A Six-Pack of Containment Considerations BONUS: Recking the Wreck

Many of you know my devotion to Jesuit priest/poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. His magnum opus, the "Wreck of the Deutschland," seems to epitomize his faith, his ministry, his life.

For all the joy points of his life, and for all his virtues and talents, Hopkins labored under an incessant  sense of futility. Disappointment from family; struggles in belief and experience of God's Presence; lackluster performance as a teacher and curate: these befell him and no doubt finally felled him, even if typhoid appeared on his death certificate.

He, too, was a fatality from a plague that was besieging Dublin in the late 1880s. Perhaps a coincidental detail, but not entirely.

Physical maladies are to some degree evidence of spiritual maladies. Sickness and death are consequences of sin. Now mental illness is not a personal fault, as if there were a direct correlation between "who sinned, this man or his parents?" and his plight (cf. Jn 9:2). They are, however, realities that as such are related causally. Even so, sometimes sins can catalyze conditions, as in the contribution of abuse or combat to PTSD.

By all accounts, Hopkins lived if not a charmed life, then certainly a comfortable one. The causes of his personal plague are, as for many of us, mysterious. Even if he knew their origin, daily decisions did not desist, and he attended to them carefully and heartfully. As with many artists, his art emerged through the rolls of his mental and emotional wringer, or at least it was in his soap.

Hopkins wrote considerably in his youth, winning a school prize for one poem, "The Escorial." Entry into the Catholic Faith, and soon into the Society of Jesus, convinced Hopkins he needed to set aside childish things (cf. 1 Cor 13:11) by burning his poetry and resting his quill.

Only after his Jesuit superior suggested that a poem be written about a recent nautical disaster did Hopkins (cue the Rocky theme) return to training, to retell a fight not in his beleaguered brain, but "in wind's burly and beat of endragonèd seas" (Wreck, 27).

In the manner that God brings forth good from evil, Hopkins' shipwreck reckoning won him a second wind, which lasted the rest of his harrowed days. Hopkins' interior torments and physical problems were the shipwrack that yielded a harvest of poetry, the "tempest [that] carr[ied] the grain" for God to us.

Storm-as-salvation, or salvation-through-storm, reflects the tension of opposites, much the work and play of Catholic theology and spirituality. No poem of Hopkins, I suggest, demonstrates this more starkly than "The Wreck of the Deutschland."

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Hopkins experienced his own conversion to Roman Catholicism as a turmoil in the first several stanzas. God is "giver of breath and bread," all things needful, but He seems to jilt as to Job. "Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, / And after it almost unmade, what with dread, / Thy doing" (1).

Nobody forced him, but the forces within him were wild weather: "the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress" (2). There was nowhere else to turn except to the Eucharistic Lord Himself, and there he thrusted himself as a graceful pigeon to its destination (3).

"Mined with a motion" (4) was the title of a book that analyzed themes in Hopkins' poetic corpus. Not one whit witless, his words achieved their aim, precisely because his aim was Truth: the truth of his perceptions and experiences, yes, but above all Christ, the Way, Truth, and Life (Jn 14:6).

This truth is evident to one who seeks and "sifts" it from life's storms and assertions. "Since, tho' he is under the world's splendour and wonder, / His mystery must be instressed, stressed" (5). These last two words are Hopkins coinages: "instress" is the force that an image ("inscape") exerts upon the mind, to which the mind must apply itself ("stress") as vigorous teeth to a Red Delicious. God is dreadfully evident everywhere, but not without purposeful sensory and spiritual effort.

The mystery of God-Evident originates not in the magnificent mysteries we celebrate today, lamentably via-satellite for most, although the initial kerygma (apostolic proclamation of Christ)  might try to convince us otherwise. What would have been the first thing on their minds? He is risen! This itinerant preacher ("going in Galilee") originated not only in the embrace of Father in the Holy Spirit, but in the "Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey; / Manger, maiden's knee;" (7).

Death and life commingle in every aspect of the God-Man's earthly sojourn, and in everyone else's. Our trials can move us, as they moved Hopkins, "To hero of Calvary, Christ,'s feet--" with a certain felt inevitability: "Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it--men go" (8).

Human hardships contain a salvific purpose, a literal salve (both in the English sense of healing and in its Latin root, the salutation made to Mary in the eponymous "Hail, Holy Queen." But herein lies the tension: divine purification presents as both "lightning and love...a winter and warm"; its Origin, a "Father and fondler of heart...hast wrung," at once producing obscurity and mercy (9).

God's purpose for us at every turn is our turning to Him, our conversion. He can accomplish this, according to Hopkins, after the striking strides of Saint Paul, or the waiting-working of Saint Augustine; either way, mercy and mastery "in all of us, out of us" are His objective (10).

Conversion and its sibling repentance are many-faceted, but in every respect a death. Though, like its sibling suffering, physical death is the consequence of original sin, it was meant to be the fire that welded a soul to its Fatherly Frame.

Death personified reads off a catalog of options (usually his, not ours): a sword, a flange (think the loose ligature on the space shuttle Challenger), a rail[road] accident, a beast's fang or a flood. There are more prevalent counterparts, such as the COVID Operation currently underway.

