Psalm 92:15
He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.
Just reading the papers, surfing the web, and watching the tube everyday can make a body want to take a shower. But that’s not because of the papers, the web, or the tube. Long before these inventions, Gerard Manley Hopkins lamented, “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.” It is that smudge and smell, that blear and smear that we feel. Modern media are simply the latest tools we have devised for smudging, smearing and soiling the world with our smell. Nonetheless, they are so universal that it is easy to wonder some days whether there is anything good left. Still, for all this, the goodness of God remains solid and unmovable. And so, Holy Church rejoices in Hopkins’ words, singing: “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.” Today, thank God that he still broods over our bent world and that no matter how unrighteous we are, there shall never be unrighteousness in him.
