He said to him,
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
—Matthew 22:34-40

I do not love you as I ought
or as the law and prophets taught.
O God, though you are all I’ve sought,
I do not love you as I ought:

to love you, heart and mind and soul,
as if those three were one and whole.
How can the imperfect reach that goal,
to love you, heart and mind and soul,

or love my neighbor as myself,
whom I have loved above all else?
I do not love you for yourself
or love my neighbor as myself.

Let my confession come to you:
My love is only partly true.
That it be whole in all I do,
let me confession come to you.

Though heart and mind may come undone,
the race before me must be run.
Then hear, all things: The Lord is one
though heart and mind may come undone,

and love shall make us one in him.
When here our fractured sight goes dim,
his light each face shall newly limn,
and love shall make us one in him.

Caritas, The Seven Acts of Mercy, pen and ink drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559. Koenigs collection, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen – Google Arts & Culture — YgFO-521RPoPdw YgFO-521RPoPdw, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21961843

Look on us as we lift these empty hands
filled but with air and cupped around our lack.
We have no incense for your burning brands,
no fragrant smoke to stain the rafters black;
only our prayers rise up from lips that crack.
On legs that will not bend, the suppliant stands.

See all our perfect offerings are lost:
We would come walking to you on our knees
but that arthritis gnarls us in its frost,
would sing your praise through an asthmatic wheeze
but cough and choke.  Look down, O God who sees,
on what we would have given, bar the cost.

Here are the widow’s mites: body and soul—
what’s left of them to watch the setting sun—
as cracked and hollow as a broken bowl,
so shattered—were these fragments ever one?
Now we hold nothing, and the day is done,
nothing, O Lord, unless you make us whole.

If you will not, you must be satisfied
to take the mere intention for the deed.
Do not forget we tried, O God, we tried.
What can we bring when all we have is need?
Yet here we are: Oh, let us come and feed
on what your love alone can now provide.  Amen.

Manos abuelita 101 años. By Correogsk – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91290270

As numerous as grains of sand
that slip unnoticed through the hand
or as the stars that fill the dark,
each brief and bright as any spark,

we flower and flare upon the earth
only a moment from our birth
and then are gone.  O Lord, we pray
that you would keep us all this day.

Look down upon us here and bless
our hunger and our nothingness,
and give us what we need to live.
Also in mercy, Lord, forgive.

We cannot hide, and so you see
our foolishness and cruelty,
but you can by your grace restore
the images we were before.

For you made us to be like you
though we are gone with morning’s dew.
As dust when any stormwind blows
we pass on pathways no one knows—

no one but you, almighty God,
for you alone all ways have trod.
Then heal our souls, our bodies mend,
and bring us where all pathways end:

in your bright heart, when stars are born
and fade not in the brightening morn.
Bring us all there, though sparks are we,
to shine in you eternally.  Amen.

Spray of sparks from a Bessemer converter as air is blown through the molten metal By Alfred T. Palmer – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID fsac.1a35063.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8094060

Then they handed him the Roman coin.
He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?”
They replied, “Caesar’s.”
At that he said to them,
“Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God.”
—Matthew 22:15-21

No Caesar holds the spinning world
within his hand, a seedlife curled,
but God alone made heaven and earth
and breathed into me at my birth.
Of all that world, I pay him this:
God gave me life; my death is his.

The armies at the ready stand
to guard the furrows of the land:
Since this is Caesar’s, his to take
an honest share of what I make.
My tithe of tax: to Caesar this.
God gave me life; my death is his.

For Caesar holds not life and death
and cannot give one single breath
or slow the speeding of the sun,
and all his days are swiftly done.
Then let him be content with this.
God gave me life; my death is his.

Let armies wage their feats of might—
I owe no act but what is right—
Let empires in their progress roll—
I owe no earthly king my soul.
Let Caesar fall—it comes to this.
God gave me life; my death is his.

Ignatius of Antioch By Authors of Menologion of Basil II (circa 985 AC, Constantinople), Byzantine manuscript illuminators[1]:Pantoleon with Georgios, Michael the Younger, Michael of Blachernae, Symeon, Symeon of Blachernae, Menas, and Nestor(Online on Vatican site) – http://days.pravoslavie.ru/Images/ii897&3009.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5662933

Ignatius Before the Lions

To all my brethren, all I leave behind,
I here bequeath and leave my one desire:
that they may be together of one mind,
harmonious within the maker’s choir,
joined in the Son, Incarnate of our kind,
to sing through him one note ascending higher.

Though Caesar here exacts his bloody toll,
I render all to God, who came before.
As he who made my body heals my soul,
he shall that body once again restore,
and what is rent shall someday be made whole,
and what is dead shall live forevermore.

The door to heaven is edged with lion’s teeth:
I will pass through, as they will pass through me,
God’s hand the lion’s paw I die beneath
that by his blessing makes me wholly free.
My soul flies out, a sword leaving its sheath,
and plunges into God’s infinity.

From the darkness that sweetly entices,
from cold comfort drawing you in,
from the mind’s labyrinthine devices
and the war that you never can win,

come back to the flour on your fingers,
to the rhythm of kneading the dough,
to the scent of the yeast as it lingers
where its life is beginning to grow.

