Go to Home Page
Intro Mary Garden
Garden Devotion to Mary
Union With Mary Through Her Flowers
John S. Stokes Jr.
We love and venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary because she is the
Mother of Jesus, whom we believe to be God incarnate, true God and
true man, the second person of the Blessed Trinity - Father, Son
and Holy Spirit. Believing Mary to be the worthy, immaculate,
holy, Mother of God, the Church Fathers turned to the scriptures
for words adequate to describe her, which they found in the
accounts of the revered women of Jewish history, seen as types
of Mary; and in Isaiah's prophecy of the Virgin Mother of the
Messiah as the Blossoming Rod of Jesse, which they saw as mirrored
in the flower symbolism of the Wisdom Books. The faithful of the
medieval period extended this flower symbolism to hundreds of
flowers in nature, the Flowers of Our Lady, which we grow today in
Mary Gardens devoted to Mary.
We love and venerate Mary, further, because of the divine favors
and answers to prayer we have received through her, whom Jesus, on
the Cross, gave to us as our spiritual Mother - interceding with
him for us in heaven as she interceded at the Marriage Feast in
Cana, and spiritually mediating for us as she did for the Apostles
at the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
For guidance in our devotion to Mary, and in our reflection on her
through her flower symbols in Mary Gardens, we turn to the Marian
teaching and dogmatic definitions of the Church; to the writings of
the saints and mystics; and especially to St. Louis de Montfort's
True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary*, and to Father Emil
Neubert's Life of Union With Mary.
St. Louis de Montfort teaches that true devotion to the Blessed
Virgin Mary is first of all interior - of the heart and mind - then
finding expression in our exterior devotional practices.
Mary Garden devotion has a special interior quality in that it is
first a picturing in our imagination of the symbolic Flowers of Our
Lady, envisaged as blooming spiritually in our interior life. Then,
with our stewardship, foliage, buds and blooms come of God's
creatures the seeds and plants of our gardens, in due season and
according to his established order - serving further to quicken our
interior devotion.
De Montfort speaks, further, of true devotion as tender. Care for
a Mary Garden provides ready opportunities for expressing the
tenderness, gentleness, and delicacy of our devotion through the
offering at Mary's statue or shrine the flowers traditionally seen
as representing her spiritual purity, holiness, sweetness and
mercy. These flower offerings in the garden in turn move us to
raise our prayers to Mary in heaven.
The illuminative symbolism of Our Lady's flowers likewise provides
for the poetic expression of our tender devotion to her, as in the
"Salute to Mary", in Sr. Josepha Mendenez' The Way of Divine
Love:
"O incomparable Virgin! Immaculate Virgin! Delight of the
Blessed Trinity, admiration of all angels and saints, you
are the joy of heaven: Morning Star, Rose blossoming in
springtime, Immaculate Lily, tall and graceful Iris,
sweet-smelling Violet, Garden Enclosed kept for the delight
of the King of Heaven . . . I salute you and rejoice
at the sight of the gifts bestowed upon you by the Almighty
and of the prerogatives with which he has crowned you."
It was in verses praising the Blessed Virgin that flower imagery
was first introduced into English poetry, as in Chaucer who spoke
of her as the "Flower of flowers."
Through our interior, tender love for Mary we come to commune with
her spiritually - sharing our feelings and thoughts with her as our
spiritual mother, and entering into her feelings and thoughts for
her divine Son, for her heavenly Father, for her overshadowing and
indwelling spouse, the Holy Spirit, and for us her spiritual
children.
As we tend the garden, flower symbols of Mary's motherly care, and
of her cooking, sewing, cleaning, washing and other household work,
evoke our tender reflection on her love for the child Jesus in the
Nazareth home of the Holy Family. Flowers of "Mary's Sword", and
"Our Lady's Tears", which by legend sprang up at the foot of the
Cross from her fallen teardrops, evoke in us compassion for her
co-redemptive participation, through the sword of sorrow piercing
her heart and soul, in the crucifixion of her divine Son and Lord.
