Missing Mass

My plane was late”I’ve missed the evening Mass;
So now I take a walk and try to pray.
The sky is vast, a dome of marbled glass
Where shoals of vapor slowly drift away.

The first few stars ride in the rifts of blue.
Again I wonder at the grand conception
That must have so intoxicated You
At the world’s indeterminate inception.

And now I breathe the atoms of the air
That Jesus gasped in words so long awaited
Since the stars shaped them in their fiery glare
To be the sound of “It is consummated.”

And this warm flesh that breathes God’s dying breath
Is no less of His substance, or His death.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

The Sinew of Diplomacy

Patrick Porter

This review will appear in the May 2026 issue. Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from…

When Rhetoric Becomes Reckless

Andrew T. Walker

Though it seemed to be an opening bid in a negotiation that, mercifully, ended in a provisional…

What the Wall Street Journal Didn’t Print

George Weigel

On March 21, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy profile of the pope as its “Saturday…