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The Ascension as a change of Era

13th May 2021

The CHC blog

The Ascension of Our Lord

Stefan Kaminski

The Feast of the Ascension can appear to have a slightly puzzling aspect. With the celebration of Our Lord’s bodily resurrection at Easter, we know Him to possess a glorified body that is no longer subject to the limitations of our earthly bodies. Although we hear of Christ’s many appearances to the Apostles and other disciples in the time following Easter, it is clear that His human and bodily nature can already be said to exist independently of this world. If this is true, why does a particular moment of “Ascension” need to take place?

The purpose of the Ascension is best expressed by considering the fact that it divides the Easter season into two uneven periods of forty and ten days respectively.

The significance of the period of forty days, from Easter to the Ascension, should be fairly clear to anyone with a cursory knowledge of Biblical history. Periods of forty days or years appear numerous times in Old and New Testaments: the forty days of the Flood, Israel’s Exodus in the desert, Moses’ time with God on Mount Sinai, and various forty years of peace or slavery for Israel and of the reigns of particular kings. Forty is a time of preparation, a time of transition, which therefore points towards a new era.

In this sense, Jesus’ forty days on earth after His Resurrection have a dual significance.

Insofar as the Resurrection proclaims the possibility of our individual redemption and our restoration to righteousness before God, so the Ascension announces the future restoration of human nature to a state even greater than that in which it was created. As St Thomas Aquinas explains, our mortal bodies belong to this earth, a place of generation and corruption; Christ’s immortal and incorruptible body belongs to the perfection of heaven. In other words, Christ’s Ascension points to the complete rehabilitation of human nature – body and soul – in a future, heavenly state, in “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1).

This is the destiny of that organic home of our soul which we call our body; that which the rupture of Original Sin has caused such a problematic relation with. Similarly to the “sneak preview” that Peter, James and John experienced at the Transfiguration, the Apostles are all blessed with a vision of the bodily glory that God intended for us, as a reflection of the spiritual beauty that He blessed us with.

Whilst drawing the future into the present in this way, the Ascension also and simultaneously closes the era of the Son, with the completion of His work of Redemption for the human race. The Apostles benefit from His presence among them during this time, listening to Him “speaking of the Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). As much as this offers a completion and closure to His time among them, it is also a time of preparation for the next era. The arrival of the “Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name” (Jn 14:26), will grant the Apostles the fullness of Christ’s authority in order for them to commence their ministry on His behalf. This era or “phase”, which can be spoken of as the era of the Holy Spirit or of the Church, is the last before Christ’s Second Coming and the renewal of all things in Him.

After the Lord’s Ascension and the time of transition to the new era, we are left with another ten days in which to prepare specifically for the great Feast of Pentecost. It is a particular time of prayer for the Church, which, though already “born” from the side of Christ on the Cross, awaits her anointing with the Spirit. Thus, these ten days form a sort of “mini-Advent”, preparing not to receive the Lord this time, but to put into effect His command to “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19).

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Mary, Model of Christians

12th May 2021

The CHC blog

Mary, Model of Christians

Adam Coates
In attempting to deny Mary’s traditionally exalted place, some people have pointed to Christ’s rebuke to the woman who addresses him in St. Matthew’s Gospel with the words “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked”. Christ replies to her that “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:27-28).
 
On the surface, this might seem to be a refutation of the idea that Mary is special. However, it is quite the contrary. As Saint Augustine explains, “Didn’t the Virgin Mary do the will of the Father? I mean, she believed by faith, she conceived by faith. … Yes, of course, holy Mary did the will of the Father. … It means more for Mary to have been a disciple of Christ than to have been the mother of Christ. … Mary, too, is blessed, because she heard the word of God and kept it. She kept truth safe in her mind even better than she kept flesh safe in her womb”.
 
It is clear what St. Augustine is saying: Mary perfectly followed God’s will and this is why she is blessed, not because of any biological connection to Jesus, but because she is the model of a faithful disciple in her fidelity to the God’s will. As the Catechism explains, ‘By her complete adherence to the Father’s will, to his Son’s redemptive work, and to every prompting of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary is the Church’s model of faith and charity. Thus she is a “preeminent and … wholly unique member of the Church’”.
 
