The Meaning of Mary’s Rose

Виолетова, CC BY-SA 4.0

December 12th is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

This commemorates the miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary to a poor native Mexican named Juan Diego in 1531.

To convince the archbishop to build a church in her honor, Mary directed Juan to collect roses in his cloak and present them to his Grace. When Juan opened his cloak before the archbishop, all the roses tumbled out revealing a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary imprinted on the fabric.

The image on the cloak showed a distinctly New World Mary in all the garb of an Aztec princess, but the roses that proceeded her were of the Old World.

Accounts say the flowers were Castilian roses, also known as Damask roses (Rosa damascena). These roses are not native to the Americas and certainly wouldn’t be blooming in the middle of December. The Spanish archbishop would have immediately recognized them, as the Damask rose has a long history in Europe and the Middle East.

In European Catholicism, the rose is a privileged symbol of the Virgin Mary and was often cultivated in monastery gardens. Spain’s Muslim neighbors also revered the Damask rose as a spiritual symbol, calling it The Flower of the Prophet Mohammad.

The combined symbols of a distinctly Native America Mary and European roses signified a unity among both peoples in God’s love. As the flowers fell to the floor, they may have also been a sign for the Old World to make room for the new.

Brian Rutter, PhD, is the cofounder of Hundredfold Video and plant biologist working for 2Blades at the University of Minnesota. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our “Sower Stories – Odd Facts About Plants” and video production tips in your inbox every month!