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2 Peter 3
“Consider that our Lord’s patience is directed
toward salvation.” —2 Peter 3:15
For once in church (before, I think, the Sacrament)
In silence deep and cast adrift in prayer,
I folded in upon the immanent
For just a moment (maybe more) and there
Was made of my own heartbeat so aware
As to preclude all else surrounding me
While sensing in the steady thrum its share
Within a tapping in eternity—
A tapping patient, tender, soft upon
The soul, as if of one preoccupied
With all the sad and silly goings-on
Of someone whom they love and try to guide
Beyond the lush entanglements of pride;
The tapping of a God whose strange delight
Is there to wait until I’m safe inside,
No longer wandering aimless through the night.
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The Lost Souls in Purgatory
We picture them as quite remote
In darkened realms of endless flame
Where earthly words cannot connote
A pain that knows no antidote.
They linger there at mercy’s edge,
Their souls steeped in their sacrilege
And stripped of everything but shame.
And yet they’re closer than we know:
Each day we speak and interact
With them and barely note the slow
Despair that stalks them as they go.
They haunted pass us on the street
And closer home declare defeat
(I fear I live with one, in fact).
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Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Agape Review, America Magazine, Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, U.S. Catholic, Grand Little Things, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website.
These are two contemplative poems that indeed haunt us all. Thankfully, God will wait for those of us who care to pay attention to the soft tapping within our soul.
Thoughtful and thought-provoking poems.
In A Christmas Carol, I’m always moved by the souls / ghosts in purgatory that Scrooge sees when Jacob Marley visits him and although these spirits want to make amends, they can’t.
Thanks for the reads, Jeffrey.
These are two very plaintive reflections on the spiritual life, Jeffrey. As seems appropriate, the vagueness of personal reference in both lead to self-reflection: “Is it I, Lord?”
Thank you for both.
Jeffrey, Your meditation on 2 Peter is thoughtful and universal enough to resonate in my own thrumming heart.
The title and tone of the second, pairing “Purgatory” with “Lost Souls” raises the question: Isn’t the doctrine of Purgatory based on the premise that Purgatory is a “state” of purgation when souls are cleansed in preparation for Paradise? If so, such souls are not “lost,” per se, but (so to speak) passing through a refiner’s fire to burn off the dross and purify the gold.
The 2005 Roman Catholic Catechism puts it this way:
210. What is purgatory?
Purgatory is the state of those who die in God’s friendship, assured of their eternal salvation, but who still have need of purification to enter into the happiness of heaven.
At least that is my understanding.
The poem itself, by the way, is winsome, and filled with love and concern for those we love who have not (yet) claimed God’s saving love in Christ for themselves.
Thank you for sharing these two beautifully framed thoughts.
James: And thank YOU for your beautifully framed thoughts. As a certified catechist (I work with the 2nd graders at my parish–including preparing them for First Communion), I very much appreciate your reference to the CCC and, of course, agree with it entirely. The “lost” in the title (a nod here to my nuns in grade school) refers to the souls in Purgatory who have no one to pray for them, which I imply in the second verse may be the ones we don’t quite even realize are there. Thanks again.
“The Lost Souls in Purgatory” expresses a quite profound truth, giving the reader a sort-of surprise ending, yet not without foreshadowing — and a salutary thought that is likely to remain with us as we “interact with them”. “2 Peter 3” also draws out an important understanding, in this case of a realization of God’s gentle insistence that we pay attention to Him. Both poems have beautifully constructed rhyme schemes.
In “2 Peter 3”, Jeffrey, there is much subtle thought, which is supported by and necessitates the almost byzantine syntax. A second, more careful, reading was necessary in order to appreciate this poem.
“The Lost Souls …” was quite chilling in the way it put us side-by-side with the denizens of Purgatory. And the unusual nonce rhyme scheme was a perfect means by which to emphasize linkages that, in some cases, are between fairly distant and disparate entities.
“Lost Souls in Purgatory” came across as an oxymoron, and thus I interpreted your “purgatory” metaphorically as a place where living souls (not yet judged) suffer the danger of despair. The living can be “steeped in sacrilege” and we can meet them on the street and perhaps even live with one without realizing his or her spiritual condition.
You explain to James Tweedie that you are in fact speaking of souls in Purgatory (ones I would call “forgotten” rather than “lost”). A soul could have been absolved of sacrilege with a long time yet to go in reparation for it. As to meeting or living with them, you would seem to go back to medieval literature where there are many accounts of souls returning to ask the living for prayers and Masses. If they want anything else, they probably come from Hell!