The hidden spiritual meanings of the poppy

Skinny and fluffy stem, red dress quickly crumpled or flown away… In the family of wildflowers, the poppy can be spotted at first glance by its scarlet face, like the cockscomb which gave it its name. , among wild chicory, blueberries, dandelions, soapwort and angelica…

It immediately announces the color, in the monochrome fields or the wasteland that we thought was doomed to greyness. Celebrated by all painters, it is the emblem of the natural flower, those wild flowers that God dresses and of which the Gospel tells us that He will do even more for us (Mt 6). Those that the chubby little hands of children pick up and that when they come back from a walk, you put them in a glass of water where they hasten to pitch down. Fragile among all the flowers, the poppy does not suffer from being transported. It cannot be kept to offer as a bouquet.

This happiness which is in the meadow

Blooming in the morning and withering the same evening, it must be contemplated immediately, where it is planted, here and now. For the man in a hurry who constantly postpones the meeting to another time, elsewhere or later, it indicates the real presence, like the little red light which awaits souls in the chiaroscuro of the church. This happiness which is in the meadow and which we let slip by always running to something else, here is which symbolizes very well the paradoxes of the spiritual life.

The poppy is the other flower of love, that of nursery rhymes and children’s games, less proud than the rose, with no other thorns to defend itself than its frugality. Poppy weddings, celebrated every eight years of marriage, are those of milestones humbly crossed, when love becomes aware of its fragility and the care it demands every day that God does. Flowers have always been associated with the passage of time and the seasons of life. They often take their name from the liturgical season, like the hellebore, known as the “Christmas rose” or “Lenten rose”, because it is one of the few to bloom in winter, the impressive passion flower, whose calyx evokes passion of Christ. The daisies, which announce the arrival of Easter, suddenly covering the green grass with a white mantle like the linen of the Risen One, the orchid of the Holy Spirit, in the shape of a dove with outstretched wings, when Pentecost comes…

Countless, like the stars in the sky

Innumerable, like the stars in the sky, indestructible, even if the poppy has become the emblem of resistance against the ravages of pesticides on wild plants, the flowers of the fields celebrate the marriage of the ephemeral and the profusion, the power of life. Thus the buttercups which crawl and grow anywhere, whatever the nature of the earth, good or bad, invaded by brambles, and even on the road; the dandelion which reseeds itself so well in the four winds, with its ball-shaped crests, the mallow which climbs the walls and the embankments. They come by themselves, reseed themselves and we find them every season. “That says a lot about God’s faithfulness. We know that we have an appointment, and that He will be there”, says Sister Odile (see opposite), gardener and Benedictine Sister of the Sainte-Croix abbey in Poitiers, who will accompany us all summer. for the composition of this mystical herbarium.