The Eucharist, as we know, is the “source and summit of the Christian life”. That is to say, Jesus is the Eucharist is where our faith begins and in which it finds its greatest fulfilment, its true end. As St. John Paul II explains, the Eucharist is the continuation of the Incarnation, of God taking on flesh. He writes, “In a certain sense Mary lived her Eucharistic faith even before the institution of the Eucharist, by the very fact that she offered her virginal womb for the Incarnation of God’s Word. … At the Annunciation Mary conceived the Son of God in the physical reality of his body and blood, thus anticipating within herself what to some degree happens sacramentally in every believer who receives, under the signs of bread and wine, the Lord’s body and blood.”
 
St. John Paul II continues to state that there is a “profound analogy” between the believer saying ‘Amen’ when receiving Holy Communion, and the Virgin Mary making her fiat at the Annunciation; both are a ‘yes’ to the will of God. When Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, when the unborn St. John the Baptist leaps in the womb of Elizabeth, Mary is demonstrated to be history’s first “tabernacle”, says St. John Paul. Mary’s faith was a profoundly Eucharistic one, and one that was practiced in model fashion.
 
Continuing on this theme, St. John Paul II points to how this necessarily leads to the Cross for, indeed, the Eucharist is the fruit of the Sacrifice of Calvary. So in our next post, we shall examine Mary under her title “Our Lady of Sorrows”.
The Virgin Adoring the Host, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1852
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The Immaculate Conception

8th May 2021

The CHC blog

The Immaculate Conception

Adam Coates
We began the first post in this series by talking about the Annunciation; and this is precisely where we will begin when talking about the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
 
Let us remind ourselves of what happens at the Annunciation: The Angel Gabriel comes to Mary and tells her she will bear in her womb the Saviour. Mary makes her “yes” and the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity takes flesh and assumes a human nature. This flesh is taken from Mary just as the flesh of you who are reading this is taken from your mother and father.
 
Now, of His nature, Christ is sinless but he is truly possessing of a human nature. The Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes declares, “born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin”. If Christ, then, truly takes His humanity from the Blessed Virgin Mary, it necessarily leads one to ask how is this possible if she is a sinful human being. The answer lies within the Immaculate Conception. What, however, does this mean precisely?
 
To put it simply, it means that the Blessed Virgin was conceived, by “a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God”, free from the stain of original sin. Consequently, she never sinned during her time on Earth. How do we know this, however? The answers, implicitly, are found in Sacred Scripture. Returning to the Annunciation narrative, Mary is addressed by the Angel Gabriel by the title “full of grace” (Luke 1:28) – she is filled up with the gifts of God. Secondly, Pope Benedict XVI explicitly links the words of the Angel Gabriel to Mary with the prophecy of Zephaniah which states that “the King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst”. (Zephaniah 3:15). Pope Benedict explains that this prophecy literally means that the Lord “is in your womb”. He further explains that this is a direct reference to God dwelling among His people in the Ark of the Covenant as first seen in the book of Exodus (Exodus 25:10-22). The Ark of the Covenant is truly special and holy, not to be approached by simply anyone. The Ark of the Old Covenant held the word of God inscribed on stone tablets, the rod of Aaron that bloomed into life (Numbers 17:1-12), and manna, the bread from heaven. The Ark of the New Covenant held Jesus, the Word of God, Jesus who rose on the third day, and Jesus who declared Himself the Bread of Life which had come down from heaven. Mary is revealed as the pure, undefiled bearer of the God Who is with His people. She is made spotless so she might hold Him who is the spotless one.
 
Some people, in questioning this dogma of the Church, have asked how Mary can be free from sin when, in the Magnificat, she refers to God as her saviour. This is easily answered. In defining the dogma, Pope Pius IX made clear that the “singular grace” given by God is made possible “in view of the merits of Jesus Christ”; that is to say, the merits of the Cross, of the Sacrifice of Calvary, are seen by God dwelling beyond time who then applies them to Mary at her conception. This grace, too, is not simply for her own benefit, but because it has an essential place in God’s divine plan of Salvation.
 
The Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium says that she was “enriched by God with the gifts which befit such a role”. This gift, this preservation from the stain of original sin enables Mary to make her “yes” at the Annunciation”, to endure the journey to Bethlehem, to stand at the foot of the Cross. In this, Mary is the model of all Christians, an idea we will explore in the next post.
The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, El Greco, 1613
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Mary, Door of Salvation

5th May 2021

The CHC blog

Mary, Door of Salvation

Adam Coates
The importance of the Annunciation, that moment when the Angel Gabriel came to the Blessed Virgin Mary and announced she was to bear in her womb the Saviour of the world, cannot be understated.
 
This humble young girl is being asked by the messenger of almighty God to play a pivotal role in salvation history. This is the moment where Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 13-15), that a virgin would bear a son and His name would be “Emmanuel”, meaning God with us, is in the balance.
 
St. Bernard of Clairvaux teaches that this is a truly cosmic moment with implications stretching across both space and time. Addressing the Blessed Virgin, he writes: “The angel awaits an answer; … We too are waiting … The price of our salvation is offered to you. We shall be set free at once if you consent. … Tearful Adam with his sorrowing family begs this of you, … Abraham begs it, David begs it. All the other holy patriarchs, your ancestors, ask it of you … This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet”; everything waits on this yes or no. Despite this, the consent of this woman is sought and, indeed, she gives it: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).
 
The Annunciation, the Catechism says, “inaugurates ‘the fullness of time’ (Galatians 4:4), the time of the fulfilment of God’s promises and preparations”. Mary’s yes, so wrote St. Irenaeus, is a stark counterpoint to Eve’s in the Book of Genesis. While Eve took up a conversation with an angel (the devil) and says “yes” to disobeying God, Mary has a conversation with an angel and, saying yes, demonstrates her obedience to God. As St. Irenaeus himself wrote, “For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith”. Mary’s yes, her fiat, her act of faith, allows God’s glorious plan of Salvation as revealed in Sacred Scripture to take effect: the stain of original sin brought about by Eve’s sin can now be undone by Mary’s faith. It is through the grace of God and in her Immaculate Conception that Mary is able to make her freely given yes.
 
Look out for the next post on Mary, in which we will examine the question of the Immaculate Conception.
The Annunciation, Fra Angelico, 1437-46
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The Tolkien Trail – Exploring the Ribble Valley

30th April 2021

The CHC blog

The Tolkien Trail - Exploring the Ribble Valley

After a year of restrictions, isolation and lockdowns it’s been wonderful to see so many people returning to the local area and experiencing the beauty of the countryside surrounding the Stonyhurst Estate.

The gorgeous landscapes of the Ribble Valley have inspired many visitors, including J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, some of the world’s most loved and bestselling books. Tolkien was a regular visitor to the area – while his son John trained for the priesthood during the Second World War, and later when his son Michael was teaching at Stonyhurst.

Tolkien’s books are known to have been heavily influenced by his own life and experiences, so his familiarity with the Stonyhurst Estate and its surroundings are likely to have inspired some of the landscapes in his stories. Tolkien was writing the second volume of The Lord of the Rings trilogy when he first spent time at Stonyhurst in the 1940s.

The Tolkien Trail is a walk which was prepared by the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst, in conjunction with Ribble Valley Borough Council. It’s a stunning way to explore the local area. The trail exposes walkers to some of the area which Tolkien would have been familiar with and may have used as inspiration in some of his stories. Some local places (such as Shire Lane in Hurst Green, and River Shirebourn) are even similar to the names of places in the books.

Cromwell Bridge - River Hodder
Cromwell's Bridge over the River Hodder
Walking route for the Tolkien Trail
After you have completed the five and a half mile walk, why not stay the night with us at Theodore House, a Grade II listed building previously known as the Old Mill dating to the 1840s?
 

The building was rebuilt and restored with funds raised from trusts and private donors by the Christian Heritage Centre. We offer B&B accommodation, with 25 single and twin rooms (all with ensuites) in a clean, comfortable and modern environment.

With plenty of excellent pubs nearby, Whalley Abbey and Clitheroe to explore, as well as Pendle Hill and other more challenging walks, the Ribble Valley is an excellent and beautiful spot for a few days’ break!