The time for perceived invincibility is long past. Our clever cloth masks are no firm prophylactic against a virus, though we may wear them to an optional outing. "But wé dréam we are rooted in earth--Dust!" There is little room for foolhardiness, for "Flesh falls within sight of us": every day the death toll climbs. Who among us is exempt from the reaper's swing? (11)

"Wreck" goes on to describe the details of the occasion: the passengers (12), the outset (13), and the impact both physical and spiritual (14ff), on the passengers and upon Hopkins himself as one who heard the news from an admittedly comfortable remove (24).

Several aspects merit Hopkins' attention: an heroic but fatal rescue attempt (16); the number five referring to both the nuns and to Our Lord's wounds (22); one nun's bold invitation for Christ to "come quickly" (24); the primacy of ordinary life ("the jading and jar of the cart"; 27) as the venue for spiritual insights and growth.

Christ came for salvation, much the need for Germany, which had far less to boast with Luther than with St. Gertrude (20). Salvation extended more intimately, in Hopkins' hopes, to the religious renegades of his native England. Just as St. Peter discerned the gruesome gravity of God ("the unshapeable shock night"), Hopkins noticed the poignant celebration surrounding this wreck, namely Mary's Immaculate Conception (it happened the day before that Solemnity).

This was all God's work, and Hopkins apprehended this after enough rumination on secondary points. "He was to cure the extremity where he had cast her" (28), and the nun's candid confession, he prayed, could help his own people repent and be converted, thus rendering this shipwrack a harvest (31).

God is in control (32). Harshly or gently, He wields the sword of mercy, swinging it even in the direction of the dead and the near-dead (33). Could that sword touch and "royally reclaim his own" British hearts? Everyone else's?

If so, it would happen as everything else has: in the tension of opposites: "kind, but royally reclaiming his own; a released shower...not a lightning of fire" (34).

The final stanza sums it up with the intensity of the last strains of Ravel's Bolero. The cavalcade of consonants, the arabesque litany spelling out the One Who fain would remember English souls all the way back to Himself.

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Morning, Midday, and Evening Sacrifice

Everything beautiful and noble about us, God has given and we are meant to return to Him in praise. 

The Handsome Heart

God's grace inspired a young boy to agree to whatever his father wanted to give him. I wish I had been as agreeable in the grocery store.

My Own Heart Let Me Have More Pity On

Hopkins left comfort root-room for a change with this one. "Let joy size / At God knows when to God knows what" suggests he wants to adopt the divine perspective toward his life.

Joy is one of the "Fruits of the Holy Spirit" in Galatians 5; fellow Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called it "the infallible sign of the presence of God."

The Shipwrack-Harvest on YouTube

I don’t know what took me so long to make YouTube recordings of GMH, but here is a link to my first playlist of same. A work in progress: recordings seem to emerge almost daily in this springtime of activity.

Regarding quality: I don’t claim to be good, only interested.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhYlit7QTcymEIW0jljEPgL8VrkyQahnm

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As Kingfishers Catch Fire is the first poem I have chosen to recite on my podcast.

It's the first Hopkins poem I remember hearing cited (in part), at the ordination of several transitional deacons. Auxiliary Bishop of Washington Gordon Bennett, S.J., the ordaining prelate, preached the last three lines of this swell sonnet: "For Christ plays in ten thousand places, / lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not His / to the Father through the features of men's faces."

Drawing upon the philosophy of Blessed John Duns Scotus, Hopkins appreciated the haecceitas, or individuality ("this-ness") of created realities. Each one of those ten thousands slays in its own way, or indeed Christ slays through them. (I know it's "plays" and not "slays"; I just wanted to use the latter term while it's still in the Youthvocabulary.)

Somewhere I read about the bell-like quality of the following:

"Like each tucked string tells, each
<hung
>bell's /
<bow
>swung
<finds
>tongue--"

In one of his sermons, Hopkins defines grace as "any action, activity, on God's part by which, in creating or after creating, he carries the creature to or towards the end of its being, which is its selfsacrifice to God and its salvation."

The preceding definition is found in the poem notes in Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works, one of the sources I shall cite frequently.

Here Hopkins echoes a saying of St. Catharine of Siena that appeals to modern ears: "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

Kingfishers and dragonflies can't help but be what they are, but we can. The same grace of God impels us all, but our cooperation with that grace is necessary and noble.

Time for a Podcast

I started this blog some years ago as a place to inspire, inform, and entertain. Its name, "The Shipwrack-Harvest," is a reference from Gerard Manley Hopkins' ode "The Wreck of the Deutschland."

In the worst of this 1875 disaster, five nuns exiled for their Catholic faith started crying out for Christ to come quickly to their rescue, whether as transport-to-shore or death. Hopkins wondered whether the nuns' plea could serve as an intercession for souls to return to Christ.

is the shipwrack then a harvest, does tempest carry the grain for thee? 

Incidentally that's why this blog is spelled ship"wrAck" and not "wrEck." Maybe they spelled it that way years ago. We used to hear the phrase "to rack and to ruin," so maybe there's a connection.

