I was looking at the scrutiny readings for today, and the Gospel made me think of one of my favorite poems, which I would like to share with you today.
After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white.
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead
The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
I’m half tempted to stop writing right here, for the poet, G.K Chesterton, personalizes today’s readings and Gospel much better than I ever can. The title of the poem snaps its message into focus. It is called “The Convert”.
We’ve all heard a thousand times in a thousand ways that life is a story of conversion and constant reversion. From each little daily fall of ours, to whole periods of life when we make God an after thought, to those moments when we fall deeper in love with Him than we did the day before, the journey is never over. God is always there to embrace us, calling us to resurrection and new life.
The first step is humility. As the poem says, when we bow our head and realize that we are not the center of the world and do not have all the answers, we see clearly with new eyes. The world turns over and comes upright. We begin searching. We become aware of many voices in the world – “forests of tongues” – that claim truth over the secrets of the universe and how best to live.
But they are strange and complicated ideologies that twist the universe around our own desires, sifting out the valuable gold of true wisdom while retaining the dry sand of the material. And why are these but as dust to the poet? In the final tear-jerking line of poem, Chesterton exclaims the one simple truth that contains the story of all of the faithful: “Because my name is Lazarus and I live!”
Christ is the answer to all of the riddles of life. He is the answer to the deepest groanings of our hearts. He stretches his hand over the grave of our broken hearts and calls out “Come forth!” The darkness of death turns to the light of life, we stumble out from our cold, lonely tombs into the embrace of a God so powerful that to Him death is nothing but so loving that He gave everything that we may live.
And in that moment of rebirth, we realize that the answer to our lives is He.