Bella Mercedes (May 14, 2013 – August 5, 2013)

O Beauty’s mercy, Mercy’s beauty sweet,
A ray of light from God our Father’s dawn:
So brief your stay, so soon was your retreat;
O Bella! O Mercedes! Now you’re gone.
The man who sired you grieves his Beauty’s loss,
While she who birthed you does her Mercy mourn;
They gave you life and you gave them a Cross.
And tears and pains and sorrows must be borne,
But, Child of Grace, there’s joy amid these tears!
Rebirth’d at font, refresh’d with Precious Blood,*
You’re mercy-crowned with beauty past your years.
And of His fullness we received a flood.
     For us, O Daughter, pray that with you we
     May sing God’s mercies in eternity.

 

*While she was baptized into the Latin Rite, of Latin Rite parents, Bella Mercedes “accidentally” received Holy Communion at a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church when her mother unknowingly held her in the fashion that Byzantine Christians present their infants to the priest to be communicated.