Ave Maria is a selection from Cross Sections, a book of progressive poetry I wrote in 2021. It asks what I think are some interesting questions: when Mary was pregnant and sang the revolutionary words of the Magnificat in Luke 1:46-55, was Jesus listening in the womb? Did he echo his mother when in Luke 4:14-30 he read from the Isaiah scroll at the synagogue in Nazareth? Did Mary’s revolutionary voice resonate throughout his earthly teaching and ministry?
Ave Maria
He was cradled in her womb
A mass of cells fueled by a divine spark
Growing, developing, moving, listening
When his mother sang a revelation—
A song of divine revolution
Bringing down the powerful and lifting the lowly
(the last will be first and the first will be last)
Filling the hungry
(blessed are those who hunger for they shall be filled)
And sending away the rich
(Camels travel through needles more easily than the rich enter heaven)
A song of divine mercy
(blessed are the merciful)
And fulfilled divine promises
(I came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it)
The babe who suckled at the breast
Of this bearer of God and singer of justice
He who played on her lap
Who listened to her lessons
Who increased in wisdom and in years
Under her roof—
Is it any coincidence
That his words echoed hers?
At his homecoming,
the son
Of the woman who with full-throated joy
Sang the Magnificat
When he came back
This boy who had begun to make a name for himself
When he showed up at the synagogue
There in Nazareth
are we really surprised
When he selects the Isaiah scroll?
Are we taken aback by the words he reads
Of bringing good news to the poor
Release to the captives
Sight to the blind
Setting the oppressed free
And proclaiming jubilee?
He may have prayed
to the one he called Father
But I’m pretty sure
Jesus was a mama’s boy.
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