The iris has a dark-blue flower, with leaves shaped like a sword. Therefore it is often called the sword-lily, and has been chosen as the emblem of warfare. If thou dost aspire to be a lily of purity thou must seize the sword. If you wouldst live chase and spotless thou must not fear the battle, but must stand armed and prepared to fight. After the fall of our first parents and their expulsion from the garden of Paradise, a cherub with a flaming sword was placed at the entrance of it in order to guard it. St. Michael also was armed with a sword, and with it drove Lucifer and his followers out of heaven.
The flower of the sword-lily is of a dark-blue or purple color, the emblem of sorrow and penance. In time of Advent, when we are sighing for the coming of Christ, and purify our sighs and yearnings by penance, or in Lent, when with sorrow and contrition we contemplate the bitter sufferings and passion of our Savior, the Church assumes a purple coloring. Our hearts should be ever like the flower of the sword-lily, clad with the garment of sorrow and compassion—sorrow for our sins and compassion for the dead, who are always so grateful for our love and repay our remembrance of them a thousand fold.
~Louis Gemminger.
We cannot take too many precautions when eternity is in question.
~St. Gregory.
The flower of the sword-lily is of a dark-blue or purple color, the emblem of sorrow and penance. In time of Advent, when we are sighing for the coming of Christ, and purify our sighs and yearnings by penance, or in Lent, when with sorrow and contrition we contemplate the bitter sufferings and passion of our Savior, the Church assumes a purple coloring. Our hearts should be ever like the flower of the sword-lily, clad with the garment of sorrow and compassion—sorrow for our sins and compassion for the dead, who are always so grateful for our love and repay our remembrance of them a thousand fold.
~Louis Gemminger.
We cannot take too many precautions when eternity is in question.
~St. Gregory.
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