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                                               Intro Mary Garden

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                   Meditation Mary Garden

In an effort to spread devotion to Our Lady and to restore the
prayerful, religious sense to gardening the author presents


Gardening With Mary


John S. Stokes Jr.


Queen of All Hearts                                May, 1960


     To proclaim Our Lady's praises, many devout Christians have
surrounded her outdoor statues and shrines with flowers which in
the ages of the Faith were widely named and used to recall her
life and mysteries, and to which these former names and uses are
being restored today.  The calendar by which the "Flowers of Our
Lady" bloom through the seasons of the year is a veritable garden
litany of Our Lady's praises, and their care is a prayerful work
of devotion in her honor.  In the Middle Ages, a garden of such
flowers was known as St. Mary's Garden, or, for short, a Mary
Garden.

     The planting and cultivation of Mary Gardens have also
fostered interior practices of devotion to the Blessed Virgin.
Those who tend Mary's flowers before her image have constantly
before them reminders which lift their hearts in veneration, love
and prayer to her as the worthy Mother of God, thus heightening
their recollectedness and purifying the intentions of their work
for her. They are also afforded rich and varied means of
meditating on her virtues, her privileges and her actions, and
contemplating her grandeurs.  There has indeed been a fulfillment
of the vision of Father James J. Galvin, C.SS.R., one of the prime
movers of the present-day Mary Garden restoration, who, in 1952,
wrote:

          "Gardens should pray, gardens should remind children of
          their Mother.  Gardens should be holy places that keep
          minds fresh and unsullied as Madonna lilies. Gardens
          should chime with names that ring like the Litany of
          Loreto.

          "And gardens, if they are truly Mary Gardens, will
          naturally lead to Christ."

     Today, more and more gardens are chiming with names like Rose
of Sharon, Mary's Gold, Our Lady's Tresses, Our Lady's Slippers,
Our Lady's Cushion, Mary's Candle, Mary's Tears, Assumption Lily,
Mary's Heart, Our Lady's Mantle, Eyes of Mary, and many others
which were current in days gone by.  Reunited to the flowers to
which they belong, these names have taken on life-giving flesh and
blood; and seen according to their old names, the flowers have
once again become religious signs and symbols with a directness
and clarity touching the heart and quickening the soul to joy and
to prayerful thoughts and acts.

     Working with these plant symbols, one is brought to meditation
also on people, on our spiritual ancestors who so loved the
Blessed Virgin, the Holy Mother of God, and so reflected upon her
life, graces and mysteries, that they saw her praises in plants and
blooms. It is as though one were actually present with and shared
the mind and heart of the Christian to whose lips first came the
words "Mary's Candle" as he regarded the candle-like form of the
giant mullein, or "Our Lady's Cushion" as he came upon the
cushion-like tufts of sea pink....

     During the first years of Mary-gardening such discoveries are
repeated many times as new Flowers of Our Lady are added to the
garden.  At the same time, old discoveries are renewed each
spring, summer and fall as the plants repeat their cycle of growth
and bloom.  As one gains more intimate knowledge of each plant,
its religious association is extended from its initial basis of
form, color or liturgical season of bloom to all parts and growth
periods of the plant - from seed or root to maturity and death. Each
plant, therefore, becomes a reminder throughout the entire season,
and not just when it is in bloom, of some aspect of Our Lady's
life, graces and mysteries.

     Considered from the viewpoint of their growth and
cultivation, the rose, the lily, and all flowers and gardens have
also been used extensively in Christian tradition as symbolizing
the spiritual life and growth of the soul, of which the soul of
Mary, the Mystical Rose, the Garden Enclosed, the Queen of all
Saints, is the most perfect and holy example and model.

     According to the figure drawn from the Scriptures and
developed by St. Bernard, St John of the Cross, St. Louis De
Montfort and others, our souls are gardens in which Christ sows
the seeds of grace and the Holy Spirit plants the roots of virtues
through Mary, mediatrix and distributrix of all graces and model
of all virtues.  As the stewards of our souls and their salvation,
we are to cultivate these virtues and graces by cutting back the
thistles and thorns of cares of the world, rooting out vices and
imperfections, sheltering tender virtues from the withering cold
of the north wind of spiritual dryness, pruning back shoots or
passion and self will, and protecting our more established virtues
from destruction by the little foxes of temptation.  The plants in
the gardens of our souls are nourished and also cultivated by
Christ, whom we receive in Holy Communion and who abides and works
in us as the Divine Gardener.  When in time the virtues mature
into protecting walls or rings enclosing our gardens, then the
most beautiful and delicate mystical flowers and fruits appear,
which are the delight of Christ, who "feeds among the lilies".
Then, too, the south wind of the Holy Spirit breathes through the
garden, wafting up its fragrance to God, our Heavenly Father, as a
holy sacrifice of praise.

