Irish Jesuit Province

My AcolyteAuthor(s): John FitzpatrickSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 30, No. 346 (Apr., 1902), p. 189Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20500257 .

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MY ACOLYTE 189

Or for their accidental good revered,

Not for their claims celestial. Different far

The lesson we have learned. The poor are fed,

The orphan nursed: around the sickman's couch,

Gentle as light, hovers the healing hand.

Times of trial

Are changed to Sabbaths; and the rude, rough girl

Waiting another service finds a home

Where that which years have marred returns again

Like infant flesh clothing the leprous limb.

Yet all these things are but the blossoms only,

The tree's deep root is secret. From the vow

Which binds the will's infinitude to God

Upwells that peaceful strength whose fount is God.

Yes, God Himself is the fountain-source whence all flows; and

only God Himself could work this work, to transform Eve into

Mary, a frail daughter of Eve into a Sister of Mercy.

MY ACOLYTE

HE stands beside me when, morn after morn, I give his mother of the Bread she seeks To sate her soul with: his complexion speaks

Of wheat-fields when the harvest-day is born; For golden locks his gentle brow adorn,

(His eyes are speedwells) and-what fully ekes The likeness out-upon his downy cheeks

Are ghosts of poppies peeping from the corn.

So, in my little acolyte I see

A living symbol of the Eucharist

Moving along the altar-rails with me;

While in his raiment red and white persist Hints of that prior rite whereby, we know,

Even sins as scarlet are made white as snow.

JOHN FITZPATRICK, O.M.I.

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