As I passed by a fenced-in wooded area on a run the other morning, I caught a sweet scent so powerful that it brought me to a complete standstill.
Honeysuckle.
That scent brought me immediately back to elementary school. When I was in fourth and fifth grades, our playground was a large, yellow-orange gravel plot of land much to the ire of school district moms who rued their boys’ gravel-stained school clothes.
During recess, the playground was divided up in naturally occurring factions. There were the girls who skipped rope, hopscotched, swooped up jacks, or just grouped together talking about things girls talked about — a complete mystery to us boys. Then there were the boys who played self-organized games of baseball, basketball, or football; those who ran around playing full-contact games of tag; and those who would walk around, exploring. I was part of this last group. As explorers, we would traverse the great expanse of dirt looking for interesting rocks, bugs, loose change, or clues to a mystery our imaginations were solving.
On one side of the playground was a long chain link fence that separated the play area from a wooded area that had a small stream winding through it. In the far corner, farthest from the reach of the peering eyes of teachers, was a large, partially buried drain pipe. Where the exposed top of the drain pipe ran through the fence, there was a gap just large enough for an explorer to pass through.
Much like Dorothy walking through the threshold of black and white into living color, we left the dry, barren yellow-orange of prudence into the plush, green of adventure.
That is where I had first encountered that memorable sweetness.
Vines of honeysuckle were draped everywhere, strung low among the small brush and high within the branches of tall trees. It wasn’t the sight that was so amazing to me; it was the smell. I had never experienced such a wonderful fragrance. In the wooded areas near my house, any heady odor was more than often eclipsed by the pungency of the nearby swamp.
“Have you ever tasted it,” asked a fellow explorer. You mean you can eat them? He shook his head and then plucked a blossom, pinched the bottom tip of the bloom, and pulled out the stamen of the flower revealing a glistening drop of nectar which he placed on his tongue.
“Taste and see for yourself,” my friend said. It was marvelous. The only downside was you’d only get a small amount with each bloom.
We stood there harvesting the ambrosial delight until we heard the whistle that herded the students in lines to go back to class.
The smell of the honeysuckle along my morning run that day made me long to taste its nectar. Unfortunately, the vines were beyond where I could get to them. In fact, I couldn’t even see them through thick brush, their scent was the only evidence I had of their presence.
As I stood there, wiping my brow, heavily breathing in the flowers’ redolence, I began to think about that time I first encountered honeysuckle, and then another thought came to me: the Eucharist. I thought about how during the quarantine and stay-at-home orders, many Catholics have been unable to partake of the Eucharist beyond a Spiritual Communion. Even as our parishes open up, many are still unable to get to Mass. The full sweetness of the Eucharist is beyond reach.
However, we are blessed by the spiritual scent of our communion with Christ. While we may not be able to taste and see, we can remember that Jesus Christ is still as present in the Holy Eucharist we see on our televisions, we can remember our joyful anticipation as we presented ourselves to receive the Most Blessed Sacrament, we can remember our deepest prayers of thanksgiving we offered as we knelt before our Lord after receiving communion.
And as we remember, let us consider the words of Saint Francis de Sales: “When the bee has gathered the dew of heaven and the earth’s sweetest nectar from the flowers, it turns it into honey, then hastens to its hive. In the same way, the priest, having taken from the altar the Son of God (who is as the dew from heaven, and true son of Mary, flower of our humanity), gives him to you as delicious food.”
Deacon Dean P. Johnson is assigned to Holy Family Parish, Sewell.
at the bottom and then tap “Add to Home Screen”
