Smelling roses

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Vanez

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Friendly greetings!

This may probably have been discussed before? Because I believe i am not the only one, there must be someone out there who has had the same experience as I do.

Excuse me for my bad english, I am a Dutch-Indonesian woman speaking these two languages daily but recite the rosary in english and pray other personal prayers in Indonesian 😃

The year 2011 was my depressed year until I found my rosary and started to recite it. Before this i’ve always liked rosary, i have a few rosaries but had almost never recited it. So, i started browsing on the net and downloaded iphone apps to instruct me how to recite it because i had completely forgotten how. I knew what my Protestant brothers and sisters have to say about reciting the rosary, but it was because of this i started to pray more often and it brought me closer to Jesus and i eventually saw the light! My depression and paranoia feelings slowly disappeared, i got the feeling of joy and passion of life in return!

But there is a weird happening…every time i recited the rosary, i kept smelling a flower fragrance which i believe was a rose. But at that time i was not really convinced that i really smelt roses. I checked my soap and thought,“oh…probably this is what caused it”

This year, my desire to recite my rosary came back. This time i wanted to make sure whether what i smelted back then was true. At night, (a few days ago) i knew i was wearing a dirty sweater…the smell of my sweater was…oh my…it smelt like sweat! So you can guess it stinks and i was convinced that nobody wanted to hug me or even sit beside me. I started to recite my rosary, meditating the mystery for that day. After i recited it my hands, my rosary, smelt like roses and my dirty sweater smelt like roses, too! And then i began to recite rosary every day. Two days ago i decided to recite my other rosary. It’s a white rosary which had no fragrance. After reciting it, again i smelt roses, til last night when i last recited it i smelt roses again. The smell just won’t disappear, no matter which rosary i recite with!
A brief explanation of my background and why i didn’t recite rosary every day:

I grew up in a Protestant family but i’ve always studied at Catholic school and as a kid i thought i was a Catholic. At school i learned how to recite a rosary, i learned Catholicism, i made sign of Cross. I brought a rosary to everywhere i went. Mom was okay with it (until this day, she is okay with me having a lot of rosaries and she let me wear a gold necklace with Jesus on a cross, which Protestants don’t). I studied at Catholic school until high school, but i was at elementary school class 6 that i realized that i really wasn’t a Catholic 😦

It was in year 2011 i started feeling that there’s something missing in my life. I did a flashback of what i thought what I was and realized what i really was, and it was a few years ago that i again…realized that i was actually Pentecostalist. My mom had me water baptized when i was around 14 yo without explaining me that it would make me a Pentecostalist. I was very naive and i always think: “oh…this is for Jesus, so i will obey!” I know that Pentecostalism is just one of Protestant denominations but I had wished my mom had explained me stuff. So, in 2011, thanks to my depression, i started to feel there’s something wrong, which is…hey…but praying to Jesus without honoring Mary is like a house without windows and door! Not complete! So i started browsing around, stumbled upon this forum, i read information about Catholicism. I was and i am like someone who is hungry about the truth, by searching for information and reading the Bible. It is because of rosary i pray more often and i am able to forgive other people’s mistakes.

may God bless you!
 
What a wonderful story and testimony smelling roses. I’ve had a similar experience once while praying in my car the rosary in my mind!! It’s so reassuring that we are in the community of saints.

May God bless you abundantly and Thanks for sharing. Also, welcome to the forums.
Mary.
 
Welcome to the forums and to the Church. You have a huge Communion of Saints on earth and in Heaven praying for you.

What a blessing to smell roses. It is a sign from God. Keep praying the Rosary and you will receive many graces and blessings.

Thank you for sharing your story. May God bless you abundantly.
 
Some smells including those of roses have often been associated with certain saints, like St. Therese. I think there is even an expression called “the odor of sanctity.” I think one theory was that this came from the sanctity and purity of our Blessed Mother’s death before she was assumed into heaven, body and soul.

I would love to smell roses when I pray, but alas, I’m more intuitive than sensual.

For you, OP, and your entry into the Church. God bless!

http://www.scrapsplanet.com/content/rose/rose-24.gif
 
Praying for you, I’m not educated enough in the catholic faith to share any advise,
Just wish you the best in your journey ,and to say my parents are Dutch,and they had Dutch Indonesian friends, they , to me were the worlds best cooks, I would be willing to walk one hundred miles for one of there meals, they were wonderful people,
Praying for your journey ,
 
thank you all! Now I’m reading/looking for information about how to be baptized in Catholic church. I’ve been tested to define whether i think like a Catholic or Protestant, I thought I would get Protestant as the result but no, I think like a Catholic and the things that I have believed since my childhood can be found only in Catholicism, e.g. I was amazed that we have a different teachings, like: salvation is by faith only, by faith only?? Not faith and good deeds? I didn’t know this 😊

Whether I will smell roses or not the next time I recite my rosary is okay, the most important thing is:
  1. I will remember that it helps me go out of my depression
  2. If it helps me bring closer to Jesus, let it be and let me recite it devoutly! 😃
St. Theresse? Was she…mother Teressa? I will look up

(update)

I’m reading about st Therese. Interesting!
 
Vanez said:
thank you all! Now I’m reading/looking for information about how to be baptized in Catholic church. I’ve been tested to define whether i think like a Catholic or Protestant, I thought I would get Protestant as the result but no, I think like a Catholic and the things that I have believed since my childhood can be found only in Catholicism, e.g. I was amazed that we have a different teachings, like: salvation is by faith only, by faith only?? Not faith and good deeds? I didn’t know this 😊

Whether I will smell roses or not the next time I recite my rosary is okay, the most important thing is:
  1. I will remember that it helps me go out of my depression
  2. If it helps me bring closer to Jesus, let it be and let me recite it devoutly! 😃
St. Theresse? Was she…mother Teressa? I will look up

(update)

I’m reading about st Therese. Interesting!
Click to expand...
It’s Saint Therese of Lisieux. There are lots of things written about her, and she also had a diary. I would very much recommend your investigating her.

Let me add this. This year is the anniversary of the beginning of World War I. Ste Therese died not long before that war, and devotion to her was huge among soldiers in the trenches.
 
Vanez,
Welcome to the forums 🙂 I hope you will soon be able to find a good priest and be received or baptized into the Catholic Church!!!

I remember when I first returned to the Church, I was going whenever I could to a Mass with incense (some Sundays I couldn’t go and went to a closer church with no incense). One time, the lovely odor of the incense stayed with me for 2 weeks 🙂 So it is not unusual for God or a saint to send us a message in this way.

I wanted to say, becoming holy is like a baby learning to walk. God helps us by sending us consolations of one sort or another, and this is the same as parents’ holding the hands of the baby taking its first steps. Then the parents begin to let go of the baby’s hands for a step or two. This is like God also, in that sometimes the consolations or helps He sends us stop.

It is important to know this because it actually means we have *grown *in our faith, and God is letting us grow more in this way. He is also seeing if we pray because we get the consolations, or if we pray for His sake.

So please don’t worry if this stops… it’s actually a good sign! And I have also noticed that my consolations return from time to time (hopefully that is just a nice message from God and not a sign I have gone backwards :o).

Again, welcome!!!
 
Could there be any similarity between the O.P’s wonderful experience and that of finding a small soft white feather beside a grave and in a top storey apartment, during a time of mourning. Sounds daft I know, but it is strange and only happens when I am particularly sad.
God bless you.
 
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