Chat & Photos
Flowers of Forgiveness
Candace Lindbloom
Jan 5, 2006 - Candace Lindbloom to Mary's Gardens
Could you please tell me if you know of a flower that symbolizes
forgiveness?
Thank you.
Jan 9, 2006 - John Stokes to Candace Lindbloom
Thank you for your message of 5 January asking if we know of a
flower that symbolizes forgiveness.
In the "Language of Flowers", created by Victorian English
writers, and widely perpetuated in current books, the purple
hyacinth is given to others to say, "I'm sorry; please forgive
me."
In our basic research of several thousand flower names of Marian
and other Christian symbolism and association which have come
down from Christian medieval oral traditions of the European and
Latin American countrysides we have found none with a name such
as Mary's "forgiveness flower" or "flower of forgiveness".
This is evidently because with forgiveness given for hurts
experienced, there is characteristically some retention of some
anger, irritation, criticism, feeling or other sin against
charity experienced in respect to the hurter - a sin from which
Mary was totally free, because of the freedom from all sin of her
Immaculate Conception and her fidelity to its graces.
Ib this respect, the boy Jesus privately revealed to Sister Lucy,
of Fatima, that the Five First Saturday devotions requested of
the faithful for peace, through Mary's Immaculate Heart, were to
be offered through the Sacred Heart of Mary not for forgiveness,
but in reparation...for:
€ Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception.
€ Blasphemies against Her perpetual Virginity.
€ Blasphemies against Her divine Maternity, while refusing
at the same time to recognize Her as Mother of men.
€ The blasphemies of those who publicly seek to place in the
hearts of children indifference or scorn, or even hatred
towards this Immaculate Mother.
€ The offenses of those who outrage Her directly in Her holy
images.")
For us who typically do experience some resentment for hurts
forgiven, our spiritual forgiveness of others, to be truly
loving, must include an accompanying purging of ourselves of all
associated anger, irritation, feelings or other sins against
charity etc.
In our self-examination for this we are to emulate the total love
of Mary's response to the boy Jesus in the finding in the Temple:
"Son, why hast thou done so to us? Behold thy father and I have
sought thee sorrowing." In The Divine Comedy. Dante observed
that the souls of persons with anger on them when they died were
required in Purgatory to hear the pure sweetness of these words
of Mary over and over until, emulating this sweetness, their
anger was spiritually purged, for their raising to heaven.
How often do we petition God in the Our Father to "Forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us" without
in our forgiveness of others having purged ourselves of the
effects of sin evoked in us by their offenses - but nevertheless
expecting God to withhold from us and others the "karma" of the
worldly effects of our sins? We are to reflect that the Father's
healing was to those for whom Jesus prayed in total love, then
saying, for example, "Your sins are forgiven; stand up and walk".
As was said by Spictetus 2,000 years ago:
"It is not he who gives abuse that affronts, but the view
that we take of it. Your hurt comes from not what others
do to you, but from what you choose to do with their
actions."
In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we purge ourselves of the
effects of the sin associated with our sins confessed - whether
sins we have committed, or our sinful responses in our hearts to
hurts received from others - through performance of the penances
given us after our examination of conscience, confession. and
reception of the graces of absolution.
One flower associated with the purging of these effects of sin
through the penances given is the Spring Crocus, "Penitent's
Rose"
representing the flowering in our hearts and souls, in grace, of
the "opposite virtues", upon the undertaking in grace of our
sacramental penances.
Secularly, flowers and their fragrance, are seen, similarly as
aids to reflection and meditation to overcome our resentment
towards those sinning against us - the overcoming of which
resentments, as said, is a part of true forgiveness in love. Of
this, Mark Twain said, "Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet
releases as the foot crushes it".
One fuller quote, in this respect, I came across is:
"One day when (the visionary) Stan Mooneyham was walking
along a trail in East Africa with some friends, he became
aware of a delightful odor that filled the air. He looked
up in the trees and around at the bushes in an effort to
discover where it was coming from. Then his friends told
him to look down at the small blue flower growing along
the path. Each time they crushed the tiny blossoms under
their feet, more of their sweet perfume was released into
the air.
"Then his friends said, "We call it the forgiveness
flower." This forgiveness flower does not wait until
we ask forgiveness for crushing it. It does not
release its fragrance in measured doses or hold us to
a reciprocal arrangement. It does not ask for an
apology; it merely lives up to its name and forgives
freely, fully, richly. What a touching example of true
forgiveness!"
(The botanical or common identity of the flower was not given,
but per Mark Twain, it could be applied to the violet.)
From such examples, we ourselves have come to be quickened by the
fragrance of flowers generally to reflection and self-examination
for sweetness in our forgiveness..
In this we are to reflect on and to emulate Mary's sweetness -
not as something to be imitated in sentimental "behavior
modification", but in emulation of her immediate loving
forgiveness for any hurts experienced. We can heighten our
resolve in this as we lean over in the garden to inhale the
fragrance of Bee-Balm, "Sweet Mary"
In addition to such affective flowers for sweetness of
forgiveness, there is a New Zealand purgative "flower of
forgiveness", Bidibid, to be reflected on for the purging of
ourselves of our experienced reaction to the hurts received,
for which we forgive - that affective sweetness may then come -
of which it has been said,
"Go to... the flower, and then sit for a minute or two,
absorbing the healing energy, for an experience in self-
healing";
Reflect, ³I forgive all, and I release all resentment
and anger²; and
"We are to allow the energy of forgiveness to enter our
hearts and dissolve the barbs that we have placed there
and projected onto others."
