The flower that we have paired with Pope Saint John Paul the Great is the Edelweiss. The Austrian flower can be found at high elevations in the Alps
(a place where John Paul II spent much time skiing, hiking, writing poetry, leading the youth, or serving secret masses). The flower is associated with a victory in ability to have made a great ascent, which certainly is fitting of the Great Saint. But moreover, the poem reminds us of a poem that he wrote, “Over This, Your White Grave”, which John Paul II dedicated to his mother on the 10th anniversary of her death.
The poem offers an (as so much of his figurative writing does) insight to the way the Great Saint felt about those people around him in his life: that they were a treasure to know because of the value that they had in the eyes of God. Because the Edelweiss offers this insight, it was in a place John Paul II treasured so much, and because it already holds such a deep symbolic nature surrounding ascent (as unto the cross), it seemed a very fitting flower to pair with the Great man,