The Catechesis of Flowers
Why flowers and candles are fitting incarnations of prayers
I’ve always loved flowers, especially roses. But in my life until recently, fresh flowers were hard to come by. I wish I could’ve adopted the European instinct of buying fresh flowers, but alas, my purse never seemed to allow it. It was only when we first moved to the country that fresh flowers became a part of my life in a regular way. I have made it my habit every Sunday morning after Mass, to go out into the fields and the lane near our house to cut sprigs, vines, leaflets and fresh blooms to fill the vases on the various entryways and prayer spots in our home.
I am intentional about always having some kind of religious centerpiece on the dining table, as I’ve mentioned before, but during the month of May, we follow the traditional custom of creating a home altar to Our Lady.
Sometime ago, our piano bench died when its one weak leg irreparably splintered despite re-nailing, re-peggings and ample application of glue. I sadly recycled the pieces into the scrap pile, turned the storage space into a shallow spice cabinet, which left a large plank out of what had been the top. It turned out the plank fits semi-nicely across the wood rack, made by my son in his early welding days. When draped with a floral bedspread and lace remnants, anchored with pavers topped with glass jars of wildflowers and decked with Easter beeswax candles made by a family friend, it makes a credible May altar. This year, thanks to copious amounts of pale blue juniper berries, it had a very pastel look, which reminded me of fairyland, or of some of Tasha Tudor’s illustrations. The statue is a 1960s vintage one I bought for my baby daughter years ago, but she lets us use it in May.
I took this picture about a week into May, and you can see that the candles are burning low and that some of the flowers have begun to droop (although the juniper sprigs are still going strong!). Such altars need to be replenished, especially those crowded with baby-picked buttercups, dandelions, and clover crammed into jars. The dropped petals and leaves need to be removed, the pollen needs to be blown away, the vases refilled, the dead and dying flowers removed to the compost. These flowers do not keep themselves—they must be attended to. And that’s kind of the point.
I understand the temptation which many devotees of Our Lady fall into of decorating her statues and images with artificial flowers. While such fake flowers can be traditional—the silk blossoms of the Victorians or the glorious tissue paper flowers of the Mexicans—there is a loss of symbolism that comes with the convenience, and it can be profound in its catechetical implications. You see, flowers, like lit candles, do not last. Their very ephemerality is part of their meaning. Flowers and candles are symbols of prayers, and placing them around a sacred image is a form of a prayer. And prayer must be renewed.
This is more obvious, I think, with candles. Actual candles are consumed as they burn and that is meant to represent our souls—we pray to lose ourselves—or at least our cares and sorrows—in God. But like flowers, candles need to be constantly renewed and replaced with fresh ones. I believe Catholics discovered the importance this truth when too many of us succumbed to safety and insurance concerns and replaced the traditional banks of vigil candles in our churches with awful fake electric ones which plugged into the wall and turned on with the push of a button. (How susceptible to fads we Catholics are!) Well, it turns out that erasing the symbolism made most of us realize that a burning candle really is the incarnation of a prayer. There is something about actual flame that is sacred. Every Catholic Mass must have two lit candles according to the rubrics. It’s also wonderfully incarnational and catechetical to light candles when praying at home with children, as well as practical: nothing calms us down like lighting candles on the home altar before beginning the family Rosary—and even rushing to be the first to blow out the candles after prayer is a bit of a ritual, a rousing return to the everyday.
The ephemerality of the wax and flame reinforces the necessity of renewing prayer daily. It’s not enough to pray once and then have done—one must pray always, pray constantly, pray for the daily bread. It makes sense to pray with something that has a brief life. Electric candles and LED votives can lull us into thinking our one-time prayer is permanent—a dangerous fallacy. Real candles remind us of the reality.
And so do real flowers. Real flowers fade, dry out, drop blossoms, even rot. Pretty soon, what was once a lovely heartfelt sign of devotion is no more than rubbish. Using real flowers requires attentiveness. So does prayer.
I’ve come to believe that artificial flowers are not appropriate for a prayer altar, because they are far too non-ephemeral. The ephemerality of flowers, like the ephemerality of candles, is meant to serve a purpose liturgically. The flowers are a symbol of love, and love among us frail creatures fades and dies unless it is renewed regularly. A single prayer does not constitute a relationship with God any more than a single word can maintain a marriage. Spouses need to communicate their love for each other regularly, in whatever love language is mutually appreciated. And it needs to be done on at least a daily basis!
The efficacy of prayer does not last any more than a flower lasts. Using artificial flowers might fool us into thinking that we have given God and His saints a permanence of devotion that is actually… artificial. Just as a real flower begins to fade, droop, and eventually dries and dies, so our relationship with God needs ongoing renewal, or it too will die. Artificial flowers can mask that from us.
I remember the nuns telling us when I was a child that each Hail Mary was like a rose given to our Lady. Given the distracted rosaries I usually prayed, I sometimes pictured myself handing Mary handfuls of half-dead wilted flowers. But no matter. I certainly believe that prayers, however pathetic, can become flowers in heaven. Doesn’t it make sense that flowers could be prayers on earth?
It’s not a perfect exchange of course—heavenly roses will never cease to bloom just as the saints in heaven will never cease praising God, but tending and renewing the flowers at the altar remind us that in this life, we need to pray daily, and that we should renew our acts of devotion regularly. Advent and Lent are the given times for stirring up our emotions towards God, and May has been traditionally seen as a time to specially honor Mary. As Gerard Manley Hopkins notes, by May, three months after the incarnation, Mary would’ve felt the stirrings of Our Lord in her womb, so it is fitting to remind ourselves of her motherly beauty this month.
Our Mary altar becomes the Sacred Heart altar when June rolls around, and the nearly cloying feminine takes a distinctively masculine turn. I remove the draperies from wood and rocks, and pull out our red Christmas linens and candles to festoon our family image of Our Lord. Red and gold bush honeysuckle berries make a timely appearance, and this year, there were red roses left over from a daughter’s graduation dinner, which gave this year’s altar a majestic touch.
As I write this, the red roses on the Sacred Heart altar are drooping and need to be replaced. It’s yet another reminder that I need to make an act of devotion to the loving Heart of Our Lord as this month comes to a close. May His love touch your heart this June.