New contributor Joy Kleucker offers this poem from contemplative Elizabeth Rooney for our practice on this Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord:

Hurting
Only pierced hands
Are gentle enough
To touch some wounds.
The quivering flesh
Shrinks even from love,
Yet knows
That without this touch
There can be no healing.
How can one reach
A deeply hidden hurt
Without revealing
A massiveness of pain
That makes the helper
Cringe in dismay?
You need
To have been crucified yourself
If you would find the tenderness
To stay and share the pain
Again and yet again.