The Tender Tale of the Pelican

In the 1290s, around the time that the Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) was added to the Church’s calendar, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote several hymns to the blessed sacrament. We still use these texts—Holy Thursday’s Pange Lingua, and Tantum Ergo and O Salutaris at benediction and the perennial favorite “Panis Angelicus—yet one, “Adoro Te Devote,” stands out for me.

It affirms our deepest belief in the real presence of the Lord in the sacramental signs of bread and wine while acknowledging our limitations: like the apostle Thomas, we want to touch and understand fully, like the good thief who died next to Jesus, we express our need, we acknowledge our hunger for God’s nourishing presence. One image, that of the pelican, deserves an explanation. Ancient legends saw the pelican as an emblem of Christ: it was believed that mother pelicans would save their starving children by piercing their own breasts to feed them with their own blood.

The 19th century Jesuit Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrestled with Thomas’ seven quatrains, and despite some archaic rhetoric, comes closest to the flavor of the Angelic Doctor’s hymn. It’s worth the effort to give it a slow and careful, dare I say? devout, reading.

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore,

Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,

See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart

Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:

How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;

What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do;

Truth himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.

On the cross thy godhead made no sign to men,

Here thy very manhood steals from human ken:

Both are my confession, both are my belief,

And I pray the prayer of the dying thief.

I am not like Thomas, wounds I cannot see,

But can plainly call thee Lord and God as he;

Let me to a deeper faith daily nearer move,

Daily make me harder hope and dearer love.

O thou our reminder of Christ crucified,

Living Bread, the life of us for whom he died,

Lend this life to me then: feed and feast my mind,

There be thou the sweetness man was meant to find.

Bring the tender tale true of the Pelican;

Bathe me, Jesu Lord, in what thy bosom ran---

Blood whereof a single drop has power to win

All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

Jesu, whom I look at shrouded here below,

I beseech thee send me what I thirst for so,

Some day to gaze on thee face to face in light

And be blest for ever with thy glory’s sight.

Amen.