Assisting Children In Moving
From Garden to World
John S. Stokes Jr. Mary's Gardens Website Aug 15. 2003
There appear to be observable times of readiness for the guidance
of children in the stages of religious growth, just as there are
times for assistance in crawling, motor skills, walking, talking,
reading and writing, etc.
As with "Tip-toeing to Mary" and "Talking with Mary in the Garden",
the first stage - in a home of religious devotion - may be an
entering of one- and two-year olds into simple spiritual communion
and conversation with Mary before her approachable statue in a
flower border.
Then, the details of the Gospel story - learned through Christmas
creches, picture books and praying of the family Rosary - can be
given a special imaginative vividness by the time-unctioned
symbolism of the medieval Flowers of Our Lady in the family Mary
Garden, as chronicled in "In Mary's Garden".
When the question of the purpose of Creation arises in the child's
mind, flowers and the care for them in gardens exemplify that God
has created the world to show forth and share with us his
goodness; and that, with the guidance of his revelation and the
promptings of his grace, we are to share in his action by caring
for the world and developing it - with culmination to be in the
building and coming of God's earthly Peaceable Kingdom, for which
we pray in the "Our Father".
Further, the growth of all plants to their perfection in flowers
exemplifies the flowering in spiritual perfection to which we all
are called, for our sharing God's goodness to the fullest of our
potential. This provides the opportunity to instruct
children that just as flowers grow through water, sunlight, air
and soil, so are they to grow in spiritual perfection through
their openness to God's grace, light, wisdom and power - that they
may most perfectly receive and act on God's spiritual prompting for
Kingdom.
In this, children, in the garden context, have as their model, St.
Therese of Lisieux, the "Little Flower", in her reliance on the
waters of God's grace, the sunlight of his illumination, and the
breath of his Holy Spirit, as she grew to her full spiritual
flowering. Like St. Therese, children are to emulate the virtues
through which Mary became most fully open and responsive to God,
and filled with grace: her immaculate purity, her utter humility,
and her total fidelity to God's word.
In the Mary Garden, reflection on these virtues of Mary is
quickened each time we behold the white lily of purity, the lowly
violet of humility, and Our Lady's Eardrops (fuchsia) adorning her
ears in honor of her hearing of God's word and keeping it.
It is of special relevance here that there was a statue of Our
Lady - "Our Lady of the Smile" - in St. Therese's family home
garden, placed there by her father; and that her childhood
devotion to Our Lady through this statue continued into her adult
life, such that in her final illness she requested that the statue
be brought into her convent sick room, where, before it, she heard
the voice of the Blessed Mother just before she died.
Perhaps the greatest challenge to parents and guardians is the
preparation of children for the transition from sanctity in
the home and church environment to a life of sanctity and work for
God in the world.
For this, children, when they show a readiness to distinguish
right from wrong, are to be instructed as to way of the world
while they are still in the protective spiritual environment of
home and garden. The essence of the way of the world is the
prideful, selfish and often violent accumlation and possession of
creatures by some, with diminishment or blocking of their access
by others, instead of a just sharing of them as created by God to
show forth and share his goodness for all.
An example of this, in the garden context, would be that of a home
gardener who would steal plants from a neighbor's garden, and
perhaps even force the neighbor to care for them, and otherwise to
provide pleasure for him or her - instead of joining in the shared
rising from the beholding of creatures to a rejoicing in God's
goodness which they show forth.
It can be be pointed out that this is what happened with the first
humans, in the first garden: the attempted enjoyment of creatures
in themselves, apart from their showing forth of God's goodness in
the harmony of Creation and their incorporation in the shared
divine/human building of the earthly Peaceable Kingdom - with
consequent withdrawal by God of his rejected guiding grace for
this; followed by the human fall into rivalry and murder, and the
consequent general disruption of the initial harmony of Creation.
That this might be overcome, and the buiding of the earthly
Peaceable Kingdom resumed; God, through Moses, first of all gave
humans the Ten Commandments - to love God above all things, and to
cease coveting, lying, stealing and killing, etc. in the
possessive love of creatures.
He then, through Mary, gave the world his only begotten Son
incarnate to take upon himself all the creature sins of the world,
and - in satisfaction for their offenses to the Father - to banish
them with the sacrificial death of his body into the nothingness
of the outer darkness; following which the Father restored to the
world the sanctifying and guiding grace for resumption of the
building of the earthly Peaceable Kingdom in culmination of
Creation.
