Roses

When God surprised me

Dear Neighbor, Friend, Family member,

By now, anyone who received roses on Valentine’s Day may see the petals wilted and fading. This is why I have waited to write to you; I had a revelation a couple weeks before Valentine’s Day after a vase of two-dozen red roses ended up on our dining room table, through a mutual friend.

Someone whom I’ve never met had been sent the roses, and through our mutual friend she requested that the bouquet instead be given… to me.

This tall, elegant newcomer to the table was quite a novel surprise; I’m not the sort of person who typically keeps flowers inside. (I take care to avoid pollens indoors.) So, I admired them as a rarity each time I sat down or stood on the opposite side of the house and saw them bathed in sunlight.

As time went on, it was first their scent that would attract my attention. The older and drier their petals became, the more I preferred them. Their fragrance smelled sweeter than when fresh.

Then, one morning, I found myself approaching the dining room table and suddenly stopped in my tracks. I realized three things, all at once.

A Time of Roses

More than a month before, for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe — a very special feast day for me personally, I had read Pope Leo XIV’s message to Our Lady which he’d shared in Spanish. One phrase in particular had jumped out at me:

Haznos comprender que contigo, incluso invierno se convierte el tiempo de rosas.¹

Literally: Make us understand that with you, even winter is converted into the time of roses.

Though I had contemplated the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe many times since childhood, this one insight had been worded in such a way that I knew it could become a source of encouragement and inspiration amid my future ‘winters.’ I took my mini movie marquee off the shelf and memorialized this for the future.

All this constituted the first recollection that struck me as I saw the bouquet of roses that morning.

As time went on, it was first their scent that would attract my attention. The older and drier their petals became, the more I preferred them. They were sweeter than when fresh.

The second was a lesson from a dear friend, St. François de Sales, found in his Introduction to the Devout Life, which we may find helpful especially in our ‘winters’ and Lenten dryness as the spiritual life seems devoid of satisfaction:

Some people, especially women, fall into the great mistake of imagining that when we offer a dry, distasteful service to God, devoid of all sentiment and emotion, it is unacceptable to His Divine Majesty; whereas, on the contrary, our actions are like roses, which, though they may be more beautiful when fresh, have a sweeter and stronger scent when they are dried. Good works, done with pleasurable interest, are pleasanter to us who think of nothing save our own satisfaction, but when they are done amid dryness and deadness they are more precious in God’s Sight.

The third recollection that suddenly struck me that morning was that my patron saint for this year is St. Thérèse, who before she died at the tender age of twenty-four had promised;

I will send down a shower of roses from the heavens; I will spend my heaven doing good upon the earth.

Since her death, thousands of people have reported receiving roses after asking Thérèse to prayerfully intercede for them from heaven — including my bosses decades ago, whose previously-presumed dead rose bush bloomed in wintertime just after they’d spent a novena asking her intercession.²

Little

That one morning, then, when I had approached the dining room table with seemingly nothing on my mind, and the sight and smell of these now-darkened, dried roses suddenly brought these three thoughts into my heart at once; I stopped frozen and stared for several seconds before tears started to flow.

I know there are many people out there who believe that an All-Knowing, Omnipotent, Supreme Being would want nothing to do with our puny selves, would be too busy to be bothered with our insignificant ideas.

My experience, however, is of being overwhelmed throughout my lifetime in ordinary moments by a Heavenly Father who is so grand as to notice what moves my small heart in the slightest, and who reminds me of his care in ways often only I can recognize — like a hidden secret between beloved ones. His gifts overwhelm me when I quiet myself interiorly.

Let us keep our eyes and ears and heart awake, and open to seeing them especially when we feel withered.

Peace,

Angela

Photo credit, main image: GoranH (Pixabay)

1. Homily, Pope Leo XIV (12 Dec 2025).

2. Modeled after the early Christians’ nine days spent in the Upper Room at Jerusalem after Jesus’ ascension into heaven praying for the Holy Spirit’s coming, a novena constitutes nine consecutive days praying — usually for a specific intention.