By the outdoor crèche at Sacred Heart Church on Christmas Day, 2005, a sheep named Princess and a donkey named Gus roamed around and sometimes stood solemnly in the stable as if they knew something special happened in this world.
On
Holy Thursday, Phil Franchi called to say that Princess gave birth to a late
lamb that is named April. On Good Friday morning, he came to the church with
April, tiny, lovely, and innocent. By the altar of repose, with April suckling
happily on a baby bottle beside me, I recited Katherine Tynan’s poem, Sheep
and Lambs, that I knew from childhood:
All in the April evening
April airs were abroad;
The sheep with their little lambs
Passed me by on the roadThe sheep with their little lambs
Passed me by on the road;
All in the April evening
I thought on the Lamb of God.The lambs were weary and crying
With a weak, human cry.
I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.Up in the blue, blue mountains
Dewy pastures are sweet;
Rest for the little bodies,
Rest for the little feetBut for the Lamb of God,
Up on the hill-top green,
Only a cross of shame
Two stark crosses between.All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
I saw the sheep with their lambs
And thought on the Lamb of God.
Isaiah proclaimed: "Like a lamb to the slaughter. The Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all." (Is. 54)
His absolute innocence absorbed all the evil of the world in cotton (lamb's) wool of cosmic proportions. We were all healed. But oh, miracle of miracles, he grasped death like a nettle and squeezed the sting out of it. Jesus rose from the dead and we all rose in Him.
We are reassured. In little April, we sense again that the strength is in the weakness. The Lamb of God. Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen!
