Dear Friends,
One of the benefits of the present health crisis is that I have more time to read than normal and the quiet to read poetry as it needs to be read. So let me share with you something I recently read, a brief reflection and a poem from the poet and Anglican priest, Malcolm Guite.
“I think it’s harder to weather this strange time as a priest than it is as a poet, the priest in me feels strongly called to be out there holding hands with the very people from whom I must be distanced, but the poet in me knows that if the muse is kind and I am faithful to her, then my words will do the touching for me.
Like all of us, I have been drawn deeply into this strange Easter when so much of the outwardly familiar has been taken away, and yet the inwardly familiar, the great Easter story of Death and Resurrection, has suddenly been renewed and become more agonizingly close, more vividly relevant to our lives than ever. But, like so many, I am deeply distressed at not being able to gather in church this morning, and to receive communion in community, to meet Christ ‘risen in bread, and reveling in wine’, as I put it in a sonnet long ago. But this Easter he calls me to discern him in new ways and in different places. He is risen indeed, and if I cannot go to church then where am I to find him? That is the question my new poem seeks to address, and if it is a question you ask yourselves too, then I hope you will find this poem helpful.”
Easter 2020
And where is Jesus, this strange Easter day?
Not lost in our locked churches, anymore
Than he was sealed in that dark sepulchre.
The locks are loosed; the stone is rolled away,
And he is up and risen, long before,
Alive, at large, and making his strong way
Into the world he gave his life to save,
No need to seek him in his empty grave.
He might have been a wafer in the hands
Of priests this day, or music from the lips
Of red-robed choristers, instead he slips
Away from church, shakes off our linen bands
To don his apron with a nurse: he grips
And lifts a stretcher, soothes with gentle hands
The frail flesh of the dying, gives them hope,
Breathes with the breathless, lends them strength to cope.
On Thursday we applauded, for he came
And served us in a thousand names and faces
Mopping our sickroom floors and catching traces
Of that corona which was death to him:
Good Friday happened in a thousand places
Where Jesus held the helpless, died with them
That they might share his Easter in their need,
Now they are risen with him, risen indeed.
We continue to minister as we can, to connect as best we can connect, to proclaim the gospel where it can be proclaimed, and to let people know that Jesus is alive in our midst even though we cannot function as normal. I get a little down when I think that the present situation may continue for a long time to come, maybe a year or more. But when I go to Jesus in prayer, I feel a comfort knowing that his spirit continues to work among us and that God’s will in the end will be done. I simply need to trust.
We are hoping to start Sunday Masses on Pentecost which is the last Sunday of May – if we start to see a downturn in the number of COVID cases locally. Until then…
Peace,
Fr. Damian