The worship of the Church, and the beauty of holiness

by J. A. Regester

The Pomegranate, with mystic association from remote antiquity with the idea of life, became the symbol of a hopeful future, the emblem of immortality.

The Oak is the representative of supernatural strength and power. In pagan antiquity it was especially dedicated in the West to Thor, the thunder-god. The familiar story of St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany, relates how he found in the country of the Hessians an enormous tree, called the Oak of Thor, greatly revered by the people and held inviolably sacred. St. Boniface cut it down in token of the triumph of Christ. When it fell with a mighty crash, and Thor gave no sign, the heathen folk, who stood about in awe, accepted the token and were converted. The stroke of St. Boniface's ax overthrew Thor, but could not altogether destroy the associations of the ancient belief. The reverence for the oak long survived; and the veneration for it, Christianized in meaning, led to its reproduction, with symbolic reference to the power of the God of gods, in many beautiful forms of leaf and spray and clustered acorn, in church decoration.

In like manner, we find flowers held sacred to heathen goddesses lifted out of that association and invested with higher and purer emblematic meaning.

The Lily, the flower of Juno, became the flower of the holy Virgin, and its snowy whiteness the symbol of Christian purity. It is often seen in the conventional form of the fleur-de-lis.

The Rose before the coming of Christianity was a mystic flower among Northern races. Among the Greeks and Romans it was the flower of Venus and the symbol of earthly love. Its symbolism felt also the redeeming touch of Christian sentiment. The love of which it is the emblem became not an earthly, but a heavenly love. As the lily tells of her purity, so the rose tells of the love that was in the heart of the Blessed Virgin. But this was but the reflection of a higher and a divine love, of which the rose was also the symbol.

How that thought of the love of heaven coming down to earth was expressed emblematically by the rose, we may see in the story of its origin which the Christian fancy of the middle ages invented. It was said that a holy maiden of Bethlehem, "blamed with wrong and slandered, was doomed to the death; and as the fire began to burn about her she made her prayers to our Lord that, as she was not guilty of that sin, He would help her and make it to be known to all men, of His merciful grace. And when she had thus said, anon was the fire quenched and out, and the brands that were burning became red roseries, and the brands that were not kindled became white roseries, full of roses. And these were the first roseries and roses, both white and red, that ever any man saw."

So the rose became the flower of martyrs, the presage of the beauty and joy of Paradise. With the same thought, the early Christians decorated with roses the graves of martyrs and confessors on the anniversary of their death. It has been conjectured that it is from this connection of the rose with Paradise, and with the thought of the love which accomplished our salvation, that the rite of the "golden rose" has been derived—the rite in which the Pope, on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, blesses a golden rose adorned with jewels, which he afterward bestows upon some person he desires especially to honor. In the prayers which are used in this rite, our Lord is alluded to as the "eternal Rose that has gladdened the heart of the world."

The interesting plant known as the Passion-flower, although of comparatively modern origin, is now freely used to symbolize the passion of our Lord. The ten faithful apostles,—omitting St. Peter who denied and Judas who betrayed our Lord,—the hammer and the nails, the cross, the five sacred wounds, the crown of thorns, the cords which bound Him, are all, by an exaggerated symbolism and straining after analogy, supposed to be represented by its various parts. It was discovered by early Spanish settlers in America, and was welcomed by them as useful in teaching Christianity to the Indians. It is the one contribution of the new continent to the ecclesiastical symbolism of flowers.

Symbols of the Evangelists and Apostles.—The Evangelists are often represented by four scrolls, four open books, or four streams of water issuing from Christ the Rock; but most commonly the Evangelistic symbols are the Man, the Lion, the Ox, and the Eagle. These figures refer to the mysterious creatures described by the prophet Ezekiel, and afterward by St. John, as adoring ceaselessly before the throne of God. "They rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come." The man is assigned to St. Matthew and his Gospel, because of the manner in which the manhood of our Lord is set forth, the lion to St. Mark, because he shows His royal dignity and power; the ox to St. Luke, because his is the sacrificial Gospel and dwells on the Atonement; and the eagle to St. John, because his Gospel rises to the contemplation of the sublimest mysteries of the Christian faith.