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Intro Mary Garden
Knock: Flowers of Mary's Presence
John S. Stokes, Jr.
Queen of All Hearts, May-June, 1988
In 1951 Mary's Gardens was founded in Philadelphia by Edward A.
G. McTague and the writer to promote the restoration of old medieval
religious names, symbolisms and uses of flowers - especially those
assocating them with the Blessed Virgin - to present-day religion
and gardening.
Thanks to the interest of writers and of the religious and
gardening press, the idea was given extensive publicity and numerous
Mary Gardens were started throughout the United States and many
foreign countries. Today the symbolical Flowers of Our Lady add
richness to religious devotion and life in monasteries, convents,
churches, homes, schools, hospitals and offices - as they are
arranged in cut flower bouquets, cultivated in outdoor or indoor
dish Mary Gardens, or found in fields and roadsides.
Through the years, individuals have come forward,
providentially, with a special commitment and contribution to this
work, arising from a deep love of Mary and flowers combined with
expertise and prominence in the horticultural field.
In 1972, an inquiry was received in Philadelphia from Brother
Sean MacNamara, of the Christian Brothers in Dublin - designer of
the plan for the Knock National Mary Garden and author of the
accompanying article. Brother Sean informed us that he had
undertaken extensive research into Marian devotion in Ireland; had
done the definitive botanical cataloging of the plants of the famous
Burran of County Clare; and was a Director and past President of the
Irish Garden Society - for which he had served as judge at numerous
flower shows. He envisaged the planting of Mary Gardens in Ireland
as an opportunity to combine his religious, teaching, scholarly and
horticultural vocations in a special and beautiful way, and asked
for our assistance.
This was a great joy to us. One of the most insightful early
articles on our work, "Mary's Gardens," by Robert Ostermann, of
Cork, was published in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record for February
of 1953; and we had, on request, written an article in 1961,
"Mary-Gardening With St. Francis" for the Irish magazine, Assisi of
the Franciscan Press which, in 1958, had published a beautiful book
of watercolors of the Flowers of Our Lady, by Beldy. But the
"right person" had not yet appeared to take on, in Ireland, the
practical initiative of inspiring and assisting in the actual
design and planting of Mary Gardens. It was apparent that Brother
Sean was this person.
With the information we were able to provide, Brother
immediately began writing about the Flowers of Our Lady for Irish
readers and assisting in the planting of Mary Gardens. After
familiarizing himself with our research into over 1,000 of the
Flowers of Our Lady of medieval England, continental Europe and
Latin America, he undertook his own research into the historic
Flowers of Our Lady in Ireland, in which he documented over 150
Irish wildflowers for which Mary-names had been current in the
religious traditions of the countrysides, including some 30 which
bore the old Gaelic name of "Muire" for Mary.
From his research, Brother Sean conceived the idea - as
mentioned in his article - of a National Irish Mary Garden - to
include two species of Mary Flowers from each of the 32 counties,
and a focal section composed of Muire Flowers. In this garden,
flowers named for Mary of old would be seen with their same forms
and colors, in contemporary immediacy and freshness, as a special
witness to Irish popular rural devotion to Our Lady through the
centuries.
Brother Sean's concept of obtaining and sustaining the
different plant species of the Knock Mary Garden from actual source
colonies in each of the 32 counties, where they are still growing
wild, and of making these locational origins known to visitors to
the Garden - through suitable maps and legends - serves to restore a
sense of the concrete reality these Flowers of Our Lady had as
religious symbols throughout the actual countrysides of medieval
Christendom.
It is evident from the widespread proliferation of the
Mary-named plants, in Ireland as in other countries - as recorded by
botanical and folklore researchers from old documents and surviving
oral traditions - that they were more than just poetic or liturgical
figures of Mary. Being most like Mary of all creatures, and being
universally present, these flowers served as symbols and quickeners
of the sense of Mary's own actual presence everywhere, wherever
grace is distributed, through her action as Mediatrix of All Grace -
a sense that is so profoundly pervasive in association with Mary's
appearance at Knock.
