Pro Custodia Creationis: Mass for the Environment, by Marjorie Maddox

Our Most Grievous Fault, by Karen Elias (USA) 2025

Pro Custodia Creationis: Mass for the Environment
 
                        “Pope Leo XIV approves new Mass
                        centered on care for the environment”          
                                    -headline in the Salt Lake Tribune, 4/4/25
 
We enter the sanctuary with palms,
but we could just as easily
 
cradle pussy willows or milkweed.
Our arms could overflow
 
with asters and black-eyed Susans,
with goldenrod and prairie clover.
 
The opening hymn? It’s always the ocean
with its salty crescendos and decrescendos,
 
its rhythmic processional a seascape
of starfish and ichthys—fishers of men,
 
Noah, and St. Francis obediently
ushering in all creatures great and small
 
to the nearest pews, which, of course,
are quite crowded (we move over twice)
 
but somehow multiply seventy times seven
before the Penitiential Act. After
 
addressing the Creator, we turn also
to the eagle perched atop the black rhino,
 
crunched in beside the red panda, not far from
the blue whale in an oversized baptismal,
 
what I have done and what I have failed to do,
as well as to the monarch and orangutan
 
in the next pew over through my fault,
through my fault, through my most grievous fault.
 
It is a long confession
that runs into the Kyrie.
 
The children save the day,
delighted as they are by fur and fauna,
 
and eager always to pet, hug, and name:
the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
 
The readings are the expected ones--
For the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof…,
 
etcetera, etcetera—the homily calling us to do
what we should already have done.
 
Of course, we agree and fill the offering plates
with our good intentions before the priest
 
proclaims, Behold the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sin of the world!
 
and we take the sacrifice on our tongue
and echo Amen!
 
But what will we sacrifice?
In what way give sanctuary
 
to those living, breathing,
growing beside us?
 
The recessional is all wind
waiting for an answer.
 
Marjorie Maddox
 
This poem was previously published in Sanctuary: St. Andrew's Episcopal Church 2025 Poetry Contest Anthology.
 
Marjorie Maddox is Poetry Moment host for WPSU-FM, assistant editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, and Professor Emerita of English at Commonwealth University, Marjorie Maddox has published 17 collections of poetry, including  ekphrastic collaborations Small Earthly Space; Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (both with Karen Elias), and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind (with daughter Anna Lee Hafer). Maddox also has published a story collection, four children’s books, and the anthologies Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and  Keystone Poetry (co-editor with Jerry Wemple, PSU Press). www.marjoriemaddox.com