Bishop Scott Bullock
 Homily from the Rite of Election
February 22, 2026

I’m happy to join my voice to that of our pastor Fr. Christensen and welcoming you all to this beautiful Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. It’s really a joy. Sounds like we’ve got a record crowd today. Thanks for doing your part. If we keep this up, we’ll have to build a new cathedral. 

As we reflect on today’s scriptures, I’d like to invite a guest homilist to get us going. It’s the great Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Let’s listen to a poem from him. This poem is probably one of his most famous. It’s called “God’s Grandeur.”  It goes this way:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
    Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

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: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod

    And for all this, nature is never spent;
    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.

I’ll be honest every time I read a poem like that I’m completely perplexed. So, let’s take our time and move our way through the poem and maybe you’ll figure out why this crazy bishop is reading this poem to you. Because I think it’s your story. 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

The speaker of the poem describes a natural world through which God’s presence runs like an electrical current, becoming momentarily visible in flame-like flashes that resemble the sparkling of metal foil when moved in the light.

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
    Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Here the poet describes, alternately, God’s presence as being like a rich oil (such as olive oil), whose true power or greatness is only revealed when crushed to its essence. Given this powerful undercurrent of evidence of God’s presence in the world, the speaker then asks, why do human beings not heed God’s divine authority? Kind of archaic words. Why do they not reck his rod? Why don’t they reckon his rod of authority?

The poet goes on: 

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: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod

So, to answer the question of why we don’t reckon his authority, the speaker starts to answer his own question by describing the state of human lives. That the way that humanity over the generations has endlessly walked over the ground, and the way that industry and economic pursuits have damaged and corrupted the landscape such that it only looks  now like that of men and not of God. Not only has the land been stripped bare of its natural things that once lived upon it, but even the shoes that people wear have cut off the physical connection between their feet and the earth they walk on.

The poet goes on with some hopefulness now:

    And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And yet the speaker continues, nature never loses its power, even with all that domination by humanity. Nature never loses its power and deep down life always continues to thrive. 

The poet, near the end of the poem says:

    And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Though the sun will always fade into the darkness of night in the west, morning will always follow as a sign of hope, springing up over the edge of the horizon in the east. 

And then the awesome last phrase of the poem:

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

So the course, and the source of this constant cycle of regeneration is the grace of a God who guards the broken world much like a mother bird warms its eggs and hatchlings.

That’s just too good. We need to hear that one again.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
    Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

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: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod

    And for all this, nature is never spent;
    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.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God, the poet says. The world is charged with the grandeur of God. Says who? Says God. Where does God say this? Well, in particular today, he says it on the lips of St. Paul, from whose Letter to the Romans we just heard. God’s grandeur is seen, especially across the God-charged human soul. As the poet makes clear, if this is so, it is at the same time hidden by the heaviness of life, “trod … trod … trod, all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil; and [worn by] man’s smudge and man’s smell.” 

The effect of all this activity can be our self-reference, our focus on our activities has rendered us unable to perceive the “grandeur of God” like “shining like shook foil.”

So, how can we recover the grandeur of God? Well, God will have to do it! So, today, we have gathered with men, women and children whose souls have, however hidden, become “shook like shining foil.” That’s you! Where shall we get a glimpse of the “grandeur of God?” Look all around. God at work in each of your souls. When many in the world live as if God is, at the very least, disinterested and not involved in the world he created, you witness differently. God has touched your souls and your presence here is evidence of that.

For those to be baptized — our Catechumens — as well as those to be confirmed and/or received into the Church, the Church’s prayer for all of you will be the same today. “Those present here relying on divine grace and supported by the prayers and example of the community, humbly request that, after due preparation they be admitted to participate in the Sacraments.”

Our prayer of divine grace is transforming your lives so that you might shine forth the grandeur of God. The prayer said, “relying on divine grace,” the action of a God, not distant and not jealously clutching his life, but ready to bestow that life, that grace, in his greatest of creations — human persons. 

It’s to this truth that St. Paul spoke in the second reading today. He says, “For if by the transgression of the one, the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many … For if, by the transgression of the one, death came to reign through that one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.”

The grandeur of God, his radiant presence which we will particularly see next week when we observe the Transfiguration of Jesus, is already on display in this overflow of grace. In you, candidates and catechumens, who declare with their lives God is real and active and has come to their hearts to come, through the abundance of grace, into the fullness of life. To your declaration of God’s gracious action already at work in your lives, I as bishop acknowledge the summoning of the Holy Spirit into your minds and hearts and will soon reply, in the name of the whole church, the Body of Christ, “My Brothers and Sisters, the Church recognizes your desire to be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit and to have a place at Christ’s Eucharistic table” for the action of God’s grace is already at work within you, and more work to come. 

So, the Church responds with gratitude at a new action of God’s grace, the “grandeur of God” coursing through your hearts and through the world that awaits redemption and life.

The great 14th century saint and doctor of the Church, St. Catherine of Alexandria, expounds upon the promises spoken through St. Paul, when she speaks the words of the Lord, who spoke to her heart. She says speaking in the words of God, “In self-knowledge, then, you will humble yourself, seeing that, in yourself, you do not even exist; for in your very being, as you will learn, is derived from me, since I have loved both you and others before you were in existence; and that, through the ineffable love which I had for you, wishing to re-create you in grace, I have washed you, and re-created you in the blood of my only-begotten Son, spilled with so great a fire of love.” 

That’s the promise of the Easter sacraments and the Lord is inviting you into those, to an even higher level of radiance and his grandeur.  

God’s grace is already seeking you to re-create you in the image of Christ through the “great fire of his love.” Continue, during these Lenten days before the Easter Sacraments, to grow in the self-knowledge about which St. Catherine spoke: that your life is from God, that you have been loved since before you were born into existence, and that same God desires to show his grandeur by recreating you into fuller life. And behold, this re-creation is already underway! So, may the Good Lord bring that work to completion.