De Montfort next speaks of true devotion to Mary as holy:
"True devotion to Mary leads the soul to avoid sin and to
imitate the virtues of the Blessed Virgin, particularly her
profound humility, her lively faith, her total obedience,
her divine purity, her ardent charity, her heroic patience,
her angelic sweetness and her divine wisdom - the principle
virtues of the most holy Virgin."
Instructed by St. Bernard's veneration of Mary as the "Rose of
charity, Lily of chastity and Violet of humility" - we ponder these
and other illuminative flower symbols of her virtues in the garden,
that through our active imagining of them their formation may be
quickened in our souls.
In medieval times meditation on Mary's virtues, and their emulation
through spiritual self-examination and spiritual exercises, and
recourse to confession and to the graces of the sacrament of
penance, to root out imperfections and attachments of the flesh,
mind and world, were seen as a "ladder to heaven" whereby souls
became conformed to Mary, as model, mold and motherly nurturer, to
whom they turned for sanctification, mindful of the words of
scripture, "Strike the roots of all your virtues in my chosen ones"
(Gal. 4:19).
Mindful of Mary's "intimate union and unique cooperation with
Christ" (Vatican 2 Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, par. 4),
we turn with her to Christ the Gardener for the cultivation in us of
her virtues - again in the beautiful flower imagery of Sr. Josepha's
private revelations:
"Lord, Thou knowest both the flowers and the fruits of my
garden . . . Come and teach me that I grow what will please
you most."
Christ: "To one who speaks in this way and has a genuine
desire of showing love, I answer: Beloved, if such is your
desire, suffer me to grow them for you . . . let me delve
and dig in your garden . . . Let me clear the ground of
those sinewy roots that obstruct it and which you have not
the strength to pull on . . . Maybe I shall ask you to give
up certain tastes, or sacrifice something in your character
. . . do some act of charity, of patience, or self-denial
. . . or maybe prove your love by zeal, obedience or
abnegation: all such deeds help to fertilize the soil of
your soul, which will then be able to produce the flowers
and fruits I look for."
The flowering of Mary's virtues in our soul serves to strengthen
our virtue of fortitude, giving constancy to our devotion, which
St. Louis de Montfort sees as the fourth attribute of true devotion
to Mary: "True devotion to Our Lady is constant. It confirms the
soul in good . . . It makes it courageous in opposing the world in
its fashions and maxims, the flesh in its weaknesses and passions,
and the devil in his temptations."
While we at first love Mary for her person and for the divine help
we receive through her prayers, we now rise, through our love for
the holiness and beauty of her virtues, and through the constancy
of our devotion, to union with her soul, and in this union, to
union also with God, who is sublimely present with her - "The Lord
is with thee" - as his chosen spiritual vessel in which he has
chosen to reside by virtue of her love, her immaculate purity, her
hearing of the word of God and keeping it, her attentive doing of
the will of her Heavenly Father, and her humble assent - "Be it
done to me according to your word."
In particular, we come to commune with Mary in her union with
Christ, to whom, as St. Augustine observes, she gave birth in her
heart before giving birth to him in the flesh. Of our entry into
union with God through devotion to Mary, St. Louis de Montfort
observes:
"[True devotion to Mary] is a smooth, short, perfect and
sure way of attaining union with our Lord, in which
Christian perfection consists.
"This devotion is a smooth way. It is the path which Jesus
Christ opened up in coming to us and in which there is no
obstruction to prevent us reaching him. It is quite true
that we can attain to divine union by other roads, but
these involve many more crosses and exceptional setbacks
and many difficulties that we cannot easily overcome. We
would have to pass through spiritual darkness, engage in
struggles for which we are not prepared, endure bitter
agonies, scale precipitous mountains, tread upon painful
thorns, and cross frightful deserts. But when we take
the path of Mary, we walk smoothly and calmly. It is true
that on our way we have hard battles to fight and serious
obstacles to overcome, but Mary, our Mother and Queen,
stays close to her faithful servants. She is always at
hand to brighten their darkness, clear away their doubts,
strengthen them in their fears, sustain them in their
combats and trials.
"Truly, in comparison with other ways, this virgin road
to Jesus is a path of roses and sweet delights. There have
been some saints, not very many, such as St. Ephrem, St.
John Damascene, St. Bernard, St. Bernardine, St.
