Nature's Proclamation of Passion

Passion is often associated with any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, such as love or hate, but it began with a much different meaning in the 12th and 13th centuries. It implied suffering, enduring, hurt, misery, woe. It was used in reference to the sufferings of Christ on the cross.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries adopted the unique physical structures of this plant as symbols of the last days of Jesus and especially his crucifixion:

• The 10 petals and sepals represent the 10 apostles who forsook their Master and fled, omitting Judas the traitor, and John who remained with Mary at the cross.

• The flower’s radial filaments, which can number more than a hundred and vary from flower to flower, represent the crown of thorns.

• The chalice-shaped ovary with its receptacle represents a hammer or the cup used at the last supper

• The 3 stigmata represent the 3 nails and the 5 anthers below them the 5 wounds (four by the nails and one by the lance).

• The blue and white colors represent heaven and purity.

• Its central pillar represents the column where our Lord was so brutally flogged

• The many slender tendrils surrounding its base were likened to the cords and whips used in the scourging.

• The rays within the flower form a nimbus, representing Our Lord's divine glory.

• The leaves on many of these plants are shaped like the spear that pierced His heart.

• The round shape of the passion fruit itself represents the sinful world that Christ came to save by the supreme sacrifice of His life.

All this gives real meaning to the following Scripture:

Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.