Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was His body
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes
of the eleven apostles;
it was His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence,
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché
not a stone in the quarry
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day. …

—John Updike in Telephone Poles and Other Poems

Adapted from Telephone Poles and Other Poems (Knopf, 1963) by permission.

Prayer for the Week

Thank you, Lord, for the hope of heaven. Use it in my earthly life to inspire and sustain my passion and purpose.

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