I think you are right.

Edje,

That must have been it. Frankly you quoted the only good part of the poem. And I can never remember whether Edith Sitwell was the fascist Sitwell or not.

“are willing to bear one another’s burdens [cf "shame of the world"], that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort and to stand as witnesses of God [cf "believe in Christ"] at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death [cf "his death" in Jacob], that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal [Christlike] life” (Msh 18:8-9)

As others helped me though my repentance, they helped bear my shame. They mourned with me about my deserved burdens and made them lighter. They comforted me, who greatly stood in need of their comfort. This caused them anguish both for me and in understanding how I’d hurt other people they knew and loved. They weren’t required to do this but their love for God, and eventually for me, led them to it.

I believe that the gospel’s core message isn’t so much that we won’t suffer for our sins — the soul’s changes of repentance depend upon us so suffering — nor that justice means we won’t be *compelled* to suffer for the sins of others. Rather, the love we are called to develop for others means that mercy impels us to *give* ourselves to mourn with them and to lighten their burdens by taking such of them as we are able upon ourselves.

“When we are willing to restore to others that which we have not taken, or heal wounds that we did not inflict, or pay a debt that we did not incur, we are emulating His part in the Atonement” (Boyd K. Packer, GenCon 10/1995)

Adam, thanks for being candid. I’m curious to hear what comes of your additional thinking on the matter.

Could this have been “Still Falls the Rain (The Raids, 1940, Night and Dawn)” by Edith Sitwell?

Still falls the Rain–
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss–
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.
…

Ariel,

I have a hard time advising you. I came to an interest in Catholicism and Old Anglicanism through Anglo-Catholic writing–Waugh, Chesterton, Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene, Lewis, Tolkien, Newman, and so forth. I started thinking about the Passion when I was laid waste by a poem written in early WWII that started something like ’1939 nails in the cross.’ I have been unable to find it since. I’ve read a few encyclicals, but most of my exposure has been casual–going to Notre Dame, reading First Things and National Review, religious art, Holy Week in Spain, some poetry.

The most fruitful devotional stuff in Anglo-Catholicism, for me, is writing on the Passion and on the meaning of the Incarnation (start with Chesterton, he has accessible writing. Lewis too). We don’t share the Catholic theology of the Incarnation but the meaning they ascribe to it has only been enhanced when I’ve realized that for Mormons every person is an incarnation in a sense.

No, I was working from memory. I’m with Edje in liking the original arrangment of ‘man’ and ‘ran’ but preferring ‘can’ to ‘may,’ especially because in modern English ‘cannot’ suggests that it is impossible while ‘may not’ suggests it is forbidden.

We should have more threads like this. :)

Edward Taylor (c. 1642-1729)
by Rosemary Roberts Petty

I wanted to skip over
Your Verses
Because they were
Religious and
Full of Conceits,
Phrases Archaic,
Rhymes Contrived,
Wordy Puns,
Farfetched Imagery.

I turned back to read again,
and again the pages flipped forward;
but a third time, disciplined, my eyes read
and my mind took in your thoughts.

Pardon,
Dissenter Parson,
Your knowledge of your God
Was so much less than mine
Yet how much more
You loved him!

(Ensign, April 1977, p. 23)