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This
article first appeared in New Oxford
Review
Lots
of Little Flowers
By
Dwight Longenecker
My
friend Sandra went to a quiet day with
the Eucharistic ministers
of her church, and they got talking about
Thérèse of Lisieux. The minister’s family
is French and he said his grandmother was
present at the exhumation of Thérèse’s
body at Lisieux cemetery in 1910. The grandmother
always recounted with wonder that she smelled
an intense fragrance of flowers as the
coffin was opened. Many people present
experienced the same phenomenon.
I
confess. This interests me. I’m interested because I had an experience
of what’s called ‘the odour of sanctity’ as
well. One summer I hitch-hiked to Jerusalem
from England staying in monasteries along
the way. Half way through France I stopped
at the town of Nevers, where Saint Bernadette
(who saw the Virgin Mary at Lourdes) spent
her days as a nun. She died in 1879. Her
body is supposed to be uncorrupted, and
is still on display in the convent chapel.
I
have this kind of morbid religious curiosity.
I’m interested in
healings, exorcisms and near-death experiences.
I like any kind of miracle story, from
the Protestant missionary taken out of
a well by an angel to a Catholic kid who
sees the Virgin Mary. I’m fascinated by
the Shroud of Turin and the blood of St
Januarius. I like rumours of monsters,
saints, angels and aliens. I sometimes
worry about my curiosity about the paranormal.
I fear it is the same sort of instinct
which makes me slow down at the scene of
a car crash. But because I’m interested
in uncorrupted bodies and the smell of
flowers in coffins, I want to visit Nevers.
On that summer afternoon
on my way to Jerusalem, a truck-driver
dropped me off a few hundred yards from
the convent. I was assigned a room, went
up to wash, then made my way down to the
dining hall. At the table everybody was
jabbering away in French and this woman
sidles up and sits next to me.
She
flashes me a big American smile and says, ‘Ah hope you won’t mahnd
if ah sit here.’ She’s from Alabama. In
France! I thought people from Alabama didn’t
even have passports.
‘Please.
Be my guest.’
‘My
name is PeggyJane. The sisters asked me
to sit here with you
since I speak English.’
I
make friends with PeggyJane and she tells
me her story. She used to
be a Southern Baptist, but became a Catholic
because she had a vision of St Bernadette.
Now she comes every summer to Nevers to ‘spend
time with Bernadette and practice my French.’ (She
says ‘French’ with about five syllables.)
After supper PeggyJane takes me on a personal
guided tour of the convent. We see the
room where the saint died and PeggyJane
recounts in a whisper the death agonies
of the young saint. Then we go outside
to the tomb of Bernadette and I learn all
about the exhumation process. PeggyJane
knows all about this stuff because her
daddy is an undertaker in Mobile. I learn
how the exhumation was certified. The doctors,
lawyers and the town mayor were there.
Testimonies of witnesses were recorded.
Affadavits were signed. Sure enough, just
like Thérèse, on two separate exhumations
a fragrance greeted folks when the coffin
was opened. The difference was that Thérèse’s
body was decayed, but Bernadette’s body
remained unspoiled despite the damp climate
and the lack of embalming.
PeggyJane
and I went into the neo-Gothic convent
chapel and there
she was. Like something out of a Disney
film, Bernadette is lying asleep in a glass
coffin wearing her nun’s habit. Her face
and hands look perfect, but that’s because
they’ve encased them in a skin of pink
wax. PeggyJane tells me they inspect the
cadaver now and again. The skin is shrunken
and discoloured a little, but otherwise
Bernadette is still intact.
The
next morning after breakfast I shrugged
on my backpack and
was about to hit the open road when PeggyJane
trotted up and stopped me. ‘Before you
go I want you to spend time with Bernadette.’ So
I take my backpack off and go back into
the chapel. In the main church a group
of mentally handicapped Irish pilgrims
on their way to Lourdes are noisily celebrating
mass. I kneel down and ask for God’s blessing
on my journey that day. Then the mass ends
and as I’m sitting in the silence I smell
this wonderful, intense fragrance of flowers.
I look around. There aren’t any flowers
anywhere. In a minute I leave and PeggyJane—her
eyes shining with enthusiasm, asks how
it was with Bernadette. I tell her about
the fragrance. She beams, ‘You have been
granted a great grace. You have experienced
the odour of sanctity. Many people experience
this while praying with Bernadette.’ She
took my hand, and looked me in the eye. ‘Please
remember to pray for me in Jerusalem.’ I
did.
So
this is why I’m interested
to hear about the fragrance people experienced
when they opened the coffin of Thérèse.
I’m also interested because it matches
up with other stories. There are lots of
accounts down through the ages in both
Catholic and Orthodox circles, of the odour
of sanctity, corpses that exude perfume
instead of putrefaction. There’s an Orthodox
monk in a Syrian monastery for instance,
whose body has been oozing fragrant healing
oil now for a couple of decades. I’m interested
because not because I am particularly credulous
or because I think such miracles prove
anything at all. In fact, I’m interested
for almost the opposite reason. While I do believe
in miracles, and I’m prepared to accept
that such phenomenon are miraculous, I’m
interested in the apparent random-ness
of it all. If this is a sign of holiness,
why don’t all saints smell good when their
coffins are opened? Why should Bernadette’s
body be uncorrupt but not Thérèse’s? It
is all rather wonderful, but like most
wonderful things, there’s not much rhyme
or reason to it all. It doesn’t prove anything.
