The Leaf

A talk given at the April, 2014 meeting of Ascension Conference of Catholic Women

Madame President, Honored Guests, Council Sisters,

That's a pretty leaf, isn't it? I took that picture a week ago. I never really expected to find a great Fall colored leaf in Florida, but I walked past that leaf on my way into a doctor's office, and when I came back out, I stopped to take a picture. I even picked it up.

The day I saw that leaf was April 10, and that would have been my husband's 90th birthday; so, it was a bittersweet day. Earlier that day, I had posted something on Facebook about it being his birthday, and one of my sisters responded as she always does whenever it’s the birthday of someone who is deceased. She kindly, sweetly, caringly posts “happy heavenly birthday.”

And while I understand exactly what she means, I also think she's exactly wrong. Because the day that Nick was born wasn't his heavenly birthday; it was his earthly birthday. Why, once we return to our true home of heaven, would we continue to celebrate the date we were born to humanity?

And when I saw that leaf, perfectly divided in half, I was inspired to write about that.

You might already know that generally, the Church celebrates the feast day of Saints on the date of their death rather than the date of their birth. If we did have a heavenly birthday, wouldn’t it be the day of our death, the day we return to eternal life, rather than the date of our earthly birth?

Because the life of our body, our earthly human life, and the eternal life of our soul are different. Souls are eternal: our souls are meant to live in eternity in heaven with God.

And so, this leaf: half green, half red, signifying the two different spheres of our own existence.

Picture the green as standing for our life here on earth; the red as standing for our eternal soul. If you look closely at the leaf, you’ll see that the green isn’t entirely green; it has red specks throughout it. Just like our souls are with us throughout our earthly life, the green side of the leaf has the red hidden within it, as veins running through. Our bodies are never totally separated from our soul, until our body dies. Even then, it is a temporary separation, as we are taught (and as we state in the creed), we believe in the resurrection of the body.

And so, the red of the leaf, the side which we have selected as depicting heaven, has spots of green, For at the end of the world, our bodies and souls will be united and live together in heaven with the Father.

This little leaf shows us the mystery of eternal life. The green side, our earthly side, has a little bit of red for our true home of heaven. The red side, the heavenly side, has a little bit of green to depict the ultimate resurrection of the body and the eternity in which body and soul will be joined.

And the stem -ah, the stem is red because heaven is our true home, our true center of eternal happiness, living in the Beatific Vision with the Trinity, the Angels and the Saints.