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Intro Mary Garden
Mary-Gardening with St. Francis
by John S. Stokes, Jr.
Assisi, Dublin March, 1961
We are told St. Francis so loved flowers for their perfection
in showing forth God's beauty and splendour that he wanted his
Brothers to care for them as gardeners. He is said, further, to
have taken great care not to harm even the least wayside plant
since it might bear a flower symbol of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
the Rose of Sharon. And when asked once while cultivating his
garden, "Francis, what would you do if you learned you were to
die tomorrow?" he replied, "I would keep on cultivating my
garden."
These stories of St. Francis recall for us the dignity of
flower gardening in the ages of the faith: a dignity which it can
have again today. Flowering plants are riches of heavenly beauty
lovingly bestowed upon us by God. Of all His creatures they afford
us the most perfect outward likenesses of Mary's interior beauty
of soul. And their cultivation can be a work of grateful praise
and service to God.
This religious view of flower gardening was lost to an extent
in the course of the urbanization and secularization of culture
following the Middle Ages. But today a restoration has begun by
dedicated individuals who have founded horticultural societies,
garden clubs and gardening magazines to promote parks in every
city, gardens in every yard, and plants or flowers in every room.
Fittingly, St. Francis' loving regard for nature and flowers has
been an inspiration for this movement, as witnessed by the many
statues of St. Francis in gardens. Now another movement, the Mary
Garden movement, is promoting a further restoration of the
religious sense and true dignity of flower gardening. This
movement, too, finds inspiration in St. Francis, but in the
fullness of his loving care for flowers as God's creatures and as
providential reminders of the Blessed Virgin.
To those who love the natural beauty and growth of flowers,
the Mary Garden movement proposes St. Francis' more perfect love
of them for their "divine creaturehood." With St. Francis we are
once again to love flowers and all the things of nature as our
brothers and sisters, as our fellow creatures of God, showing
forth his glory. We are to reflect also that through our fault,
through the fault of our first parents, flowers grow midst thorns
and thistles and after blooming for a time wither and die: but
through our fulfillment of the work of Christ's redemption they
will, after his Second Coming, bloom for ever in a new heaven and
a new earth. Christ suffered and died to redeem God's beauty and
glory in nature as well as in our souls. Flowers now live and die
and live again, reminding us of Our Lord's death and resurrection
but, in a little while, they will show forth God's glory
everlastingly in heaven.
The Mary Garden movement proposes further that we should
reacquire St. Francis' special love for each flower because it is
a symbol of the Blessed Virgin. We owe the beginnings of the
flower symbolism of Mary to Christians who lived before St.
Francis, and its full development, including the custom of growing
flowers symbolical of Our Lady in "Mary Gardens" to others after
him; but St. Francis is the inspiration for our grateful love of
each and every flower for its inherent likeness to Our Lady.
This love is firmly grounded in two great Christian
discoveries: that meditation on the life of the Mother of God,
imitation of her virtues and dedication to her service are a
swift, sure road to knowledge and love of and service to God; and
that of all God's earthly creatures, none can surpass flowers in
suggesting for our meditation the immaculateness of Mary's purity,
the beauty of her holiness, or the splendour of her glory.
When flower gardening is inspired and motivated by St.
Francis' grateful love of flowers as God's creatures and as
symbols of Mary, it is a work of the highest dignity. As a work
of love it engenders a desire to learn and to practice the garden
arts and sciences, in collaboration with God's providence, as
perfectly as possible in order to nurture the finest plants and
flowers. Interiorly, its humble submission to the needs of plant
creatures in the spirit of St. Francis and its faithful
stewardship for them year in and year out can be a demanding work
of sacrifice and penance.
Since the time of St. Francis, the findings of botany and
biology and of physics and chemistry have heightened our
appreciation of the wondrous perfection of the eternal Creator, as
manifested in the diversity, the intricate structure and the total
order of His plant creatures. Likewise, the development of flower
symbolism of Our Lady since St. Francis has provided, if possible,
even further motives for loving and caring for flowers.
Beginning with the inherent likeness of all flowers to Mary's
pure beauty of soul, the ingenuity of Christian love discovered
numerous reminders of Our Lady's life and mysteries in the
characteristic forms and colours and seasons of individual flower
species. Research into the medieval flower symbolism of England,
Ireland, Germany, Flanders, France, Italy and other countries of
Christendom has recorded some 700 symbolical associations of
flowers with the Blessed Virgin. These form a veritable litany or
encyclopedia of Mary written with the immaculate petals and
foliage of flowers much as all her actions were infused with her
purity.
The Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valleys were biblical
titles applied to the Virgin by the Church Fathers from the
Canticle of Canticles, in which they saw her typified as the
mystical bride of God. These titles were then given to flowers
considered as fitting embodiments of this symbolism of Our Lady.
Similarly, the Church gave Mary the title, Mystical Rose,
preserved today in the Litany of Loreto; and several rose
varieties came to be known as Mary's Rose. The rose symbolism was
extended to a number of rose-like flowers such as the peony and
carnation, which were likewise called Mary's Rose. The rose was
also adopted as the emblem of Mary's love of God.
Other flower symbols of Our Lady's virtues and attributes
included the lily representing her purity, the myrtle her
virginity, the violet her humility, and the marigold her heavenly
glory. St. Bernard spoke of Our Lady as the violet of humility,
the lily of chastity, and the rose of charity: and also as the
balm of Gilead and the golden gillyflower of heaven.
