THANK you for featuring just an ordinary (or should I say, extraordinary), wife and mother on the back page of The Catholic Leader (22/7/07).
Many who attended the 10am Mass at St Mary’s in Warwick in the mid-nineteen hundreds will remember Mr Fitzgerald leading his large, immaculately attired family up the centre aisle, genuflecting, then waiting for one entire seat to be filled before taking his place on the end.
Others at that Mass came from similar circumstances, large families (though none as large as the Fitzgerald’s), coming in after the milking was done from small farm houses with no electricity, indoor plumbing or possibly phones; and old-fashioned laundry facilities.
My family too drove in from our farm at no great speed, and some of us at times freezing cold in the back of our utility.
Hard days, perhaps, but we were happy.
Thank you for honouring motherhood (something not often done in today’s society) in the person of such a great woman as Mrs Fitzgerald.
Makes one recall the words of the late Cardinal Mindszenty:
“The most important person on earth is a mother. She cannot claim the honour of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She need not. She has built something more magnificient than any cathedra, the tiny perfection of her baby’s body …
“The angels have not been blessed with such a grace. They cannot share in God’s creative miracle to bring new Saints to heaven. Only a human mother can.
“Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creature. God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation …
“What on God’s good earth is more glorious than this … to be a mother?”
N. MACKENZIE
Taigum, Qld