This past week has witnessed articles concerning problems with Catholic priests' failures in chastity (sex only within marriage). The celibate vocation is for the Latin rite the typical condition to be ordained a priest. The celibate person (priest or not) witnesses to the primacy of everyone's relationship with God over spousal relations, however good and necessary they are to the Kingdom.

Hopkins had struggles with his creed, his family loyalties, his emotions--even, it seems, with his sexuality. His poems were sallies in a well-waged spiritual campaign.

In "The Shipwrack-Harvest Podcast," I wish to narrate these poetic forays so their sacredness and whimsy can "fling out broad [the] name" of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and I hope you can join me.

Available on Anchor.fm:
https://anchor.fm/shipwrack-harvest

My podcast RSS feed:
https://anchor.fm/s/9577d18/podcast/rss

Year in Review: Celebrity Dying, Quotidian Living

I don't have a "Year in Review" media piece in front of me, but I can tick off the proverbial top of my head several celebrities who died in 2016. Starting from the most recent, but otherwise in no particular order: Carrie Fisher, Keith Emerson, Florence Henderson, George Michael, Prince...OK, that's all I could think of without help.

Found since the writing of the first paragraph, a rather partial list. Clockwise (from memory, starting from top left): Muhammad Ali; Alan Thicke; David Bowie; Nancy Reagan; John Glenn; Gene Wilder; Florence Henderson; Chyna; George Michael; Alan Rickman--not from memory (thanks, TLK!); Arnold Palmer; Prince; Carrie Fisher (center). Image credit: unknown and unsought.

The diversity of my Facebook friends shines forth in the varied reactions to these deaths. Nobody who posted on it was wholly indifferent (else, I suppose, they wouldn't have posted; I shared my selective share, as well).

Like much else, it moves me to wonder: maybe I care too little about people, or I just don't care about celebrities, or I consider myself "more sophisticated" (read conceited, even callous) for not caring so much about those particular people, their artistic prodigies or the fact of their deaths.

Except for the general sadness concerning death as a human institution, especially any death I consider "premature" or "before their time," my level of caring depends on my level of attentiveness and interest in their contributions to culture. It definitely is a reflection of me, for good or ill, or neither or both. For example, yesterday's death of Carrie Fisher registered lower than the death of Prince or George Michael, because I liked a few songs of the latter two persons and I care hardly at all for the Star Wars phenomenon. (Blasphemy, perhaps, but it's where I am. "Don't judge," but judge away.)

Nothing new here: Death is not going to stop. Celebrity deaths are not going to stop. The older we all get, the closer we all get to death. Pace Keith Richards, drug and alcohol abuse increase (but don't "guarantee") the likelihood of premature death. The cult of celebrity is not going to stop. The Internet is not going to stop, nor is the Internet-exacerbated tendency to react quickly and emotively to death, tragedy, and injustice.

In short: We need to renew our prescription for chill pills...and yet we must beware overdosing on chill pills, for we ought to take seriously many things, most of all our health, safety, and salvation. But we obsess over various uncontrollables to distract ourselves from the fundamental malady that includes "not being right unless we're not right" ("right" in the sense of "well"). The syndrome won't go away, though each day, please God, we can confront it--gently, yet head-on.

To retool a phrase: "The poor you always have with you" (Mt 26:11) meaning not only the material, but (here especially) the panoply of spiritual poverty that rock and roll our world. In the manner a friend once proposed a similar observation to me: we ought to keep in the front of the mind that in the back of our mind we are always seeking physical, emotional, moral, and spiritual self-destruction, aided, I now add, by the ancient enemy of genuine human fulfillment and the influence of that enemy in the culture.

One of my high school classmates, a fellow of intellectual bent and, if I recall, a fan of Jim Morrison, wrote this in his 1994 yearbook inscription to me: "Rem. [sic] your own death as often as possible." Upon first reading his esoteric entry, I concluded: whether or not I remembered my own death, I would remember him for having exhorted me thus.

One of my seminary professors, in his introductory ethics class of Fall 1997, told our class: "All philosophy is an attempt to address the problem of death." Implicit in that assertion, by virtue of their mutual service, is the inclusion of "all theology" with "all philosophy." The brevity and fragility and preciousness of life, besides being a proof for the existence of God, catalyzes the cranium for contemplation, especially that sort best supplemented by appropriate action.

I won't deny: 2016 was a difficult year for the entertainment industry and for many of its fans. Next year will be, too, I predict, if only because the celebrities of yesteryear, whose output was undeniably better than any of the drivel being released today, are dying off. (I mean, whenever, say, Tony Bennett or Betty White dies, the flag should be half-mast! When Sinatra died, I wore black all day! To explain: I was in the seminary, so I was wearing my cassock, specifically receiving my B.A. in Philosophy, which got me nowhere but wherever I am.)

"The beatings will continue until morale improves" [or, if you will, "until morals improve"--and even if they did improve, that wouldn't guarantee anything but greater disillusionment, and more grist for the atheist/anti-theist/hedonist mill]. 

But more than that: grist for the human mill. I grind with the best of 'em.

