Like flowers

One afternoon towards sundown, the gardenias caught my attention. (The Arabian jasmines, sampaguitas, did a few days earlier.) The flowering shrubs thrived in the university at the base of the statue of a man with head upturned and arms wide open who wore nothing more than a leaf over his privates.

I did for the gardenia or rosal plant what I had done for the jasmine. I stepped off the street that led to my favorite campus kiosk, came up to the rosal in Oblation Square and stooped close to one white rose-like blossom to enjoy the scent of its God-given perfume.

Hagiographers, students of the lives of Catholic saints, speak about the olfactory when referring to their subjects. In the old days, candidates for canonization were people who died in the “odor of sanctity.”

I always thought the phrase was just as proverbial and figurative as “the fountain of youth” and meant that a person in Jesus Christ’s name believed and hoped in and loved God and neighbor heroically  until his heart caved in.

But I am intrigued by reports that at some point in their earthly existence, saints like Padre Pio of Pietrelcina literally and miraculously filled the places where they prayed with sweet heavenly scents.

Interestingly, many lines in Holy Writ associate human beings with flowers.

Saint Peter in his first epistle says humans are as fleeting as flowers. (cf. Peter 1:24) Our Lord himself speaks of a heavenly Father who, He hints, can clothe men and women in finery better than King Solomon’s and as haute as that of field lilies. (cf. Luke 12:27-28)

Centuries after the Bible was completed, Danish Hans Christian Andersen wrote the story of a garden that Death keeps. Human lives grew as flowering plants in that garden. Death would pluck or transplant a plant as a man died.

If we were all flowers and this life were God’s garden, I wonder if we smell pleasant to the Gardener.

For context, let’s take a couple of current circumstances.

The state of New York under Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently legalized marriage for persons of the same sex. Weeks before that, Malta legalized divorce.

These realities may no longer be alien to Filipinos if we don’t stay vigilant. Philippine solons have introduced legislation to approve the dissolution of marriages and stop discrimination against those who could easily stand at the forefront of supporting same-sex “marriages.”

(Legislating opposition to discrimination based on sexual orientation is brilliant and necessary, but how protective is the anti-discrimination bill of a believer’s rights to free speech, expression and religion whenever he echoes in truth and love the biblical condemnation of homosexual sexual behavior?)

How would an entire society smell in God’s garden if these bills that in whole or in part breach divine and natural laws become laws? Would Death transplant to eternity lives that oppose eternal laws?

Every Christian is responsible for loving the individuals who support the hedonistic bills. One way the Christian can love these individuals is to remind them, gently but without compromise, that Jesus Christ said, “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder,” (Matthew 19:6) else society itself is rent; that the Holy Spirit through Saint Paul in the Bible presents same-sex sexual partnerships as acts of grave moral depravity that stem from the cult of the body and lead to physical malaise and withered spirits. (cf. Romans 1:18-26)

Real saints recognize that their spiritual advancement is for naught if it doesn’t save others, too.

The odor of sanctity works that way.

The smell of roses that attended Padre Pio’s prayers helped those around him come closer to God.

The faith, hope and love of the saints remind us that though we were made of clay and may sink in the mud, we were meant to grow and bloom in that garden called heaven.