Lately, ever since I got my own roses from St. Teresa, I’ve been curious about what a sign given to us by a saint really means. Does it mean that God will grant our wish, or perhaps that our prayers have only gained submission and still need to be considered? The answer to this question can be quite complex, and we must always remember that God’s ways are above our own, and that our job is not to understand Him first, but to accept His decision with the confidence that He always wants what we want. better for us.
From an early age, Saint Teresa was drawn to many different vocations. She wanted to be a doctor, a priestess, a saint, an apostle, a martyr, and only after long hours of prayer did she discover that the foundation of all these vocations is love. Essentially, she realized that she wanted to profess love, spread love, and work through love, not for herself, but for all of humanity and for the glory of God. She realized that love was her calling. She noted that God loves us tremendously, yet only a few of us show him love, yet our love is the only thing He wants from us. So, to supply what we lack and to gladden the heart of God, she offered herself as the martyr who made all possible sacrifices to show love to God where we did not. She never turned down any hard work, never turned down any task, and never turned down any opportunity to show sympathy, understanding, and kindness; she was good where we were bad, kind where we were impatient and critical. She did everything to show God that men were capable of loving him and that her teachings did not fall on deaf ears and cold hearts. For her everything was and still is love, everything is born of love, and even now, after her death, she is willing to make tremendous sacrifices for love and in the name of love. That is why she received the title: Doctor Amoris.
As she neared death and slowly succumbed to her illness, Teresa said: “After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses. I will spend my heaven doing good on earth… My mission is to make God love… And her mission is to make God loved here on earth, but how can she do that, how can she bring us closer to God, make us open our hardened hearts to him by herself?
As a saint, she has a wonderful and God-given power: she can intercede for us by praying to God to grant our wishes. And in fact it is with this rain of roses that she decided to point out that she is praying to God, and that God is responding favorably to our prayer. However, we must remember that Saint Therese can only intercede, but she herself cannot grant our wishes. Everything is God’s decision, and everything depends on his divine approval. To be granted, our wishes have to fit into her divine plans. Thus, St. Therese “boldly declared that she would take her roses before God in heaven for her blessing before pouring them out on earth. Everything is subject to her discretion.” (Ficocelli, E. “A Shower of Heavenly Roses”, p 26) And when our desires fit into her Divine plans, when we win her good will, He allows Saint Teresa to signal her loving approval to us with a pink. Therefore, the roses that we receive as answers to our prayers come directly from God, and Saint Teresa is our beautiful divine messenger. It is a “physical, tangible thing to guide a person as to what God’s will is in a situation” (Ficocelli, E. “A Shower of Heavenly Roses,” p 143), and as such, receiving such a rose is an overwhelming emotional experience. After all, a divine messenger left it to us as a sign of hope and a sign of God’s love for us, of his divine intention to say yes to our request, and also as a sign of Saint Therese’s devotion to us and her fiance. When we receive the rose, we feel encouraged, although we would not need signs to have confidence and faith; however, being human, seeing something that we can process with our intelligence encourages us, makes us feel loved and cared for. And once we see such a loving sign, truly a sign of hope, of encouragement and of mercy sent by God, we approach Him, we open our hearts, we feel an overwhelming love for Him, that He, in His greatness, look. he understands our pain, knows us by name and has mercy on us. This is what the rose means; Saint Therese is praying with all her strength and heart for us, and that God is granting our wish because He can never deny anything of her favorite.
The rose makes us gravitate towards God. Suddenly we feel his presence, and we feel that we are truly his creations, the ones he loves the most, and for which he also wants to be loved, deeply and trustingly and with total abandon. In the face of so much love for us, we want to raise our hearts to Him, to snuggle in His cloak, to be one with Him. A single rose evokes the deepest and most moving feelings for our Father. As the angel Elemiah instructs us to say: “When I understand, when I know, when your secret face is revealed to me, my love, great and immense, will fly to you like an arrow” (Haziel, “Le Gran Libro de Invocations y Exhortaciónes, p 45) What a beautiful expression: the rose is the secret face of God revealed.
With the rose, Saint Teresa is signaling to us when she is “doing something good on earth”. She is doing good on earth because she makes us happy by letting us know that our desire is taken seriously and that the solution we have asked for is in process and will soon be presented in our lives. She is also doing good because as we feel God’s love so strongly, we also feel a surge of love within us for Him and a humble admission of guilt for all those moments when we thought He abandoned us. Now, with this rose, we feel important again, and we feel inspired to show our love and great attachment to our Father who never abandons us.
This rose is a visible and undeniable sign that we so often yearn for in times of trouble and concern. It is a sign of hope that instantly restores our inner harmony and balance. We feel loved and we love in return. This is what Santa Teresa wanted. For her, love is the foundation of everything, the feeling without which life is not possible. The rose is like a rose we receive from a lover: it is given to us to let us know that we are valued and that our happiness matters, and we love our lover for such a wonderful gesture. The channels are open and love flows.
The Rose is also a sign of Saint Teresa’s love for us. She never stopped praying a lot to God for us and going to the thorn bushes to pluck our rose. She thing of suffering for love; love for us, and for God, to make God loved here on earth. The intercession of Santa Teresita has its roots in love. She spends her time in Heaven making sacrifices for God and for us, so that the love between God and us may flow freely and abundantly, and we may be sure of each other’s devotion.