O Mother, you have magnified the Lord:
In you he shows his workings to the world.
All generations—even ours—will praise
the ordinariness of all your days.

For he has shown the power of his arm
not in the sword and trumpet’s bright alarm,
but in your lifting him up to your breast
you show the might of God in tenderness.

And when he fills the hungry with good things,
it’s not as lord of lords and king of kings,
but in your nursing of his infant thirst.
You fill him as his mercy fills you first.

You show us, in your motherhood, his grace,
as he in helplessness has shown his face.
You bless him as he us—not lord to thrall,
for truly he is mother of us all.

Then as he promised mercy evermore,
be mercy for us, mother of the Lord.
We are because he holds us in his thought;
enfold us in your arms as you did God.

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Mary as the Queen of Heaven in Dante‘s Divine Comedy. Illustration by Gustave Doré. – Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri – published by L. Hachette et Cie, Paris, 1868, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1633234

Jephthah made a vow to the LORD.
“If you deliver the Ammonites into my power,” he said,
“whoever comes out of the doors of my house
to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites
shall belong to the LORD.
I shall offer him up as a burnt offering.”
—Judges 11:29-39a

Better to have faltered, Jephthah;
better to have failed.
Better to have fallen, bested,
on the battlefield.
Better to have broke your promise;
better have betrayed.
Better would be broken honor
than this keeping faith.

Who are you to vow such slaughter?
Better to have held your breath
for the blessing of your daughter.
God disposes life and death.
God, who makes the nations, breaks them;
you, the mattock in his hand,
ready earth for seeds.  He wakes them,
bringing bounty from the land.

Better to have backslid, Jephthah—
God is mercy, ‘bove all else.
Better to have seen your error,
risking judgment on yourself,
crying out, “Forgive me, Father,
that I do not take the knife.”
God had given you your daughter;
better to have spared her life.

Pietro della Vecchia -Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter – https://collection1.libraries.psu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/palmer/id/6378, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66814851

I can’t say that I’d do it all again.
I’ll not deny that summer’s fruits are sweet,
but summer doesn’t stay, and then—what then?
The price I paid for these is steep, is steep.

I am not she that planted first those seeds
(though she is still me, if you catch my drift):
I am the she that choked and drowned in weeds;
that she is here today is all pure gift.

That any of those seeds took root and grew
up strong and whole—in spite of my own pain—
and now they stand, laden with summer’s fruit:
This is a mercy I cannot contain.

But knowing what I know now, to go back
and open-eyed decide to take the thorns—
Forgive a coward, Lord—the world would lack
this harvest.  I could not bear to be torn

again, to feel the harrowblade again.
And so I thank you for these summer days,
these summer lads so fast becoming men,
and that I go not back to springtime’s ways.

I thank you, God: These fruits have ripened sweet.
When their day comes, oh, gentle be the plow
and sweet again the harvest of their seeds.
I taste it in your mercy even now.

A plum tree with developing fruit By Fir0002 – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Hekerui., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25592935

Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.”
—Luke 12:49-53

O Christ, we pray for better days—
You come to set the earth ablaze.
We pray for peace; you bring the sword,
and you have sheathed it in us, Lord.

We every minute feel its edge
and long to draw it from ourselves
no more to pierce ‘tween bone and joint,
and let some grace the wound anoint.

We love it, too, though—keen and bright—
and draw the blade to wield its might,
to plunge it into other hearts—
and, doing so, tear ours apart.

Then why, Lord, did you bring us this
instead of simple peace and bliss?
You, who have come to be baptized,
not on the blade but hilt will rise.

Your power buried in our earth
who wed our nature by your birth,
transform us with this keen-edged blade,
that we may be like you someday.

Two-handed sword, Italy, circa 1623, Photo By Unknown author – LSH 67303 (lm_dig2877), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28919473

I tallied all I thought and did and said
to find a way to make them balance out—
Sometimes I miss the numbers in my head,

like rosary beads, as through my hands they sped,
a prayer to counter every word of doubt.
I tallied all I thought and did and said:

the loving acts, the saintly books I read,
could then undo each unkind, angry shout.
Sometimes I miss the numbers in my head.

They stood, a wall against encroaching dread:
God's reckoning demands a perfect count.
I tallied all I thought and did and said.

Too great a task for numbers, beads, and thread,
to bear the weight of hope, so they gave out.
Sometimes I miss the numbers in my head.

I stand here naked, my defenses shed—
no proof of good, and what am I without?
I tallied all I thought and did and said.
Sometimes I miss the numbers in my head.

Christopher Wordsworth. Greece Pictorial, Descriptive, & Historical, and a History of the Characteristics of Greek Art, London, John Murray, 1882. – http://eng.travelogues.gr/collection.php?view=37, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48156106

 Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
cried out in a loud voice and said,
“Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”
—Luke 1:39-56

Who am I, that the mother of my Lord,
the tabernacle wrought by unseen hands
in which he dwelt, by her alone adored,
would rise in haste and cross the empty lands
for one who has so long her due ignored?
Who am I, that she’d bend to my demands?

