Maya Angelou

Savior

Savior - meaning Summary

Longing for a Restored Faith

The poem argues that institutional religion and ritual have distorted and obscured the original, self-giving love of the Savior. Angelou contrasts authentic sacrifice and joy with hollow liturgy, proud intermediaries, and prophetic law that dulls belief. The speaker observes believers drifting in fear and losing the name and immediacy of the divine, and ends with a direct plea for the Savior to return and restore genuine faith.

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Petulant priests, greedy centurions, and one million incensed gestures stand between your love and me. Your agape sacrifice is reduced to colored glass, vapid penance, and the tedium of ritual. Your footprints yet mark the crest of billowing seas but your joy fades upon the tablets of ordained prophets. Visit us again, Savior. Your children, burdened with disbelief, blinded by a patina of wisdom, carom down this vale of fear. We cry for you although we have lost your name.

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