Heart to Heart - for hearts

After his graduation from Boston College in 1916, Gerald Fitzgerald entered St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, MA, and was ordained a priest on the Feast of Corpus Christi, May 26, 1921. He spent the entire afternoon of his Ordination day before the Blessed Sacrament and said,

“I believe that the Son of God made Himself a prisoner of love in the little white Host in this tabernacle for me. He who is my God loves me enough to be here as a prisoner of love, then I love Him enough to give up the joys and consolations of a Christian home and be His prisoner of love.”

  

 

 

Window of tabernacle in Chapel of St Vincent de Paul Catholic Church

Huntington Beach , California

 

 

Stories abound about Father Fitzgerald and his work with the poor.  It was this consuming charity which also led to his encounter with a priest who had left the ministry and was living as a beggar on the streets. While still a parish priest in Brighton, Massachusetts, on a bitterly cold winter's evening during the depression, a homeless man knocked at the kitchen door of the rectory. Fr. Fitzgerald prepared a warm meal for him and as the man was leaving, he turned to Father and said, "I used to be a priest" and disappeared into the cold winter's night. 

That door, opened to a “stray shepherd,” was the first of many such doors. The discovery that there were priests with serious problems remained constant in Father’s mind and compassionate heart.

Eventually Divine Providence led Fr. Fitzgerald to develop a vision of a religious community whose mission would be to serve the needs of priests and members of other religious orders who were struggling with issues such as celibacy, alcohol and substance abuse problems. The Apostolate was basically twofold: (1) to pray for all Bishops and priests in the Church, both living and deceased, to obtain from the Divine Mercy of God all the graces they need; (2) to help priests who have wandered from the path of virtue.

In 1947, at the invitation of Archbishop Edwin V. Byrne of Santa Fe, Fr Fitzgerald founded two communities, both to specifically support the priesthood, yet each in a unique and autonomous way: a community of priests and brothers by actively caring for priests, and the Handmaids of the Precious Blood ( http://www.nunsforpriests.org/), by their hidden lives of prayer, sacrifice and daily Eucharistic Adoration.

For the next twenty-two years of his life, Fr Fitzgerald followed a conviction that the key to priestly sanctity, fidelity, reparation and rejuvenation is a deep prayer life expressed in ardent devotion to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.   

“In strengthening the priest you strengthen the whole Church....
Strengthen the priest and you strengthen the whole foundation,you strengthen everything in the Church.” ~ Fr Gerald Fitzgerald

PLEASE PRAY for SANCTITY, FIDELITY, REPARATION and REJUVENATION in the PRIESTHOOD!