Am I a stone

by Christina Rossetti

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon--
I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

* * *

Christina Rossetti was afflicted with paralysis of the face. It set her face quite literally like flint, so that she could not show facial expressions. This probably inspired the poem.

I feel quite a lot like that, though. It seems I can cry for pain, for sorrow, for homesickness, for disappointment, for any number of things, but I cannot cry at the only thing worth crying for: Christ's suffering.

I was thinking last night, as I tore myself away from the Altar of Repose so as to get home in time, about the time I spend praying. When I was younger, I had loads of time to pray. I even thought it was too much. At boarding school, on Holy Thursday, we had one holy hour together, and everyone got another half-hour in the night, going in shifts. I finally learned to appreciate it the last year I did it.

Now, I want to pray. I am eager to--I wish I had three hours. But now I have no time. I suppose God just gave me the time I had before to teach me how to pray and how to love to pray, and now that I have learned to love to pray, I will make time to pray whenever I can.