perpetual virginity is a pure host offered to God, a holy victim

THOU: A week ago I couldn't bear to look in your direction. Two weeks ago today I was working on getting back on the gin. Half a bottle later that night I was hardly drunk, no less aware of my anger, and coming to terms with the fact that I have indeed, miraculously, lost the taste for alcohol.

Then the priest in the Sunday confessional, a stranger, who surprised me. Because he knew me, Lord. Or because he took the time to get to know me as if to confirm what he already knew. He knew I was seeking you, and he knew to remind me I must remind myself of how I came to know you. He surprised me by bringing the you who is concretely within me before me. "Faith," he said, "is the wider view," and then (thank you) I was turned round, asked to put my face up to the glass, asked to look closely for your prints--the ones I've identified before--and asked to study them again, this time with a mind towards retracing the vestiges of my own conviction. Look again, he said. And: "don't let this guy who killed your friend narrow your view so much that this murder is all you can see."

Today I can't stop looking at you, Lord. How can this be? That I (always complaining that I have no words for you) would like to spend all day listening for you within me? That now the letters I wrote to Fr about you (and so oddly exclusive of you), seem clumsy because they were clearly not meant for him, but for you? That now you have joined me to you, pierced me to the quick, wounding my wounds with the very nails that bind me together, body and soul, as one.

So it is: a vow is a nail.

Nail my heart, then, three-personed God. Nail it fast to your cross.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To God who is, who was, and who is to come, now and forever.

Amen.

...

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

--John Donne, XIV, Holy Sonnets

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