God’s Grandeur

Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ (1844 – 1889)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
      It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
      It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
      And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
      And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
      There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
      Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
      World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

In the spirit of Hopkins’s poem, Fr. O’Keefe shares a poetic meditation:

The spirit of the age looks to the created world and despairs. Instead of being drawn to the transcendent, to the creator, it is drawn to the immensity, density, and variety of all that exists beyond man and flounders, sees no hope, desires to be lost – knows man to be unworthy, sullied by sin, unredeemable and unredeemed, wishes him to be dust that never knew animus or enmity, to have never been animated and hence to have never left a mark, a remembrance, a sign of his failing, to be unremembered and at last at ‘peace.’

But we inhabit a world charged with a greatness not its own – it reflects, contains, shines forth the gift of God. The world is breathing it, drawing it close in, to fullness, near to bursting. Our first parents, arisen from the dust, began in harmony with it, but in rebellion were driven to work, to be at odds, to demand from it by the sweat of their brow who had opposed the gift. Man has pounded, hounded the earth, so near to that fullness, but in the dark. And now all is hardened, unyielding, unrelenting, leaving him empty. Building up and tearing down his castles, giving way to the tide – disappointed to discover he is only a creature, that for all his digging and invention, he still suffers, falls short, finds no help to escape his helplessness. But the gift given is not rescinded, the well of goodness not depleted, held in the hidden heart of it, groaning for the cleansing flood of victory.

Man, born into the fall from grace and the coming of dark night, is longing for light, but tempted to despair. Yet, for all his being lost in the cold dark, he is not abandoned – for the dawn of new life has arisen. Salvation has come. The Word incarnate, by the mark of His blood, is cleansing the dust.

The spirit of the age – hopeless for being unable to hope in itself – brings death. The Spirit of God brings new life, draws us on in the gleam of the fullness to come.