In this, God the Son, with the command above all to love God and
one another, called for avoidance of the temptations of the
captial sins of creature misuse: of pride, envy, anger, avarice,
lust, gluttony and sloth - that humans might more fully, in grace,
take up again the building of the Peaceable Kindom through
relationships of truth, justice, love, freedom and peace.
Children are to undertake this building, first in their family,
neighorhood and school relatonships, and then, when older, in
their work, social and political worlds.
Finally, and equally necessary for the building of the Peaceable
Kingdom, God has called us - and has recently called us again,
through Our Lady at Fatima - to offer sacrificially for and with
Christ, who takes them all upon himself, all the inconveniences,
irritations, adversities and sufferings of our daily lives and
duties for the reparational banishment into nothingness also of the
effects of sin causing these, and causing all the ills the world -
that with this diminishment of the total effects of sin circulating
in the world, the hearts of rulers, leaders, activists and all may,
increasingly freed from these effects, respond in their inherent
created goodness of heart and mind to the promptings of God's
graces of truth, justice, love, freedom and peace.
In his desire for us to share in the divine action in love, God
wishes us to join both in the building of the earthly Peaceable
Kingdom and in his reparational sacrifice to purge the fallen world
of the effects of sin that this building can be continued. Peace
on earth awaits the fullness of the offering as sacrifices of all
the adversities of our daily lives and duties. In this, even our
slightest adversities are offensive to God's intention of the
harmony of Creation, and are to be offered by us in sacrifice, with
Christ, in diminishment of the effects of sin circulating in the
world so as to cause them.
Children, as they enter the world, are to be counseled ever to
pray and to examine themselves for the avoidance of temptations to
creature abuse; to make recourse to the penances and healing
graces of the sacrament of reconciliation if they fall into such
temptations; and to sustain a fullnss of sanctifying grace through
the eucharistic communion of the Mass, that they may be ever more
responsive to the promptings of God's actual graces guiding their
actions for Kingdom, as prayed for in the Rosary.
But more than this, "the best defense is a good offense". In
emulation of Mary's union with her Divine Son's Passion and Cross,
chidren entering the world are to now to pray the sorrowful
mysteries of the Rosary - and to reflect on the flower symbols of
these in the Mary Garden - in mortificational freeing of their
wills (agony in the garden), bodies (scourging), intellects
(crowning with thorns) feelings (carrying of the cross) and their
very lives (crucufixion) for total openess and responsiveness to
God's will, grace an providence. Similarly, they can intensify
the offering of each of their daily sacrifices, as they occur, by
envisioning the corresponding sorrow into which Christ incorporates
it in his sacrificial offering - continued in all the daily masses
of the world.
Ever-increasingly mortified, children, as young adults, are ever
more fully to offer sacrificially all the adversities of their
lives in reparational diminishment of the tempting effects of sin
in the world, that all may be increasingly freed to further the
building of the Peaceable Kingdom. Just a single such sacrificial
offering, for and with Christ, has the reparational potential of
freeing a leader to make a key decision de-escalating violence, in
a move from war to peace - although the general establishment of
peace on earth awaits the fullness of daily sacrifices offered
reparationally to this end, for and with the Sacred Heart of
Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary - as called for by Our
Lady at Fatima.
Finally, as children and young adults continue their meditative
praying of the glorious mysteries of the Rosary, and meditate on
the flower symbols recalling these, they enter, with Mary, assumed
into heaven, into ever fuller union with God, and thus with his
will for the building and coming of his Peaceable Kingdom, through
Mary's intercession and universal mediation, in union with her
divine Son - through which God increasingly accomplishes in her,
and in us, in our emulation of her, the fullness of personal human
sharing in the divine action, desired by him for Creation.
Details of this summation are to be found in the website "Flowers
of Our Lady and Mary Gardens for Schools Reference/Index".
Aug 20 2003 - Father Thomas A. Stanley, S.M.
Our Lady of the Smile
The statue in St. Theresa's family garden was a small commercial
replica of Our Lady of Consolation, done by a noted artist and
found in the church of St. Sulpice in Paris. It is a statue of
Mary with arms extended toward the viewer.
When Theresa was ten years old she fell victim of a mysterious
malady the doctors were unable to diagnose. She was near death and
asked that the family statue of Our Lady be brought to her room.
When she turned to look at it she said the statue smiled at her and
that from that moment she began her recovery to full health. Hence
the title O. L. of the Smile.
Copyright 1998-2003, The Ferralli
Group. Erie, PA