The passage below is from The Quickening of John the Baptist, one of Thomas Merton's great Marian poems.



You have trusted no town

With the news behind your eyes.

You have drowned Gabriel's word in thoughts like seas

And turned toward the stone mountain

To the treeless places.

Virgin of God, why are your clothes like sails?



The day Our Lady, full of Christ,

Entered the dooryard of her relative

Did not her steps, light steps, lay on the paving leaves

like gold?

Did not her eyes as grey as doves

Alight like the peace of a new world upon that house, upon

miraculous Elizabeth?





The Roman, Anglican, and Lutheran calendars now observe the Feast of the Visitation on 31 May, but 2 July was the traditional date of the feast on the Roman calendar, commemorating the events described in the first chapter of Luke. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, greeting her young kinswoman Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb and Mary, in response and in full acceptance of her role in the history of our salvation, proclaiming the noble words of the Magnificat.