The readings for this nearly mid-summer Sunday reflect the beauties of the earth: its golden harvests, its astonishing Spring, its delicate birds, beasts, mountains, hills and plains. Even in this time of virus, those whose eyes can see will find infinite surprise!

Yes, even in this time of virus and troubles.

I want to quote a complete poem in this space, hoping that I am not just indulging my attachment to poetry. The Jesuit poet Hopkins was so filled with the world’s beauty that I want him to speak here, in the poem called “Pied Beauty.”*

Glory be to God for dappled things—
   For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                 Praise him.*

Some of the language is unusual, I admit. I hope the footnote below will help you, especially when you read the poem out loud. If you spend time with these glorious images you will come to love our ever-evolving blue planet like someone bathing in the gentle tide of ocean swirl. All of it luxuriant, all of it precious.

In the First Reading the Lord uses this ebb and flow of seasons to show the workings of his visceral love for the earth.

He says,

Just as the rain and snow come down to earth,
and do not return there till they have watered the earth,
making it fertile and fruitful, …
so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth.
It comes to the world and does not return until it has moistened
and nourished life in every single creature that will receive it.

A fruitful harvest, the Psalm calls it.

Then, in the Second Reading, St. Paul speaks of all creation groaning in labor pains. Human beings too groan within themselves like seeds which break open and push their way through tough ground and evolve into full trees that stretch up for Christ’s light.

Can such rich images apply to you and me? How is our own soil? God pours his grace into it always. Do you and I groan and yearn for the goodness of God which is already lavished upon us? Do we take time each day to let love in? Or when we listen to the Word on Sunday, perhaps with some interest, do we then forget everything by Monday?

Jesus lists a number of things we might have to correct in order to accept the gifts he has ready for us (Gospel). We might be shallow ground, he says. Or rocky soil. Weeds might choke us.

Discouraging, isn’t it? Must I pretend to be rich soil, though I know my shallowness?

No. I must be fully myself and allow God to do the rest. The Indian poet Tagore put it this way:

The cloud stood humbly in a corner of the sky.
The morning crowned it with splendor.

(Tagore, Stray Birds, #100)

Let us be humble and join in the revolving refreshment of all earthly things. Can’t we open our leaves, and allow the sun to come in?