On Resurrection Hope

Lent is a season of penance, of waiting. The mystery of the empty tomb is such a scandal that I'm surprised that it doesn't bother us more than it does. Words can't do much to add to that splendid center of our Christian faith, that hope that we eagerly and perpetually participate in as we fall deeper into relationship with Christ. Yet there are a few who do attempt to put words to this. I'll post a favorite poem of mine by none other than that great wordsmith, Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ. Do yourself a favor and take advantage of his unique style, which works best if you read the poem aloud. It was written in 1888, and so you'll find some odd words like "roughcast" = drywall, "Jack" = guy, and the very reference to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who thought all matter came from fire and was in a constant state of change.

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Resurrection

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth,
     then chevy on an air --
built thoroughfare: heaven roysterers, in gay-gangs |
     they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever
     an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long | lashes lace,
     lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes,
     wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases | in pool and rutpeel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust;
     stances, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Millon-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire
     burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-
     selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that
     shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
                        Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the
     Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's grasping, | joyless
     days, dejection.
                        Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:
                        In a flash, at a trumpet's crash,
I am at all once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood,
     immortal diamond,
                         Is immortal diamond.