‘Some find me a sword; some
The flange and the rail; flame,
Fang, or flood’ goes Death on drum,
And storms bugle his fame.
But wé dream we are rooted in earth—Dust!	85
Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same,
Wave with the meadow, forget that there must
The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.

(G.M. Hopkins, "Wreck of the Deutschland," Stanza 11)

The last spoonful of mirror-directed moralizing on the matter: Excessive luxury of all sorts does not go unaddressed, whether by living or by dying. That's my takeaway from 2016. I'd like to keep it in mind every day.

Memorial Day Musings

Two beloved poems come to mind on Memorial Day: Rudyard Kipling's Recessional (1897) and Gerard Manley Hopkins' The Soldier (1885). The former is responsible for the phrase "Lest We Forget." One of our local fire departments has a plaque aside the door that often features the names of recently deceased members. Below the name(s) are the words, "Lest We Forget." The poem is a reminder that the sovereignty of God surpasses pride-impaired temporal power.

God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Kipling's poem considers the "universal," the attitude of the government or the citizenry as a whole. As earthly rulers receive authority from God, to God they must render an account. There are echoes of the 51st Psalm, the Miserere ("Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness") in the second stanza, and in the final stanza, the 127th Psalm, Nisi Dominus ædificaverit domum ("Unless the Lord build the house").

Hopkins traditionally treats the "particular," so his poem extols the nobility of "any given" soldier, likening him to Christ in terms of His sacrifice. As in the first poem, pride also motivates the first-person plural subject, but Hopkins fancies soldiers as types of Christ regardless of their personal disposition toward Him or His ideals.

YES. Why do we áll, seeing of a soldier, bless him? bless
Our redcoats, our tars? Both these being, the greater part,
But frail clay, nay but foul clay. Here it is: the heart,
Since, proud, it calls the calling manly, gives a guess
That, hopes that, makesbelieve, the men must be no less; (5)
It fancies, feigns, deems, dears the artist after his art;
And fain will find as sterling all as all is smart,
And scarlet wear the spirit of wár thére express.

Mark Christ our King. He knows war, served this soldiering through;
He of all can handle a rope best. There he bides in bliss (10)
Now, and séeing somewhére some mán do all that man can do,
For love he leans forth, needs his neck must fall on, kiss,
And cry ‘O Christ-done deed! So God-made-flesh does too:
Were I come o’er again’ cries Christ ‘it should be this’.

The first word of this poem is peculiarly placed. By now, as a Hopkins fan, I should know better than to question him. I should just marvel at his Sprachgefuhl. It's the plain-and-simple affirmative, but the question he asks ("Why do we bless soldiers?") is ostensibly not a yes-or-no question. Perhaps it's the spontaneous, ebullient portent of a positive position ("Soldiers are manly, valuable, noble, and attractive, like Christ Himself").

The phrase "do all that man can do" reminds me of the former U. S. Army slogan "Be all that you can be." Do, be--recall, the military classified Sinatra "4-F," unable to serve because of his punctured left eardrum. He served, I suppose, by keeping the ladies interested in having someone to love, and the troops interested in having someone to fight.

The Stuff of Saints, Part the First

In an earlier post, patient reader (or should I call you Theophilus?), I mentioned that, on Monday the 28th, I would be speaking to young adults on the subject of "Becoming a Saint in the 21st Century." Only since Monday did I recognize that Friday is "All Saints Day." The topic of presentation was apropos of the upcoming Holy Day, so the timing is Godly!

(The Diocese of Allentown had something to do with it, I grant. The Diocese works for God...though, in a certain sense, God works for the Diocese!)

I broke the topic into two major segments: "Becoming a Saint" and "In the 21st Century," and I began with the latter. Everyone in the room was a resident of the 21st century for the same amount of time, which is more than I could say for some of the venues I work (e.g. our elementary school)!

The most important things I noted about being a resident in the 21st century were:

• Technology, as evidenced by the "smartphone." The sheer inescapability of it, the overwhelmingness, the thrill, the headaches of it! The instant access to information, true or false, helpful or baneful. The ability to connect with people through social media (or, perhaps, the ability to fabricate a profile by which one can "interact" with a similarly-fabricated profile).
• The importance of education, for purposes beyond the mere content, and the pressure to continue education beyond the high school and undergraduate levels.
• Openness to new ideas: "searching," viz. experimenting with and "sharing" philosophies, religions, relationships, in the hopes of furthering self-discovery.
• Mobility, local, social, occupational, et-ceteral.
• Fluidity that extends even to ideas, even to the point that what one person holds as true, another may not, without recrimination or scrutiny, which derives in part from
• Relativism, the idea that any idea (especially my idea) is as valid as others. Substitute "faith/religious practice" if you wish.

What to do, in this marketplace of ideas? Is there a manual? Is there any sort of standardization to us "seekers"? Catholicism and Orthodoxy persist in positing a human nature that is universal, with its faculties of intellect and will that God made to understand truth and pursue goodness. We aren't actualized unless we are intent on understanding truth and pursuing goodness.