Bonaventure, and St. Francis de Sales, who have taken this
smooth path to Jesus Christ, because the Holy Spirit, the
faithful Spouse of Mary, made it known to them by a special
grace. The other saints, who are the greater number, while
having a devotion to Mary, either did not enter or did not
go very far along this path. That is why they had to
undergo harder and more dangerous trials."
Through her intimate union and close cooperation with Christ, on
which we have meditated in praying the mysteries of the Rosary, we
come to understand that the Blessed Virgin's divinely endowed
prerogatives for us of co-redemption, advocacy, intercession,
universal mediation, distribution, motherhood of the Church and
queenship of heaven and earth are all a sharing of the divine
action with her by Christ, her divine Son, Lord and King.
We understand further that this sharing is a sublime, exemplary,
particular fulfillment in Mary of God's general will for the
Creation of the world: the showing forth and sharing, in love, of
the divine goodness, interior relationships, and action with us
humans - created to this end in the divine image and likeness; and
in particular, with her, of the sharing of his redemptive action by
the Son for the world for the Father, in the union of the Holy
Spirit. Each time Mary freely responds to our prayers in
advocacy, intercession and mediation, or gives protection or
distributes graces in her motherly love and mercy and desire for
the building of God's eternal Kingdom of truth, justice, love,
freedom and peace, there is a new sharing of the divine goodness and
action with and through her in ever greater fulfillment of the
divine purpose of Creation.
In this we rejoice in the fullness of God's showing forth and
sharing with us of his divine goodness and action through the
virtues, excellences, and divine prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin
- through her immaculate purity, spiritual motherhood, perpetual
virginity, co-redemption with Christ, and Assumption body and soul
into heaven; through her motherly spiritual mercy, nurturing,
protection, advocacy, intercession and mediation for us; and
through her queenly spiritual governance of heaven and earth with
Christ the King. Through our union with Mary, and through her
with God, we now see directly and clearly what in faith we previously
have accepted of Mary through dogma and doctrine.
As Mary's flowers have assisted us in expressing the tenderness of
our devotion to her, and in emulating her holiness, we are now
quickened by others of these flowers to reflection on, and prayerful
recourse to, her now more fully appreciated divine privileges and
prerogatives:
Immaculate Conception - Madonna Lily
Doing God's Will - Obedient Plant
Hearing God's Word - Our Lady's Eardrops
Divine Maternity - Lady-Lords (symbolizing the
Virgin and Child)
Perpetual Virginity - Strawberry (still in flower
while in fruit)
Spiritual Overshadowing - Our Lady in-the-Shade
Co-Redemption - Our Lady's Tears; Mary's
Sword (of Sorrow)
Heavenly Assumption - Assumption Lily
Heavenly Glory - Mary's Gold
Mercy - Eyes of Mary
Advocacy - Prayer Plant
Intercession - Mary's Heart
Mediation - Our Lady's Keys (to the heavenly
storehouses of grace, light,
wisdom and power)
Distribution of Graces - Mary's Hands
Protection - Our Lady's Mantle
Motherhood of the Church - Mother-of-Thousands
Queenship - Mary's Crown
For our veneration, and our quickening to reflection and prayer,
Mary Garden plantings of the Flowers of Our Lady can be composed
according to various arrangements. The most varied Mary Gardens
have been those of "the medieval countryside in a garden" - gardens
composed of favorite Flowers of Our Lady, or those more readily
available commercially, in harmonious horticultural design around
her focal sculpture - with bloom sequence left to the "Mary
Calendar" of seasonal blooming. Others have been composed with
groupings of flowers according to their symbolism of the joyful,
sorrowful and glorious mysteries of the Rosary. Still others have
been composed as "Rosary Walks" with flower plantings composed
around a garden Crucifix, with round flagstones for the Ave "beads"
and square flagstone for the Pater "stations" of the day's 5 Joyful,
Sorrowful or Glorious Mysteries.
On our very entering of the Mary Garden, before viewing any of
its flower symbols, we are disposed to such reflection from our
immediate sense that it is a holy place: from its focal Marian
sculpture, from the harmonious planting of flowers around it, and
from the effects of its priestly sacramental blessing, serving to
quicken the "excitation of pious emotions and affections of the
heart" (Catholc Encyclopedia). (See article, "The Blessing of Mary
Gardens as Holy Places.")
