Fractures well cured make us more strong. [“Repentance” by George Herbert.]

REPENTANCE

by George Her­bert

 

Lord, I con­fesse my sinne is great;

Great is my sinne. Oh! gen­tly treat

With thy quick flow’r, thy momen­tanie bloom;

Whose life still press­ing

Is one undress­ing,

A stead­ie aim­ing at a tombe.

 

Man’s age is two houres work, or three:

Each day doth round about us see.

Thus are we to delights: but we are all

To sor­rows old,

If like be told

From what life feeleth, Adam’s fall.

 

O let thy height of mer­cie then

Com­pas­sion­ate short-breathed men.

Cut me not off for my most foul trans­gres­sion:

I do con­fesse

My fool­ish­nesse;

My God, accept of my con­fes­sion.

 

Sweet­en at length this bit­ter bowl,

Which thou hast pour’d into my soul;

Thy worm­wood turn to health, windes to fair weath­er:

For if thou stay,

I and this day,

As we did rise, we die togeth­er.

 

When thou for sinne rebuk­est man,

Forth­with he wax­eth wo and wan:

Bit­ter­nesse fills our bow­els; all our hearts

Pine, and decay,

And drop away,

And car­rie with them th’ oth­er parts.

 

But thou wilt sinne and grief destroy;

That so the bro­ken bones may joy,

And tune togeth­er in a well-set song,

Full of his prais­es,

Who dead men rais­es.

Frac­tures well cur’d make us more strong.

—

iserere me, Domine—“Have mer­cy on me, O Lord”; that’s the 51st psalm. If you pray the tra­di­tion­al Litur­gy of the Hours, you pray it every morn­ing at Lauds. You begin every day with repen­tance, as you begin every Mass with repen­tance. “Have mer­cy on me, O Lord, for I have sinned.” It is good for those to be the first words you say each day. In that spir­it George Her­bert begins his poem: “Lord, I con­fesse my sinne is great.” Before a Catholic becomes a full mem­ber of the Church, the first thing he or she does is go to Con­fes­sion. Repen­tance is first; the Church’s read­ings for the first Sun­day of Lent, Year A—the first of the three-year cycle—begin with the reminder that we all have sinned in Adam. Repen­tance is first.

For Christ, who is like us in all things but sin, obe­di­ence is first. No soon­er do we come into the Church than we go home and sin, but when Christ was bap­tized, the first thing he did was go into the wilder­ness and resist the temp­ta­tions of Satan. And so in the read­ings at Mass the Church reminds us of our own sin­ful­ness, and of Christ’s obe­di­ence. Just as through the dis­obe­di­ence of the one man, many were made sin­ners, so through the obe­di­ence of one, many will be made right­eous.

It is not our obe­di­ence that heals us, but Christ’s obe­di­ence.

—

George Her­bert, a con­tem­po­rary of John Donne and fel­low devo­tion­al poet and Meta­phys­i­cal poet, was also an Angli­can priest. Born in Wales in 1593, but raised in Eng­land, he attend­ed Trin­i­ty Col­lege and for a brief time, dur­ing the reign of King James I, was a mem­ber of Par­lia­ment. In 1630, he was appoint­ed rec­tor of St. Andrew’s in Wilt­shire, where he remained until he died just three years lat­er, of con­sump­tion, at the age of 39.

“Repentance”—which is Her­bert’s 51st psalm, his Mis­erere—first appeared in the col­lec­tion The Tem­ple. You can find it at the Inter­net Archive. Short­ly before his death, Her­bert sent the man­u­script to Nicholas Fer­rar; Fer­rar pub­lished it lat­er the same year. The Tem­ple is sub­ti­tled “Sacred Poems and Pri­vate Ejac­u­la­tions.” (An “ejac­u­la­to­ry prayer” is a short prayer prayed to God in an emer­gency; for exam­ple, “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mer­cy on me, a sin­ner.”)

—

Her­bert begins the right way, by con­fess­ing sin; and his sin is so great that he has to men­tion it twice in the first sen­tence: “Lord, I con­fess my sinne is great; / Great is my sinne.” Rep­e­ti­tion is nev­er acci­den­tal. This par­tic­u­lar rep­e­ti­tion is a chi­as­mus; the word lit­er­al­ly means “cross­ing.” Specif­i­cal­ly, it refers to the cross­ing of strokes in the let­ter X (chi in Greek). The let­ter X reads the same back­ward and for­ward, and a chi­as­mus is rep­e­ti­tion in reverse order: “Lord, I con­fesse [a] my sinne [b] is great; / [b] Great is [a] my sinne.”

So great is it that Christ alone is the rem­e­dy. “[G]ently treat / With thy quick flow’r,” Her­bert prays. (“Flower” is a ref­er­ence to Christ.) It amus­es me that Her­bert wants his sin to be treat­ed “gen­tly.” Heal me, Lord, but please do it gen­tly! It is human of Her­bert to want an easy cure, though we’ll soon learn—as will he—that his sin can have no “gen­tle” rem­e­dy. The point he resists, and does­n’t get to until the last line of the poem, is that his sin should be well cured.

Christ’s life, Her­bert tells us is “one undress­ing / A stead­ie aim­ing at a tombe.” Christ came to be stripped naked (“one undress­ing”) and killed at Cal­vary; that was the point; every­thing he did had that as the sin­gle end. Our redemp­tion cost God. It did not come gen­tly for the Sav­ior. Why should Her­bert expect it to come gen­tly for him­self?

Christ’s life, like Lent itself a “stead­ie aim­ing at a tomb,” reminds Her­bert that his own life is brief: “Man’s age is two houres work, or three.” Her­bert, who was always sick­ly, was cer­tain­ly con­scious of his own death. Prob­a­bly he knew his “houres” were near­er two than three. The “delights” of those “houres” are tem­pered by “sor­rows old”—that is to say, orig­i­nal sin, inher­it­ed by “Adam’s fall.” Our life is brief—“two houres work, or three”—because death came into the world by sin.

The short­ness of life reminds Her­bert to ask God again for com­pas­sion and gen­tle­ness: “O let thy height of mer­cie then / Com­pas­sion­ate short-breathed men.” (“Breathed” is two syl­la­bles, and “com­pas­sion­ate” is a verb: you pro­nounce it com-PASH-un-EIGHT.) “I do con­fesse / My fool­ish­nesse,” Her­bert says, as though this addi­tion­al rep­e­ti­tion will con­vince God to let him off easy.

In the next stan­za, Her­bert is still ask­ing for gen­tle­ness, but he real­izes that it’s not going to be as easy as he may have hoped. “Sweet­en at length this bit­ter bowl / Which thou hast pour’d into my soul.” To be healed from sin requires “bit­ter” remedy—a pour­ing of “worm­wood” into the soul—and Her­bert’s hope now is for sweet­ness “at length.”

The sweet­ness is not in the cure, but in the holi­ness you have after the cure. “Thy worm­wood,” Her­bert prays, “turn to health.” God’s pur­pose, Her­bert real­izes at the end, is to “destroy” our “sinne and grief,” and that requires a “bit­ter” rem­e­dy. Quot­ing Psalm 51, Her­bert writes: “Thou wilt sinne and grief destroy; / That so the bro­ken bones may joy.”

God’s pur­pose is not to heal us gen­tly but to heal us well. A pat on the head does­n’t make us holy when our sins are so grave we have to men­tion them twice in the first sen­tence. Frac­tures well cured make us more strong.