A Prayer Poem

The Nazareth Temple

Rejection is hate.  
Why go into a place of hate? 
Desire to love to learn to love, not hate;
being in a place of rejection
is being in a place of hate.

Here is one loving response of Christ:
Walk through their midst
and never return to Nazareth. 
Jesus walked away.
Did those who rejected Him
consider that He was rejecting them? 

It is the temporal perspective, to reject and hate. 
God is love.
Cassocks and candlesticks,
Latin glorias and sergeant-at-arms
will not the inner make. 
Who in the temple interprets the tongues?

Lord, help me never return to Nazareth. 
Better to let the world reject
and be crucified by the world
than to be in a temple of rejection: hate.
The outer does not the inner make. 

Where is the love?
Some may say not all therein reject,
only the high priests and Pharisees.
Do those who reject know love?
Love does not reject. 

Ought love reject hate? 
Unless forever in Christ's mystic love,
crucified once and for all:
God help me not go back into
the Nazareth Temple of rejection: hate.