We are offering a 10% discount for all our visitors this June and July, so send us an email now at [email protected]

Visit Theodore House website here

Download the Tolkien Trail booklet here

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Tolkien’s Cosmology

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine
#1 Tolkien's Cosmology: Understanding our World

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

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JRR Tolkien’s mythical world captured the hearts and minds of millions. His world is one that speaks to us because it is anchored in a profound truth: that of a cosmos brought into being and continually guided, whilst simultaneously respecting the free choices of its creatures. Rev. Dr Halsall will explore the beauty of Tolkien’s vision as a reflection of the Catholic understanding of the cosmos, as defined in its relationship to the Creator.

About the speaker:

Fr Halsall is a priest of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, and teaches Philosophy at Allen Hall Seminary in London. Fr Halsall’s recent book – Creation and Beauty in Tolkien’s Catholic Vision – explores the philosophical themes in Tolkien’s crafted creation narratives, alongside those of the Christian tradition, influenced as they are by varieties of Christian Neoplatonism.

Other videos in the series:

#2 Fact & Fiction Today

#3 Catechetical Poetry

#4 Fiction as Formation: CS Lewis & Narnia

#5 Educating in Virtue

#6 Inspiring Heroism

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St Catherine, Patroness of Europe and Italy

29th April 2021

The CHC blog

St Catherine, Patroness of Europe and Italy

Stefan Kaminski
View of the Court d'honneur at the Papal Court at Avignon, France

Europe has six patron saints, amongst them St Catherine of Sienna, who is also shared with Italy as patron saint and whose feast is today.

The remarkable Catherine is known, amongst other things, for her hard-hitting reform of Church politics, including persuading the Pope to return to Rome from Avignon and reconciling his successor with the Roman Republic. What is even more remarkable though, is that she did all this before dying at the age of 33.

Neither was Catherine brought up in the sort of circles that were used to such high-level diplomacy. She was the youngest of the large family of a tradesman, who nonetheless was one of a faction that ruled the Republic of Sienna for a brief period in between revolutions. Born in 1347, she was graced with a deep love for Christ and with visions from her earliest years. This put her firmly on the path towards a consecrated, religious life as the means to unite herself to her one, true Love. Her hard-headedness was quickly revealed as this course of life was not quite what her parents hoped for. Indeed, aged 16, she cut off her long, beautiful her in protest against their desire for her to attract a suitable husband.

Giovanni di Paolo, Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine of Siena
The tomb of St Catherine in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome

However, in her active and practical mind Catherine was equally sure that she did not want a cloistered life. She therefore joined the lay branch or third order of the Dominicans, choosing to wear the Dominican habit and making a promise to God of celibacy. After three years of enclosed prayer (aged 16 to 19) and mystical experience, she emerged to begin serving the sickest and poorest in the Sienese community. Her joy, deep spiritual insight and practical wisdom quickly attracted a group of men and women disciples around her. Together, they began travelling the country, calling both the laity to conversion and the clergy to reform.

In 1370 (aged 23), Catherine received a particular vision of the next life and, together with this, a call to enter public life. She began to write letters to influential public figures, extending her call to conversion to them. The depth of philosophical and theological knowledge that she had gained through prayer, and her complete dedication to God, resulted in this young lady quickly gaining the attention of the day’s leaders, including Pope Gregory XI.  The latter was currently residing in Avignon, which had been sold to the Papal States in 1348. Catherine was adamant that the Pope should reside in his own see (like any other bishop), wanting him to reform the clergy generally and also the administration of the Papal States, and so to help bring peace to a fractured Italy.

In 1376, she was sent as an ambassador for Florence to the Pope in Avignon to sue for peace in the war that had broken out between the two. Although she was unsuccessful at that moment (mainly due the constant shifts in power in the Florentine government), the impression she made on the Pope convinced him to return to Rome, despite the opposition from his cardinals and the French King. Back in Rome, the Pope in turn sent her to Florence to negotiate peace in 1378. After a tumultuous six months in Florence, during which she narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, peace was finally achieved. In the meantime however, Gregory XI had died and been succeeded by Urban VI.

The election of Pope Urban VI was followed by a schism within the Western Church, as the electing cardinals, influenced by political concerns and pressures, backtracked on their choice. Claiming an invalid election, a small number of cardinals elected another candidate, who settled into Avignon as Clement VII.

