Hasting to Heaven

A banner day today: the second wedding anniversary of Margaret and Ethan!

Joy abounds.

I’ve been reading the poetry of Robert Bridges lately and have been contemplating “My Eyes for Beauty Pine” this morning — (does that not describe M?):

My eyes for beauty pine,
My soul for Goddès grace :
No other care nor hope is mine ;
To heaven I turn my face.

One splendour thence is shed
From all the stars above :
'Tis namèd when God’s name is said,
’Tis Love, ’tis heavenly Love.

And every gentle heart,
That burns with true desire,
Is lit from eyes that mirror part
Of that celestial fire.

and somehow I chanced (!) upon this beautiful anthem-setting of it by Elizabeth and Thomas Coxhead (a brother-sister duo).

And then I could hear in my head Bishop’s Richard Chartres marvelous, sonorous opening of his sermon at William and Catherine’s wedding: “Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire” (St. Catherine of Siena). We should remind ourselves often of this weighty sermon which is especially appropriate for today.

Bridges writes of God’s love, spiritual love, but Chartres reminds us that a husband and wife’s love can be a “door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this: the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life.”

Happy Anniversary to two “gentle hearts” with eyes to heaven that mirror the “celestial fire” of Heavenly Love.