Easter Sunday the Resurrection of the Lord
…Now burn, new born to the world,
Doubled-naturèd
name,
The
heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered he
in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day
dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;
Kind, but
royally reclaiming his own;
A released
shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fíre hard-hurled.
Dame, at our
door
Drowned, and
among our shoals,
Remember us in
the roads, the heaven-haven of the Reward:
Our Kíng back,
Oh, upon énglish sóuls!
Let him
easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a
crimson-cresseted east,
More
brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls,
Pride, rose,
prince, hero of us, high-priest,
Our hearts'
charity's hearth's fire, our thoughts' chivalry's throng's Lord.
Study
The great Jesuit-Poet
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote the line, “Let him easter in us.”
Easter is something that happens to us. It’s a verb, from the darkness into light.
Mary Magdalen has been “eastered” (freed by Jesus).
Simon Peter has been eastered (the wisdom and joy of a person forgiven!)
Saint Paul has been eastered (a complete turnaround!)
They have been eastered – God can and does take the worst thing in the world and turn it into the best thing.
We have been eastered in receiving Holy Communion in grace.
The people who have not been eastered explain why even though evil and hatred and suffering have been overpowered, they still hang around by the free will of people.
Being eastered means having interior “movements” of the soul that gives us Easter joy and strength.
It means that I allow myself to feel what I am feeling, bringing them to prayer and asking the Holy Spirit to use these emotions to move me forward in some way. Being eastered by hope to stay present, to abide in the flow of Mercy through yielding to it.
Christ eastering within us means we have a new center and core from which we live. We now live Christ’s life.
Saint Paul said,
It is no longer I who live, but it is
Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in
the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:19-20)
The two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning said, “He has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee.”
Galilee is where he told them that he would die and be raised up. Go there to that place of prophecy where you begin anew. This is where the Christian mission resumes. Pope Francis says we must find a Galilee; a returning to our first love, the origin of our journey with Jesus.
Action
Where is Jesus
telling you to go to begin anew?
How will your life be different with Christ eastering in you?
Amen.
[i] Hopkins dedicated his poem
“The Wreck of the Deutschland” to the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns,
exiles by the Falk Laws, who drowned between midnight and the morning of Dec. 7th, 1875.
Italics added.
Photo from Main Street Baptist Church, Bath, Maine.
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