October 2, 2023: Shower of Roses

Yesterday was the Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux who I feel has been beckoning to me since youth. Her presence and her intercession are indicated variously by the gift of a rose or the smell of roses. As a sad young girl who romanticized death, it seemed impossibly glorious to me that she died at the age of 24. As an adult I cringe at some her sayings that seem impossibly trite and at the glorification of suffering and martyrdom as a noble role for women... and yet somehow she keeps cropping up at moments in my life, drawing me in spite of myself. I am tempted to say that the problematic parts are a religious gloss applied over her true story in the century since she died, but this is based more on my own desire for wish fulfillment than any actual evidence. Somehow she still remains a beacon for me and a way-shower: guiding and assisting me in ways I do not fully understand.