Catherine, in the meantime, returned to Rome, continuing to work strenuously to effect reforms amongst the clergy and to serve the destitute in the city – as she had continued to do in Siena. She also took up the cause of Pope Urban VI and the unity of the Church, sending streams of letters to low and high alike, in all directions. At the beginning of 1380, she began suffering a mysterious agony after imploring the Lord to take her body in sacrifice for the unity of the Church and for the sins of the world. This suffering culminated in her death on 29th April, but not before her last diplomatic coup of bringing about a reconciliation between the Roman Republic and Urban VI.

St Catherine’s remains are buried under the high altar of the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, next to the Pantheon. She leaves us some 400 letters, besides her prayers and key work, the “Dialogue”, which together are recognised as having greatly influenced Italian literature.

Giovanni di Paolo, Saint Catherine of Siena Dictating Her Dialogues
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St George, the Martyr-Knight

Full title: Saint George and the Dragon Artist: Gustave Moreau Date made: 1889-90 Source: http://www.nationalgalleryimages.co.uk/ Contact: [email protected] Copyright © The National Gallery, London

23rd April 2021

The CHC blog

St George, the Martyr-Knight

Stefan Kaminski

Celebrating our martyr-patron, St George, necessarily involves some distinguishing of fact from fiction. Even some of the earliest narratives from the 5th-century that relate to St George claim some rather incredible stories of him. We automatically associate him with a dragon, but ironically this story can’t be traced further back than the Golden Legend of the 12th century.

What is clear is that the St George did exist as a historical person. An ancient cult, and the accounts of several pilgrims in the 6th to 8th centuries, all speak of Lydda as the resting-place of his remains and of the veneration which had been accorded him since his death in about 303 AD. His martyrdom would have therefore occurred under the tyrant-Emperor Diocletian, who was also sometimes allegorised as a dragon – one possible explanation for the associated story.

The veneration of St George spread quickly in both East and West. A church in Rome was already dedicated to him by 512AD, and it still stands today. His cult was “exported” to England by the 8th century, and churches had been dedicated to him by the time of the Norman conquest.

The crusades brought about an increase in the popularity of such “martyr-knights” as St George, whose patronage was invoked to support righteous causes. George was particularly seen to personify the ideals of Christian chivalry, and so was quickly adopted as a patron of various city states and countries. King Richard the Lionheart is said to have been responsible for introducing St George’s coat of arms. However, by 1222 his feast had already been proclaimed a holiday. By the 14th century, English soldiers were bearing St George’s coat of arms, but the official seal of Lyme Regis already consisted of a ship bearing the “George cross” in 1284. His cross remains the British Navy’s ensign today.

Gustav Moreau, Saint George and the Dragon
San Giorgio in Velabro, Rome
An image of the remains of the Temple of Janus, showing San Georgio in Velabro to the right, by Etienne Duperac
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The Necessity of Good Friday

2nd April 2021

The CHC blog

The Necessity of Good Friday

Stefan Kaminski

Each day of the Easter Triduum is inseparable from the rest: Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday form a single, liturgical action, as the Church sees it. Together, the Thursday evening to Sunday morning constitute a time of immersion in the most sacred and greatest of mysteries. In the middle of this liturgical trio is the celebration of Our Lord’s Crucifixion on Good Friday. It would not be inaccurate to call this, literally, the “meat” of the Triduum: the substance of the rite that is instituted on Holy Thursday is found on Good Friday; and, without Christ’s death, there would be no Resurrection. The celebration of the most joyous and solemn Easter Mass hinges on the prior celebration of Good Friday.

Equally, if Easter signals the commencement of our life in the Holy Spirit, the era of the Church, Good Friday can be perhaps considered the absolute pivotal moment between Testaments Old and New. Although a “New Testament event”, it also signals the final closure of the Old Testament, in the sense that Good Friday celebrates the Sacrifice of sacrifices, the last word with respect to man’s historic need for sin offerings as practiced under the Old Covenant. Christ’s sacrifice is the final but only effective one in a long chain of sacrifices made since Abel and Cain. Similarly, in finally atoning for all human sin, past and future, it ushers in the life of grace. So it is that all sacrifices before Christ’s were a mere antetype; any sacrifices made since cannot be other than idolatry.

