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God's Flowers

John S. Stokes, Jr.

Catholic Women's Journal, April, 1963

     St. Paul taught that from the visible things of creation we
can know the invisible things of God; and that we should preach
the Gospel to every creature.

     Thus, Christians saw flowers as special signs of heaven and
the unfolding of spiritual life, and adopted them as symbols of
everything pure and holy in Christ and his Virgin Mother.

     Flowers were gathered joyously for the house of God, and in
time were placed on the very altar itself.  On the principal
feasts, when the liturgy was performed with splendor, churches
were regularly decked and strewn with flowers and greens, and
priests wore them as garlands and crowns.

Sacristan's Gardens

     By the ninth century special sacristan's gardens were
established as sources for church flowers.  And in recognition of
the importance and dignity of his work, the gardening monk, after
having worked humbly and silently throughout the year, was
privileged on December 19th at Vespers to intone the Great O
Antiphon of the Roman Rite: "O Root of Jesse . . . come to deliver
us and tarry not.'

     This antiphon recalls the prophecy of Isaias that the virgin
birth of the Redeemer would be as the blooming of a flower; that
the earth, watered with the dew of heaven, would bud forth a
Savior; that a rod would flower out of a root of Jesse.  The
central circle of the monastery garden, with its fountain or pool,
symbolized the "O" of the antiphon, and thus the liturgical
significance of the flowers and their care.

The Church's Nature Symbolism

     In its development of nature symbolism the Church referred
wheat and grapes, thorny plants, cross-shaped flowers and the vine
directly to Christ, recalling the Last Supper, the Crowning with
Thorns, the Crucifixion and the Mystical Body.  Flowers, however,
were mostly referred to Christ through His Mother, whom the
Fathers saw as the Rose of Sharon, the Lily of the Valley and the
Garden Enclosed of the Canticle of Canticles.

     Venerable Bede wrote in the ninth century of the white lily,
later named the Madonna Lily, as the emblem of the Blessed Virgin:
the white petals symbolizing the purity of her body and the golden
anthers the beauty of her soul.  Other flowers were associated
with her from their use each year to deck churches for the
"Lady-Days," the feasts of Our Lady, for which they were in bloom,
including snowdrops (Purification Flower), Lily of the Valley,
Marygold and aster (Our Lady's Birthday Flower).

     Following this scriptural, patristic and liturgical
association of flowers with Mary, the ingenuity of Christian love
discovered numerous reminders of the events and mysteries of her
life in the shapes, colors and seasons of the various flowers.
Documented research has listed over 1,000 flower names and
symbolisms referring to Our Lady in popular religious tradition,
evidencing the widespread use of flowers as intuitive symbols of
her purity and sweetness, the beauty of her holiness and the
splendor of her heavenly glory as the worthy Mother of God.

     Symbolical Flowers of Our Lady were collected and cultivated
in sacristans' gardens and then in St. Mary's Gardens or Mary
Gardens of their own, often around central figures of the Virgin
and Child. In this way gardeners were enabled to honor God and His
Mother directly in the garden, as well as through the use of
flowers in Church.

Saints Associated With Flowers

     For religious example medieval gardeners looked to the early
saints associated with flowers and the garden.  First there was
St. Dorothy who, after her martyrdom steadfast in the Faith, sent
her unbelieving executioners a basket of flowers from the heavenly
paradise.  St. Phocas so yearned for the happiness of heaven that
he dug his own grave with his garden spade on the eve of his
death, after charitably receiving his executioners as his guests.
St. Fiacre dedicated his life to tending a garden of flowers and
vegetables around an oratory to Mary for the comfort and
nourishment of the poor and of the sick, in whom he worked many
miracles.

     In the medieval period St. Francis was said to have taken
care never to step on the least wayside plant, as it might bear a
flower, symbol of Mary, the Rose of Sharon.  And in the New World,
St. Rose of Lima abandoned the worldly life of her city for a holy
life of gardening and service to the poor.

