The news continues to be filled with death and impending death. A Prince lies near death and transfers his powers to his son. Long live the Prince! A woman who has been neither dead nor alive for all of fifteen years finally breathes her last amidst an angry national debate. Will any good come of it? A uniquely beloved Pope hovers on the edge of eternity while the world looks on as never before. Soon he may know that which is really worth knowing. And the College of Cardinals will engage in one of the most dramatic rituals in the world: the election of a new pope. Who will succeed him?
It’s spring in the Northern Hemisphere and here in Chicago crocuses are just poking through the dry earth as early signs of the return of life to the earth. This return of life is the very heart and soul of Christianity. Jesus dies on Good Friday, lies in the ground, and rises again on Easter. All through the love of God.
Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev’n as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snows in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.
Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quick’ning, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
We say amiss,
This or that is:
Thy word is all, if we could spell.
—George Herbert
