TradCatKnight: Poem: When All Hope Is Gone

Monday, September 19, 2016

Poem: When All Hope Is Gone

Poem: When All Hope Is Gone

By: Eric Gajewski

Psalms 90:9
Because thou, O Lord, art my hope: thou hast made the most High thy refuge.

Please enjoy my latest poem from "Fortress of the Soul". At the end is a compilation of my poems.

Press play and listen as you read the poem...

When All Hope Is Gone

When All Hope Is Gone…

Whispers the weeping winds

As sins collect, the rains fall gently amidst modern mans painful song

Like Job who eventually swallowed his will whole

But first ate from the “bowl of woes”, which said his days art but nothing

This day now fades and slips through the hands of man

Descending into unending night

For it is Ye, who live by self and let despair loudly speak

Yea, you say, life used to be, at one time, sweet

But now all is wrong, for hearts still remain attached

Filled with cluttered dreams, chambers disillusioned with greed

Hoarding, it is indeed, the self alone, you feed

For When All Hope Is Gone...

Will You still stand in self strong?

Or will you concede to Mercy? Will you cry out in Repentance’s grief?

Will you plead? Or will you run to hide in the “den of doubt” proclaiming defeat?

For the lesson of “the dark” is harsh, yet for each soul unique

It is here, alone, that thee, might once again find humility

It is here, alone, in this dense dark, the blind come

But leave in Love’s due time, with the new found ability to see

Woe unto me you say, Christ, upon my own ship, has fallen asleep!

Yet in folly you do not recognize

“A heart must be stripped of all things!”

Say the Angels above who in unison sing

In so that he may never speak again of this “negativity”

For wherest two hearts art One, a vibrant flower is always budding

Thy heart must calm down to beat in this life’s hurried race

Slow enough to dismiss all the worry

Thence, in defiance of this world,

It is in this silence and solitude, I am still

For what I would want He does not Will

And what He wills I do not want

Thence again, I remain tangled in self’s fury

Whilst the disease of “me” invades

And takes hold of my mind, heart and body

I am ill, says the sinner, I am a slave…

For all hope is gone, you silently say

But Lo and behold there IS still a Remedy!

One, Who truly supplies our every need

One, Who controls the waves and heals completely

For when all is lost according to Reason

It is He who still stands upon His own Seas

And instantly answers with a Word

Appease, we must through Faith, fear not…

For every eagle must be, every eagle must seek

And keep his wings spread, for the Storm is strong

Because when all hope is seemingly gone

It is His Wind, to which, I am drawn

And by His Divinity, I have the strength to fly upon

In this Great Test…

For When all hope is gone and the night seemingly won’t end

With no apparent way to see the morn’ of the new dawn

An eagle must stretch, even further, his wings, to carry on

For there is no such worry in these turbulent skies

For when all hope is gone

When we finally see that “the night” no longer fights us

But is only meant for our transition

It shalst be the Eyes of Charity which shall lead us on…

Salvation

St. Augustine explains how we can rejoice in something that we can’t yet see and don’t yet possess. In so doing, he helps us understand better the power of the theological virtue of hope.
The just man will rejoice in the Lord and put his hope in him; the hearts of all good men will be filled with joy. We must surely have sung these words with our hearts as well as with our voices. Indeed, the tongue of the Christian expresses his deepest feelings when it addresses such words to God. The just man will rejoice, not in the world, but in the Lord. Light has dawned for the just, Scripture says in another place, and joy for the upright of heart. Were you wondering what reason he has for joy? Here you are told: The just man will rejoice in the Lord. Another text runs: Delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.
What are we instructed to do then, and what are we enabled to do? To rejoice in the Lord. But who can rejoice in something he does not see? Am I suggesting that we see the Lord then? No, but we have been promised that we shall see him. Now, as long as we are in the body, we walk by faith, for we are absent from the Lord. We walk by faith, and not by sight. When will it be by sight? Beloved, says John, we are now the sons of God; what we shall be has not yet been revealed, but we know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. When this prophecy is fulfilled, then it will be by sight.
That will be the great joy, the supreme joy, joy in all its fullness. Then we shall no longer drink the milk of hope, but we shall feed on the reality itself. Nevertheless, even now, before that vision comes to us, or before we come to that vision, let us rejoice in the Lord; for it is no small reason for rejoicing to have a hope that will someday be fulfilled.
Therefore, since the hope we now have inspires love, the just man rejoices, Scripture says, in the Lord; but because he does not yet see, it immediately goes on to say, and hopes in him.
Yet already we have the first fruits of the Spirit, and have we not also other reasons for rejoicing? For we are drawing near to the one we love, and not only are we drawing near – we even have some slight feeling and taste of the banquet we shall one day eagerly eat and drink.
But how can we rejoice in the Lord if he is far from us? Pray God he may not be far. If he is, that is your doing. Love, and he will draw near; love, and he will dwell within you. The Lord is at hand; have no anxiety. Are you puzzled to know how it is that he will be with you if you love? God is love.
“What do you mean by love?” you will ask me. It is that which enables us to be loving. What do we love? A good that words cannot describe, a good that is forever giving, a good that is the Creator of all good. Delight in him from whom you have received everything that delights you. But in that I do not include sin, for sin is the one thing that you do not receive from him. With that one exception, everything you have comes from him.
In this excerpt from one of his sermons (Sermo 21, 1-4: CCL 41, 276-278), St. Augustine urges us to rejoice and even delight in hope. This selection is used in the Roman Office of Readings for Wed of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time with the accompanying biblical reading taken from Zeph. 10:3-11:3.