The Old Man Who Gives You Flowers

And, for Mother’s Day, another touching excerpt from E. Boyd Barrett’s autobiographical A Shepherd Without Sheep:

In spite of his rebellion, his confusion of mind, his human faults, he [the renegade priest] clings to his faith and his hope in Mary. He trusts that she will somehow save him. And when moments of sorrow strike, and he sheds bitter tears over his fate, it is at the feet of his little Mother that he sheds those tears.

For seventy years I have known and loved Mary, though there was a long dark period, a score of years, when my love was weak and no spark at all in it. Many a million times I’ve asked Mary to help me in my last hour, and it is no small comfort to me to know, for certain, that she will do just that.

Back where memory begins, I see myself lighting an old-fashioned oil lamp before her statue in my little bedroom. It was a sweet statue of her and I knelt there as often as the thrush sings. And sometimes I had flowers for her, that my mother gave me from her garden; heliotrope, or geraniums, or red passionflower, or maybe a bright yellow rose.

Now, at the end of the day, I have another little statue in my room, the Immaculate of Lourdes. There are roses before it, almost all the year round, the loveliest roses, fresh and fair, for they never fail me on this hill. Now, with a kind of trusting pride, I can say to my little Mother: “Listen, Lady! I’m the old man who gives you flowers!”