Brian’s Reflection: Holy Saturday, April 7, 2007


While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope .....

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

- From William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”. He was born
on this day, 1770, at Cocker-mouth, England


… I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts, of something far more deeply interfused ……

I believe that this is what the women and the apostles experienced when they came upon the empty tomb. More so when Mary Magdalene saw the mysterious figure in the garden Who spoke her name. And the disciples in the upper room. And the fishermen as they gazed at the figure by the fire on the shore.

The resurrection, the “being alive” of Jesus is not strange. Wordsworth experienced the reality, the truth, in the Mystery of Nature a few miles above Tintern Abbey. I have experienced it in countless places, ways, modes, landscapes, holy places - and in my own life and in the lives (and deaths) of others. “….. something far more deeply interfused …..”.

The “presence that disturbs me with joy” is everywhere. Through the stance of faith, all tombs are empty.

Brian+

[ The whole poem can be found at http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww138.html ]