Two Red Roses

CORPUS CHRISTI MASS 2008 is now etched in my heart as the day I met Saint Therese of Lisieux. As always, I do not chose which of His Saints it pleases my Jesus to personally introduce to me. All I know is that when my Lord has in His limitless wisdom and boundless compassion willed for one of His Saints to become intimate with me, they soon arrive in my life with a love that is constant and unchanging and mysterious much the same way that my Anne has arrived in my life.

Now, all that I have and all that I am I know are gifts from God but the friendships that my Savior gives me from among the company of His Angels and Saints are what I consider the most precious of all because not only are these friendships so fulfilling, all of these great lights always, always point the way back Home to my Jesus, my All. And they usually come to me during turning points in my life.

My life right now is in a state of uncertainty. Now, I know that all of life is universally uncertain so what is so out of the ordinary about my feelings of uncertainty? My faith. You see my faith is not a feeling or a sense of something vague and obscure like it is to want to believe that there is a God and an unseen supernatural order. By an unmerited gift of God, my faith knows for certain the absolute reality of God, Mother Mary, His Angels and His Saints. To be sure, my faith does not understand but it knows and knows for certain about God and God's things.

It wasn't always like this before. In fact, for most of my life it is not surprising that I lived in error and ignorance about many things. My faith until I finally met my Savior and my Jesus decided to correct me was not the proper Catholic faith. Now, I am referring here now to the theological virtue of faith. My faith was an assurance of God's mercy conditioned on the belief that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. It was an admixture of hope and anything from Christian zeal, self-trust, or dare I say presumption. It was what Catholic theologians would call, a fiduciary faith. Suffice to say, I was both surprised and relieved to find out one day that the faith that I had clung to for so long is, I would not say the wrong kind for what is wrong when it is all directed toward the truth of Jesus Christ with Whom all things are possible, my faith was just not the Catholic way of holding faith to be and I am after all a Catholic man. I was surprised because of the fundamental nature of my error and at the same time, I was relieved because I could then renew my efforts using the Catholic method of holding faith to be. At that time, I was on the verge of frustration because I could get no kind of satisfaction or consolation from my Christian religion. And so my most merciful Jesus taught me the way I now hold my faith to be which is a conviction of the truths of God and God's things.

This conviction is born in the soul as a desire, even a faint desire but it is never vague. Faith require our gentle and constant nurturing and here is where prayer and contemplation is vital. Because faith is not just a faint desire just like a seed is not just a seed, like all virtues, faith needs to grow into something that reaches up to God from our souls like plants needing sunshine. Imagine within our heart is a secret garden where all different kinds of supernatural virtues grow and thus, the atmosphere of this interior garden is the air of hope and the sunshine is God's charity, faith is that first tree at the center of the garden that grows nurtured by the waters of God's grace. And where do we get the water? The sacraments and prayer, of course. Now, the infinite worlds within have a weather all their own and this weather is dictated by Christ's Peace and how much of God's Peace are we willing to possess in our hearts whose interior climate is naturally inclined to be stormy and chaotic. Every choice that we make that is animated by love then calms the skies above our secret garden to let the sunshine of God's love into our hearts. Now imagine a garden with just seeds, why would God want to walk with any of us in the cool of the afternoon in such a barren place?

Consequently, a proud heart is a barren place, a barren place is a lonely place, lonely because it longs for life, it longs for life because it has no life and it has no life because it is in darkness, it is in darkness because it's death grip on sin would not let God's creative light into itself. Indeed, a heart eclipsed by pride in all its devious manifestations is beset permanently by winter forces for not only is there a complete lack of sunshine, the soil of that place is also permanently just as cold and hard as the stagnant, frozen air. Indeed, no life can survive in such a place so hostile to the God of all life. But the fertile soil of those hearts whom God loves to grow all manner of green and growing things that bear for Him and for His elect eternal fruits is called humility.

The germ of humility is the ability to accept what is wrong in order to receive what is right. One can not just receive what is right without first accepting that there is something wrong else there would be no place to put it. As it spreads in the heart, making things ready for our Lord, one realizes in degrees that humility is a virtue that deals in truth - supernatural truth - and that this virtue is the essential soil where other virtues grow and mature. Pride will never accept that it is wrong because it thinks itself falsely to be a god but humility knows to accept and submit to all truth, willingly, freely and with joy, acting human when it is wrong and human when it is right being completely honest and level headed about itself both in weakness and in strength. The path that lead to humility is humiliation.

My Lord had to stand back and let me get hurt a lot for most of my life before I learned what He wanted me to learn about humility either because I was too proud or too dumb or both. But I did learn and it just shows how good a teacher the Master is and not because I am any good, it is all really His grace that have led me through the most difficult times of my life. Even now, my Jesus teaches me humility, constantly testing me by allowing temptations to afflict me and the greater the temptation, the greater my Lord's desire to refine what virtue He is nurturing to proper strength. It is not with humility that I have problems with though nowadays. Although all virtues require opposition i.e. temptation to maintain and advance themselves in the life of a Christian, with regards to temptation, my greatest tests are those evils that war with my chastity and the Devil, my Lord and I know it. And the greatest help I have in this regard is the Queen of my heart, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

