Our Lady of the Hawthorn

The May Tree and the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts of Jesus and Mary

“Mary was the rootless rod of Aaron the priest which had not yet budded, yet brought forth buds, and blooms, and blossoms”

St Bernard, Sermon for Sunday in the octave of the Assumption

At Beauraing in Belgium in 1932-1933 Our Lady appeared 33 times to some children. At first she appeared to them on the viaduct above the street, but soon she came to rest on a Hawthorn tree, which is still there at the shrine today. She is known informally there as Our Lady of the Hawthorn, a title she has also been given in other places. In fact, I was astonished to discover that she is honoured under the title of Our Lady of the Thorn in Belgium, Spain and France at various shrines.

But I was interested to see if there was any connection of Our Lady with the May Tree in England. Every year in mid-May our English lanes and hedgerows are bursting with these frothy white blossoms, and it has always seemed a particularly English tree to me.

Of course, you wouldn’t have to look far for a connection. According to tradition, St Joseph of Arimathea, mentioned by all four Gospels as the provider of the tomb for Jesus’ burial and probably the uncle of the Virgin Mary, is said to have come to England on a mission in AD 63, having been sent by Philip the apostle. Being a tin-merchant and having already made the journey to England many times, Joseph would have been familiar with the route. He came to Wearyall Hill, at present-day Glastonbury, which would then have been an island, and planted his staff in the earth. It immediately shot forth into leaves and blossoms.

St. Joseph of Arimathea built a church dedicated to Our Lady at Glastonbury. This ancient wattle church would have been the earliest place of devotion to Our Lady in the country. At the beginning of the 8th Century King Ine, the great Wessex monarch ordered it free from tax:

“In order that the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the eternal Virgin Mary, as it is first in the kingdom of Britain and the source and fountain of all religion, may obtain surpassing dignity and privilege…I appoint and establish that all lands, places and possessions of St Mary of Glastonbury be free from all royal taxes and works.”

You can read the fascinating story of The Flowering Hawthorn written by Hugh Ross Williamson. Buy direct from Arouca Press here.

Symbolically as a tree that points to the Cross and Resurrection, and Our Lady also, the hawthorn is fascinating. It has simple white flowers for the purity of Our Lady, but it also has sharp thorns which remind us of the Crown of Thorns, and also of the sufferings of Our Lady of Sorrows.

In January, I had some concerns about my cardiac health. I felt some arrythmia and looked for remedies. At the same time I was very interested in the apparition at Beauraing, in particular when Our Lady showed the children her golden heart. This was in January 1933. I felt that Our Lady was trying to tell me to use the Hawthorn as a remedy.

I didn’t realise at the time but Marie-Julie Jahenny, the Breton Stigmatist, was supposedly given this cure for a future plague by Our Lady:

“You know the leaves of thorns that grow in almost any hedges (white hawthorn). The leaves of this thorn will stop the progress of the disease. You must pick the leaves, not the wood. Even dry, they will retain their effectiveness.

Put them in boiling water and leave them there for 14 minutes, covering the container so that the steam remains. When the malady first attacks, you must use this remedy three times a day.”

Whatever the truth of this is, there is no doubt that Hawthorn is powerful for the heart. “Rich in antioxidant polyphenols, hawthorn appears to work by helping strengthen the heart muscle, reducing or preventing degeneration of blood vessels and improving blood flow by dilating the coronary arteries.” It has an astonishing array of properties which make it a well-known remedy for the heart, and it certainly has been very effective in my own treatment.

The tea made from the leaves and flowers, and of course the berries, are a coppery, blood-red. Along with the pure white flowers, this combination of white for purity and red for suffering leads us to the Passion, and to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, and the Suffering and Immaculate Heart of His Mother.

Joseph of Arimathea is said to have brought two silver cruets filled with the blood and sweat of Christ with him to Glastonbury, and the two springs there at the foot of Chalice Hill are called the red spring and the white spring because of the different colours of their water - the red spring has a very high iron content and is wonderfully refreshing.

Chalice Hill and Chalice Well at Glastonbury are connected with the legend of the Holy Grail. I will leave it up to Hugh Ross Williamson to draw out the Marian connection:

“The Christianised Grail is inseparable from the Virgin Mary. As one of the Welsh poets writing at the time of the romances put it: Christ, son of Mary, my cauldron of pure descent’. And Mr Geoffrey Ashe, who has written on this particular matter with more perspicacity than anyone else, has suggested that the true answer to the crucial question that must be asked if the Waste Land is to revivify: ‘Whom does the Grail serve?’ is ‘Mary’. Now, the one thing that Glastonbury was more than anything else and beyond all dispute, was the shrine of devotion to the Virgin Mary. From the building of the Wattle Church, it had been so. It was on Our Lady of Glastonbury that both Arthur and Alfred had called for succour and their victories had made her to be regarded as something which may be called, without irreverence, the Christian talisman of England. It was the saving of her image from the fire - presumably the statue accredited to Joseph of Arimathea - that was the miraculous comfort of the monks.

She formed another, and the most potent link, between the Grail and Glastonbury. More than the connection of the folklore Arthur with the cauldron of Annwn at Avalon; more than the reputed coming of Joseph of Arimathea to the Glass Island; more than the existence of an abbey of European fame, the cultus of Our Lady, stretching back to the very beginning of the Christian Era, connected the Grail with Glastonbury. And in the centuries to come, fostered in part by the Grail romances, the influence increased so that England itself was known quite simply as ‘Our Lady’s Dowry’.”