Peace Be With You

              Each of them – alone
    Cowering together in an upper room
     Full of memories, emptied of hope

   Each snarling smugly at women’s talk
   Of dazzling angels and an empty tomb
Each believing only in their own unbelief

           Each clinging to the other
As sheets to a fevered corpse gone cold
    Eleven dead men less one buried

          And still – He comes

         “Peace Be With You!”

   Wounded hands and wounded feet
A pierced heart but not a barb at unbelief

“Peace Be With You!”
  His gift balm soothing blistered souls
      Each knows themself – forgiven

He breathes on them, frees these captives
  Sends them out into the lighted night
            Each of them – together

—J. Michael Sparough, SJ is a retreat director, playwright, and poet at the Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House, Barrington, IL