There is a big emphasis today on uniqueness. Cherished Catholic figures have relevant quotations:

• "Be who you are and be that well." (St. Francis deSales)
• "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire." (St. Catharine of Siena)
• “To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory, too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should." (Gerard Manley Hopkins), whose entire poetic corpus is relevant. Special emphasis on "As Kingfishers Draw Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame," which I quoted in the talk. Hopkins reflected the post-Scholastic philosophical stress on the individuality, or "this-ness," of each created entity.

As for becoming a saint, I don't know if everyone gathered that evening had aspirations for sanctity. Sometimes I don't know if I do. The aggregate of saints, canonized and not, speaks to us about the desire for God that is written on the human heart. You may also call it the desire for self-transcendence--with which conscientious human persons of any or no religious persuasion will identify, though perhaps with a little bit of help.

It is crucial to admit the existence and relevance of anything outside of the self. The failure to do so may well epitomize the human condition. Recovering addicts speak of a God in terms of a "higher power," but is there an "other" power? Note that the Hebrew word for holy, qadosh, at its heart means "other." When the angels were declaring the thrice-holiness of God (cf. Is 6:3), they cried out, "Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh!" "Other, Other, Other!" To be holy, then, is to be set apart...unique!

Since this talk was intended for Catholic Christians of this or any century, we needed to cite certain transcendent characteristics of holiness:

Obedience to the Commandments. Stipulated by the Lord as a proof of one's love for Him (cf. Jn 14:15). Nobody likes to be told what to do and what to avoid, so maybe it would mollify us to hear the commandments described as "enshrinements of positive conduct that fosters a well-ordered society, a communion of persons like unto the Trinity."

Virtues: Stable dispositions to choose the good amid the various circumstances of life. Temperance, patience, kindness, humility, diligence, chastity, and charity: these are seven contraries to the “deadly sins."

Prayer: traditionally understood as “lifting heart and mind to God” (St. John Chrysostom). St. Teresa of Avila: “a friendly way of dealing, in which we find ourselves talking in private, with Him whom we know loves us." Dr. Ralph Martin recently defined prayer as “paying attention to God." Referring everyone and everything in our lives to God—in real time, when possible (and when isn’t it?). This, however, doesn’t preclude fixed, regular “sessions” of prayer, in which we engage the Lord through the Liturgy, the Scriptures, the Rosary, worthy reading, the events of the day, etc.

More later.

Let's Hear It For Alphabetical Order!

While scrolling through the iPod this evening, I noticed the curious juxtaposition of two works: a dramatic reading of The Habit of Perfection by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the song "Had To Cry Today" by Blind Faith. (Both selections are available on iTunes.) I was first introduced to Hopkins by the poetry section in the back of the four-volume Liturgy of the Hours, and to Blind Faith by a seminary classmate. For the Patient Reader's convenience I shall offer both selections:

ELECTED Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.
Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:	5
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.
Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light:	10
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.
Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust	15
So fresh that come in fasts divine!
Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!	20
O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.
And, Poverty, be thou the bride	25
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

It's already written that today will be one to remember
The feeling's the same as being outside of the law
Had to cry today
Well, I saw your sign and I missed you there

I'm taking the chance to see the wind in your eyes while I listen
You say you can't reach me but you want every word to be free
Had to cry today
Well, I saw your sign and I missed you there
And I missed you there

Had to cry today ...

More lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/b/blind_faith/
I propose a relationship between the content of these poetic works. Hopkins writes in praise of the consecrated, vowed ("elected" as in freely chosen) religious life. It is the avenue to perfection: the ever-deepening relationship with the Trinity which finds its consummation in heaven.

The standard spiritual supposition is that people move swiftly along the path to spiritual progress by sensory self-denial. Hopkins provides examples: intentionally forgoing conversation and other forms of external noise (ll. 1-8), visual delights (9-12), gustatory pleasures (13-16), pleasant odors (17-20), tactile comforts (21-24), and all that money can buy (25-28). Thus he corroborates the Lord's contention that the consecrated person will receive "a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life" (Mt 19:29), in eternity if not in time.

The firm of Clapton, Winwood, Baker, and Grech support Hopkins' case (unwittingly, I'm sure) in "Had To Cry Today." We regret ignoring opportunities to connect. Perhaps one of the worst purgatorial pains will be a video montage of what could have been if we'd paid more attention to God and to people during our lives. We happily recall, however, that Divine Providence is the backdrop for such footage; for, even if we failed to bridge an unfortunate gap, God is bigger than all the dramatis personae in the human story.

It is likewise important to note that our interior recollection makes it easier to recognize the signs of God's presence and human need. Our periodic purification efforts might be only a shadow of others' efforts, but we profit by them by becoming clearer channels of compassion.

Reading "The Wreck," Stanzas 24-27

24             Away in the loveable west,	185
On a pastoral forehead of Wales,
I was under a roof here, I was at rest,
And they the prey of the gales;
She to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly
Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails	190
Was calling ‘O Christ, Christ, come quickly’:
The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wild-worst Best.
25             The majesty! what did she mean?
Breathe, arch and original Breath.
Is it love in her of the being as her lover had been?	195
Breathe, body of lovely Death.
They were else-minded then, altogether, the men
Woke thee with a we are perishing in the weather of Gennesareth.
Or is it that she cried for the crown then,
The keener to come at the comfort for feeling the combating keen?	200
26             For how to the heart’s cheering
The down-dugged ground-hugged grey
Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing
Of pied and peeled May!
Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still higher,	205
With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky Way,
What by your measure is the heaven of desire,
The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for the hearing?
27             No, but it was not these.
The jading and jar of the cart,	210
Time’s tasking, it is fathers that asking for ease
Of the sodden-with-its-sorrowing heart,
Not danger, electrical horror; then further it finds
The appealing of the Passion is tenderer in prayer apart:
Other, I gather, in measure her mind’s	215
Burden, in wind’s burly and beat of endragonèd seas.

