would
reflect upon the victory of their dear Christ—
remember Him who would in all things sate their needs,
whose sacrifice their former hunger signed;
whose triumph their fine feasting testified.

And my own tribe, the evangelicals,
do none of this! We skip straight to the feast!
Truly, my own people know little of ritual,
or remembrance; we are wary of nearly all
outward expressions of inward belief.
Our bodies—do they ever feel the truths our minds embrace?
Our senses (save the hearing)—is the gospel told to them?
What lessons can my people learn from those monks in the book,
whose lives, that week, were ordered
by the fast before the feast?

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A Stylist Submits
Pianissimo
Poems read aloud, in search of an aesthetic experience like a divine touch. My favorite poems, as well as my own poems.
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William Collen