8 June 2023 - Thursday of the 9th week in Ordinary time - Gerald Manley Hopkins - Tobit 6:10-11; 7:1 and 9-17; 8:4-9a

    We hear a long reading from the book of Tobit today, which we have been hearing from all week in our first readings in daily Mass. In answer to the prayers of Tobit and Sarah, God sends the Angel Raphael to answer their prayers as a special messenger.  In obeying the instructions of the angel, Tobias is unafraid and trusting in the Lord, even when he hears that seven other men married Sarah and did not live past their wedding night. I love the prayer that Tobias and Sarah offer God in order to bless their marriage. Tobias and Sarah acknowledge that their marriage not only fulfills their love for each other and their desire to be husband and wife, but that their marriage is instituted by God. Because they know in their hearts that their marriage comes from God, they pray confidently to God, asking for his help in their marriage.  This wedding prayer from the book of Tobit is commonly chosen for Catholic weddings, with many brides and grooms identifying with the wishes offered up to God on their wedding night.

      As we hear of the faithfulness of Sarah and Tobias from the book of Tobit, I want to mention a Jesuit priest who died in obscurity on this day, June 8, in 1889.  Gerald Manley Hopkins was born in England in an upper-class Anglican family.  However, after excelling in his studies at Oxford University, his family was very disappointed when he decided to leave his Anglican faith, entering the Catholic Church and becoming a Catholic priest. A gifted poet, he abandoned writing poetry until he decided to write a poem about a shipwreck off the coast of England, on which a group of Franciscan nuns perished as they were traveling to the United States to work with the immigrant community there.  That poem is entitled The Wreck of the Deutschland.  It is considered one of Hopkins’ most significant poems.  Hopkins died of typhoid in 1889, not having any of poetry published during his lifetime.  Hopkins kept up a correspondence with Robert Bridges, a friend of his from Oxford.  A celebrated poet himself and the poet laureate of the country of England, Bridges received all of the poems that Hopkins wrote in that correspondence, publishing them after Hopkins’ death. Today, Hopkins is considered a ground-breaking poet in the English language, one of the great poets of the Victorian era. Plagued with self-doubt and mental illness, Hopkins never saw the acclaim that his poetry achieved.  Hopkins wrote: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”