As the Eucharist is the memorial and Real Presence of Christ
everywhere - as he was born of the Virgin Mary, lived, died on the
Cross, was buried and rose again, in the Holy Land - so, evidently,
flowers, for rural Christians, served as reminders of Mary's
universal presence as Mediatrix of All Grace. Deriving from this
basic association, the various flower forms and colors were then
seen and named as symbolic reminders of Mary's life, work and
mysteries as Mother of Jesus - in the tradition of the Crusaders'
"Relics of the Virgin" brought from the Holy Land, such as purported
remnants of Our Lady's Mantle, Slipper, Hair, Milkdrops, Teardrops,
Bedstraw, etc.
The Church Fathers saw Mary as the Rose of Sharon and the Lily
of the Valley of Canticles; and Mary, the Mystical Rose, in her
appearances to us, has many times brought roses with her: the
miraculous roses of Guadalupe; the three rose garlands adorning her
at La Salette, and the rose at her forehead at Knock. At Lourdes,
in the words of Pope Pius XII, "When Mary appeared to St.
Bernadette, each of her feet was adorned with a blooming rose. She,
whom the Church had just proclaimed the Immaculate Conception,
manifested in this way to a poor and artless child the fullness of
her perfections and the delicacy of her goodness."
In The Way of Divine Love, Sr. Josepha Mendenez reports that
Jesus, in private revelation, exhorted her to salute his Mother as
"Rose Blossoming in Springtime, Immaculate Lily, Tall and Graceful
Iris, Sweet-smelling Violet, Garden Enclosed kept for the delight
of the King of Heaven."
The centuries of close association of Mary with flowers have
been distilled for us in the prayers of the Rosary, which Pope Pius
Xll, again, has described as, "primarily a garden of roses offered
to Mary, an adornment of her image, a symbol of her graces," from
which Mary has been titled, in the Litany of Loreto, "Mary, Queen of
the Most Holy Rosary."
Devotion to Mary has been described as the spiritual energy
which built the cathedrals and universities of the Middle Ages of
Faith. The Rose Window, or "Rose," was a culminative element of each
cathedral - a great garden of glass symbolizing Mary, the Mystical
Rose, as showing unto us the Blessed Fruit of her Womb, Jesus. In
his famous poem, "Our Lady and the Dynamo," Henry Adams likened the
power of Mary in the Middle Ages to that of electricity today.
As we marvel at the power of medieval faith, and ponder Mary's
role in it, we come to understand that the key to this power was the
universal and immediate sense of Mary's presence, wherein almost
every village had its experiences and legends of her motherly
appearances - many associated with flowers.
In our modern culture we use holy cards, paintings, statuary,
scapulars, medals, Rosary beads and books as reminders of Mary; but
the intensity of medieval Marian faith and meditation was richly
expressed and sustained by finding her in all the little things of
life, even in every flower - as well as by the building of
cathedrals, the naming of cities, and the dedication of universities
in her honor. Thus, altar flowers, for example. served to heighten
the sense of Mary's presence at each tabernacle and Mass - as they
do today also at the Legion of Mary meeting altar tables.
The blessing on Laetare Sunday, of the Pope's Golden Rose - one
of which was presented to the Knock Shrine by Pope John Paul II on
his 1979 pilgrimage visit - epitomizes the widespread sacramental
blessing and preservation of flowers as religious objects of grace.
Symbolically perceived and named, Flowers of Our Lady were
woven into the very fabric of medieval rural culture, and by their
names which have come down to us, we see the variety of ways in
which they quickened the sense of the presence of Mary herself, as
well as quickening recollection of her and meditation on her life,
mysteries, attributes and prerogatives. Among such names given to
flowers were: Mary, Virgin, Sweet Mary, Our Lady by the Gate, Our
Lady in the Corn, Our Lady in the Shade, Our Lady of the Meadow,
Beautiful Lady, Virgin's Bower, Our Lady's Cushion, Eyes of Mary,
Our Lady's Tresses, Mary's Hand, Our Lady's Slipper, Our Lady's
Thumb (Print), Our Lady's Bite (Marks), and many others.