Through our spiritual communion with Mary in love, we also come to
experience her presence in the garden, through her mediating action,
as symbolized by various flowers seen in popular religious
traditions to recall her person, such as Our Lady by the gate, Our
Lady of the Meadow, Our Lady in the corn, Mary and The Virgin.
With our heightened sense, through our union with Mary, of her
queenly concern for the coming of the divine kingdom on earth, and
of her prerogatived sharing in the mediation and distribution of
the divine grace, light, wisdom and power for it's coming, we are
ever more awed by her continued tender, motherly presence with
us in concern for our own immediate needs. However, with the
mortification of our worldly desires in the course of our ascent
of the "ladder to heaven" of emulating Mary's virtues, we are now
moved to offer our prayers to her not for our own self-interest,
but for her further spiritual mediation for the building of the
earthly Peaceable Kingdom.
In this our devotion attains the fifth characteristic of true
devotion to Mary, as taught by de Montfort, that is to be
"disinterested" - without self-interest, or selfless:
"The soul does not love Mary just because she obtains
favors for it, or because it hopes she will .. . it
inspires the soul to seek not itself but God alone, and
God in his holy Mother".
Further, from our devotion to Mary, and our understanding of her
divinely endowed privileges and prerogatives for the carrying
forward of the divine plan of showing forth and sharing God's
goodness and action with us in Creation, we are now moved, to
this end, to make the total consecration, of St. Louis de
Montfort, of our lives to Jesus through Mary:
"In the presence of the heavenly court, I choose you this
day as my Mother and Mistress. I deliver and consecrate
to you . . . my body and soul, my goods, both interior and
exterior, and even the value of all my good actions, past,
present and future; leaving to you the entire and full
right of disposing of me, and all that belongs to me
without exception, according to your good pleasure, for
the greater glory of God, in time and in eternity."
We consecrate to Jesus through Mary all the immediate secular and
moral effects of our actions, in accordance with the divine will
for Creation, and, especially, all the merited spiritual fruits of
our earthly works in grace, which, as described by de Montfort,
magnify the grace, light, wisdom and power divinely bestowed on us
through Mary's mediation - with their consequent rising return,
through her, in augmentative filling of the heavenly storehouses,
to which she has the keys, for distribution through her further
mediation, to where they are most needed for the furtherance of the
Divine Plan for the world of creation, redemption, sanctification
and kingdom.
However, with our fuller understanding that God's will for Creation
is for us to carry forward the development of the world, its
redemption, and the culminative building of God's Kingdom in a
sharing in the divine attributes and action; and that true sharing
and cooperation, in love, between persons requires that they be in
freedom; we see that while our devotion and consecration to Mary and
Jesus are indeed to be "disinterested" as far as our own separate
self-interest is concerned, they are at the same time to be freely,
creatively, offered in union with the divine will for Peace on Earth
- always, in view of our necessarily limited discernment of the
particular needs for peace at any given moment, with the
disinterested reservation of "not my will but yours be done."
In this we thus come to understand, however, that our prayers are to
be not just a dependent petitioning of divine blessing and
assistance, but, with their fruits, to be our own freely elected
fulfillment of our call, as humans, to share, participate in and
show forth, in emulation of and cooperation with Mary, the divine
action in the world - as members of the Mystical Body of Christ.
Relevance to the Modern World
On hearing it said that the alienation and violence in the world
since the time of Christ have shown that "Christianity has failed",
G. K. Chesterton replied, "Christianity hasn't failed; it's never
been tried." With a similar faith, Pope John Paul II has affirmed
"God did not create the world to be a graveyard."
For our part, we remain confirmed in our faith, from the viewpoint
of "Creation Theology," that through a fullness of human
cooperation in the goodness of the divine creative, redemptive,
and renewing action, God's will for the showing forth and sharing
of the divine goodness in Creation will indeed be accomplished in
the building of the earthly Peaceable Kingdom.
