"Amor con amor se paga"

by Fr. Jonathan Atchley

If you already know it, love is the only payment one can return for love. And if you do not yet know it, you will learn from this story of two happily blessed children.

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Once upon a time, a brother and sister were playing in a field of rolling hills and dancing flowers. It was a lovely place to spend the late summer. School was out, their chores were done, and all they cared for was to soak in the beauty of the blossoms and the warmth of the sun.

While they played, a single butterfly crested the hill and fluttered down a grassy slope nearby. To them, it seemed the king or queen of all butterflies! Besides being as large as their hands were wide, it rode the air on strikingly bright, reddish-orange wings bordered in black and dotted with white, looking precisely as though it wore a tuxedo. This must be a Monarch butterfly—the very one they had learned about in school, which makes a strong, fearless two-thousand-mile journey every year from the north, through California, and down into Mexico.

Wanting to see this magnificent creature close at hand, the children skipped, ran, and finally caught up with it.

“How wonderful!” “What fantastic luck!”

They shouted aloud for the flowers and hills to rejoice with them when they gently scooped the Monarch into a glass jar. “How beautiful its wings, how lovely its face, how splendid its colors!” they exclaimed to one another.

However, the poor butterfly did not look so happy. Its wings drooped, and its head bowed.

The children tried to feed it, but it would not eat. They tied a string carefully around it, but it would not fly. Finally, they understood: their butterfly could not be happy without its freedom.

“Certainly it would be an insult to keep the King or Queen a prisoner,” one whispered to the other.

With that, the children let their hard-won prize go. They knew they would never want to live in a jar or be tied to a string, and it seemed only fair to treat the royal butterfly with that same respect.

Up and out, finally free! The Monarch fluttered into the air, circled above the children for a breathtaking moment as though to say thank you, and gracefully flitted away back over the hill from whence it came.

The boy and girl were happy for their friend. They were good children, gentle and kind, who had learned from their mother to treat even the smallest creature as they wished to be treated. They did what they knew was right. Yet for a long while after, they marveled at how, for a timeless moment, the Monarch had been their friend.

While the siblings talked, the shadows of nearby trees slowly stretched long, twisty fingers, reminding them of their mother’s warning: a dangerous wolf came out late in the day to hunt children who were not safely close to home.

Up on their feet, they readied to run, when—oh, no! A large mouth with terrifyingly sharp teeth emerged from behind a tree. Growling in a hungry, challenging way, the beast stood menacingly before them.

“What luck!” snarled the wolf. “Here are two delicious-looking children. I suppose I could take them home, but I really cannot wait. I’d rather eat them right here.”

Just as the wolf began to decide which of the two would be more savory, a lone butterfly fluttered up and over the hill.

Its wings flashed brilliant reddish-orange, gold, and black. It was the Monarch butterfly!

Toward the children it flew, courageous and brave. Yet, wondrously, it was not alone. With it came a hundred... a thousand... a million butterflies, floating, fluttering, and gliding through the air around the wolf.

They had come to rescue the children!

It was not long before the overwhelming cloud of brilliant colors and dizzying motion proved too much for the wolf. Confused and frightened away from its meal, the beast reluctantly slunk back into the dark woods.

But the butterflies remained. Thousands upon thousands of kings and queens surrounded the children, and in a remarkably dignified manner, escorted the brother and sister safely away from the darkening valley.

To any onlooker, it would have appeared as though ocean waves of red, orange, and gold were carrying the children forward like billowy clouds on a gentle summer breeze. But for the siblings, surrounded by nature’s gift of friendship, it felt simply like love guiding them home.

Many years later, when the brother and sister had families of their own, they still shared the story of the day they made friends with a kaleidoscope of royal butterflies. And with every retelling, they passed along the most important lesson any adult or child, queen or king, could ever learn: the only way to repay love... is with love.