Like the lily, we, too, are being cultivated by another

During the Easter season, churches across the country are decorated with white lilies, the vast majority of which are grown today in the Pacific Northwest – in the border counties between Oregon and Northern California – and then shipped around the nation. 

Before the 1940s, this species – the lilium longiflorum – was imported, mostly from Japan. But the trumpet-shaped flower, bringing to mind the angelic horns that sound to celebrate the Good News, have since become synonymous with paschal decorations and have led to a booming U.S.-based business.

However, there is a long tradition of ancient Christian symbolism connected with this particular flower. The first indigenous American saint, Kateri Tekakwitha, is frequently referred to as the “Lily of the Mohawks.” Saints Casimir, Anthony of Padua, and Louis, King of France also have a symbolic association with the flower, which over time, even gave birth to the logo of the New Orleans Saints football team via its Bourbon heraldic history, as the fleur-de-lis is historically related to the lily (even though it technically looks more like an iris).

In scenes of the Annunciation, a lily often appears in Mary or Gabriel’s hand, or sometimes in the background as a potted plant. Here, and in frequent depictions of Saint Joseph, the lily brings to mind spotless purity or chastity. Though perhaps more commonly associated with the Mystical Rose, Mary herself is sometimes connected with the beloved in the Song of Solomon, where it reads: “As a lily among thorns, so is my darling among the daughters.” (2:2) Jesus, too, extols the plant explicitly, when he tells us not to be anxious about what to eat or drink or wear: “Look at the lilies of the field; how the grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Mt 6:28-30).

In a number of medieval Last Judgment paintings, Christ the Judge has a lily springing forth from one side of his mouth and a sword from the other, normally referencing the just and the damned, the latter of whom are frequently depicted in graphic and lurid scenes of torment.

Legends claim that lilies were supposed to have sprung up where Christ’s blood dropped from his brow in the Garden of Gethsemane as he prayed for the bitter cup of suffering in the passion to pass him by. Sometimes, they are pictured at the foot of the Cross, in Jesus’ empty tomb, or in Mary’s grave after the Assumption. For this reason, they are sometimes poetically referred to as “white robed apostles of hope.”

Non-Christian traditions like Buddhism and pagan Greece and Rome long used lilies as symbols of enlightenment and fertility, respectively. Even the Milky Way galaxy is connected to them through the myth that when Zeus tricked Hera into breastfeeding Heracles, the spurt of milk that splattered across the sky when she discovered the treachery and pulled herself free from the infant formed the path of the stars; a drop that reached the earth led to the sprouting of the first white lily on earth.

In a sort of ironic etymological connection to all this, the Lilly Endowment (spelled with two L’s after its founder, chemist and businessman Eli Lilly, but likely not unrelated etymologically) today funds tens of millions of dollars of philanthropic support for theological education and spiritual formation, including across the Catholic world.

So this year, as our parishes explode with beauty and fragrance after the austerity of an early and wintry Lent, keep in mind Peter Burn’s encouraging 19th century poem: 

“Consider the lilies, Ye sons of despair.

Consider the lilies, Ye daughters of care.

And from them, instruction receive:

Though fragile and feeble, yet, see how they grow.

‘Thy toil not, they spin not,’ nor care do they know.

But, kept by their Maker, they live.

Consider the lilies!

To them ever give, attention and study –

They’ll teach you to live.

The secret of peace they will show;

Then, ye from distresses, and cares shall be free.

Like them ye shall flourish, though lowly ye be.

Like them, ye in vigor shall grow.”

May we take the flowers’ lesson to heart, and realize that we, too, are being cultivated by the hand of Another, thereby exalting Him who was once mistaken by Mary Magdalene for a simple gardener.

An alumnus of Camden Catholic High School, Cherry Hill, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.