Almost twenty years ago I wrote an article for Commonweal entitled “Resurrection and Real Presence.”I ended the piece by quoting a just-published poem of Czeslaw Milosz. As I recall, permission had to be obtained to quote it, and Milosz granted permission in return for a year’s subscription to the magazine — Patrick Jordan, does that ring a bell?Here, as we approach Lent’s Fifth Sunday, an excerpt from one of Milosz’s late poems, “Prayer,” written when he was almost ninety:

Now You are closing down my five senses, slowly,And I am an old man lying in darkness.Delivered to that thing which has oppressed meSo that I always ran forward, composing poems.Liberate me from guilt, real and imagined.Give me certainty that I toiled for Your glory.In the hour of the agony of death, help me with Your sufferingWhich cannot save the world from pain.