I was at rest: The first half of stanza 24 comes to mind when I think of my brother priests (or their charges) who are serving in the military. While other noble souls are in the storm--whatever form the storm may take--I have nothing to complain about. Pope Francis called upon priests to acquire the scent of their flock by engaging deeply in their service. Smell like seminarians, high-school students, the elderly, prisoners, or anyone else--just be out there among them!  That's what Hopkins was doing in his particular setting, so I don't believe that Hopkins was considering his academic responsibilities as a sinecure.  It is neither proper nor helpful to compare one person's task to another's. If both do their best, working prayerfully, rigorously, and generously, God be praised!

Christ, come quickly: The recent story of the "Missouri Mystery Priest" (upon which I reflected here) tells of an alter Christus who responded to an emergency call with prayer, encouragement, and sacramental ministration. The teenage accident victim thought enough to call out for prayer at that crucial moment. The swift and cautious attention of emergency personnel is a very real kind of prayer, so if they didn't answer the young woman's request vocally, I'd understand. The second responder--the priest--surely made a vocal response!

I'd like to think that any of us priests would do that, but then I'd have to reflect on whether I'd do that!

As a newly-ordained priest I was driving back to the rectory from a visit home when I noticed police and emergency vehicles gathered at the side of a road. I stopped farther down the road and, oil stock in hand, marched over to the site. A car had lost control, broke through a guard rail, and fallen down the embankment. I hailed a responder, identified myself as a Catholic priest, and asked whether there was anything I could do. The gentleman declined, and, tail between my legs, I proceeded back to my car. On the way I muttered something to myself that revealed my ethnic and religious biases. "Catholics wouldn't have refused me." As usual, it's not about me!

Since that day I think I may have stopped once at an accident scene. Nowadays I offer a blessing and a prayer as I drive by, amid the occasional interior conviction of (1) being the priest or the Levite who passed by the beating victim, or (2) wanting to be the poster boy for the priesthood. When the opportunity presents itself again, I pray that I will respond as the Holy Spirit prompts.

But automobile accidents aren't the only kind of storm that calls for Christ to come quickly. It could be the ring of the doorbell, the tap on the shoulder, the "Father, do you have a minute for a quick Confession?", the page for me to answer the phone or hospital beeper, the e-mail, or whatever.

What did she mean? Hopkins asks the "arch and original Breath," the Holy Spirit, to help him to answer that question. Is the Spirit ("love in her") within the nun, "making intercession for the saints" (cf. Rom 8:27) through her plea? For the nun, death is "lovely." By her cry she is welcoming death and the Christ Who comes to people precisely through death. Another option Hopkins considers is the "crown" of martyrdom, the crown of life (cf. Rev 2:10). That, too, comes only through death; and usually an unpleasant one, for all its reward. The disciples gathered in the wind-tossed boat (Mt 8:23ff), flushed with fear, didn't seem to be thinking of a glorious witness for their Master; rather they were crying for divine rescue. On a purely human level, the terror of the moment suffices for anyone to wish it were all over.

The keener to come at the comfort for feeling the combatting keen: That's just a smartly alliterative way of saying, "The crown [of everlasting life] is a terrific reward for this mortifying wind."

"How do you spell relief?" In Stanza 26 Hopkins draws upon natural sources of cheer: the breaking of gloomy storm-clouds to reveal sunny or starlit skies. Then he polls the reader for his own "heaven of desire" that surpasses even the delight of the senses.

So, what did she mean anyhow? Hopkins returns to the earlier question to rule out the idea that the storm (in its myriad forms) drove her to petition for Christ's coming. "The jading and jar of the cart" (another Wreck favorite) refers to the physical, mental, and emotional erosion that often happens to laborers. The actual meteorological event is insufficient to render her virtuous or to conform her to the impassioned Christ. The mere experience of hardship doesn't of itself make a saint out of a sinner. Prayer and meditation--conscious and free alignment of the soul to God--contribute to that lifelong effort.

We imagine that this nun communicated fondly and often with her Master, so she must not have considered her present plight as an example of His absence--a gap that God might bridge, if He wanted to, by arriving, oils in hand, on the scene.

Powerful Amidst Peers

FELIX RANDAL the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mended	5
Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom
Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!
This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,	10
Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;
How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!

Portrait of the Laborer as a Young Man

When my father Joseph died in 2004, a priest-friend and mentor told me that he thought of "Felix Randal" upon hearing of my father's death.  This priest helped Dad to complete the annulment process and make his first confession in God-knows-how-many years.  Everyone should get to know a priest who is heaven-bent on reconciliation and familiar with the Hopkins corpus.

