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Providential Images and Symbols of Our Lady in
Nature and the World


John S. Stokes Jr.


     The Gospel tells us that "Only a wicked and faithless age
seeks a sign".  Such signs are providential means whereby
unbelievers may be disposed to receive the gift of faith, as - for
many - through the appearances of Our Lady in our times.

     The appearance shrines of Our Lady established at Guadalupe,
La Salette, Lourdes, Paris, Knock, Fatima and elsewhere, and other
Marian shrines, also serve providentially to enhance the life of
faith and the love of Mary of those who already believe and who
make pilgrimages to them.

     Closer to home, devotion to Mary - sustained by prayers of
consecration and the Rosary - is frequently quickened in daily
life by her images and symbols providentially encountered in
nature and artifacts.
 
    As distinct from representations of Mary in religious art,
her likenesses and symbols discovered in nature and the artifacts
of daily life have a special quickening effect on the imagination
because of the unexpectedness or freshness of their encounter.

     Those who collect or work with rocks, for example, are from
time to time surprised to find that when they crack open an agate
rock they may discover an image likeness of Our Lady.

     In contemporary experience, many have been startled to
encounter or learn of such things as the tower of a newly erected
building of a major city lighted by a huge neon M outlining its
architectural features and rising over the city.  Or a reflection
resembling Mary on the side of a glass building.  Likewise, there
is the discovery of the likeness of Mary's head and veil in the
opening aerial view of the London docks of the British TV drama
series, "East Enders" (shown on some U.S. PBS channels).

     These last examples, typical of many, are cited in that they
heighten the sense of God's providence, and quicken prayerful
recourse to Mary's omnipresent protecting, nurturing and
mediating, in city life, as Our Lady of Divine Providence.

     From their spiritual impact, the discovery of such symbols
midst the secularity of daily life is to be regarded as more than
circumstantial or accidental.  If not miraculous or revelatory,
they are indeed providential - demonstrating the unity and poetic
correspondences between the life of the Spirit on the one hand,
and the natural, physical world on the other - both created
through the Word of God, through whom all things were made.

     In the predominantly rural life of medieval Christendom, such
symbols and likenesses of Mary were largely discovered in nature.
Indeed, from the generic biblical prophecy of the Virgin Mother of
the Messiah as the "Blossoming Rod of Jesse", other flower symbols
of Our Lady were discerned in scriptural passages, and then as a
"galaxy" in nature.

     Mary was seen as "the Rose wherein the Divine Word was made
incarnate", of Dante and of the central rose windows of the
medieval cathedrals.  Then - possibly inspired by the "relics" of
Our Lady brought back to Europe by crusaders and pilgrims
returning from the Holy Land - numerous flower symbols were
discovered of Mary's apparel and household articles, for
reflection on the life of the Holy Family in Nazareth.  As
supports for meditation and emulation, other flowers we seen as
symbols of her virtues, excellences and mysteries.


                      .


     Since flowers were universally present in nature, with
similar symbolic forms in various localities and countries, they
time and again presented a spiritually quickening surprise
recognition - both for the traveller, coming round a bend in the
road, and for the villager encountering the new blooms of each
season.  Informed of these flower symbols, we, too, can share in
such discoveries today as we encounter the very same blooming
flower species in all their freshness while walking past city
gardens or window boxes; walking or driving through the
countryside; or cultvating them in our own Mary Gardens.

     When any actual graces are received through the pious
emotions, affections or illuminations excited while beholding such
symbolical flowers - especially if they have been sacramentally
blest, as in a garden - Mary, Mediatrix of all graces, is indeed
present through her mediating action.  Frances Crane Lillie,
founder of the mother Mary Garden of the present day Mary Garden
movement, at St. Joseph's Church, Woods Hole on Cape Cod,
Massachusetts, was so conscious of this experience in the garden
that she entitled the leaflet listing the Flowers of Our Lady in
this garden, "Our Lady in Her Garden".

     And for those who have received the gift of the sense of Our
Lady's presence, this sense is quickened by the beholding of Our
Lady's Flowers.  Persons with such a sense were likely those who
first named flowering plants encountered with some likeness to a
human form for Mary, such as "Little Mary" (Zinnia elegans),
"Queen Mary" (Aechmea mariae-regina), "Our Lady of-the-Meadow"
(Filipendula ulmaria), "Our Lady-by-the Gate" (Saponaria
officinalis), and "Our Lady in-the Corn" (Papaver rhoeas).
                               
     While the original discoveries of such flower symbols -
perpetuated in popular oral traditions, and then recorded by
scholars, botanists and folklorists - are almost entirely lost in
the mists of time, we do have a contemporary record of one such
discovery - that of the Passion Flower (Passiflora caerulea), in
the New World.  This report is instructive in that it preserves
the sense of providential wonder associated with the discovery.

     It is recorded that in 1610 a Mexican Augustinian friar,
Emmanuel e Villegas, made a report, with sketches, of the
discovery of the Passion Flower - originally known from the forms
of its parts as the "Flower of the Five Wounds" - to a monastic
scholar, Jacomo Bosio, in Rome.  After verifying the discovery
with others, Bosio wrote, "It may be that in his infinite wisdom
it pleased (God) to create it thus, shut up and protected, as
though to indicate that the wonderful mysteries of the Cross and
his passion were to remain hidden from the...people of these
countries until the time preordained by his Highest Majesty."

     As John Vanderplank writes in Passion Flowers*, from which
this quotation is taken, "It was the task of scholars (of that
period) to identify and publish the meaning of all manner of
living things.  They believed that every growing plant or animal
was on earth for a specific purpose, for their benefit.  The
passion flower was no exception, and the story would have been
implicitly believed by the common people of that time."

     While such flower symbols were in their origins quickeners of
faith and love - passed on from parents to children through the
generations - they are today often regarded only as interesting or
curious lore.  It is the hope of Mary's Gardens, now with the help
of the Internet, to restore them to their full wonder in our
modern culture.


     "Look on the flower, think of Mary"


* John Vanderplank, Passion Flowers, The MIT Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1991.


Copyright, Mary's Gardens, 1997