Holy Wood, Intelligible Winepress
“Blessed are you, Holy Wood, intelligible
winepress!
In you was crushed the heavenly bunch
of grapes,
sufficient for gladdening the heavenly
and the earthly.”
[David the Invincible, “An Encomium on the Holy Cross of God,” in Vigen Guroian, Inheriting Paradise, 68]
Love Is That Liquor
“Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach, then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood, but I, as wine.”
[George Herbert]
Forever More a Living Tree
“The Word himself was the first Gardener. In the beginning he planted a tree in the garden of Eden that grew the fruit of immortal life. But the serpent came into the garden and claimed the tree as his own, until the Word took our flesh and reclaimed it. Nailed to that tree he made himself the antidote of sin and death. They who nailed our Lord to the Cross did not know that it was his from the beginning, that the selfsame dead instrument of execution was and is forever more a living tree, the Tree of Life that produces the food and drink of the Kingdom of Heaven.”
[Vigen Guroian, Inheriting Paradise, 73]
A Tree So Noble
“Faithful cross, a tree so noble
Never grew in grove or wood;
Never leaf or blossom flourished
Fair as on thy branches glowed;
Sweet the wood and sweet the iron
Bearing up so dear a load.
Ah! relax thy native rigor,
Bend they branches, lofty tree!
Melt, O wood, in tender mercy!
Christ, the King of Glory, see!
Veiled in human sin and sorrow,
Slain, from sin the world to free.”
[Fortunatus, “Pange Lingua,” in Vigen Guroian, Inheriting Paradise, 66]
