Poems and Prose by Gerard Hopkins

Author:Gerard Hopkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

SERMON

FOR SUNDAY EVENING NOV. 23 1879 AT BEDFORD LEIGH1 – LUKE ii 33. Et erat pater ejus et mater mirantes super his quae dicebantur de illo (text taken at random)

ST. JOSEPH though he often carried our Lord Jesus Christ in his arms and the Blessed Virgin though she gave him birth and suckled him at her breast, though they seldom cither of them had the holy child out of their sight and knew more of him far than all others, yet when they heard what Holy Simeon a stranger had to say of him the Scripture says they wondered. Not indeed that they were surprised and had thought to hear something different but that they gave their minds up to admiration and dwelt with reverent wonder on all God’s doings about the child their sacred charge. Brethren, see what a thing it is to hear about our Lord Jesus Christ, to think of him and dwell upon him; it did good to these two holiest people, the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, even with him in the house God thought fit to give them lights by the mouth of strangers. It cannot but do good to us, who have more need of holiness, who easily forget Christ, who have not got him before our eyes to look at. And though we do have him before our eyes, masked in the Sacred Host, at mass and Benediction and within our lips receive him at communion, yet to hear of him and dwell on the thought of him will do us good.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, my brethren, is our hero, a hero all the world wants. You know how books of talcs are written, that put one man before the reader and shew him off handsome for the most part and brave and call him My Hero or Our Hero. Often mothers make a hero of a son; girls of a sweetheart and good wives of a husband. Soldiers make a hero of a great general, a party of its leader, a nation of any great man that brings it glory, whether king, warrior, statesman, thinker, poet, or whatever it shall be. But Christ, he is the hero.2 He too is the hero of a book or books, of the divine Gospels. He is a warrior and a conqueror; of whom it is written he went forth conquering and to conquer. He is a king, Jesus of Nazareth king of the Jews, though when he came to his own kingdom his own did not receive him, and now, his people having cast him off, we Gentiles are his inheritance. He is a statesman, that drew up the New Testament in his blood and founded the Roman Catholic Church that cannot fail. He is a thinker, that taught us divine mysteries. He is an orator and poet, as in his eloquent words and parables appears. He is all the world’s hero, the desire of nations. But besides he is the hero of single

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