18 John's disciples reported all these happenings to him. 19 Then he summoned two of them and sent them to the Lord with this message, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to look for someone else?" 20 When the men came to Jesus, they said, "John the Baptist has sent us to you with this message, 'Are you the one who is to come, or are we to look for someone else?'" 21 At that very time Jesus was healing many people of their diseases and ailments and evil spirits, and he restored sight to many who were blind. 22 Then he answered them, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind are recovering their sight, cripples are walking again, lepers being healed, the deaf hearing, dead men are being brought to life again, and the good news is being given to those in need. 23 And happy is the person who never loses faith in me."
It's as if Jesus is saying, "The fullness of God's transformative, healing, restoring love have been let loose upon the world in my person. Believe it!"
The Irish Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a poem (perhaps you read it in school) titled, God's Grandeur. The poet writes about this wild, divine love, and that despite our spoiling neglect, it comes back again and again.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared,
smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with
ah! bright wings.
And then there is Vincent Van Gogh's Country Road in Provence by Night. How majestic. Van Gogh painted it in May of 1890, just three months or so before his tragic death in July. Artists love to paint roads — a path through the woods, a road along a river or through a city, through the mountains or fields and here, a country road in the south of France.
Van Gogh loves to include cypress trees in his landscapes. This tree often grows in cemeteries. Did Vincent have his own approaching death in mind. It is generally believed he died by suicide. But notice this — the top of the tree pierces the upper margin. Was it poor planning or did he intend that the tree symbolically reveal that there are not two distinct and opposed worlds of earth and heaven. Does the cypress stitch together earth and heaven?
On the left of the centrally placed tree there are the planets (named after ancient gods) Venus and Mercury converging. Although they are very far apart from each other in space, every once in a while they seems to lay over each other in their orbits. They were converging when Van Gogh painted the picture. We'll have to wait until 2033 to see that orbital space layering again. On the right is a crescent moon — the new moon in its very earliest phase. It is an image of optimism and new beginnings.
There are two walking travelers in the bottom right of the painting and behind them there are some folks in a carriage. Vincent Van Gogh understood loneliness and longed for real companionship. But the best of it is the paint strokes themselves. Look carefully: the night sky spins — the clouds, the planets and moon, the ground we walk on, the grasses and trees are shot through with divine energies.
Perhaps the words of Jesus, the Hopkins poem and Van Gogh painting are telling us that we are all traveling in a world that, while sorely troubled, is still filled with infinity and eternity — a universe that seems to know it is filled with transformative love.
Catherine Randall has authored a book of Hopkins letters and poems titled, "A Heart Lost in Wonder." Don't you want that kind of heart for yourself? I do. Jesus knew. The young sickly poet-priest knew. The lonely and troubled artist knew. I don't want to miss any of it.
