‘IN THE SPRING BECOMES THE ROSE’

During the funeral ceremonies for former US President Ronald Reagan in mid-June, there were some very moving scenes. In all the pomp and ceremony that the Americans perform so well, there was one moment, seemingly fixed in time, when we saw the tiny frail figure of Nancy Reagan embracing her husband’s coffin. With the world watching on television, it was a beautiful scene, full of affection and emotion. Here were two people, committed and inseparable friends for 52 years, parting ways for the time being.

A few days later I sensed something of this same love when standing at the graveside at Springvale cemetery alongside Geoff Honan, as he bade his temporary farewells to wife and best friend Marie. They would have been married 50 years this coming November—on exactly the same day as their good friends, Sid and Marie Lambrick, with whom they had been celebrating the exact wedding anniversary for many years.

On a different note I experienced a similar bond of love at Tony Carroll’s 70th birthday party in early June. When Tony and Anne’s son, Greg, died tragically in 1983 during his final year at school, my pastoral responsibilities drew me into the folds of this wonderful family of nine children. Their love and care for one another, made so much stronger in the face of tragedy, has always been an inspiration to me. When Tony in his birthday speech made special mention of ‘Gregory Anthony’, the sadness of his story reminded me that love and pain are inseparable companions.

The beauty of the rose symbolises this for us so well.

In the Irish Sacred Heart Messenger for July this year, Maureen MacMahon writes that ‘while love is the most beautiful and sought-after thing in life, it has its hard edges … and painful thorns. To know the love of another is a life-giving experience. To give love is self-enriching. True love makes us free, but it also binds. It commits us to another, even when the petals begin to fade. It is an echo of God’s love for us, which is the only perfect love, totally selfless and self-giving’.

‘When the petals begin to fade…’ This expression reminded me of another wonderful passage on love, this time from Louis de Bernières’ novel, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin:

‘Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because that is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not promulgation of promises of eternal passion … That is just being ‘in love’, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.’

Brian Doyle’s recent book Leaping has a very humorous and rich chapter on his teaching and preparation of a group of eight-year-olds for first Holy Communion. Doyle talks to them about the ‘infinite shapes of love, among them affection and respect’. He echoes the words of Maureen MacMahon and Louis de Bernières in his resolve to persuade them that ‘romance is only a corner of the cloak’.
What a wonderful image! If romance is only one corner, and pain and commitment take up another corner, then the joy of intimate friendship must take up the remainder of the cloak and draw us into the folds of God’s love. ‘To love another person is to see the face of God’ we hear in that most exquisite of musicals, Les Misérables.
While Nancy and Ronald Reagan were saying their temporary farewells recently, the whole world was drawn into the beginning of a new fairytale marriage a few weeks beforehand on the European stage. Tasmanian Mary Donaldson spoke of her love for Prince Frederik of Denmark and referred to the beautiful Sonnet XLIII of Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Not surprisingly, there are echoes of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians here, where he prays that we ‘will, with all the saints, have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth, until knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, we are filled with the utter fullness of God’ (Ephesians 3:18-19). After all, when we reflect on the depths of our love for someone, we are drawn also to ponder God’s extravagant love for us: ‘While he was a still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly’ (Luke 15:20). Brian Doyle rightly tells his eight-year-olds that ‘God has more mercy than we have sins to commit’.

The rose is a very rich symbol of love because it represents also the pattern of death and resurrection threading its way through all our lives.

Let us end here with Bette Midler’s song, The Rose, which also captures this so well for us:

When the night has been too lonely,
And the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only,
For the lucky and the strong.
Just remember in the winter,
Far beneath the bitter snow,
Lies the seed that, with the sun’s love,
In the spring becomes the rose.