Never Before Heard Choral Piece! ✨ Omnem Victum Suum (Original Latin Motet)

In honor of my Perpetual Religious Vows today, I wrote this piece, which expresses so much of my heart in this offering. I hope it blesses you! Here is the text in Latin and English and the explanation:

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“Omnem victum suum”
Text:

Hæc autem ex inopia sua omnem victum suum, quem habebat, misit.

"But she out of her poverty put in all the living that she had.” -Luke 21:4

Hydria farinæ non deficet, nec lecythus olei minuetur.

“The jar of meal shall not be spent, and the cruse of oil shall not fail.” -1 Kings 17:14

Explanation:

There is a striking parallel between the poor widow who offered all her money to the Temple treasury in the Gospel of Luke and the poor widow who offered to bake a cake for the prophet Elijah with the one serving of flour and water she had left in the First Book of Kings. Both, as a response to what they deem to be the will of God, give all they have to live on in an act of trust and abandon. The widow in 1 Kings is rewarded by a miracle: her jar of flour and jug of oil do not run dry, and she and her son are saved from the famine. We don’t know what happens to the widow in Luke, but we can only imagine her reward was great, for according to Jesus, with her measly two coins she donated more than all the rich people, “for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all the living that she had.”

The widow in the Bible represents those who are poor, weak, and downtrodden. Are not these stories also images of those terribly poor and weak individuals who offer their lives to God in the profession of religious vows? They trust that out of their poverty, their offering of all that they have (which is not much), the Lord will bring forth abundant fruit, and their “meal” and “oil” will never run dry because their Divine Bridegroom will provide all they need at all times. This gift of their lives, like that of the widows just mentioned, mirrors that of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who gave his life “as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). May all those who heed this call of the Beloved receive the “hundredfold” promised (Mark 10:30).

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