     According to a similar figure from Scripture, the Liturgy and
the Saints, our souls are flowering plants which are to "send
forth flowers as the lily, and yield a fragrance, and bring forth
leaves in grace and praise with canticles, and bless the Lord in
His works" (original Communion verse, feast of the Most Holy
Rosary).  The principles of this growth are the warming rays of
Christ, the Sun of Justice and the waters or dew of sanctifying
grace which we receive in due season from the Holy Spirit through
Mary, the "Heavenly Light Cloud Bearing the Rains of Grace", under
the providence of our Heavenly Father.  The more our soul grows
from absorption of the waters of grace, the more of these waters
it can absorb, in emulation of Mary the Mystical Rose, the
Spiritual Vessel, who from the moment of her immaculate conception
was ever full of grace.

     Mary, our spiritual mother, is also the Enclosed Garden of
the Eternal Father and the New Paradise of Eden, within whom and
in whose soil we are rooted, and by whose spirit we are nourished.
Mary's spirit is sweet above honey, and her inheritance above
honey and the honey-comb; but we who know her shall yet hunger and
thirst for Christ.  And as we receive our true nourishment by
partaking of Our Lord's Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Most
Holy Sacrament of the Altar, we are engrafted and incorporated as
branches of Christ, the True Vine, growing at the center of the
enclosed garden of Mary and cultivated by our Heavenly Father, the
Husbandman, to whom the fragrance of our blossoms are wafted by
the Holy Spirit.
 
     Thus, the garden and flowers which we may first have
cultivated as a setting for, and adornment of, Our Lady's statue
or shrine, and then transformed into a Mary Garden filled with
Flowers of Our Lady, proclaiming her praises and serving as a
basis for meditation on her life and mysteries, are also a school
of spiritual growth for the soul devoted to Mary.

     This growth begins as we cultivate Our Lady's Flowers before
her image in her garden, believing in her, loving her, recalling
her, proclaiming her praises, praying to her and meditating on her
virtues, graces, privileges, mysteries, joys, sorrows and glories.
Then, as our understanding increases of how sublimely the Holy
Trinity endowed, blessed, loved and loves her as daughter,
dwelling place, mother, bride, cooperator, co-redemptrix,
mediatrix and queen, we are moved to imitate her virtues and to
adopt her as the model for our growth in perfection and
sanctification in service of God.
 
    As our knowledge of Mary grows, so also does our love of her
and our sense of personal access to her in prayer as our heavenly
mother, advocate, intercessor, mediatrix and queen.  Our
meditations and considerations thus become interspersed and
completed with spiritual acts, aspirations and ejaculations to
Mary; and we strive, not only to emulate her virtues, but also to
share her joys and sorrows and to mortify our own spirit and
inclinations so we can become the instruments of her spirit.

     The fruit of turning constantly to Mary, our Mother of Good
Counsel, in prayer is a sense of her nearness, presence and
companionship as we work and pray in the garden.  This sense of
Mary's presence is most helpful to us in confiding, examining and
discussing our temptations, emotions, sentiments, thoughts and
conscience with her as a means to the further perfection and
sanctification of our thoughts and actions in conformation to the
will of God, the mind of Christ, and the promptings of the Holy
Spirit.

     Thus composed and recollected, we are moved to lift our
hearts and minds to Mary in contemplation in the peace and quiet
of her garden.  As we do, her flowers seem to glow about her
image, filled with the radiance of her virtues and graces and
permeating us with a sense of the unfolding of spiritual life and
growth.  Plunged, as it were, into the interior of Mary in
contemplation, we begin to take root and sustenance in her as our
Spiritual Mother and Earthly Paradise.

     Marian spirituality has been set forth so fully and
authoritatively in St. Louis De Montfort's True Devotion to the
Blessed Virgin Mary, Father Emil Neubert's Life of Union with
Mary, and other works, that there is no need to elaborate upon it
here beyond what has already been said to indicate how work and
prayer in a Mary Garden can be one means and aid to its
development, except to note that such spiritual growth, like all
spiritual growth, is properly cultivated under obedience to a
spiritual director.

     We must not expect, however, that our souls will be permitted
to rest in contemplation on the flowery beds of the garden.
Mindful that Mary, the Mystical Rose, was called from her flights
of divine love in the Temple to the work of the incarnation,
redemption, mediation and spiritual motherhood, we should watch
and pray in expectation of God's call through Mary, to arise and
go forth to new duties in the garden of the world, where the
harvest is great but the reapers are few.

     As we are thus summoned to go forth into the world, we still
carry within us the interior garden which was nourished in our
souls while we cultivated and meditated on the Flowers of Our Lady
in the Mary Garden.  And in our hands, we carry the distilled
essence of Marian flower symbolism in the rose garden of our
rosary beads.  Mary, too, who has been our constant companion in
her garden, goes forth with us so that in the world we may
continue to perform all our duties and works by her spirit; with
her as the example and model for all our actions; in her as our
spiritual mother; for her as our most venerable Queen and
Mistress; and through her as our heavenly intercessor and
mediatrix - that we may better perform them through, with and in
Christ, her Son, to the honor and glory of God the Father Almighty
in the unity of the Holy Spirit.


Reprinted with permission.