Thank You Little Flower

Feast day of St Therese of Lisieux

There’s a rose in the garden with the title Blessings, sitting currently atop Ralphy’s grave. This morning it came into bloom, just the one beautifully fragrant perfect peach pink.

Today is the Feast day of Saint Therese of Lisieux, the little flower, for when she is interceding for you she sends roses to let you know. My bunch of roses came on Valentine’s Day some years back, when my house flashed up before my eyes on Daft.ie.

Prior to that, I’d found a crumpled hand written Novena to St Therese on the seat of an empty church. The note instructed that this was a Novena that would help me find a home.

I’ve written about this before in the Sunday Times and on the Cottage Academy website and I’ll post a link to it when the website is back up. In any case it’s been a big week at the cottage, spiritually, because we had the Feast of the Archangels, Saint Michael, St Gabriel and St Raphael (Michaelmas) on Friday. This cottage is named for Saint Gabriel, the angel of truth and (giggle) Patron Saint of journalists.

We had a guest over summer, who’s put her experience living here into a few paragraphs for you to read. I think the house misses her.

Andee worked at an eco retreat centre place up the road where I used stay when the cottage was under renovation. Miraculously she used always find me a dorm room all of my own and turned a blind eye to my sneaking Ralphy in too. I was incredibly grateful to have a bed and hot water. We became friends. A few days after she moved in, Andee took her harp into the parlour and tuned it up. The sun was shining, the windows were open and the birds were singing outside. I was at the top of the stairs when I stopped to listen and an unusual thing happened. It was as if the whole house was welcoming this beautiful tune, breathing it in.

Andee writes:

Last March I was forced to move from my home and place of work with only two months notice. I had been there eight years. After six weeks house-sitting in Doolin, I came to live with my friend Louise whom I had known for six years. I had five glorious months which took me from Spring until the end of Summer, but it was soon time to move on. I had known for quite a while that I needed to return to the UK and rebuild my life there (I left in 2014 after my marriage broke down). I had a dream of buying and living aboard a narrowboat on the Leeds-Liverpool canal. But how? The housing situation in the UK was as bad as it was in Ireland, and having a cat seemed to complicate matters even more.

Louise told me how she had prayed to Saint Therese when she was searching for her home, and Saint Therese found for her a beautiful cottage in North Clare, and it all flowed so easily. Louise gave me a little prayer card with Saint Therese’s image on it. I said the prayer and kept her image close to me, looking at it and meditating on it every day. I looked also at the portrait of Saint Therese in Louise’s sitting room and spoke to Therese. I thanked her for helping me, because I knew she was doing her very best. Soon afterwards, I got an offer from a friend of mine in Yorkshire to come and stay with her and her husband until I got settled elsewhere or found a boat. They welcomed my little cat Molly as well. They happen to live within walking distance of the canal. This was so unexpected and it had come so easily! It is said that when Saint Therese answers your prayer, you will be given a rose; and I within a couple days, I received a most unusual variety of rose, a single stem with two petite roses.

My background is Jewish, but I am spiritually eclectic and embrace any belief based in love. I thought it a very good sign indeed when I booked my travel back to the UK and the only available date was in two weeks’ time, which was the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. I start my new chapter with love and gratitude and continued prayers to Saint Therese and to God.

Who is Saint Therese?

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