These were intermixed with other familiar flowers, which were
seen and employed to symbolize and recall Mary's Immaculate
Conception, the household articles and work of her life with the
Holy Family in Nazareth, and her sorrows, glories, queenship,
spiritual motherhood, intercession, mediation and all her virtues,
excellences, privileges and prerogatives: Our Lady's Rose, Balm,
Mint, Needlework, Pincushion, Smock, Fingers, Gloves, Candle, Keys,
Tears, Sword of Sorrow, Radiance, Gold, Stars, Mantle, Heart,
Bedstraw and Milkdrops. Also, Purification Flower, Assumption Lily,
Tower of ivory, Ladder to Heaven, Birthday Flower, Bells . . .
These flowers, too, in their own way, conveyed the sense of Our
Lady's immediacy and presence - as illustrated, for example, by some
lines associated with "Our Lady's Candle" (mullein, Verbascum
thapsus):
"The Virgin Mary moves over all the land
With heaven's fire in her hand."
In our era, a primary means of restoring and heightening the
sense of Mary's maternal presence with us is through pilgrimages to
her appearance shrines: Guadalupe, La Salette, Paris, Lourdes,
Knock, and Fatima. Once we reacquire the sense of her presence "on
location," it behooves us to find means for sustaining and
quickening it on our return to home, parish, community and
workplace. Shrine gift shop souvenirs and holy cards are helpful in
this, but after a time they may become familiar and "stale." Because
of their perpetual freshness and unending variety, however, flowers
and other religious nature symbols serve to quicken this sense for
us through the years.
The importance of the Mary Garden at Knock is that it is a
means of acquainting pilgrims with the Flowers of Our Lady so that
they may make use of them in their devotional life upon their return
home. Brother Sean's 40 p. booklet, "The Knock Mary Garden,"
available from the Shrine gift shop, is an important adjunct to the
garden to this end. As the National Irish Mary Garden, Knock is
also a witness, and a tribute to Our Lady, of the rural Irish
devotion to her through the centuries.
(Note, 1995 - The priting of 5,000 copies of Brother Sean's
booklet has now been exhausted, and with the planting of the
entire Shrine grounds with Flowers of Our Lady in 1990,
the re-printing of the booklet for the original Mary Garden
awaits up-dating.)
It is fitting that a special impetus to the restoration of
religious flower symbolism in the present day has emerged in
Ireland, at Knock. St. Patrick, as emblemized by the Shamrock, was
preeminent in sanctifying nature everywhere to elevate it from pagan
"nature worship" to its redeemed Christian sacramental status as
wellspring and instrument of grace, under Mary's universal
mediation. St. Colomban has been characterized as ever alert to
find God in the woods and fields. And St. Fiacre - who in the 7th
century "exported" the Irish religious sense of flowers and
gardening to France where he built an oratory, surrounded with a
garden, which he dedicated to Our Lady, and also a hospice for the
sick - was subsequently adopted as a universal patron saint of
gardeners.
Hopefully the rich Irish traditions of devotion to Our Lady,
Mhuire Mhatair, and of the sacramental view of nature will, through
the Flowers of Our Lady, be combined in spreading a heightened sense
of the constancy and immediacy of Our Lady's silent presence with
us, so strong at Knock, to the entire world, that through the
resulting fuller recourse to Mary as Mother, Companion, Intercessor
and Mediatrix, we may better grow in the sacramental life of grace,
light, wisdom, power, prayer and providence: for salvation, the
universal works of mercy, the building of the Peaceable Kingdom, and
the coming of the New Heaven and New Earth.
Reprinted with permission
(Note: See, also, the "Artane Oratory Mary Garden" leaflet,
describing the Mary Garden established by Brother Sean MacNamara in
Dublin in 1992.)