Evidently, the plant was or is seen in local popular New Zealand
folk tradition, - according to the doctrine of signatures. (the
discoverability of spiritual values in material creatures) - to
symbolize one's mental "barbs" of anger and resentment resulting
from being sinned against . . . barbs to be removed through
meditation, and the resolve to practice the "opposite virtues",
etc. of sweetness, so one's forgiveness of others can be
spiritually full.
One investigator, seeking out the Acaena to extract the
unpleasant purgative herbal essences of its seed pads - for
sniffing or smelling during meditative self-examination to
achieve more fully purged interior forgiveness - reported:
"I saw the plants, with their little seed-head balls
looking like tiny hedge-hogs, during a walk up the track
to the high hill in the Maungakotukutuku Valley (in the
hills east of the Kapiti Coast). . . The seed-heads...
have lots of tiny little barbs that hook into one's
clothes and stick like glue."
In our faith and hope in the coming - through God's willed
divine/human cooperation, in grace - of the Creation-culminating
earthly Peaceable Kingdom, for which we pray in the Lord's
Prayer, the Our Father; our practice of forgiveness, with
meditative and confessional removal of our own interior hurt and
resentment, is one of the two principal means for diminishing the
circulation of aggregate of worldly temporal effects of sin,
which block the building of God's Kingdom, in grace.
The other means for such diminishment, as beseeched by Our Lady
of Fatima, is our undertaking of all our daily duties, works and
sufferings sacrificially for and with Jesus, who takes them, and
those of all the world upon himself as his own in his redemptive
and reparational Passion and Cross, continued in our daily
re-enactment of it in the Mass.
Through this, having purged ourselves sacramentally of all our
own effects of sin, we, cooperatively - "making up what is
wanting in the sufferings of Christ" - may, through the actual
graces bestowed from the Cross through the Mass, enable, with and
through him, the reparational purging of the effects of sin in
others, so that all, and especially world leaders, dissidents and
insurgents - thus delivered from the evil of these worldly sinful
effects in their hearts and souls - may be freed to respond, in
their innate, created goodness (with which we all start out in
childhood), to the graces of reconciliation, peace, renewal and
Kingdom, beseeched in the Rosary prayers and sacrifices of the
faithful.
For the World Day of Peace, Jan. 1, 2002. Pope John Paul II
prayed for reparation and forgiveness for peace:
"Salve, Madre santa!
"Virgin Daughter of Zion,
"How deeply must your Mother's heart suffer for this
bloodshed!
". . . We ask you to move hearts hardened by hatred so
that they may open to love and so that revenge may
finally give way to forgiveness.
"Obtain for us, O Mother, that the truth of this
affirmation - No peace without justice, no justice without
forgiveness - be engraved on every heart. Thus the human
family will be able to find the true peace that flows from
the union of justice and mercy."
We are to recall that Jesus said to those who would have him not
go up to his enemies, in Jerusalem, in love, "Get you behind me,
Satan"; and that from the Cross he prayed in love, "Forgive them,
Father, for they know not what they do."
With recognition of the importance of true forgiveness, and of
reparational sacrifices, to world peace and Kingdom, our daily
quickening to these through the sweetness of flowers, ever at
hand - is to be most valued.
Thanks, Candace, for prompting me to think through and research
this a bit. I am circulating copies of this message to our
Associates, in case some of them may know of other flowers of
forgiveness.
Blessings.
Jan 5, 2006 - Candace Lindbloom to John Stokes
Thank you very much for the wonderful information! That was so
very kind of you.
Sincerely,
Jan 10, 2006 - John Stokes to Candace Lindbloom
(Peace Lily)
Dear Candace,
Thanks for your thanks.
In relation to the need for forgiveness in the world, here,
coincidentally, is a (highly excerpted) excerpt from today's
news:
Sincerely,
o O o
VATICAN CITY, JAN. 10, 2006 Pope's Address to Diplomatic Corps
"Commitment to Truth Is the Soul of Justice"
. . . Commitment to truth opens the way to forgiveness and
reconciliation. This necessary link between peace and the
commitment to truth has given rise to an objection: differing
convictions about the truth cause tensions, misunderstandings,
disputes, and these are all the more serious the deeper the
convictions underlying them. In the course of history these
differences have caused violent clashes, social and political
conflicts, and even wars of religion.
. . . Where the Catholic Church herself is concerned, insofar as
serious mistakes were made in the past by some of her members and
by her institutions, she condemns those mistakes and she has not
hesitated to ask for forgiveness. This is required by the
commitment to truth.
Asking for forgiveness, and granting forgiveness, which is
likewise an obligation -- since everyone is included in the
Lord's admonition: Let him or her who is without sin cast the
first stone! (cf. John 8:7) -- are indispensable elements for
peace. In this way our memory is purified, our hearts are made
serene, and our gaze is clearly fixed on what the truth demands
if we are to cultivate thoughts of peace. Here I would recall the
illuminating words of John Paul II: "There can be no peace
without justice, no justice without forgiveness" (Message for the
2002 World Day of Peace).
I repeat these words, humbly and with deep love, to the leaders
of nations, especially those where the physical and moral wounds
of conflicts are most painful, and the need for peace most
urgent.
. . . One thinks of . . . so many...countries throughout the
world which are the theater of violent conflict.
Surely one of the great goals of diplomacy must be that of
leading all parties in conflict to understand that, if they are
committed to truth, they must acknowledge errors -- and not
merely the errors of others -- nor can they refuse to open
themselves to forgiveness, both requested and granted. Commitment
to truth -- which is certainly close to their hearts -- summons
them, through forgiveness, to peace. . . .
o O o