The call of God and who we are – “What I do is me – for this I came.”

Hopkins is one of my canoncial poets, and the poem below an example of sublime poetry that in the act of reading slips ineluctably into prayer. And prayer in language that enables us to articulate longings usually too deep within us, and too elusive, to be brought by our own words to the light of God's day.

Years ago I read Bernard Martin's biography to gain a sense of context; in fact I came to understand why Hopkins' poetry delivers such a potent word of summoning towards that which I longed for. Christian vocation isn't always to a task or role – it is to being, and to authentic being at that. To be that which it is our God given nature to be, in all its unique peculiarity, its precious and unprecedented once-for-allness. When Augustine exulted in God's love as loving us as if we were the only one to love, he too sensed the miracle of a love that draws us to that place where, in accepting who we are, we say to God, "What I do is me – for this I came."

And far from an endorsement of the aggressive and selfish individualism pervasive of our culture and invasive of our relationships, Hopkins' poem is a celebration of what it means to surrender to the true self God made us to be. The sonnet form of fourteen lines is my favourite poetic form – in such disciplined brevity, and care for structure, Hopkins delivers one of the most expansive expositions of why it is God made us – "what are human beings that you care for them" – Hopkins' answer centres on Christ, and on our calling to be Christ-like. 

As kingfishers catch fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies
dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each
hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its
name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.