Religious Use of Nature Declines

     But towards the end of the medieval era, with the change from
a rural to a city culture, the religious use of nature fell into
decline.  Its importance was relegated to that of a raw material
for the city, and the religious significance of its completed
forms, such as flowers, was transferred to their representation or
transformation in religious art.  It was as though the vitality of
nature surged up in the architecture and sculpture and stained
glass of the Gothic period and then was cut at its roots.
Churches were no longer "oriented" (turned to the East) in nature
itself, and those who furnished their interiors were less and less
able to "find time" for the cultivation or gathering of flowers,
now considered of little religious importance.

     This decline of the religious use of the things of nature in
churches was accompanied by a corresponding decline in the
religious sense of nature on the part of churchmen.  Nature came
to be considered optional as an approach to God, to be used or
not, depending upon convenience and personal preference.

     Perhaps the most far-reaching consequence of the artificial
separation of the Church from nature was its effect upon
liturgical worship.  Once the spiritual sense was dulled for the
things of nature on which the scriptures and liturgy are so
largely based, participation in the liturgy itself became verbal
and logical rather than direct and intuitive, with a resulting
decline in its spiritual efficacy.

     Yet, as the city-centered Church lost its sense for the
religious potency of flowers and gardening, the innate longing of
the human heart for these "things of God" burst forth in a
vigorous secular gardening movement, inspired by a love of the
natural beauty and growth of flowers, and expressed by their use
in landscape design and interior decoration.  Now, paradoxically,
just as the Church has largely divorced herself from nature, the
secular gardening movement in its quest for deeper meaning looks
eagerly to the medieval gardening monk.  Likewise, it looks to
Japan where gardens and flower arrangements are widely used today
as important means for preserving traditional religious values in
artificial, urban surroundings.

Re-establishing Religious Contact With Nature

     Happily, as Edward A. G. McTague has written, "the Church,
holding ever to good and innocent expressions, has never cast off
the terms of nature for descriptive and symbolic, instructional
and religious purposes. Thus, if one reestablishes contact with
nature, in accordance with Christian religious sense and
expression, much that is in nature, and in the liturgy and
symbolism of the Church will again readily touch the heart and
quicken the spirit with the things of supernatural life "

	It is to the restoration of such religious contact with
nature, through flowers and gardening, that the contemporary Mary
Garden movement, founded by Edward A. G. McTague and the author in
1951, addresses itself.  By engrafting Mary-Gardening onto the
vitality of the secular movement in gardening, it hopes to develop
a religious sense of home gardening which will then overflow into
churches and liturgical worship: restoring the full liturgical use
of flowers and, more importantly, the vital liturgical
participation of nature-attuned worshipers.  Reunited, flowers and
the liturgy will reveal their spiritual meanings anew in full
vigor, offering souls a nourishment which almost seems enriched in
value by virtue of its prodigal loss and rediscovery.

	It is proposed likewise that through the Mary Garden,
monasteries and convents can once again become vital centers for
the spread of the religious sense of gardening in their
surrounding neighborhoods and countrysides, as of old.  Returning
home from such centers, visitors can start Mary Gardens of their
own.  Then, with the seasons, they can bring and exchange seeds,
bulbs and plants with the gardening Brother or Sister and with
other visitors, thus entering into a rich social and religious
exchange and flowering as well.

Mary's Inspiration

	Present day Mary-Gardeners can look for inspiration to Our
Lady herself, who brought heavenly flowers with her to earth at
Guadalupe, Lourdes and La Salette.  Of Lourdes, Pope Pius Xll
said, "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."  And at La Salette, Our Lady came down
to sit, weeping, on a little flower "paradise" made by shepherd
children, herself adorned with flowers on her crown, her mantle
and her shoes.  Surely if Mary, the Holy City of God, the image of
the Church, comes down to us as a bride adorned with flowers, it
behooves us to adorn our churches and our prayers likewise as we
give worship to God.


Reprinted with permission.