Catholic Poetry

The First Mass
By “J.B.S.”

She kneels in the aisle, the mother,
Head high, tho’ her lips move in prayer,
With eyes fast fixed on the altar
For a priest, her baby, is there.
How far away seem the voices
That are singing the Kyrie;
E’en at the gate of high heaven
Seems the heart of the mother today.

Lights blaze from the cross to the table
They flash between flower and palm,
Some tremble and bend in devotion
Some burn in the holiest calm.
Her eyes have seen through the darkness
Of many a silent night,
She could see the priest, her baby,
Were there never an altar light.

“Sanctus” they sing, and the music
Dies away on the trembling air,
In the hush his voice sounds triumphant,
A word, and the Godhead is there.
Dear Christ! Save the heart of the Mother.
It must break in this moment of joy;
She is tasting the first sweets of Heaven
Brought down to the earth by her boy.

The Michigan Catholic, May 7, 1914, 4-5, quoted in Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Seasons of Grace: A History of the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 140-141.