Scent of May

Every May, long before the first candle is lit for the evening novena, the air in our barrios changes --not only because the heat thickens, but because the fragrance of faith itself, soft and lingering, is carried by petals and prayers to the feet of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Flores de Mayo is not just a charming tradition on our Catholic calendar; it is a month-long catechism in beauty and devotion, a quiet schooling in tenderness and community.

As a child, I learned the language of this belief not in theological treatises, but in the daily discipline of looking for flowers each May afternoon, searching our yard and neighboring lots for blossoms worthy of the Blessed Virgin Mary. With no flower stalls, decades ago, outside the Saint Joseph’s Parish Church, we had to look, to climb, sometimes to ask a kindly neighbor whose garden overflowed with blooms, and my favorite was always the kalachuchi, its white petals edged with yellow or blush like small halos fallen from heaven to rest on our humble soil. The petals, weaved by coconut midrib, I would cradle them carefully, as if each were a secret only Mama Mary and I shared.

To my young heart, the kalachuchi was the perfect metaphor for our offering --innocent, fragile, and pure, its scent not loud like showy perfumes but a heavenly whisper that lingered on our fingers long after the petals touched the altar. I remember walking to the church with other children, our small hands moist with its faint, milky fragrance and our feet dusted with afternoon soil, carrying not only flowers but our small sacrifices --the time spent searching, the scraped knees from climbing, the patient waiting for the first bell --so that each bloom laid before the Blessed Virgin Mary felt like a piece of our day, our effort, our love transfigured into something beautiful.

Today, many churches are ringed with stalls selling ready-made bouquets, petals in plastic bags, and even artificial flowers, so one can step down from a car, pick a bundle, and be inside the church in minutes. There is a certain practicality in this, perhaps even a kindness to those who no longer have gardens or whose days are consumed by work and traffic, yet I cannot help but feel that something tender has been lost when flowers are simply bought, not sought. The kalachuchi I once climbed for has been replaced by roses on demand, their stems trimmed and tied by someone else’s hands, and though the offering is still valid, the journey toward it has grown shorter, less personal, less rooted in the slow labor of love.

Flores de Mayo endures, and with it, the possibility of renewal, for each time I watch children walk up the aisle --some with supermarket bouquets, some clutching single flowers from a surviving backyard-- my heart returns to those evenings when the scent of kalachuchi wrapped itself around our little chapel like a quiet hymn. The Blessed Virgin Mary, I believe, sees beyond the source of the flowers and looks instead at the hearts that bring them, yet perhaps this May we can invite our children and grandchildren to rediscover the older way: to look for beauty in the nearest tree, to feel the bark beneath their fingers, to smell the flower before they offer it. In that small journey from garden to altar, from effort to offering, they may discover what Flores de Mayo has always whispered to the Filipino soul --that true devotion is never ready-made, and that the most fragrant prayers are those carried, like the kalachuchi, in hands that have learned to seek, to cherish, and to give.