Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eyes what in God’s eye he is-
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), As Kingfishers Catch Fire (1877).
Everyone benefits when we have an identity and a vocation. Manley Hopkins likes to use natural images and events to illustrate the point made by Catherine of Sienna (c.1347-80) to a new priest: 'Christ as no body now on earth but yours. No hands but yours. No feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which His compassion must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which He must go about doing good. Yours are the hands through which He must bless the world now.' Whether or not they are Christian, everyone should ask themselves the same question: 'What am I here for?'.
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