More Poetry from Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald, SP

Words of Fr. Fitzgerald, SP that move my soul...

St. Margaret Mary












There were so many thorns
about his brow,
so many red lips
to prove the reality
of His love,
so little fertility
in the soil of
His creature's affections,
so much of Winter everywhere:
need we be surprised that
when the Gardener
found a rose
fragrant with remembrance
He should lift it
to His Heart?

~Paths from Bethlehem

Snowdrops

The lesson of the snowdrops is this: Listen, for I am going to let them speak to you.


Dear little one, you love us, do you not? And why do you love us? Because you see that we are sweet and fair; and we are sweet and white and fair because we have lifted our white heads up and hold them up bravely above the damp clay of Mother Earth's dark breast. Do you want to be loved, too? Do you want God and His Blessed Mother and His angels and saints to look on your soul and smile with pleasure upon it? You do; of course you do. Then you have only to imitate us. Lift your soul off the earth; lift it up, bravely, calmly. Do not let its fragrant petals drag in the soil; do not let selfish hands pluck you. Be not afraid that you will be crushed under foot. A Divine Gardener watches with jealous love over your growth, refreshing you with the gentle dew of His Heart's Blood, while he warms the Golden Mantle of His grace. It is true that we are on earth, but our souls are made to be lifted up, up from the earth to God. If you lift your soul up to God, He will use your life even as he has used ours; only yours in a nobler manner, to bring happiness to other lives and the fragrance of God's Love and the sweetness of God's beauty into the cloistered garden of a Christian home.

~Letters of Father Page