Nature Can Teach Us Much about Love

French marigold seeds on a paper towel. 

Recently I was filling small handmade origami paper envelopes with seeds from flowers I had grown in our convent gardens. The two types of flowers I had collected dead blooms from and dried out for several weeks in paper bags were gazanias and French marigolds.

As I was picking up small clumps of seeds from a paper towel, the song, “Unless a Grain of Wheat” came to my mind. The song is based on John 12:24 in the New Testament, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls onto the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

For a Catholic Christian, the paschal mystery of Christ - his suffering, death, and rising to new life in the Resurrection - is at the heart of our faith.

Crucifix and tabernacle behind main altar in Motherhouse chapel in St. Augustine, FL.

The flower seeds I held in my fingers were a tangible expression of seeing how, as Franciscan theologian Sister Ilia Delio says, “Material reality bears within it a drive towards the spiritual.” Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin once said, “The physical structure of the universe is love.”

For us to bear fruit or bloom, we must be willing to give ourselves away to others, be open to dying to self in our daily lives for the sake of the good of others. Our bodies, like any flower or grain of wheat, will eventually die - we flower or fruit and fade - and how we have lived our lives will determine what kind of “new life” eventually emerges. Dying to self out of love for God and others is countercultural in our individualistic, materialistic culture.

French marigold plant struggles to stay live in the August heat of Florida. 

As Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine, Florida we are encouraged by our On-Going Formation Team to support each other as we live into an ever-deepening commitment to the journey of growth and integrity, wholeness and self-gift, aware that God is with us as we undergo whatever diminishments may befall us.

In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola reminds us that each one of us is created to participate in and make a unique contribution to the great evolutionary project initiated by and continuously supported by God, namely, the bringing all creation into one magnificent conscious loving union.

Packets of French marigold seeds to be given away at Sept. 1st Rosary for the Earth in Motherhouse gardens along with several other types of flower seeds.