Through the centuries of Christianity it is coming to be
understood, with doctrinal clarification and dogmatic definition,
that the divinely willed fullness of sharing of God's goodness
and action with humans is exemplified, for our emulation, in and
by Mary - in her immaculate purity, fullness of grace, divine
maternity, perpetual virginity, co-redemptive participation in
Christ's redemptive sacrifice, and Assumption body and soul into
heaven; and in her protection, advocacy, intercession, universal
mediation and distribution of grace, spiritual motherhood, and
queenship of heaven and earth.
Through our increased understanding of Mary's exemplification of
the potential of our human nature - created in the divine image
and likeness - for this sharing in the divine action, we have a
heightened appreciation of how with "prayer and fasting" we, too,
can - through our purification, our emulation of her, and the
graces mediated through her - advocate, intercede and mediate;
and can cooperatively magnify bestowed grace, light, wisdom and
power, the merited "value of all (our) good actions" consecrated
to Mary, for distribution, in incorporation in her mediation, to
those areas where needed for the movement of the world towards
Kingdom.
In the present world it is compellingly evident that to carry
forward the "peace process" for the divinely willed building of
God's Kingdom, we are in need of graces for quickening:
- Respect and love which reach across alienations of racial,
religious, ethnic, national, class, cultural and individual
differences;
- Expiation of accumulated historical anger between groups into
nothingness, through effective union with Christ's redemptive
sacrifice and death as divine scapegoat.
- Conciliatory compromise on issues between warring, rebellious
and terrorist factions, and
- Cooperative building of God's Kingdom of truth, justice, love
and freedom.
Pope John Paul II has said, "Christianity is the religion of
human peace. Christianity's mission is to unite people in Christ,
making them aware of being brothers and sisters to each other,
because, to him, they are the adopted children of the one Father
who is in heaven."
For our times, the divine call for our increasing prayerful
participation in the divine action for the Peaceable Kingdom is
being made by Mary herself - assumed body and soul into heaven
- in her many appearances to us on earth, in our era, at
Guadalupe, La Salette, Lourdes, Paris, Knock and Fatima, etc.,
and in various private revelations, subject to Church approval.
At Fatima in 1917, she specifically called for the consecration, in
reparation - of the prayers, acts, works and lives of all the world
to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through her Immaculate Heart, for the
intention of world peace:
"God desires to establish in the world the devotion to my
Immaculate Heart. I promise salvation to those who embrace
it, and these souls will be loved by God, like flowers
placed by me to adorn His throne. My Immaculate Heart will
be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God."
"Tell everybody that God gives graces through the Immaculate
Heart of Mary. Tell them to ask graces from her, and that
the Heart of Jesus wishes to be venerated together with the
Immaculate Heart of Mary. Ask them to plead for peace from
the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for the Lord has confided the
peace of the world to Her."
Thus, in Mary's call for the consecration of our lives, prayers
and actions in reparation to her Immaculate Heart and to the
Sacred Heart of Jesus, the selfless "disinterestedness" of our
de Montfort devotion and consecration to Mary is culminated with
our embrace of the intention for all our prayers, acts, works
and immolations of world peace - of the Peaceable Kingdom.
To this end we continue with our garden devotion to Mary, and,
pray, with the Legion of Mary:
"Confer, O Lord, on us who serve beneath the standard
of Mary that fullness of faith in you and trust in her
to which it is given to conquer the world. Grant us a
lively faith, animated by charity, which will enable us
to perform all our actions from the motive of a pure
love of you, and ever to see you and serve you in our
neighbor; a faith firm and immovable as a rock through
which we shall remain tranquil and steadfast mid the
crosses, toils and disappointments of life; a courageous
faith which will inspire us to undertake and carry out
without hesitation great things for God and the salvation
of souls; a faith which will be our Legion's pillar of
fire, to lead us forth united, to kindle everywhere the
fires of divine love, to enlighten those who are in
darkness and the shadow of death, to inflame those who
are lukewarm, to bring back to life those who are dead
to sin, and which will guide our feet in the way of
peace, so that the battle of life over, our Legion may
reassemble in the Kingdom of your love and glory."
- Legion of Mary Handbook
* St. Louis de Montfort's True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin
Mary, available on the Internet at:
www.immaculateheart.com/MaryOnLine/html/cover-story0.html)
Copyright Mary's Gardens 1999