When they brought the news of my brother,
I was choked with disbelief.
He, who’d given his life, his time,
to helping the wretched in the town,
had spent his surging, God-given strength,
in touching and healing the untouchable, the diseased,
who’d dined and caroused with the destitute,
who’d been followed by children, revered by prostitutes,
adored by his followers, worshipped by me!
He’d been caught in a trap, they told me,
sold to the enemy, handed to what they called justice’.
He’d been stripped of dignity, lashed cruelly,
hammered to a tree and left to die in agony.
I couldn’t go to him; time distanced him from me.
How could I help? What could I do?
Could I call to him across the years by prayer?
He was my brother, born of the same father.
How could I link my faraway life with his?
And then it seemed his voice spoke to me:
You have many brothers and sisters, too
suffering as I suffer, their bodies wrenched apart,
their hearts torn, their minds jarred with pain,
isolated as I am now, friendless, forsaken.
As you pray for them, you will be praying for me;
as you bring light to them, you will bring light to me,
and their comforting will be my resurrection.
Easter
Sylvia Read