The prayers of the Rosary were considered a garden of roses
offered to Mary, an adornment of her image, a symbol of her
graces. Various flowers recalled the individual mysteries of the
Rosary: the Madonna Lily the Annunciation; Our Lady's Slippers the
Visitation; Our Lady's Bedstraw the Nativity . . . and so on
through the Assumption Lily and Mary's Crown. In general, white
flowers symbolized Mary's joys, purple flowers her sorrows and
yellow or gold flowers her glories. Some flowers, such as
Purification Flower and Our Lady's Birthday Flower, were associated
with Our Lady's life and mysteries through her liturgical feast
days, the "Lady Days", for which they bloomed each year . A large
group of flowers were known by names denoting their fancied
resemblance to Mary's pure eyes or to her tresses, hands or fingers.
Others were seen to be her mantle, smock, belt or shoes; or her
pins, needles, thread or sewing work, as though everything she
touched partook of her purity.
Typical of the many folk-legends woven around the Mary-named
flowers is one telling that the white markings on the leaves of
Our Lady's Thistle and certain other plants first appeared when
drops of the Virgin Mother's immaculate milk dropped on them as
she nursed the infant Saviour. Another relates that the flowers,
Our Lady's Tears, appeared where she wept at the foot of the Cross
on Calvary.
Mary's Cross recalls that Mary, our co-redemptrix, offered to
the Father and shared interiorly the sufferings of Christ. Mary's
Mantle symbolizes her motherly protection of the faithful. Mary's
Heart moves us to beseech the intercession of her Immaculate Heart
with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Sweet smelling herbs, several of
them called Sweet Mary, bring to mind Our Lady's spiritual
fragrance and her motherly sweetness.
Many of these flowers are still commonly grown in gardens
today, although known by other names in our era when the faithful
have become accustomed to look for God and Mary in the symbols of
the printed page rather than those of nature. And thanks to
commercial seedsmen and nurserymen, the necessary seeds, bulbs and
plants are readily available to those of us who wish to relearn
the beautiful symbolism of Our Lady's Flowers first hand by
growing them once again in Mary Gardens.
A Mary Garden planting, large or small, of Our Lady's Flowers
is customarily made around a statue or shrine of the Virgin or the
Virgin and Child. The flowers serve as a setting for the statue,
and the statue serves in turn as a centre from which Our Lady's
attributes shine out as it were onto the surrounding flowers.
Then, after the symbolism of the flowers has lifted our thoughts
to meditation on Our Lady's life and mysteries, the statue serves
as a focal point which brings them to repose in simple
contemplation of Mary and her Divine Son.
As we approach the garden, our first sense is of peace and
joy. Beholding it in its entirety with its trees and shrubs, its
plants and flowers, its birds and bees, in the sun and breeze, we
are moved to offer praise and thanksgiving to the Creator with the
overflowing joy of St. Francis' Hymn to the Sun. Approaching
closer, we see that the beauty of the garden has been composed and
offered around the image of Mary, the Mother of God, as a hymn of
veneration, in which we are drawn to join interiorly. Then,
considering the surrounding flowers as symbols of Mary's
immaculate purity, the beauty of her holiness and the splendour of
her heavenly glory, we praise, bless and thank God for His great
glory as magnified in the soul of Mary.
As we enter and walk through the garden, the symbolism of the
familiar shapes and colours of the individual flowers lifts our
thoughts to meditation on Our Lady's life and mysteries.
Meditating thus, we are moved to praise God for the privileges and
graces he bestowed on Mary for her chosen role as His mother,
companion and cooperator in the work of human redemption. At the
same time we rejoice in Mary's love of God and her perfect
obedience to His will, which serve as the model and inspiration
for our own love and service of God. Reminded in this way of how
pleasing Mary must be to God, and of His appointment of her as our
heavenly mother and mediatrix, the instrument of His mercy, we
confidently beseech her to pray to Him for us and to make our
prayers hers.
As we turn to the work of cultivating the flowers, we
consider them anew with special attention to their life and death,
which in turn bring to mind the redeeming life and death of
Christ. The symbolical forms of certain plants and flowers have
recalled for us the lash, the crown of thorns, the cross and other
instruments of the Passion, but now the withering and dying of the
very life of the plants recall Christ's death by a more direct and
real analogy.
Thus, the same plants which moved us on entering the garden
to share in St. Francis' joy over the praise returned by creatures
to the Creator, now remind us to share also in his compassionate
and sorrowful interior union with the suffering and death of the
Redeemer. Mindful of the continuation of the sacrifice of Calvary
through the ages in the sacrifice of the Mass, we join the
intentions of our gardening work with all the Masses being offered
in various places at that very moment.
We rejoice that many of the flowers we are cultivating will
be used to adorn the church altar, representing there at the
offertory of the Mass our garden labours and the joys and sorrows
of the seasons. And we turn with particular affection to those
flowers which we are growing for the liturgical feast days with
which they are especially identified by name or traditional use.
After completing our gardening tasks we rest, finally, in
simple contemplation of Mary and Jesus and of the mysteries of the
Incarnation and Redemption. Then, filled with the Peace of
Christ, we leave the garden, praying with St. Francis that we may
be made the instruments of that peace: where there is hatred -
sowing love, where there is injury - pardon, where there is doubt -
faith, where there is despair - hope, where there is darkness -
light, where there is sadness - joy.
Reprinted with permission
(See the poem, Gardens Give Mary Glory, by Liam Brophy - inspired by
this article and presented to Mary's Gardens as a gift by the
author).