Mary the Sunflower...

 

This year we’ve had many sunflowers throughout our garden; wherever I looked, whatever corner I turned, there was another majestic golden head rising to greet me and fill my heart with something of the sunshine it had imbibed...and how grateful we are for the long sunny summer we’ve been blessed with this year.... Somehow the sunflowers were there, everywhere...a real presence... 

I was reminded of the beautiful phrase in our Carmelite Constitutions describing the important role of Mary in our lives... It says:  ‘Mary’s presence among her daughters and sisters pervades the entire Carmelite vocation.  It imparts a special Marian tone to their contemplation, sisterhood’ etc...

Her presence PERVADES...  Doesn’t that give a real sense of her closeness to us, her inspiration and protection?   Yes, the history of Carmel overflows with the presence of the Virgin Mary.    

I’d like to share with you the beautiful reflection on Mary by our recently canonised Carmelite Saint, Titus Brandsma, whom he likens... to the sunflower!

Devotion to Mary is one of the most delightful flowers in Carmel’s garden.

I should like to call it a sunflower.  This flower rises high above all the other flowers. 

Borne aloft on a tall stem, rich in green leaves, the flower is raised yet higher from the green foliage.

It is characteristic of this flower to turn itself towards the sun and moreover it is an image of the sun.  It is a simple flower: it can grow in all gardens and it is an ornament to all.  It is tall and firm and has deep roots like a tree.  In the same way, no devotion is firmer than that of virtues, with which the devotion to Mary is surrounded.

The flower itself represents the soul created after God’s image in order to absorb the sunlight of God’s bounty.  Two suns shining into each other, one radiant with an unfathomable light, the other absorbing that light, basking in that light and glowing like the sun, but so enraptured by the beams of the SUN which shines on it, that it cannot turn itself away  from Him, but can only live for Him and through Him. 

Such a flower is Mary.  Like her, so may we, flowers from her seed, raise our flower buds to the Sun who infused Himself into her and will transmit to us also the beams of His light and warmth...

And I love to think of Mary gently dispensing the light in case it would be too much for us...

‘Through her we may see him 

Made sweeter, not made dim,

And her hand leaves his light

Sifted to suit our sight’.                      G. M. Hopkins