Human Flower Project
St. Theresa—Helicopters for “The Little Flower”
October 1 is the feast day of one of the most popular Catholic saints, “the little flower” who hit the big time.
Therese Martin, pre-sainthood
Therese Martin was the baby of the family, born in Alencon, France, 1873, the youngest of nine children. Who’d have guessed a spoiled little imp would become a globally beloved spiritual guide?
St. Theresa had her conversion at age 14, joined the Carmelite order in Liseaux the next year, and in less than a decade became a giant of Catholicism by preaching smallness. She described her life as “the little way”: ‘What matters,” she wrote, “is not great deeds, but great love.’” Holiness is an everyday thing.
Of a person who found spirituality in what’s immediate and vulnerable, one might expect similes of flowers. So was Theresa’s dainty theology.
From her Story of a Soul: “Jesus set the book of nature before me and I saw that all the flowers he has created are lovely. The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. I realized that if every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness and there would be no wildflowers to make the meadows gay. It is just the same in the world of souls.”
Theresa died of TB at age 24. She was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1925. Since then, scores of churches and Catholic schools across the world—most of them also shrines— have been named for “The Little Flower.”
2005 Rose Queen Megan Janowiak (front left) New Columbus Shower of Roses, 10/2/2005
Photo: Carol Zickler, for the Times News
In eastern Pennsylvania, there’s an October custom that makes literal St. Theresa’s promise: to return after death in “a shower of roses.” Seventy-three years ago Msgr. Agnello J. Angelini arranged for rose petals to be dropped from a Piper Cub plane over New Columbus, a tiny hillside community near Nesquehoning. In subsequent years, little got ever more biggified: a local rose queen was named and carried out the aerial petal-dropping honors. More recently, the queen has a court, and they all ride by on a motorized float. “A helicopter appears in the sky at 5 p.m., the day of the celebration, to drop roses. If you are fortunate enough to catch a falling rose, your wish may come true.”
We have mixed feelings about St. Theresa. Her dogmatic “littleness” seems a convenient kind of piety, given the general submission of 19th century women. Also, it can sound downright smarmy: like that scene in “A Place in the Sun” (based on Theodore Drieser’s An American Tragedy), where a dumpy and pregnant Shelley Winters looks across the rowboat at Montgomery Clift (who’s lovestruck with Elizabeth Taylor) and whimpers, “It’s the little things that matter!”
On the other hand, considering rose queens, helicopters, and the parading of St. Theresa’s remains through Ireland, Australia, and now, New Zealand, perhaps the Carmelite pixie was onto something. To live, as flowers do, in the present—and stay little—is a bigger challenge than it looks.
Comments
iwould like to get some articles about st.thereas
thank you
by sony
Dear Julie,
Thank you for writing your post about St. Therese. Please, if you want to know still more about her, visit my Web site, which links to many good articles about her. I can also recommend Joann Wolski Conn’s “A Feminist View of Therese” in the book “Experiencing St. Therese Today.” with good wishes, Maureen