“April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain. / Winter kept us warm, covering / Earth in forgetful snow, feeding / A little life with withered tubers.”

English majors everywhere will recognize these words as the opening lines of T. S. Eliot’s epic poem The Waste Land from 1921 when Europe was still soaked in death following World War I. 887,000 British soldiers had died in the war. A whole generation had been lost. The trenches and the battlefield of continental Europe were truly a waste land. Few people expect casualty numbers in the present conflict with Iran to come close to such numbers, but this could be the cruelest April in quite some time. 15 members of our Armed Forces have been killed and 300 wounded. Reliable sources indicate that 3,300 Iranians have died so far in our bombing. 70,000 homes, 600 schools, 300 health care facilities, 120 cultural sites have been damaged. And while peace talks are on-going as I write this on Monday morning, President Trumps threat from last Tuesday still hangs in the air:  “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Pope Leo, who has usually refrained from talking specifically about American politics and American political figures, slammed the threat as “totally unacceptable” and urged “Americans to contact their political leaders and congressional representatives to demand that they reject war and work for peace.”  Of course, all of this is playing out against regular drumbeat of death from domestic violence, street violence, the abortion mentality, etc.

God’s creation, though, is resolutely pro-life. As I look out my window this morning, a lone daffodil from last year is in bloom. The iris plants that surround the statue of Mary every year with deep purple blossoms are pushing through the topsoil. In the springtime birds never consider taking their nest egg to Las Vegas to try their luck at the craps table. They sit on the eggs until they hatch and produce new life. Nature even papers over human horrors, as Carl Sandburg wrote in his poem Grass: “Pile them high at Gettysburg / Pile them high at Ypres and Verdun / Shove them under and let me work / Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor / What place is this? / Where are we now? / I am the grass / Let me work.”

When Jesus speaks of his own death and resurrection, he usus nature to make his point:  “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” The grain of wheat has no choice but to bring new life into the world—but we do. Jesus surrendered everything to the Father, died a horrible death, and then the Father raised him up on Easter morning. Now more than ever the world seems to be challenging us to take resurrection seriously, to see Easter not just as event in the past or an event that opened the gates of heaven for us, but as an event that impacts our life every day. In other words, Easter challenging us human beings to get in line with the rest of creation: to imitate the generosity of the grain of wheat and let go of our old self -centered habits and find ways of bring life out of death or find ways of intercepting death dealing forces. If there is one thing that Easter was not it was business as usual.

How can I surrender a bit of my time, my talent, or my treasure to make God’s creation less of a “waste land? The possibilities are endless. I could get involved in tutoring youth at risk; donate time or money to a shelter for women who choose to carry their baby to term; to taking time, as the Pope suggests, to write our legislators about peace. Many of us admired the beautiful pictures of earth sent back last week from outer space. Earth looked like a really great place to live. It certainly does not look like a “waster land.” As people of faith empowered by the resurrection of Jesus, we can make it an even more attractive place to live.

                  Fr. Joe