This is my body, this is my blood.

I have been known to write about women in ministry. This poem, the epigraph of a piece I'm citing in a paper and hadn't noticed before, just brought me to my knees. I am blessed to be just weeks away from my church officially claiming me as one among its eligible for ordination. For my Roman Catholic and Orthodox sisters, I weep.

Did the woman say,
When she held him for the first time in the dark of a stable,
After the pain and the bleeding and the crying,
"This is my body, this is my blood"?

Did the woman say,
When she held him for the last time in the dark rain on a hilltop,
After the pain and the bleeding and the dying,
"This is my body, this is my blood"?

Well that she said it to him then,
For dry old men,
brocaded robes belying barrenness,
Ordain that she not say it for him now.

-- Frances Croake Frank