Christmas Lullaby : Edmund Matyjaszek – Secular Franciscans

I first heard these wonderful words of the Incarnation during a candle lit Advent service at St Thomas’s in Cowes a few weeks ago, and today Ed Matyjaszek has given permission to share his poem on our website.

Some words of the Incarnation encourage us to imagine pictures, some invite us to re-create sounds and smells, but Edmund Matyjaszek’s poem “A Christmas Lullaby” is full of emotions – pain, joy, suffering and love – and the simple, silent, soft beginning of the Incarnation as “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” [Jn 1:14]:

A Christmas Lullaby By Edmund Matyjaszek

You swing him cradled in your arms, Quiet and slow, your single boy. Keep him now from pain and harms,

Keep him for this time of joy.

He will grow to know it fully Suffering all that pain; The anguish on the hill, the folly,

The voices that come back again

Whispering, whispering “It’s useless – Why persist? Why go on?” Keep him now in gentleness.

That time, we know, that time will come.

Hush – keep soft, keep quiet, he wakes now, Stirs; eyes blink at the day. Rock him, rock him, rock him slowly.

Look – he sleeps again. We pray

To him to rescue us from sinning But for this moment must recall The simple, silent, soft beginning –

Your love, your arms, the humble stall.

Artwork Madonna and Child by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato [Italy 1609–1685]

© EdMund Matyjaszek

Ed Matyjaszek is the Principle of: Priory School of Our Lady of Walsingham Beatrice Avenue Whippingham Isle of Wight

PO32 6LP

Tags: Art Christmas Incarnation Isle of Wight Madonna and Child Nativity Poem Sassoferrato