The stories of Felix Randal and Joe Zelonis are somewhat similar.

Although my father never seemed to lose his wits (nor his wit), at least two if not three disorders ravaged his body.  As a young lad he lifted weights and had a scrappy swagger.  Both qualities were helpful for living and working in the eastern Pennsylvania coal region.  Though never a bowler (but a pin-setter!), he eventually developed a "beer frame."  A week-long hospitalization in 1998 prompted him to quit drinking, and the initial result encouraged him to make more dietary changes, to good effect.  His heartier days (lifting fabric rolls, dumbbells, and 12-ounce bottles) were over.

To my earliest recollection, Dad wasn't much of a church-goer beyond Christmas and Easter, although he was raised to fear Christ, the Church and priests.  I was not privy to Dad's meetings with my priest-friend*, but I sensed that Father's winsome earthiness began to melt his fears and develop a brighter perspective on his faith and moral life.  Oh, and having a son who was increasingly closer to ordination--and eventually ordained, called Father just like all the others he'd known--this could have played an auxiliary part.  Talk about someone who "knew him when"!

*Given the sensitive nature of the material of their discussions and its personal irrelevance to me, I did not merit a part in them.  I would like to have been a fly on the wall "for instructional purposes," but my motives would nonetheless be severely tainted with curiosity.  I knew my father well enough to know his need for redemption; moreover, years after his death, I've been coming to know him more in myself.  I am my father's son!

Taken broadly, sacraments are events of divine-human synergy.  The human encounters with this priest precisely conveyed the divine life, as Hopkins' encounters did for Randal.  It is typically humble, and theologically accurate, of Hopkins to place more emphasis on the divine power of the sacraments than the priest's own personal contribution.  His first sacramental ministration was the Eucharist ("our sweet reprieve and ransom," line 6), but the Anointing of the Sick waited until Randal's final hours and days, as the traditional "Last Rites" or "Extreme Unction."  We may presume that Hopkins heard Felix's Confession.  With the fortification of the sacraments Hopkins can wish Felix the "sabbath rest that awaits the people of God" (Heb 4:9; cf. line 8).

In teaching a course on the Sacraments for a diocesan adult catechesis program, I happened upon paragraph 1523 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  It gives quite the nod to the "Extreme Unction" concept, one of the many things that Vatican II allegedly did away with:

If the sacrament of anointing of the sick is given to all who suffer from serious illness and infirmity, even more rightly is it given to those at the point of departing this life; so it is also called sacramentum exeuntium (the sacrament of those departing). The Anointing of the Sick completes our conformity to the death and Resurrection of Christ, just as Baptism began it. It completes the holy anointings that mark the whole Christian life: that of Baptism which sealed the new life in us, and that of Confirmation which strengthened us for the combat of this life. This last anointing fortifies the end of our earthly life like a solid rampart for the final struggles before entering the Father's house. (loc. cit.)

I particularly enjoy the "trinitarian" series of anointing: Baptism, Confirmation, and Anointing of the Sick.  In the course of a person's life, all three holy oils can be used.  While the purpose for the first two focuses more on the disciple's identity (as "character sacraments"), the last touches upon "identity" only obliquely: a suffering person may question the reality and the relevance of God in his or her life.  As the saying goes, suffering can make a person bitter, or better.  Our resistance to hardship is natural, but the choice is ours to press on with greater trust in Providence: an investment in our divine sonship.

In the third stanza, Hopkins shows appreciation for the necessary personal dimension of his sacramental encounters with Randal (actually a pseudonymous surname; but Felix was the given name of the inspiration for this poem).  A caregiver's verbal and tactile expressions mean so much to the patient, and the benefit of such outreach is undoubtedly mutual, as I recently noted.  "My" tongue and touch brought Felix comfort, and "Thy tears" touched Hopkins' heart.  It may seem patronizing for a man of thirty-six (Hopkins at the time of the pastoral relationship and the poem; as I currently am) to call a thirty-two year old Randal "child"; I picture an old Irish priest in the confessional saying, "Yes, go on, my son."  A priest is Father to everyone, regardless of age or status, though he does not "lord it over" his charges (Lk 22:25).

I had the providential opportunity to tender the sacraments to my Dad on a few occasions, as his debilitation grew more acute.  Like many things, this is something that I have cherished more as the years rush by.  When I came home for the day, Dad used to jokingly greet me, "Hello, Father" (and I him, "Hello, Son").  I'm glad Dad lived long enough to witness my ordination, with a year and three months to spare.  He continues to father me, I trust, from a better vantage point.

Nobody ever gets a blueprint of his life before it unfolds (and thank God for that!); nobody knows how it will unfurl.  Dad's "boisterous" years were long gone by my time.  His siblings could attest to them!  Early days at the glass factory and the textile plant would have witnessed a man "powerful amidst peers."  Felix Randal shod horses so that they could transport goods in Britain's industrial Lancaster region.  The respective occupations of Felix and Joe required a great deal of physical strength.  Both men needed that strength, and I could imagine that they did not deal well with its diminution.  But their vigor lives on in every faithful laborer who in his own day will rise and fall.

