O Christ, who taught on earth of old, and fashioned in the tales you told of life and truth the hidden key, and windows on eternity, prepare our hearts, that in our turn we too may read and mark and learn. The world of nature, death and birth, the secrets of the fertile earth, the ripened field, the garnered grain, the seed that dies to live again, are doors in heaven, opened wide upon your kingdom's countryside. Of wedding-feasts and pearls and flowers, of debts, and half-completed towers, of sunny slopes where vineyards grow, we read more wisely than we know; for in your parables there shine the images of things divine. A beggar's bowl, a robber band, foundations built on rock or sand, we mark them all; but one imparts a dearer hope to human hearts: from that far country where we roam a Father's welcome calls us home.