Come back to the stove and the oven.
Though inward you drown in the storm,
stand here where despair is forgiven
and soup and its comforts are warm.

The soup, with its onion and carrot,
is life beating strong in the vein.
For all of its weight, you can bear it,
the soup and the bread and the pain.

There isn’t a cure for the aching,
but there is the soup and the bread
and all of the good to be making.
Come back to the world and be fed.

Gerard David – Virgin and Child with the Milk Soup – WGA06027 – Web Gallery of Art:   Image  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15452815

Surely somewhere I have never been—
surely you are there.
That’s why I have never found you, then,
only looking where
I’ve known.

All I think and feel and do and say
I would offer you.
Silent in the ordinary day,
you have left me too
alone.

Since, O God, you will not show yourself
on well-trodden ways,
I’ll escape the turmoil of myself,
all my wheeling days
to see.

I will go out to a desert place
like the saints of old.
Surely, surely there I’ll see your face.
What will you unfold
to me?

Yet I fear before I even go:
You love not the sands
nor the way the long siroccos blow
there across your hands
for this,

not the mountains or the chasms deep,
not for what they teach.
That’s not why you will forever keep
safely in your reach
their bliss.

No, but that they are, that we all are,
creatures of your make.
With me no less than you’re with a star,
now you bid me take
my part.

I must find you in me, for the storms
stirring desert sands
blow in me where chaos yet transforms
what lies in your hands:
my heart.

The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world By The Central Intelligence Agency – The World Factbook – Algeria, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29196928

Then he said to his servants, ‘The feast is ready,
but those who were invited were not worthy to come. 
Go out, therefore, into the main roads
and invite to the feast whomever you find.’
The servants went out into the streets
and gathered all they found, bad and good alike,
and the hall was filled with guests. 
—Matthew 22:1-14

The feast is standing ready;
the doors are open wide.
The groom awaits his wedding,
but where now is the bride?

She’s fled across the wide earth,
as scattered as her heart,
but he will go to find her
and gather every part.

This promise he has spoken:
to leave no stone unturned
nor any wall unbroken
until the bride’s returned,

until upon his shoulder
she’s borne into the feast,
until his arms enfold her,
her greatest and her least.

Then call us from the highways,
from leagues of dust and mud,
and from the lonely byways
into your house, O God.

Dress us in robes of justice
(we have none of our own)
to celebrate your nuptials
and stand before your throne.

Make us, oh, make us worthy
and welcome us inside.
Your heaven weds our earth here,
and we shall be your bride.

The meal on a sabbath day at the house of a Pharisee, Brunswick Monogrammist (fl. between 1525 and 1545) Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweiger Monogrammist, das Große Gastmahl, Photo By Dguendel – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116821411

As known and shocking as the day in fall
when sunlight casts pure color on the wall
through window prisms—as if the year wheels round
so crystals can throw rainbows on the ground—
the ordinary miracles come back.
Orion sinks each autumn on his track;
somewhere (not here) the leaves are turning red,
but I have seen them once.  They fill my head:
I watch them changing with an inner eye
while outwardly great crowds of grackles fly.
The day grows short; the night throws out its arms
to show us all the wonder of its charms,
for every season bears with it such balms,
each hour unfolding its accustomed psalms,
calling the pilgrim passing on the way
to mark the blessing of each passing day
before it flies.  Yes, we are passing, too,
where mercy every moment is made new.

Sunlight spectrum produced by the prism. By Maxim Bilovitskiy – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44968434

Two gringos walk into the Spanish Mass,
having missed the English earlier that day.
Blonde heads among the darker tresses pass
to find a pew, slide in, and kneel and pray.
My Spanish is the kind that orders tacos.
Es muy mal, I say—it’s not the best,
but I can hear the angels sing their Santos,
repeat Te alabamos with the rest.

And every moment, Christe, Kyrie
eleison.  O Mercy, draw us close
around the altar of your mystery.
Bring us all in and listen to us pray
in Agnus Dei, Cordero de Dios.
May we all sing it in eternity.
Amen.

Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, with gushing blood, detail of the Ghent Altarpiece, Jan van Eyck, c. 1432, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=691803

Let me now sing of my friend,
my friend’s song concerning his vineyard.
My friend had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside;
he spaded it, cleared it of stones,
and planted the choicest vines;
within it he built a watchtower,
and hewed out a wine press.
Then he looked for the crop of grapes,
but what it yielded was wild grapes.
—Isaiah 5:1-7

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Another meager harvest
is stunted on the vine.
This year was not the harshest,
yet there will be no wine.

And you who tend the vineyard,
now do you count the cost?
Another vintage hindered,
another harvest lost.

Next year it will be better.
Next year, oh, wait and see—
We said the same thing last year,
and nothing came to be.

What promise could we give you?
Nothing, nothing at all.
How could we stand forgiven?
How could our leaves not fall?

Our hearts cry, turning inward;
we lift our empty hands:
Do not destroy your vineyard!
Give us another chance!

Another year of mercy,
of rain upon the vine:
Be patient with your servants
to make us yet your wine.  Amen.

The Red Vineyard at Arles, By Vincent van Gogh – Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70563335