On this World Day of Prayer for Cloistered Life, the whole Church is called to celebrate the contemplative vocation and pray for those who are living or discerning this special form of life. We count on your intercession as we seek to grow day by day in fidelity to our vocation as the “heart of the Church!”

As a little thank-you gift for your prayers, from our contemplative Passionist hearts, we share with you some thoughts and images from two of our Sisters on their latest chalk art masterpiece …

One Foot in Eden

One foot in Eden still, I stand
And look across the other land.
The world’s great day is growing late,
Yet strange these fields that we have planted
So long with crops of love and hate.
Time’s handiworks by time are haunted,
And nothing now can separate
The corn and tares compactly grown.
The armorial weed in stillness bound
About the stalk; these are our own.
Evil and good stand thick around
In fields of charity and sin
Where we shall lead our harvest in.

Yet still from Eden springs the root
As clean as on the starting day.
Time takes the foliage and the fruit
And burns the archetypal leaf
To shapes of terror and of grief
Scattered along the winter way.
But famished field and blackened tree
Bear flowers in Eden never known.
Blossoms of grief and charity
Bloom in these darkened fields alone.
What had Eden ever to say
Of hope and faith and pity and love
Until was buried all its day
And memory found its treasure trove?
Strange blessings never in Paradise
Fall from these beclouded skies.

The poem our Sisters chose to illustrate this year is Edwin Muir’s beautiful and thought-provoking meditation on the kingdom parable of the weeds and wheat (or, in this case, the corn and tares). This is the mystery of “O happy fault, O truly necessary sin of Adam” which we sing in the Easter Exultet; the mystery of how even greater good can somehow spring forth out of evil. The mood of the poem is sober, even bleak, yet it is shot through with wonder and hope. In the midst of a landscape blackened and twisted by evil and sin, the poet muses upon how we, for all our fallenness, are still essentially good at our root, still able to bring forth beautiful flowers and fruits.

The two halves of the poem each begin by explicitly evoking Eden; specifically, that we have not wholly lost our foothold in Paradise, and we are not severed from the good, clean rootstock of our origin. “One foot in Eden still… still from Eden springs the root, as clean as on the starting day.” Fallen, banished, twisted, broken, still our nature retains its essential goodness. We are not wholly depraved; our fields are thick with both “love and hate”, both “charity and sin”, both “evil and good”. By evoking Jesus’ parable of the “corn and tares,” the poem raises the age-old question of why God permits evil, why sin is permitted to sprout and grow alongside this goodness. Having allowed us readers to feel tangled and even choked by the reality of these weeds in our fields, the poet then answers the question in the second half of his poem.

It turns out that, in God’s infinite goodness and providence, the good clean root from Eden that lies at the heart of every man, can “bear flowers in Eden never known.” It is only in the context of the brokenness of sin that “grief and charity… hope and faith and pity and love” have cause to blossom and be known in all their beauty. “Strange,” indeed, is the realization that greater blessings can be found on this side of Paradise, than ever were had before!

So taking up their chalky palette on a perfectly damp November Sunday, our artists set to work. In the foreground stands the field of corn and tares compactly grown, from which spring three scenes of charity and sin bound up together (and in which charity triumphs). The Sisters chose – perhaps unsurprisingly, as Passionists – to depict a crucifix as the ultimate example of “evil and good stand[ing] thick around,” of the best possible blessing (Redemption) springing forth out of the worst possible sin (Deicide). Four figures stand at the foot of the cross, but they are not the traditional figures of Mary, John, Magdalene, and “the other Mary.”

On the right of the Cross, a young woman stands and hands lilies to a man in jail clothes, This is the virgin-martyr St. Maria Goretti in her iconic return of love and forgiveness for her murderer Alessandro Serenelli’s infamous attack. Maria’s heroic forgiveness won for him the grace of conversion and repentance, “flowers” which truly would not have existed had his horrible violence not been perpetrated. Indeed, “what had Eden ever to say / of hope and faith and pity and love?” Yet Maria spoke volumes of all these as she lay dying from her wounds. (Alessandro’s cause for sainthood is now being promoted.)  This single iconic story, represented in chalk, has a broader symbolic significance, representing the power of God’s grace to bring forgiveness, healing, and redemption to the wounds of abuse and exploitation in the world and even in the Church of our own times.

On the left of the Cross, two female figures embrace in front of a bombed-out building. At first glance, one might be identified as a Missionary of Charity, but a closer look reveals a Star of David on her mantle. This scene is actually a prayer of petition in symbols; the women are dressed in the flags of Israel and Palestine and represent their suffering and warring people. In broader strokes, they represent all rival peoples at war with each other, and their embrace depicts the Sisters’ heartfelt hope and prayer that true compassion and communion can spring up out of the sufferings of war. “Blossoms of grief and charity / bloom in these darkened fields alone.”

The final couplet, “Strange blessings never in Paradise / Fall from these beclouded skies,” evokes the Biblical image of mercy falling like rain upon the earth, often used in the context of the Incarnation, Passion, and Redemption. Our artists inscribed it at the base of their crucifixion scene and also evoked it in the billowing clouds in the sky behind (or part of?) the cross… for it is, in fact, from the Cross that the rain of grace and mercy falls upon our world. “The world’s great day is growing late,” – seen in the setting sun – yet how much hope is packed into these evocative lines!