No.604: Advent at the Farmhouse // A Poem for Christmas Eve

For the last post in the Advent at the Farmhouse series, I’d like to share a poem by Robert Southwell.  It’s a beautiful reminder about the power of sacrificial love and the importance of Christ’s birth for our salvation.  He came with a love that burns like a fire!  I thought it was an appropriate meditation to pray with before the hustle and bustle of Christmas begins.  Wishing you and yours a blessed, peaceful and Merry Christmas. See you in the new year.  xoxo

The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell, SJ
As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.