Day 7: A Shower of Roses

The seventh day of the Saint Therese Novena turns to one of the most striking promises in modern Catholic devotional history: Therese's promise to let fall a shower of roses after her death. The Catholic faithful have taken the promise literally, and the testimonies of Catholics around the world over the past century are overwhelming: roses (sometimes literal, sometimes symbolic) have come at the close of Saint Therese novenas in numbers and circumstances that the natural explanation cannot account for.

Today's invocation

Saint Therese, Little Flower of Jesus, please pick for me a rose from the heavenly gardens and send it to me as a message of love. (Continue the full opening prayer.)

Today's meditation

Therese's promise is recorded in the Derniers Entretiens (Last Conversations) preserved by her sister Mother Agnes of Jesus during the final months of Therese's life. The principal forms of the promise are: "I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth" and "After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses." The second is sometimes given in the longer form: "My mission of making God loved as I love Him, of giving my Little Way to souls, will begin after my death... I will spend my heaven doing good on earth. I will let fall a shower of roses." The promise, in the Catholic tradition, is simultaneously a Marian-style intercession from heaven and a particular sign by which Therese's intercession will be recognized.

The Catholic faithful have responded by treating the rose as Therese's particular sign. The standard form of the Saint Therese Novena prayer invokes her promise: Saint Therese, please pick for me a rose from the heavenly gardens and send it to me as a message of love. The traditional Catholic expectation is that the soul who prays the novena faithfully will receive, at some point near the end of the novena or shortly after, a rose (literal or symbolic) as a sign that the petition has been heard.

The forms in which the rose arrives are extraordinary in their variety. A literal rose is sometimes given by an unexpected visitor, found in an unusual place, encountered in a flower delivery for someone else. A symbolic rose may appear in a child's drawing, a photograph, a dream, a printed advertisement, a wallpaper pattern, a song heard on the radio. The Catholic devotional convention is to accept these as signs of Therese's intercession without claiming that every coincidental rose is a Therese sign; the Catholic tradition is realistic about the difficulty of discernment, but it has consistently confirmed that Therese's roses are real and recognizable to those who pray her novena seriously.¹

Today's intention

Today, bring to Saint Therese your principal intention with the explicit invocation of the promise. Saint Therese, you promised a shower of roses. I claim your promise today. If it is according to the Lord's will, send me your sign as I close this novena.

Watch for the rose in the days following the close of the novena. Do not press the search; let the rose come, in whatever form it does. Many Catholics report receiving a rose only after they have stopped looking, which is itself the Catholic gift of the Little Way: trust the Lord and the saint, and the sign will come.

Reflection

The Catholic theology of the rose is not a Catholic claim about flowers as such; it is a Catholic claim about the Communion of Saints. Therese, alive in heaven, is in a position to communicate with the souls on earth in the small ways the Lord allows. The rose is the form she has chosen for this communication. The roses are not the answer to the prayer (the answer is the grace itself); they are the sign that the prayer has been heard.

The Catholic spiritual writers have observed that the rose phenomenon is itself a Catholic catechesis on the Communion of Saints. The Catholic faithful sometimes talk about heaven and the saints in language so abstract that the doctrine becomes unreal. The rose is the corrective: a small, concrete, personal sign that heaven is real, that the saints are alive, that the prayers we offer are received. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us" (Hebrews 12:1).

Closing prayers

Conclude with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Saint Therese, send us a rose. Pray for us.

Footnotes

1. The promise of the shower of roses is documented in the Derniers Entretiens (composed July-September 1897, preserved in the archive of the Carmel of Lisieux). The phenomenon of the roses is documented in the testimonies collected by the Carmel of Lisieux from millions of Catholics across more than a century, preserved in the carmel's pilgrimage archive and in popular Catholic devotional literature. ↩