Dominican Friars

“April showers bring May flowers.” You remember that little rhyme, don’t you? Growing up in Buffalo meant that sometimes these showers were of the snowy variety, but those flowers did spring up in May. And at my house there were plenty of them, especially roses, my mother’s favorite part of the garden. But May is not just the month of spring flowers; it is also the month of Mary. And the connection of Mary and the flowers of May, especially roses, is admirably fitting.

First, roses don’t come fully grown. They, too, start out as small seeds. But these seeds have a destiny—they have been preordained to flower into one of the most sought-after natural beauties. These beautiful flowers are hidden away, buried in the earth, waiting for the “appointed time” to appear. Mary, too, did not come unto the salvation history fully grown. Her beginnings go back into the midst of time, as Lumen Gentium says: “she is already prophetically foreshadowed in the promise of victory over the serpent which was given to our first parents after their fall into sin” (LG 55). Mary was chosen and hidden “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4); a seed of the redeemer to come.

Second, even when the seed turns into a bulb and begins to grow out of the soil it is not yet anything like a rose: stem, thorn, and leaves resemble not a rose. And thorns can be quite tricky to work with. Mary’s coming too was not without thorns and ugliness. Tradition ascribes the genealogy of Jesus found in Matthew to Mary’s lineage, and the cast of characters found there are not all of the pious type. Abraham lied about his wife to Pharaoh, Jacob tricked his father, Tamar deceived her father-in-law into sleeping with her, Rahab is a prostitute in Jericho, the incident with David and Bathsheba is well known, Rehoboam breaks up the kingdom of Israel, Manasseh brings about the Babylonian exile, and so on. This is truly a thorny line of descent—a line of royalty, rancour, yet also repentance. This is no problem for God; he chose Mary from the beginning and worked through the rough and tumble of Israelite history to get to her.

Third, it always seemed like one morning the rose flowers just appeared. When the buds arrived you got a foretaste of future glory, but it was always a decisive moment in the garden when the outer leaves fell away, revealing the most beautiful flower. So too with Mary: the stories of her childhood are all tradition-based and shrouded in legend, but obviously this Jewish girl was no ordinary child. As the Protoevangelium of James records: “She made a sanctuary in her bed-chamber, and allowed nothing common or unclean to pass through her.” Yet no one, not even Mary, was ready for the Annunciation, the moment when “Mary is definitively introduced into the mystery of Christ” (Redemptoris Mater, 8). Mary’s Fiat is the opening of the flower of God’s salvation.

Fourth and finally are the color and smell of this beautiful flower. While there are many colors created through cross breeding, it is the natural red roses which have the sweetest perfume. My mother always said you had to choose between the eyes and the nose; you can’t have wild colors with pungent aromas. So too with Mary, for it is only by the redemption wrought in Christ that she has any special holiness and power. Her “salvific influence…flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on His mediation, depends entirely on it and draws all its power from it” (LG 60). The Catechism summarizes this Mother-Son relation nicely: “What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ” (CCC 487). Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman says the same: “The glories of Mary are for the sake of Jesus… we praise and bless her as the first of creatures, that we may duly confess Him as our sole Creator.” Separating the redemptive role of Christ from Mary is akin to breeding a rose with a color other than red: no matter how beautiful this new hue, the rose will lack that wonderful fragrance, the analogical “aroma of Christ” which we venerate in our devotion to Mary.

Mary is, as the Litany of Loretto has it, the Rosa Mystica, the Mystical Rose, the Flower of May. Cardinal Newman, in his reflections on the Litany, sums this up beautifully:

Mary is the most beautiful flower that was ever seen in the spiritual world. It is by the power of God’s grace that from this barren and desolate earth there have ever sprung up at all flowers of holiness and glory. And Mary is the Queen of them. She is the Queen of spiritual flowers; and therefore she is called the Rose, for the rose is fitly called of all flowers the most beautiful.

This month, Mary’s month, spend some extra moments in the rose garden of Marian devotion, for it is there that Christ loved, and still loves, to dwell fragrantly.

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This article was originally published on dominicanajournal.org and was written by Fr. Bonaventure Chapman, O.P.

From Adam working the garden to Christ doing the works of the Father, the Scriptures prominently feature the theme of work. In his second letter to the Thessalonians, Saint Paul goes so far as to say that all those who do not work should not eat (3:10). But, why? What is the significance of work? Saint John Paul II once wrote, “By means of work, man participates in the activity of God himself” and so comes to be like him. In turn, the man who works for God comes to love him ever more.

Work has the ability to make us love God more, if it is done for him. For when we work for God, we learn something both about ourselves and about God. We simultaneously learn our own limitations and God’s surpassing love. Accepting these truths requires a death to self, but results in a higher life in God.

Today is the memorial of Saint Joseph, the patron of workers and an exemplar for us. Let’s consider what Joseph’s work might have taught him and how this knowledge would have prompted him to love God more.

Joseph was a carpenter, so his work was physically demanding: lifting and carrying heavy loads; chopping, splitting, and shaving rough logs; sanding, hammering, and assembling these into finished tables, chairs, doors, and the like. From this work, he would have been sore and tired, hungry and sweaty, with blistered hands and covered in dirt. From such work, one comes to know himself and his limits: man is exhaustible and hurtable. By laboring, the man of faith also learns something about God: he supplies strength for us to do our work and healing for us to recover.

Joseph’s work as a carpenter also included mental tasks: designing a bench, a cabinet, a desk; calculating and measuring boards and cuts along the way; studying the color, grain, and age of wood to predict its effects when hammered or bent in various ways; and most of all, there is the mental task of planning new jobs and estimating the worth of one’s work. From these tasks, Joseph must have felt the weariness of mental exhaustion; anxiety and stress from the responsibility and unpredictability of his work; and the distractions and discouragements of hard labor. But here again we learn about ourselves, especially as we humbly recognize our limits and quirks. At the same time, we gain greater knowledge of God: we discover that he is the giver of peace, the source of encouragement, the supplier of mental strength and healing.

By persevering in work as St. Joseph did, we may learn more about ourselves and God, but this requires a death to ourselves. Yet if we do die to ourselves, in admitting our weaknesses, then we are able to see the love of God, present and supporting us. The one who works for God comes to love him ever more.

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This article was originally published on dominicanajournal.org and was written by Br. Michael Prize, O.P.