O spotless mother of the spotless lamb,
can you conceive the gravity of fears
in one who thinks the source of love will damn?
Who turns to prayer, and prayer turns into tears?
Who cannot bear God seeing what I am?
I haven’t said a rosary in years.

Yet Christ the seed was buried in your soil
and turned you to the Eden of our birth;
outside you is the sweat of our long toil.
I must return again, as earth to earth,
so take me in, O Mother, to your joys,
if there is love enough for my poor dearth.

For I have ached to feel once your embrace,
have longed to know your mantle circling me—
in truth, have longed to hide within your grace.
But he is there, too—shall I let him see?
Reveal to me, O Mother, Jesus’ face
and teach me how to whisper “Let it be.”

The Assumption of the Virgin, 1475-76, by Francesco Botticini, National Gallery of London, Photo By JoeyWhisperz – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=141565681

“When the LORD, your God, brings you into the land which he swore
to your fathers: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
that he would give you,
a land with fine, large cities that you did not build,
with houses full of goods of all sorts that you did not garner,
with cisterns that you did not dig,
with vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant;
and when, therefore, you eat your fill,
take care not to forget the LORD,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
The LORD, your God, shall you fear;
him shall you serve, and by his name shall you swear.”
—Deuteronomy 6:4-13

The houses that we did not build
with goods we did not earn are filled
from vineyards that we did not tend—
Will they be ours, Lord, in the end?

At tables laid with bread and wine
we did not make, there shall we dine
in cities filled with feasting halls—
yet none were driven from their walls.

In days gone by, by might and sword
and conquest did you give them, Lord;
in days to come are none cast out
from cities where the swords are plows.

Yet now we stand upon the height
and let the prospect fill our sight,
where all our hearts have always been—
but shall we ever enter in?

Turn back the hand that struck the rock;
silence the grumbling of the flock.
Let not the golden calf take form—
or else have mercy on us, Lord.

For all these things and more we’ve done,
and now our race is all but run.
This grace we beg on Jordan’s strand:
to enter then the promised land.

Imagined painting by Frans Pourbus the Elder (c. 1565–1580) depicting the Israelite‘s God showing Moses the Promised Land Photo By Sailko – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49066369

We ripen so on gifts of sun and rain
that soon the heavy stalks begin to bow,
the sway-backed vines to bend beneath the strain.
Then they must break and rot until the plow
turns undertaker—or face harvest’s pain.
And see: The scythe is at the grindstone now.

From our first breaking forth in leaf and root
we’ve carried in our bodies this dread death.
We have been faithful, though, and borne good fruit,
touched by a yeast from spring wind’s gentle breath.
He runs unseen the length of every shoot,
and in our breaking shows and inward strength.

He shares in the destruction of the wheat,
one with us in our terrors and our dooms;
and in the wine press as we know defeat,
what has been ever with us dives and blooms
to face the bitter and enjoy the sweet,
transforming casks and barrels into wombs.

So we are crushed, but never are destroyed;
laid in our tombs but never left alone—
yet we are still ourselves, still unalloyed,
transfigured, though, beyond what years have grown—
and from our wounds this yeast brings forth strange joy
as yet unhinted by the wines we’ve known.

Ancient wine press, south of Hebron mountain. On the right the treading pit. In the middle the precipitation pit. The vat on the left. By איתן פרמן – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3255195

“Gird your loins and light your lamps
and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,
ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.
Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.  
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,
have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.”
—Luke 12:32-48

Let it be this, Lord; let it be.
Of all our needed tasks ‘til then,
let this be what you have for me
to work at ‘til you come again.

For some are prophets of your word,
and some apostles teaching true;
some build a house on what they’ve heard,
and all here have their work from you.

Then let this be my task assigned;
in mercy, let this be enough:
Employing hand and heart and mind
to serve in daily acts of love.

No prophet I, yet may I speak
in words of comfort through the days.
No might have I, yet work the deeds
of love in ordinary ways

at this, the table in the world,
with this, the bread that on it stands:
Let your love’s banner be unfurled
above the work of human hands.

This is my task, my busyness,
and when you come to raise the dead,
Lord, may you find me doing this
and call me where you break the bread.

Albert Samuel Anker – Still-Life with Coffee, Bread and Potatoes – http://www.sightswithin.com/Search/albert%20anker/Page_2/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37060415

Aflutter though I came,
I’m stopped dead in the gate—
an image in its frame—
by wonder in full spate
and wings of sabled flame
that come to consecrate.

The lime-tree leaf’s too pale,
yet larvae love to eat.
This glory will not fail
through all the year’s defeat.
a Giant Swallowtail,
in summer’s cruel heat.

As breathless as the day
beneath weight of drought,
I watch the mother lay,
then rush into the house
and find the air to say,
“Come quick! Stand here: Look out.”

Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes), Shirleys Bay, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada By D. Gordon E. Robertson – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33484737