My Christian warfare to defend my chastity is one of the severest struggles in my life. It is the only impediment that I feel that is holding me back from truly enjoying a freedom that I desire so much, the absolute freedom to love my Jesus without restraint. To be able to fly to Him without shame like other Saints during their time here. I do not say that I envy what God has given to others for I know enough to know that we all tread different ascendant paths to the one summit of the mountain of God. But with me, I have to gain from the strength and confidence of a company of friends including my Anne and of course, my Mama Mary, to be able to feel close to good enough to stand before the God of the universe in spirit and in prayer. And because God made me this way, so insecure and lacking in self-confidence, I have to accept that unlike others who are strong enough to fly to Jesus by the strength of their own unwavering purity and devotion, I have to rely on all that can be relied on, depend on all that can be depended on in order to reach my Jesus. My only consolation is the constant reassurance that I get that my Jesus loves me in spite of me and that He wants me to come to Him by way of the same Love by the trail of gifts that He has grown accustomed to leave behind for me as He goes ahead of me, walking and sometimes not even stopping nor looking back because I fall so much and am so slow that very often I can no longer see Him ahead of me but only have the luminous company of His friends (and mine) to remind me of my Jesus and the way that He took. I love all my friends, most especially my unseen friends with a love that is forever but when I really think about it, when I sit down to really contemplate things, many times I find myself weeping desperately because I acutely feel this deep longing for my Lord.

It is then today and for the past several weeks that I am feeling quite hurt at why Jesus wouldn't wait up for me, and why my Mama Mary wouldn't ask her Son to walk with me even for a while. I have so much love to give to Him but I am frequently frustrated by my own inability to persevere, to be constant against temptation. I fall and I fail so many times to the point that I do not know what else to do and have been neglecting even my prayers. My dear, darlingest Anne after getting tired of tugging at my heart for days even had to literally go behind me to push me into praying a rosary one day. I know that temptations must be endured for God's glory and our sake as a Church and that in my case, temptations to impurity as Saint Francis de Sales described in his book, "An Introduction to the Devout Life", usually come mounted and charging but once overcome usually retreat creeping and crawling. However, there were only a few times that I have persevered enough to know the strength and the feel of this kind of temptation and it was indeed just as the Saint has said in his book.

My Companion, it is a fearful thing to be tempted where you are the weakest built but much more fearful is this uncertainty that I now feel. An uncertainty that I know is the feeling of sin gnawing away at the tree at the very center of the garden of my life with Jesus. Like I said before, I fear nothing as much as to lose this love that have filled the void of my past life and have taught me the truth of all things I know and want to know all of my life, in time and in eternity. Both to love and to be loved but to love most of all, it is this ability to love truly and to love forever that I fear to lose for in this I know is the sum of all that is real in my short, little existence. In short, I fear losing my Lord to sin. I know what sin is and it just pains me why I still can not yet hate all of sin with the same revulsion that all truly contrite souls have learned to cultivate in penance. I should not want to complain and I nearly never do but it does hurt me a lot inside at this present time that I am still stained by an attachment that goes from neutral to danger close to the one remnant of a sin that I constantly ask my Lord to help me overcome, a sin against chastity that has its roots during those times when I knew neither sin nor virtue.

It is now then, that I met Saint Therese of Lisieux, yesterday at Corpus Christi mass. First, I found her book, "Story of a Soul", among my other books. It was actually a book from among the books that my mom gave me that I did not know I had. I read the synopsis on the back of the book, saw a picture of a little girl who is now a Saint in heaven and thought that this might be a good read. My spiritual reading schedule is really something I have to firmly establish along with many other aspects of my life that could benefit from better discipline and self-control.

Picking up that book put the thought of Saint Therese in the back of my mind all the way to 5 o'clock mass that I attended with my dad. While at mass, I noticed roses, red roses and I thought they were from some school function that the kids and their parents attended before coming to mass as I saw one parent with a graduation picture of her little girl.

Those roses also reminded me of Saint Therese's well known sign, of course, but the thought that it had anything to do with me was still far from my mind. Toward the end of mass, a woman came right up to her family with a bunch of red roses that she began to hand out to her family members sitting next to me and my dad. The thought of Saint Therese came nearer to my consciousness at that time and I said to her at first, that if this lady gives the man next to me three roses that I know you are here. And she did.

And then I said to Saint Therese, that if this lady give me a rose, then I know you are here for me. But she didn't and then a voice came to my understanding, "Ask the woman what the flowers are for."

I hesitated because I am naturally shy and not initially conversant with people but there came a clarity of presence that illuminated for me that precise moment when I knew the right time to ask and then I asked without any hesitation, "lady, what are those roses for?"

She replied, "oh these, these are for our Lady, we are offering her flowers because it's her month."

And then she said, "here I'll let you have some", handing me two red roses.

At that instant, a permanent realization set into my awareness that Saint Therese is here for me now and that my Jesus is giving to me her most precious acquaintance through His Mother, Mary, the Queen of my Heart.

At first, I was a little dumbstruck, awed by what just happened. I offered my other red rose to my dad who refused it and then I quickly realized that these two flowers are meant to be for me and my Anne.

I was in tears when I offered those roses back to Mother singing her hymn, "Salve Regina" (with Hosea, one of my most favorite hymns) for I know that because of my dear Jesus and very clearly through Mama Mary, I have gained another infinitely precious friend. I was in tears because I was so overcome in my heart of hearts by another singular act of great affection that my Lord has shown for me just yesterday, Corpus Christi mass 2008.

I know that with Saint Therese's help along with Mama Mary, my Anne, and all the other Saints and Angels particular to me that I now have a better, clearer chance at catching up to my Savior in the hope that He would one day walk alongside me. But at that day, I have to be able enough in virtue to catch up to Him and also persevering enough in sanctity to keep up with Him. My Lord is my keeper just as much as I am keeper of my brothers and sisters, seen and unseen, and they are keepers of me. My Lord safeguards my virtues which is why faith is so important to me.

But as for today, I commit myself to cultivating this new and exciting friendship with Saint Therese of Lisieux by first reading her book. Oh, it's going to be a great day!

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.