Holy Thursday

The Last Supper, Altarpiece by Eckersberg, C.W. - 1829 - National Gallery of Denmark

A Poem by Timothy Bartel

We love most the ones who break their bodies:

“This is my body, broken just for you.”

Yes, break it, we respond. We’ll join your party,

And wish that we could be so broken too.

Of course, it's not sustainable, this love.

Our pity and security break through

And tell us to retain our forms, to save

What little we have left, avoid the new.

Yet all will be transformed, like flame in glass.

The flesh, the blood become a kind of food

To fuel a new beginning. In a flash

And at a thunder-lash we are renewed.

And what we see will be—my god, my God—

His body was so beautiful, so good.

Timothy E. G. Bartel is a poet and professor from Houston. He currently serves as Professor of Great Texts and Theology at Saint Constantine College. His work has appeared in Christianity and Literature, First Things, Modern Age, Windhover, and elsewhere, and his latest collection of poems is A Crown for Abba Moses (Solum Literary Press, 2023).