Proverbs 31

"...She looks for wool and flax
And works with her hands in delight..."

Revelation 6:7-8

When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Mark 8:24

He spit in his eyes, put his hands on him and asked him, "Do you see anything?" He looked up and said, "I see men, as trees, walking."

Genesis 3:17, 18

"Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the field."

Deuteronomy 26:5

"You shall make this response before the Lord:
A wandering Aramean was my ancestor."

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. Surely so
revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

Ascension

"Stretching Himself as if again,
through downpress of dust
upward, soil giving way
to thread of white, that reaches
for daylight, to open as green
leaf that it is . . . "

Denise Levertov

Via Negativa

"Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within..."

R. S. Thomas

On Belief of the Physical Resurrection of Jesus

"It is for all
‘literalists of the imagination,’
poets or not,
that miracle is possible,
possible and essential...."

Denise Levertov

Hast Thou No Scar?

"Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on hand and foot, or side, or hand?..."

Amy Carmichael

John 1:14

"This page will be no less a riddle
than those of My holy books
or those others repeated by ignorant mouths
believing them the handiwork of a man,
not the Spirit’s dark mirrors...."

Jorge Luis Borges

Facing It

"Who could declare your death, standing
obedient as Stylites, empty as death's head
moving gently as the world's
majestic sun into light?..."

Daniel Berrigan

Arc of the Lilly

"The movements of the Madonna-
moment of maternity,
passion of the Pieta
are the same stance...."

Loretta Watts

Judas

"Always I lay upon the brink of love,
Impotent, waiting till the waters stirred,
And no one healed my weakness with a word..."

Vassar Miller

The Twelve

"There by some wrinkled stones round a leafless tree
With beards askew, their eyes dull and wild
Twelve ragged men, the council of charity
Wandering the face of the earth a fatherless child..."

Allen Tate

Luke XXIII

"Gentile or Jew or simply a man
Whose face has been lost in time,
We shall not save the silent
Letters of his name from oblivion..."

Jorge Luis Borges

His Savior's Words Going to the Cross

"Have, have ye no regard, all ye
Who pass this way, to pity me,
Who am a man of misery!..."

Robert Herrick

Good Friday

"Am I a stone and not a sheep
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath thy Cross,
To number drop by drop thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?..."

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Finally, One Arrives

"Finally, one arrives at the place
Of the skull because there is nowhere
Else to go. And there before the face
Of bone one pauses to despair...."

Andrew Landsdown

The Rule

"The oil for extreme unction must be blessed
On Maundy Thursday, so the rule has ruled,
And by the bishop of the diocese..."

Richard Wilbur

The Question

"I saw the Son of God go by
Crowned with the crown of Thorn.
‘Was It not finished, Lord?’ I said,
‘And all the anguish borne?’..."

Rachel Annand Taylor

Calvary

"Friendless and faint, with martyred steps and slow,
Faint for the flesh, but for the spirit free,
Stung by the mob that came to see the show,
The Master toiled along to Calvary..."

Edward Arlington Robinson

African Easter Good Frday

"I am not your God
If you have not denied me once, twice,
If I have not heard you complaining,
Or doubting my existence..."

Abioseh Nico

The Arrest

The Trial

Pontius Pilate

"The crowd assembled. I listened to its power
measuring his weakness. As I watched
from the pavement we were each alone..."

Neil Azevedo

In All Ages

"In all ages, always, everywhere,
and everywhere
It repeats itself, that cruel dream—
The inexplicable kiss of Judas..."

Yuliya Drunina

Often Have I Tried to Follow You

"Often have I tried to follow you, my life
Along familiar paths your mercy shows
But always, but always your several foes
Have seized me by the sheet, my strength borne off..."

Jean De La Ceppède

Pilate's Headquarters

"Meanwhile the priests, who want to prove to Rome
How deeply they are religious one and all
For fear of taint before the Paschal lamb
Is eaten, stay outside the judgment hall...."

Jean De La Ceppède

Found of Them That Sought Him Not

"I will arise and to my Father go;
This very hour the journey is begun."

John Charles Earle

Why Wonder That He Doffed His Garments

"Why wonder that he doffed his garments willingly,
Who had unclothed himself of heavenly majesty?"

Jacobus Revius

The Last Supper

"They are assembled, astounded, bewildered,
round him who, like a sage centered at last,
withdraws from those to whom he once belonged
and flows beyond them as some foreigner...."

Rainer Maria Rilke

A Calvary Path

"Where the stone steps
falter and come to an end
but the hillside rises
yet more steeply..."

Denise Levertov

The Convert

"After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright..."

G. K. Chesterton

Lazarus

"He sat up slowly,
and around his left side
all his long life's muscles ached..."

Agnes Nemes Nagy

Jesus with the Daughter of Jairus

"Child—child! Your narrow cheeks are white
which once a mother’s love caressed
and the red of youth once blessed...."

Ernst Ludwig Schellenberg

In the Wilderness

"I sit alone on the rocks trying to prepare
a man to teach what the laws of life are...."

James Simmons

Mother of Consolation

"What you look hard at looks back hard at you.
As in this icon, where the child with the deer-
brown eyes gazes at something just beyond
your view...."

Paul Mariani

Shadow of the Father

"How shall I approach you, Joseph, you, the shadow
of the father? The stories vary. But who
were you really?..."

Paul Mariani

A Eucharistic Hymn to the Virgin Mary

"Mother of my Jesus,
Mother of God so great,
tell me of him,
of God so small and sweet...."

Advent Saturday With Catrina

"Hanging on beside you as the crosstown bus
lurches its laden way between the wintered hills
of Central Park, my sidelong glance snags
on a prospect never caught before...."

J. Barrie Shepherd

Advent Visitation

"Even from the cabin window I sense the wind's
contagion begin to infect the rags of leaves..."

Lucy Shaw

Incarnation

"Now that the time had come
when it would be good
to ransom the bride
of that law
which Moses had given her...."

St. John of the Cross

Hope

"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul..."

Emily Dickinson

A Curse on Herod

"May you live forever. In that eternity
may birdcries from the playground ring in your ear
incessantly...."

Amy Witting

The Centurian

"I've slaughtered babies all day long,
near Bethlehem. But why?..."

William Baer

We Know the Scene

"We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book, always
the tall lily...."

Denise Levertov

The Three Kings

"Where do we go from here?
We left our country,
Bore gifts,
Followed a star..."

Muriel Spark

Journey of the Magi

“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey..."

T.S. Eliot

A Song For Simeon

"Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills..."

T. S. Eliot