06/06/2026
First Saturday—votive Mass of the Immaculate Heart of Mary—we need Our Lady in order to truly comprehend Our Lord.
At our post-social talk, Professor Erik Tonning spoke on Fr G. M. Hopkins SJ’s Wreck of the Deutschland and explained how the poem not only re-interpreted the death of the five Franciscan nuns in a shipwreck on 7th Dec 1875 but also expressed Hopkins’s own conversion and journey of faith—Hopkins, coming from an Anglican background, was received into the Church by St John Henry Newman but suffered a lot as a result of his conversion, just like Newman did.
As Professor Tonning explains through Hopkins’s poem, our hope, which should be a consequence of our faith, should not be a mere earthly optimism, but should be grounded in Christ’s promise of eternal life. The “tall nun” who was calling “O Christ, Christ, come quickly” was not calling for God’s rescue but was indeed yearning for the reunion with Christ, her spouse.
