"Down Into The Darkness Of The Grave"

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind.

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Since Cain killed Abel humanity experiences death and its aftermath, sorrow; loneliness; regret. We know that death remains the last enemy of us all.  Still, there are times when we as a world count death.  We live in one of those times, when the death toll is reported daily. The numbers are hard to grasp.  I live in a county of about 100,000 souls. The current COVID-19 death toll has surpassed that number. Try to imagine an entire county’s population being placed in the grave within a month. Staggering.

On this Saturday we remember that God is no stranger to death. One of the Holy Trinity died. Jesus was one of the ‘loving hearts in the ground.’  More important is this: on this Saturday some 2000 years ago the molecules stirred and the resurrection body of Jesus was created anew.  May this Holy Saturday stir the faith of the hundreds of thousands grieving the deaths we count.  May they come to believe that the rock which covers the hard ground shall on the last day be moved; that the trumpet will sound;  and up from the grave shall rise victory over the last enemy.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

(Dirge Without Music, Edna St. Vincent Millay; Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52773/dirge-without-music )