At the same time, the Cross speaks most profoundly of the Mystery of God’s Love. It brings together and crushes the contradiction created by man’s first disobedience. In the Cross, the weight of human sin and the magnitude of the Father’s Love confront each other; High Priest and Victim are united; God and man are reconciled; life and death are met. The Mystery of this day is such that “every word is silenced before this… the Father’s hour, when the eternal triune plan is executed,” in the words of von Balthasar.

Carl Bloch, The Crucifixion of Christ

Indeed, the only necessary words on Good Friday are those spoken by the Son as He hangs from the Cross: seven phrases, identified from across the Gospels, referred to as the Seven Last words. These words uttered by the Word are, in a sense, God’s final word. “But in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Heb 1:2), and these are the words spoken by the Son in the last moments of His life on earth. Each is therefore full of significance, drawing together all of God’s preceding revelation and bringing it to its climatic fulfilment.

Perhaps the most enigmatic of these words, and the ones that most vividly speak of the transition from Old Testament to New, is the fourth phrase: “Eli, Eli, la′ma sabach-tha′ni?” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

These words come from the beginning of Psalm 22; Israel’s great psalm of suffering, a plea for deliverance from suffering and hostility. It is addressed to an apparently-distant God: One who is recognised as past deliverer of Israel, but Who is currently silent, despite the repeated prayers of the people. The psalmist, some 1,000 years before, speaks of the very details that are to manifest themselves on Calvary: the mockery and the challenge to God, the piercing of the hands and feet, the division of the clothes amongst the soldiers and the casting of lots for the outer garment. By invoking Psalm 22 from the Cross, Jesus thus identifies those prophetic words with the event of His Crucifixion, simultaneously speaking reality into those words as he undergoes what they portray.

At the same time, Psalm 22, and therefore the Crucifixion event, does not end with the sufferings of the Messiah. In the last stanzas of the Psalm, a transformation takes place: “From thee comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied… the families of the nations shall worship before him.” In these lines, the early Church identified herself as the “great congregation” that offers a sacrifice of praise. In the memorial of the Passion, instituted by Christ at the Last Supper and manifested in the Church’s liturgy, the Bread of Life Himself becomes the food of the afflicted. And as the Gospel spread throughout the Roman empire and beyond, so those who worshipped the One, true God spread beyond the people of Israel to include the wider families of the nations.

And so Psalm 22 also alludes to the immediate fruit of Christ’s Suffering: the birth of the Church, and with her, of the Sacramental economy. As the Old Testament is brought to completion and the New begun, so too the people of God is created anew. From the side of the Body of Our Lord is drawn forth the water and blood of the Church’s Sacraments, Baptism and the Eucharist. As Eve was drawn from Adam’s side, so too is the Church drawn from Christ’s.

We celebrate today “a great mystery… Christ and the Church”, in which “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph 5:25). The contemplation of the Cross is the contemplation of Christ’s love for each of us, from which flows the offer of grace and the promise of new life. Good Friday is not a day to be overlooked.

Post updated 29th March 2024

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G.M. Hopkin’s “God’s Grandeur”

2nd April 2021

The CHC blog

God's Grandeur

By Gerard Manley Hopkins
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.

A discussion of G. M. Hopkins's poem "God's Grandeur"

Dr Michael D. Hurley (University of Cambridge, Chairman of the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst), Dr Rebekah Lamb (University of St Andrews, Trustee of the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst), and Dr Jan Graffius (Curator of the Museum, Library, and Archives at Stonyhurst) discuss Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “God’s Grandeur”.

The podcast offers an accessible overview of Hopkins’s life, the literary and theological richness of his poetry, and some of the ways in which his religious, scientific, and creative imagination was shaped by his experiences at Stonyhurst.

In collaboration with Stonyhurst College and Jesuits in Britain.

Gerard Manley Hopkins Podcast

About Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins was an English poet and Jesuit priest, one of the most individual of Victorian writers. However, because his style was so radically different from that of his contemporaries, his best poems were not accepted for publication during his lifetime, and his achievement was not fully recognised until after World War I. Hopkins was a former seminarian pupil and teacher of Stonyhurst. His poem ‘God’s Grandeur’ is thought to be inspired by the grandeur of the building and the beauty of his surroundings whilst at Stonyhurst, finding ‘God in all things’.