The Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, in his poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” poetically captures the tragic sinking of a boat, the Deutschland, among whose passengers were five Franciscan Sisters. Facing suffering, the Sisters pray that Christ “be a dayspring to the dimness of us.” Dayspring is a biblical reference to Christ the Light. These days “dimness” is very prominent due to the consequences of the coronavirus on us personally and in society. We have never before faced anything like this darkness.
During the Easter Vigil in our Cathedral as the cantor chanted the Exsúltet, I looked at our small group who formed a circle around the Paschal Candle while maintaining “safe” distance from each other. Including myself, holding a lit candle, were the three priests concelebrants, a religious brother who was the lector, a musician and off camera two “tech” guys. I saw “dimness” in their faces. It was all so strange and un-precedented the manner we were celebrating the Easter Vigil on The Night of all nights.
There was no roaring fire lighting up the darkness of the night that saw Jesus rise to life; there were no trumpets to herald that He is Risen; there were no faithful, neither outside the Cathedral to begin the vigil nor inside for the liturgy.
The cantor sang The Easter Proclamation (Exsúltet) which praises the significance of that most holy night which saw Christ rising from the dead to life. We heard its invitation to “Rejoice,” to “Be glad,” to “Sound aloud our mighty King’s triumph” in response to the Lord’s Resurrection from the tomb. Then, repeated five times the reference to “This is the night,” “O truly blest night” “To ransom a slave you gave away your Son!” His dying and rising “dispels wickedness; washes faults away; restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners.” Yet, none of that was evident in the faces of our small group at that Easter Vigil. A Holy Week filled with darkness concluded with an Easter filled with the same.
In a few excursions outside my Residence to the supermarket or the Post Office, I continue to see this “dimness” in the eyes of the masked faces around me. Our Holy Father Pope Francis, speaking on Easter Sunday, called for the “victory of love over the root of evil, a victory that does not bypass suffering and death, but passes through them, opening a path in the abyss, transforming evil into good.” The pope proclaimed a “contagion of hope” in sharp contrast to the contagion of the virus.
I suggest that we all need big doses of Hope, the virtue that sees through the present suffering to God who is not distant. “Christ my Hope is Risen!” an ancient petition ascribed to Mary Magdalen, needs to be prayerfully repeated by us who need the Lord to be a “dayspring” to the “dimness” this virus inflicts on us. Hope teaches that we will rise out of this “dimness.” May it be eradicated by the blazing glory of the Easter triumph of Christ. Let Him “dayspring” in your “dimness” and illuminate you with the Light of His Resurrection.
Most Reverend Dennis Sullivan, D.D.
Bishop of Camden