From Heaven a Shower of Roses

Here is Leia Rose holding a very special flower petal. Very special indeed, . . . and there's a long story behind it, too. So let me begin with what I told Leia Rose about only a few nights ago . . .



When I was in second grade, Oma told me about a wonderful saint named St. Therese, The Little Flower who promised "to spend heaven doing good on earth" and "to let fall from heaven a shower of roses" for anyone who asked her to intercede for them. Oma proceeded to tell me that if I asked St. Therese for help, and Jesus would grant the request as a result of St. There's intercession, she would send you a rose on earth. A real rose. And it wouldn't just be any rose, either, it would come along with a special feeling so that you would KNOW it was from St. Therese. Well, I right away asked St. Therese if she would help me get to heaven someday. Then I started looking around for a rose and didn't find one, . . . not until that Friday. I was sad during the school Mass because I hadn't seen a rose. Not one. And then, right during the Consecration mind you, I looked up and saw that on either side of the Tabernacle, that I hadn't noticed before, were two huge vases of red roses. I was ecstatic.



There would be many roses from St. Therese in my lifetime, but another significant one I received when I was teaching at Sacred Heart Academy in Connecticut. (And it was so significant that I would tell all of my classes about it the next day.) I was there late at night doing some extra copying. My classroom was the only one that had a light on in the entire school. Even all the nuns had gone to bed in the convent. It was a significant night because it was the evening I was going to find out the fate of a small cancerous nodule in Great Grandma Betty's lungs. And I realize now that I stayed late in fear of going back home, fear of hearing bad news about Grandma. Anyway, I went to the copy room to make some more copies, leaving my books standing open on my desk, . . . and when I returned I found a single rose petal, . . . one perfect, light pink, fresh rose petal right on the top of my teacher's textbook! I couldn't believe it! And this time, I hadn't even TALKED to St. Therese about anything, but I recognized it as an immediate sign from her. It came along with that special feeling, of course. And I went home to find that Great Grandma Betty's lungs were now free and clear and that the doctor had actually said something like, "one thing's for sure, you'll die of old age before you die of that cancer we had found." Wow. I took that rose petal and pressed it. It now resides, framed, with my very favorite picture of St. Therese being welcomed by Jesus while casting down that shower of Roses.



Then there was the most recent request I had for St. Therese regarding something that is not yet resolved, but was troubling me. I took the request to St. Therese and asked her, point, blank, the outcome. Then I waited. I saw nothing for a while, . . . until one Sunday I decided to go to perpetual adoration, . . . into the little chapel at the front of the church where the Blessed Sacrament is always present. I did this mostly because I rarely get to pray devoutly at Mass these days. (I wonder why.) I entered the chapel and knelt down and at my feet was one small vase with three yellow roses. I couldn't believe it. Again, there was that familiar special feeling of St. Therese, and I gained quite a bit of peace about an unresolved issue. Interesting that now two of the roses that I have received have come beside the Tabernacle. And this is exactly what I saw:
About a week ago I told these stories to Leia Rose and we said the special prayer that we do every evening together in honor of St. Therese: "Oh most glorious Saint Therese, whom almighty God has raised up to aid and counsel mankind, I implore your miraculous intercession. Please pick me a rose from your heavenly garden and send it to me with a message of love. Ask Jesus to grant me the favor I thee implore, and tell Him that I will love Him each day more and more. Amen." And on that day, the prayer probably meant more to Leia Rose than it did the day before because she finally understood her namesake, . . . why her middle name is Rose. Because THAT is why. After all was said and done, I placed my special rose petal in its special frame in Leia's room, simply for her to look at and contemplate. Considering Leia Rose is only five, I wondered if I may have told her about this too soon. And yet, near the end of prayers that night, sure enough, she made her first request to St. Therese: "Dear St. Therese, will I go to heaven?" Such an innocent request (and one with more finality than I had the intelligence to ask for when I was seven). Then every day after school I asked Leia if she had seen a rose. And each day for five days Leia said the same thing, "No." I was starting to get worried until the evening we went to Fridays on the Front Porch at the Carolina Inn. There was a time when Leia Rose disappeared for a moment, and when she returned she was holding a perfect, light pink rose petal in her hand. "Mamma! Look what I found!!!" And we looked at each other, and we both knew. I hugged her, and she just felt so special! And just like the petal that appeared on my textbook when no one was around, you have to understand how unbelievable it was for Leia rose to find this rose petal at this music fest we were attending. It was wall-to-wall people, squished in like sardines. There was hay covering the ground, and everything the fell was getting trampled. Everything, that is, except this lone rose petal that Leia found. And the biggest irony of all is that Leia's rose petal looks like it could have been plucked from the exact same rose that St. Therese sent me many years ago at Sacred Heart Academy in Connecticut. And perhaps they WERE from the same rose. Thank you, Little Flower, for giving us hope and, of course, for sending us roses.