Advent Sunday Behold, the Bridegroom cometh: go ye out With lighted lamps and garlands round about To meet Him in a rapture with a shout. It may be at the midnight, black as pitch, Earth shall cast up her poor, cast up her rich. It may be at the crowing of the cock...
A SKETCH The little hedge-row birds, That peck along the road, regard him not. He travels on, and in his face, his step, His gait, is one expression; every limb, His look and bending figure, all bespeak A man who does not move with pain, but moves With thought....
AUTUMN Today the peace of autumn pervades the world. In the radiant noon, silent and motionless, the wide stillness rests like a tired bird spreading over the deserted fields to all horizons its wings of golden green. Today the thin thread of the river flows without...
The heavens are full of ruby-hued jewels, alive with the ridged wrinkles of glistening garnets, awash in the juices of fruitful glory. Ah, the delectable flesh of this sky! Round the center seeds small and smaller wink like stars in a carnelian firmament, the...
“O stock of Jesse, you stand as a sign for the peoples. Kings fall silent before you, the nations acclaim you: delay no longer, but come to free us.” —the Magnificat antiphon for December 19 It is the week before Christmas, which means it is the week...
K.C. Ireton is a writer and teacher. The author of The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year and Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis, she lives near Seattle with her husband and four school-aged children. She is a lover of books, gardens, and tea. Also, Oxford commas.