Roses are perhaps the most popular flower — surely the best known flower, the most loved flower. The Litany of Loreto calls Mary, Mystical Rose. For Catholics, mystical doesn't mean faraway, out of reach rose, but rose so close, we might well miss the meaning. Before the Protestant Reformation, the rose was called Mary's Mystical Participation in the Holy Trinity. That's a mouthful.
Late Medieval paintings often show Mary sitting inside the Holy Trinity — the Father and the Son placing a crown on Mary's head, the Spirit with wings spread, floating above. Carl Jung considered the 1950 declaration of Mary's Assumption to be the most important religious event of the 20th century — that Mary's Assumption, and her taking her place within the Trinity, restored the feminine aspect to God's inner life. Some even suggest that Mary's stepping into the Trinity turned God's inner life into a more complete quaternity.
We don't need to dissect that. Sufficient here to think about the rose itself. The roses pictured here are bunching. Not like the hybridized, forced, long stem, single roses we pay big money for at Valentines Day. These more wild roses are abundant and kind of overflowing — like Mary's yes! and the fullness of her life lived in nearness to Christ. And that after all, is what Christianity is supposed to be, isn't it? Not a dogma book, not an ethical system, but a fragrant encounter with the living person of Jesus Christ, who patterns for me my own life, lived abundantly, uniquely and beautifully.
But notice as well — at the far right, bottom half of the photo, there is a spent rose. The petals have faded and fallen off, making room for the newer opening buds. To live that abundant Christ-life: "I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness." John 10:10 something old has to be allowed to fade off or drop away. What might that mean? From time to time, do I hear myself saying, "I used to think that way, but I don't anymore." "I used to act that way, but I don't anymore."
What a pity — a life lived religiously, that doesn't change and evolve — that's lived like everyone else.
