Bring Flowers of the Rarest

Our voices ascending,  In harmony blending,
Oh! Thus may our hearts turn  Dear Mother,   to thee;
Oh! Thus shall we prove thee How truly we love thee,
How dark without Mary Life's journey would be.
O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May,
O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.

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     At the end of our day's labor, with great joy we bring the overflowing remaining flower petals from the Corpus Christi Procession to Our Lady in the tree at the convent.  What does a child eagerly bring to its mother? We are so happy to shower our own Blessed Mother with the rose petals because they demonstrate our great love for her.  She is constantly at our side, nurturing us, leading us, teaching us - we could not live without her!  We are so confident of her aid and believe with all our hearts that She will us to reach our true Homeland.
    There are so many flowers that symbolize Our Lady's virtues, but the Rose is perhaps the flower most associated with the Heavenly Queen.   We think of St. Juan Diego and the roses of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mystical Rose, The yellow roses at the feet of the Blessed Virgin when she appeared to St.  Bernadette. Saint Brigid says: “The Virgin may suitably be called a blooming rose. Just as the gentle rose is placed among thorns, So this gentle Virgin was surrounded by sorrow.”  According to St. John Newman, the Blessed Virgin Mary is called Rosa Mystica, the Mystical Rose, because 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.”
     The most common association of the rose is with the Virgin Mary. The third-century St. Ambrose believed that there were roses in the Garden of Eden, initially without thorns, but which became thorny after the fall, and came to symbolize original sin itself. Thus the Blessed Virgin is often referred to as the 'rose without thorns', since she was immaculately conceived. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux compared her virginity to a white rose and her charity to a red rose. With the rise of Marian devotion and the Gothic cathedral in the twelfth century, the image of the rose became even more prominent in religious life. Cathedrals built around this time usually include a rose window, dedicated to the Virgin, at the end of a transept or above the entrance. The thirteenth century St. Dominic is credited with the institution of the Rosary, a series of prayers to the Virgin, symbolized by garlands of roses worn in Heaven.
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