The passionflower is the symbolic reference for Good Friday, which commemorates the crucifixion of Christ at Calvary.

As legend has it, while Roman monastic scholar Jacomo Bosio was researching his extensive treatise on the Cross of Calvary in 1609, a Mexican Augustinian friar, Emmanuel de Villegas, showed Bosio sketches of the passionflower.

The drawings were so "stupendously marvelous" that Bosio feared they were greatly exaggerated. Bosio was convinced the flower was real only after receiving further drawings and descriptions from New Spain priests, being assured by Mexican Jesuits passing through Rome that the flower existed, and reviewing poems and essays by the Dominicans at Bologna.

Bosio concluded that it was his manifest duty to introduce this flower to the world as the most wondrous example of the mysteries of the Passion of Christ. Bosio observed that the bell-shaped flower developed slowly, then after being open just a day, closed back into its bell form as it slowly faded away. He wrote, "It may well be that in HIS infinite wisdom it pleases HIM to create it thus, shut up and protected, as though to indicate that the wonderful mysteries of the cross and of HIS passion were to remain hidden from the heathen people of these countries until the time preordained by HIS highest majesty."

In Peru and the West Indies, Spanish descendants still call it the Flower of the Five Wounds.

The multiple symbolism of the passionflower provided a specific focus of Christian faith to the religious sense of nature, and furnished a visual tool for teaching the Gospel story in an era when there were no printed catechisms. Spanish missionaries used the plant to teach South American Indians about the Christ's suffering and crucifixion.

Scholars argue that one test of the authenticity of religious prophets was the enduring acceptance by the community of their prophecies. When religious flower symbols achieve this enduring acceptance, as did the passionflower, their "prophetic" function enriches the faith and devotion of believers.

Apart from the religious symbolism, the passionflower's aesthetic beauty transcends our imagination, and reveals the spiritual epiphany that nature provides in our daily life.