Reading "The Wreck," Stanzas 19-23

19             Sister, a sister calling	145
A master, her master and mine!—
And the inboard seas run swirling and hawling;
The rash smart sloggering brine
Blinds her; but she that weather sees one thing, one;
Has one fetch in her: she rears herself to divine	150
Ears, and the call of the tall nun
To the men in the tops and the tackle rode over the storm’s brawling.
20             She was first of a five and came
Of a coifèd sisterhood.
(O Deutschland, double a desperate name!	155
O world wide of its good!
But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town,
Christ’s lily and beast of the waste wood:
From life’s dawn it is drawn down,
Abel is Cain’s brother and breasts they have sucked the same.)	160
21             Loathed for a love men knew in them,
Banned by the land of their birth,
Rhine refused them. Thames would ruin them;
Surf, snow, river and earth
Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light;	165
Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth,
Thou martyr-master: in thy sight
Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers—sweet heaven was astrew in them.
22             Five! the finding and sake
And cipher of suffering Christ.	170
Mark, the mark is of man’s make
And the word of it Sacrificed.
But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken,
Before-time-taken, dearest prizèd and priced—
Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token	175
For lettering of the lamb’s fleece, ruddying of the rose-flake.
23             Joy fall to thee, father Francis,
Drawn to the Life that died;
With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, his
Lovescape crucified	180
And seal of his seraph-arrival! and these thy daughters
And five-livèd and leavèd favour and pride,
Are sisterly sealed in wild waters,
To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in his all-fire glances. + + + + + Hopkins considers the nun a "sister" to him by virtue of their common religious consecration.  They share a divine Master, as well.  Amid the continued brutal assault of the waters, the nun remains steadfast in the consecration of her spiritual vision.  If it helps the reader, in line 149, mentally insert the word "through" or "amid" such that the sense of the line conveys: "but she through that weather sees one thing, one."  Fetch: as a noun, it means a "trick" or "stratagem," even an "interest" or "attraction" (see 2c of the linked definition).  There are nautical meanings, too, suggesting appropriate wordplay: "holding a course," "the distance traveled by waves with no obstruction."  With respect to her relationship with her Redeemer, this nun has received a nihil obstat.  Her pleas pierce the tempestuous atmosphere, such that God and man alike can hear them. There were five nuns aboard the ship, and her designation as "first" likely derives from her role as superior of the community.  She emerges, moreover, as the moral leader of the pack by her heaven-piercing cries. For most of the 19th stanza Hopkins meditates on the significance of "Deutschland."  It is the name of both the foundering vessel and the country where its final voyage began.  St. Gertrude the Great and Martin Luther were born there (although Gert's Catholic Encyclopedia article says otherwise).  The evidence of their lives' outcomes--obedience and revolt, respectively--is enough for Hopkins to drastically polarize these two figures, setting up a sort of dualism or rivalry that traces all the way back to the primordial fraternal fracas. The nuns and other Catholic exiles on the Deutschland are German.  The Falk Laws were responsible for the Rhine refusal.  The Thames torrents were the proximate cause of their death.  Yet Hopkins suggests a higher wisdom at work: the "Orion of light," the Trinitarian constellation that somehow catalyzed the whole event.  More than a mere cluster of stars, God is Personal--has "palms" that lifted these nuns from their sanctuary (chancel) and held them so as to express reverence for their self-offering.  By no means their first self-offering (that was their profession of vows--or rather, it extends to their baptism), God estimated it as their best, precisely as it happened amid the tempest. The number five is multivalent: Five nuns boarded the Deutschland; five wounds grace the Crucified Body of Christ.  The wounds were dealt by all sinners (CCC 598), not merely by the Roman soldiers or those whose clamors led Our Lord to the slaughterhouse.  By the same token, all sinners are invited to return Him their own precious offering.  What else can we render to the Lord that is purely our own, except our sin?  And yet it is this very offering that the Lamb takes unto Himself, by becoming our sin (2 Cor 5:21). The Crucified left His five-fold mark on the worthy Father-Deacon Francis of Assisi, whose company these sisters joined.  Drawing near to Francis who drew near to Him, Jesus branded him with the stigmata (Greek plural of stigma, seal).  These five holy nuns, bonded by their consecration, are now united in their death.  We need not posit a masochistic God who delights in the bleak death of the nuns and their fifty-odd counterparts on the ship (or, for that matter, any tragedy or inconvenience); rather He delights in the way they "capitalize" upon the fact, by suffering well--offering it for His glory.  Such a manner of dying bespeaks their manner of living: habitually (pardon the pun) disposed to the radiance of Christ, whenever and however it appears among men. The single-mindedness of the nun appeals to me in my lukewarmness.  "Blessed are the pure of heart," Jesus proclaims upon the mountaintop.  To maintain an integral focus is essential to discipleship and, a fortiori, to priesthood.  The saints among us preserve this focus, to the degree that they are "seared" with the reflection of the Love-beam returning to them from the mirror.  Indeed all baptized persons enjoy the "indelible mark" of Grace.  As we grow in awareness of this unfathomable blessing, we will allow the dross of us to drip away so that the Pure Sacrifice remains.