Death Swallowed Up in Victory

Easter Lilies in Sunlight and Shadow

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Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:

‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’

1 Corinthians 15:51-54

Peahen on Branch

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The peacock was an early Christian symbol of the Resurrection.

Although the peahen is not as showy as her male counterpoint, she has a dignified beauty of her own. (The tuft of stray feathers that seems to be sticking out of her left side actually belongs to her chick, hidden behind her. )

Comfort of the Resurrection

Dandelion against Blue Sky
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That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire

and of the

Comfort of the Resurrection

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-

built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.

Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,

Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.

Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare

Of yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rut peel parches

Squandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches

Squadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil there

Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, ' nature’s bonfire burns on.

But quench her bonniest, dearest ' to her, her clearest-selvèd spark

Man, how fast his firedint, ' his mark on mind, is gone!

Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark

Drowned. O pity and indig ' nation! Manshape, that shone

Sheer off, disseveral, a star, ' death blots black out; nor mark

Is any of him at all so stark

But vastness blurs and time ' beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,

A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, ' joyless days, dejection.

Across my foundering deck shone

A beacon, an eternal beam. ' Flesh fade, and mortal trash

Fall to the residuary worm; ' world’s wildfire, leave but ash:

In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

Is immortal diamond.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins