For Lent …

Deus Absconditus

“Mother Teresa … lived much of her life tormented by doubt. … looking for God’s face … often all that stared back at her was the face of human suffering.”

— Richard Rodriguez

I see now

What I missed: How

You were always there

Looking through the eyes

Of those afflicted, their gaze

Revealing a presence I mistook

For absence. I see now

In the beauty of their pleading

You were always there,

Your voice sounding

In the weakness of their sighs.

Day after day you revealed

Suffering’s aloneness, your own

Sense of abandonment,

Transparent love I took

For emptiness. I could not turn

Away, held steady beneath

The solemn weight of doubt, 

I see now.