A Spiritual Check-Up
The Little Flower, Therese of Lisieux,
Described young lives given over to God.
Like Tarcicius, Goretti, Jacinta, and Acutis
Who bloomed early,
For a short time gave off a fragrance,
Then yielded to the Son’s compelling Presence
And died, “Little Flowers of God.”
But what of us seasoned souls?
Harkening to His call, some early, some late,
Faithfully following day in and day out,
Bearing the heat, the storms, the drought,
The ebb and flow of Presence and absence,
Sometimes sinning in the dark of night.
“Lord have mercy on me a sinner.
Let me never be lukewarm,” I cry,
As I reach into a silent sky,
With branches sometimes bare, sometimes full,
Aging seventy, eighty, even ninety years,
Waiting, growing, suffering, not knowing,
“Do I please Him? Have I done His Will?
What do all these years mean to Him?”
I name us “Trees of God.”
Unlike the flowers, we are rooted deep
In earth’s joys and pains
And responsibilities to keep,
But always reaching heavenward
And longing for the day,
When harvested by the Lord,
Our rings will tell the story
Of long lives led in His Presence.
Like, Drexel, Sheen, Pennington and Peyton,
Alive through Grace,
But scarred by this world’s darkness
As Jesus was scarred
On a Tree
On Calvary.
Bernice Dumitru 2018