The aroma of the two magnolia flowers on the altar fills the sanctuary with the sweet smell of lemon, thyme, and jasmine. It’s a unique smell distinctive to the large white graceful-looking bloom. If you can quiet your mind and focus your senses to smell the air inside our church, you can experience the faint aroma. Enter a bit deeper into the silence and engage your senses. You can discern the faint smell of old wood and incense rising up from the tile soaked from years of worship.

We are all drawn to this holy place for worship. Not the worship of flowers, architecture, or trimmed gardens. This is a place for adoration and worship of God who created all things. On this Holy Saturday, I sat before Christ drawn to his exposed eucharist and looking upon him hanging from a tree. 

Christ, the Tree of Life, offers the food of LIFE. Hung in shame and open for all to see. The smells bring me back to the aromas dancing in the sanctuary. On the way to church, I stopped by the magnolia tree in my neighbor’s yard to trim two blooms that were not there yesterday afternoon when I went on my walk. I’ve enjoyed the blooms on the tree for years and always wanted to put them on the altar. They still had raindrops from the night rain on their petals.

Fragrant flowers all smell wonderful to me because I adore them and these magnolias are beautiful because I placed them there. The experience of my nose reminds me of my physical existence in this spiritual moment where emotions sometimes try to escape my being to not experience the moment. My nose reminds me of who Christ is. He is a physical God. He became a man to touch, feel, embrace and love. 

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Genesis 2:7. My nostrils are the entryway from when God first breathed life into me. The ability to smell and eat was given by God to live and in doing so I worship Him that created me. Worship of Him only is my vocation. I can do my daily tasks and the basic function of smelling and eating can be a form of worship when that act is done through Him. In my act of smell, I worship.

Worship in its purest form is simple. To love is to worship. When all that stems from me are acts of love then my whole existence becomes the creation for worship. The love of God is my one and only objective. The entry into love is to go into God and that process is worship. Worship is not the object but the journey which is our life’s vocation. The journey into that object by worship lead us to God. The teachings of love by Jesus is our guide. His teachings of love give us a road map into God.  

The bread for my journey is Christ to move toward him is to worship him and to love him. To love no other but him is to have him already. 

When I extend my hand to take him, I am worshiping Him. When I sit with him to love him I am worshiping Him. When I reach out to love another I am reaching out to him in worship. When the life within me is purified through loving him first, all extensions into the world become acts of worship from my core and the seeds that spread from me have been purified by love. My love through him can reach the darkest places on earth and make it beautiful because he is in me and I in him. 

The most memorable part of my stay at the mental hospital was the smell of the people there. These are people abandoned by their families and have been living in the streets before they were brought in. They haven’t showered in days if not weeks. When you walk past a homeless person on the street you know what I meanl. In my mind and heart space at the time, I existed in my purest form with God at my center. I extended into the world with his love residing in me and everyone around me smelled beautiful. The smell you experience is the stench of body odor from poor hygiene was the smell of a person whom God created and loved. I experienced them through the love of God and they smelled sweet and unique. Odour of sanctity is commonly understood in the Catholic Church to mean a specific scent that emanates from the bodies of saints. St. Terese de Lisieux was said to have produced a strong scent of roses at her death which was detectable for days afterwards. 

That experience was very profound and has stayed with me. It’s mystery I’m still processing. The experience of the lowliest of the low smelled just as beautiful as the magnolia I experience on the altar. The God who created all things called them beautiful.

Image: Sir James Jebusa Shannon, Magnolia, 1899, Oil on Canvas.