THE BEARDED IRIS are finished blooming for the summer and now it is time for the Japanese Iris. These are blooming in the garden here at the retreat house. They might strike us as birds taking off in flight. In Greek Mythology, Iris was the winged messenger of the gods who traveled from above to earth along the rainbow.
In my first assignment, as a young priest, if the weather was with me and I had the time, I'd do my calls on bicycle. One warm July day I visited a home that looked like a French Chateau on a large property with formal gardens. As I peddled through the gates I noticed that the Japanese iris were blooming. A few minutes later, when I entered the room of the elderly and dying woman, I saw the private duty nurse had placed one in a glass on the bedroom nightstand.
The lady died soon after, and in preparing for her funeral Mass I sensed that the presence of the iris had some significance for me. So I did some research, (one had to go to the library in those days) and found a paragraph about a Medieval Italian cardinal who in his coat of arms featured a single stylized iris and on the banner beneath it read, "We grow with God's help."
I suppose any flower could remind us of that, but the iris does it in a particularly lovely way. We grow in goodness and with God's help, so we must be patient with ourselves and each other. We shouldn't take the heavenly help for granted but look to discover heaven's growth-producing assist along our life way: to be better people: more healed, sober, kind, more open to learning, more surrendered, less a victim of haste, less compulsive.
Then recently I discovered this marvelous reference to the Iris as symbolic of Mary's Light-Receiving Eye. Of course this isn't about Mary's optic sight but rather as the first disciple and model of the Christian life, her inner sight. But our eyes are only light-receiving when we are awake. This is what Mary did at Bethlehem - she was awake to Christ: awake to his presence in her arms, awake to his cries, his need for comforting,
Mary awake at Bethlehem invites us to wake up to the One who calls himself Light - awake and out of the cultural slumber - news clips, slogans and opinions we call truths. Cultural sleep is constantly looking for the new product with new and even better promises, the new star in the new movie, the new scandal, the new advice from the next new expert, the new sensory excitement.
Thomas Merton writes that waking up means discovering God's presence where it wasn't expected. Waking up is the intuition I know didn't come from myself. Waking up is something we each have to do for ourselves, it isn't information someone hands on in a book or lecture. Gratitude grows out of the awakening and gratitude itself is an awakening. Both!
Thomas Merton writes that waking up means discovering God's presence where it wasn't expected. Waking up is the intuition I know didn't come from myself. Waking up is something we each have to do for ourselves, it isn't information someone hands on in a book or lecture. Gratitude grows out of the awakening and gratitude itself is an awakening. Both!
