Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joyes in love.
Anglicans have appropriated some very fine poems over the years and made them into hymns. This lovely, lilting poem, originally published in 1633, is one of them, written by one of the most devout and lyrical of the seventeenth-century English “metaphysical poets.” As indicative as any I know of what purity of heart and desire for God look like, it moves seamlessly, as you read it, into song. The simple intimacy of the personal pronoun—“my Way, my Truth, my Life”—invites all who pray this prayer to take Christ’s self-disclosure personally.
The imperative that starts each stanza, “Come,” suggests an eagerness and an urgency and a depth of desire that accumulate in the course of the twelve deceptively simple lines. Imperatives have always seemed to me an uncomfortable form to introduce into prayer. We are told to ask for what we need, and some of the parables seem even to encourage us to ask again and again, to the point of being nuisances. But the Lord’s Prayer in English, for all its list of petitions, at least begins in the polite subjunctive: “Thy will be done.” It seems so much more respectful than “Do what you know needs to be done.” By the time we get to “give us” and “forgive us” and “lead us not” and “deliver us,” we’ve eased ourselves into God’s company with a full acknowledgment of divine sovereignty that allows us to venture into more forthright demands.
Whether command or invitation, imperatives bring us into face-to-face encounter. They assume and urge action. The heartbeat of Herbert’s poem, and the whole of its focus, lie in that one-word call: “Come.” I’m reminded when I read it of a friend’s moving public prayer that ended with words that appear in the final verses of Revelation—“Come, Lord Jesus.” When I heard them in the context of a prayer otherwise focused on the needs of our community at the moment, on issues of personal, public, and institutional concern, they suddenly blew the frame and the moment open. Suddenly all of Christian history unrolled in that word, “Come”—all the waiting and hoping and expecting and speculating and imagining when. And suddenly our collective desires seemed lifted out of daily concerns and refocused on the “desire of the everlasting hills.” “Come” ranges from a prayer for awareness of God’s presence in this moment, this day, this encounter, this task, to a prayer for the coming of a new heaven and a new earth, transformation of history, the fulfillment of eschatological hope.
That powerful petition is followed in each stanza by little gem-like meditations on who Christ is. The “way” that “gives us breath” is the One who was there from the foundation of the world, who breathed life into dust, whose creative work sustains us, and who, in our very genomes, has opened a path of development we even now can barely fathom.
The “truth” that “ends all strife” is the truth that will set us free. It is hard, in the midst of a thickening tangle of lies and spin and half-truths, to know how to find reliable information, to figure out who is trustworthy, to decide how to speak or hear a word of truth when language itself has been bent and hammered into an instrument of propaganda. How we “speak peace” in the midst of an economy largely dependent on war and a culture that valorizes violence is one of the great challenges of our time. To imagine, as Herbert does, a truth that “ends all strife” is to suggest that a mark of truth—God’s truth—is that it will be a message and an agent of peace. Jesus’s claim goes beyond an assurance that he speaks the truth: he is the truth—embodied, enacted, irreducible to maxim or law. And so, it seems, the way to peace lies in living truth, not in teachings or utterances alone.
The “life” that “killeth death” is a living force, summoned here not only as a reminder of an atoning sacrifice accomplished once for all, but also as divine energy, available when the human spirit flags, when faith weakens and hope wanes, and when, in despair, death looms like a dark lord. It is clear from some of Herbert’s other poetry that he suffered those conditions on occasion, and that his petition is no idle recitation for the sake of poetic form and rhetorical effect, but a real and urgent call for help.
In a similar way, the “light” that “shows a feast” asks for restoration or renewal of a perspective on the human story that frames it in terms of hope for the heavenly banquet. Asking for that light, the speaker asks for a vision like the one given John on Patmos, perhaps, that will sustain hope and keep the sufferings of this world and this life in a perspective that makes them not only tolerable but meaningful.
The quaint and antique description of the “feast” that “mends in length” recalls that the heavenly banquet will be celebrated in an eternal now in an endless fullness that will make up for what so often seems the tragic brevity of life here. No matter how long earthly life is, it often seems too short when death comes; death always, I believe, leaves those remaining with a sense of incompletion. But the feast that awaits us, the speaker reminds himself, will mend what is torn at every graveside.
And at that banquet, the guests will be those who are not only invited, but re-created, resurrected, renewed, body and soul, for the occasion. Lifted up by “the strong hand of the Lord,” we will be remade into God’s guests, made ready, made welcome, made whole.
The “joy” that “none can move” and the “love” that “none can part” refer, we should remember, not only to what Christ imparts, but to who Christ is. Herbert’s sacramental understanding of the emotions awakened in us by the lively, immediate, loving presence of the Spirit who is Christ’s breath in us is, in its way, shocking. The joy and the love and, finally, the heart itself—the seat of all feeling, the place where life renews itself with every beat—are manifestations of God’s own life in us.
God is already here. Christ has promised to be with us. The Holy Spirit dwells in and around us. Yet still, as we read this poem, we pray with the poet, “Come.” More than a summoning of One who is already here, it is, perhaps, a prayer for awakening: Attune me. Make me more fully aware, receptive, responsive to your presence. Heart of my own heart, enliven in me a heart that “joyes in love.”
The final line encompasses the rest. When love is our deepest joy, loving will be what we enact, what we embody, how we see. Love will inform our understanding and our motives. Imagine being “in love” in that way—dwelling in it, walking in it, seeing by it, moved to laughter and tears by it, letting love feed imagination and every encounter. Most of us don’t live that way with any consistency. But Herbert’s prayer gives me a little vision of what it might be like to find that lightness of being, that sure and lilting hope that turns words to song and imparts a bit of what it prays for—such a way and life and joy as to give us all the manna we need for the moment we’re given.