I’m
interested in the odour of sanctity and
bodies oozing perfume because
I like unusual things generally. The rebel
in me likes anything which upsets the status
quo. I like the effect these stories
have on tasteful, educated members of the
liberal intelligentsia. Surely the bizarre
is always fascinating and fun, and yet
if you mention such experiences in the
presence of educated liberal folks you
definitely commit a social error. There
is a chilling silence at the dinner party
and an embarrassed switch of subject by
the hostess. The arched eyebrows and pursed
lips seem to scream, ‘He’s not only brought
up religion, but the supernatural as well!’ Is
it wrong for me to enjoy this effect almost
more than the weird phenomenon itself?
This
response from tasteful folk indicates why
kooky religious events
are ultimately interesting. The paranormal
is fascinating because it introduces the
unknown and the unexpected to a society
that is desperate to keep the material
borders intact and the spiritual realm
at bay. Tasteful and educated people, above
all, want their physical, suburban world
to stay just where it is. They want religion
(like everything else) to be tidy, organised,
limited and under control. Uncorrupted
bodies, angels and supernatural fragrances
are wild cards. They are too zany and unpredictable
for those who want their religion to be
like their hair and their flowers—cut and
dried.
I’m also interested in
religious peoples’ response to my miracle
stories. Religious prejudices come out.
Protestants who believe in miracles don’t
like these kind of miracles. Why not? If
they dug up Hudson Taylor or Dwight L Moody’s
body and found it was fresh as a daisy
would they believe it? I don’t know. Pious
exhumations are not an everyday part of
evangelical tradition. Liberal Catholics
also have a funny response. For them the
miraculous is always an error in taste.
They turn up their nose at such peasant
religion. Self-righteously they assert
that they, ‘Do not have a faith which rests
on such crude exhibitions.’ They insist
on making desperate assertions like, ‘I’m
sure it was all a case of mass hysteria.’ Overlooking
the fact that mass hysteria is much more
common at evangelistic rallies or pop concerts
than it is at exhumations. Is it so difficult
to simply have a sense of fun and accept
that weird things happen? Is it so difficult
to admit that ‘there are more things in
heaven and earth Horatio than your philosophy
has dreamt of?’
I like the miraculous because
it smells authentic. Religion is supposed to
be miraculous for crying out loud. What
good is religion if it doesn’t upset our
assumptions and make us think again? Wherever
religion is fervent it allows for the miraculous.
Wherever religion is real it allows for
the miraculous. The miracles don’t prove
the validity or the truth of the religion,
but they do indicate that whatever religion
it is, some kind of transaction between
the material and the spiritual world is
going on. Miracles also add authenticity
because they attract ordinary folks. I
suspect any religion that is the refuge
of the educated classes. Tacky miracles
attract tacky folks and a religion that
excludes ordinary people is more like a
set of table manners than a religion.
Finally,
I like the kooky end of religion because
it reveals a God
of surprises. When a body is uncorrupted
or people smell flowers when they should
smell putrefaction it’s kind of like a
divine joke. I think God likes practical
jokes. He likes the effect of tricks. He
likes upsetting our smug preconceived mindset
about the nature of the physical world.
Maybe miracles are given not to prove anything,
but simply to remind us that the physical
world is not so solid and real and dependable
as we think. It’s all much more rubbery.
We should expect the unexpected a bit more.
The
miraculous reminds us that the other world
is far closer than
we think. When we smell flowers instead
of death our perception of reality is turned
topsy turvy and we are reminded that the
spiritual realm is more real, not less
real than this realm. We think of the spiritual
as insubstantial, ethereal and vague. C.S.Lewis
reminds us that in fact, ‘it is the present
life which is the diminution, the symbol,
the etiolated, the substitute. If flesh
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom that
is not because they are too solid, too
gross, too ‘illustrious with being’, but
because they are too flimsy, too transitory,
too phantasmal.’[i] The miraculous opens
up this truth not with argument or proof,
but with trickery, symbolism, stories and
surprises.
When the coffin of a young
girl is opened up and we smell roses maybe
the Divine Poet is reminding us that in
this life we are in death, but in this
death we are also in life. When a saint
lies in a glass coffin like sleeping beauty,
The Divine Storyteller may be reminding
us that we all have a final hope in the
destiny of Love. Bernadette in her coffin
reflects the truth that for all of us death
is just a falling asleep while we await
the kiss of the beloved. The miraculous
speaks the magical language of stories,
poems and plays. Uncorrupted bodies and
the odour of sanctity may not be there
to prove anything at all. Instead, like
the gift of roses to a lover, such things
may simply be tokens of love. They may
be tender reminders that these funny, smelly
bodies are also destined for glory, and
that we may one day wake up to an eternal
surprise. The roses just might hold a deeper
significance. We may discover like Dante,
that paradise itself is a Rose of eternal
mystery, interlayered with an endless pattern
of meaning, redolent with fragrance and
radiant with an overwhelming beauty.
Dwight Longenecker is
the editor of The
Path to Rome and the author of Listen
My Son-St Benedict for Fathers. His
study of Benedict and Thérèse of Lisieux
is published in Spring 2002 by Our Sunday
Visitor. He lives in England where he
works as a freelance writer and broadcaster.
[i] C.S.Lewis, The Weight of Glory, in Screwtape Proposes a
Toast, London, Fount, 1986, p.90
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