April 24: Easter Sunday

Gospel: Mt 28:1-10


That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection
A poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ

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 rut peel parches 
Squandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches 
Squadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil there 
Footfretted in it. Million-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 in 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 gasping, ' 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 crash, 
I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and 
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, 
                Is immortal diamond.