VIRGIN BIRTH

© JVieira

The perennial paradox
Peculiar to this Father and Son
Specialists in confounding
Human wisdom withdrawn from wonder.
A virgin gives birth
Not to sterility but
To a Messiah.

Now what has virginity to do with giving birth?
Nothing!
When wisdom wastes words wandering
towards the truth that will not set you free.

Virginity and inconsummation
incomplete heart and flesh
wrestling with a God who has no flesh
and who won’t let flesh
meet flesh
Aches, waiting completeness
To stave off sterility
Truly the unforgivable sin against
The spirit of life which is holy.

But sterility becomes pregnant
with yearning
for the spirit that sleeps
with God in the night
and impregnates with messianic spirit
those patient enough to yearn
and sweat lonely tears
rather than ruin gift
with impatience.

Only virgin’s wombs bring forth messiahs
They alone live in advent
waiting, a delaying bridegroom
late, hopelessly, beyond the 11th hour.
Still, the virgin’s womb waits
Refusing all counterfeit lovers and
all impatience
which demands
flesh on flesh and
a divine kingdom on human terms.

Messiahs are only born
in virginity’s space
within virginity’s patience
which lets
God be God
and
love be gift.

Ronald Rolheiser em «Forgotten among the Lilies»