Gerard Manly Hopkins wrote a poem entitled The Wreck of the Deutschland. It concerned itself with five Franciscan nuns who were on their way to Missouri to do missionary work. Their ship sank in a terrible storm in the North Sea. The young nuns sacrificed their own lives so that others might be rescued. Hopkins ends the poem with this line: “Let him Easter in us,” be a dayspring to the dimness of us. “Let him Easter in us” that we may live our lives in the light of his compassion and peace, his justice and forgiveness.
“Let him Easter in us” that we may be a people who live the life of stewardship; sharing our time, talent and treasure with others.
“Let him Easter in us” that we may bear our crosses for one another as he bore his cross for us.
Here Easter is used as a verb. In other words Easter is a way we think, we feel, something we do. Simply put Easter is something we “do” every day. Thank you to all who make our Easter celebrations so joyful here at St. Luke’s: to our choirs, altar servers, lectors, Eucharistic ministers, environment committee, greeters, ushers. So many people living stewardship make Easter happen for all of us. We pray especially for our young people who will leave for Jamaica with Fr. Matt next week.
Fr. Bob Hawkins - APRIL 7, 2007
The image above, used with permission of the Wheaton Francisons shows a quilt which hangs in the Deutschland Chapel at the Motherhouse in Wheaton, Illinois and serving as a tribute to the five Sisters who perished in the wreck of the Deutschland.
The Shipwreck image by Jody9 via flickr under Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 )
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