Gerald Manley Hopkins deserves attention. So other Christian poets, in search for someone to counter the drugstore fustian that greets us regularly at our 21st-century mass.

First, do no harm, God told the worship clerks, who asked, “What on earth are you talking about?”

I do them injustice. It’s not easy to tell people how to pray. They mean well, as do many a mis-doer, from whose misdirected, ill-conceived and -executed efforts God save us and them.

Now and at the hour of our death. Amen.