To Wear My Girlhood Like a Sword

reflecting on Sheldon Vanauken's Good Friday sonnet

“The Sword”

by Sheldon Vanauken

Yes, Mark was posted to the Tenth that year.
The day we got there priests contrived to bring
This ‘god’ to death, and mobs that made me cling
To Mark surged round us, all one mocking jeer.

No omen warned me when Mark led me near
The yelling street that I should be implored
By God to wear my girlhood like a sword
So edged with mercy men would freeze in fear.

Mark’s armour made the crowd draw back a space.
Just there beneath his cross the god limped by.
I saw his eyes and rushed into the street
Through sudden stillness and I wiped his face.
'My child,' he said and staggered on to die.
—My girlhood lay in fragments at my feet.

This poem was written by Sheldon Vanauken, author of A Severe Mercy, which I recommended a few weeks ago. He explained the poem and its dedication to his wife and a friend,

“I wrote another of my ‘Oxford sonnets’ on the Veronica legend about the woman who wiped the sweating face of Jesus on his way to the crucifixion, and dedicated it both to Davy and the impetuous Bee Campion. I could see either of them doing just that” (108).

In his version of the Veronica legend, Veronica seems to be remembering many years back to “that year” when Mark — a Roman soldier, probably her brother — was assigned to serve in Jerusalem. Veronica and Mark are both Latin names: Mark from Marcus, after Mars the god of war, and Veronica from the Greek name Berenice, meaning “she who brings victory.”

They are Romans, not Jews, new to the city and unimpressed by news of a ‘god,’ in lowercase and quotation marks, even of a god being put to death by his own priests.

They are neither of them cowards, and Mark’s masculinity helps them get closer to Jesus: she clings to him amidst the surging crowds; he leads her closer to the limping god; and his armor makes the crowd draw back enough that she can stand right next to Jesus.

But what was their motive at first? Were they merely curious? As Roman citizens, they have doubtless witnessed many executions before, and they might have just wished to see what made this man so remarkable that he claimed divinity, even while his limping subjugation would seem to prove he was anything but a god.

There was no compassion among the crowd, whose inhumanity rendered them less human. They are “all one mocking jeer”; the very street is “yelling.” There was also a lack of divine power, at least from her perspective, as no “omen” warned her of what God — the only time in the poem when she uses a capital letter to describe one God - would ask her to do.

Then Veronica sees Jesus’ eyes, and humanity and divinity flood into that moment.

I saw his eyes and rushed into the street
Through sudden stillness and I wiped his face.
"My child," he said and staggered on to die.

Today is Palm Sunday, Good Friday is in a few days, and I wanted to choose a poem appropriate to this week. This is one of my favorites.

Vanauken uses the unlikely image of a sword to represent two things: girlhood and mercy. 

The sword is “so edged with mercy men would freeze in fear.” What makes someone freeze in fear at mercy, if not the fact that mercy is the companion to suffering? It forces you to see the one suffering as a real person, not just the object of your wrath. In the face of suffering, there are three possibilities: jeering, apathy, and mercy. The crowd chose the first response, despising their victim. Mark was apathetic; he did not use his real sword to free the prisoner of Rome. Veronica alone pitied him and sought to relieve his pain.

This is probably why Vanauken calls girlhood a sword. It is not the armored soldier but the physically weaker girl who shows the greater courage. On the day our Lord chose to suffer and die for us, he did not want people to fight to stop his plodding death-walk and free him. He had rebuked Peter for attacking the soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane. Traditional, masculine heroism – strength of arm and swords and shields – was powerless to stop what had to come, but the soft, feminine virtue of mercy acted mightily. Someone might have tried to stop a man who stepped forward to help Jesus, but they may have realized the unnecessary cruelty of attacking a young girl - especially a young Roman girl.

Significantly, the male disciples did not stay with Jesus on Good Friday, with one exception. John was with him to the end, showing his devotion to Jesus and offering what protection he could to his mother and the other women who walked all the way to the cross. It’s not that there was no need for masculine virtues, but only John had the courage to show them in the quiet, obedient way that Jesus himself did.

(It goes without saying, but masculine and feminine virtues can be practiced by both men and women; “masculine” virtues are often more appealing and easier for men, and “feminine” virtues are more appealing and easier for women, but everyone is called to practice all of them in the appropriate contexts.)

Finally, the very same girlhood that emboldened her in mercy where stronger men froze, would be shattered. Her eyes were opened. When she rushed forward to wipe his face, her innocence, naivety, and girlishness died. She met God.

Veronica is an apocryphal character: she doesn’t appear in any of the gospels, and I’m not sure if she existed or not. If she’s a legend, she certainly is a very old one, first appearing in written accounts around the fourth century, where she is identified with the woman Jesus healed of a hemorrhage in Mark 5:23-34.

Whether she was real or not, I think that Vanauken’s poem captures why a character like this inspires us, why we certainly want her to have been real. We want someone to have shown mercy on the worst day in history. The poem powerfully reminds us that small deeds can show great valour.

Even for those of us who left girlhood behind long ago (or never were girls), we can wear mercy like a sword.