Of the Graces of Your Great Mercy

Holy Spirit, 'Send the dew of Your sweetness, and grant that, with my senses under control, my soul and my spirit may enjoy the fullness of the graces of Your great mercy. Cultivate the impressionable ground of my hardened heart of flesh so that it may be able to receive Your spiritual seed and make it bear fruit. We confess that only through Your great wisdom do the gifts blossom and grow in us.' 

St. Gregory of Narek

Painting: Wisinger-Florian Im Garten, in US public domain due to age

Flowers Before Your Throne

"My Beloved, this is how my life will be consumed.  I have no other means of proving my love for You other than that of strewing flowers, that is, not allowing one little sacrifice to escape, not one look, one word, profiting by all the smallest things and doing them through love; and in this way I shall strew flowers before Your throne.

"I shall not come upon a flower without unpetalling it for You.  While I am strewing my flowers, I shall sing, for could one cry while doing such a joyous action?  I shall sing even when I must gather my flowers in the midst of thorns, and my song will be all the more melodious in proportion to the length and the sharpness of the thorns.

"O Jesus, of what use will my flowers be to You?  Ah!  I know very well that this fragrant shower, these fragile, worthless petals, these songs of love from the littlest of hearts will charm You.  Yes, these nothings will please You.  They will bring a smile to the Church Triumphant.  She will gather up my flowers unpetalled through love and have them pass through Your own divine hands, O Jesus.

"And this Church of Heaven... will cast these flowers, which are infinitely valuable because of Your divine touch, upon the Church Suffering in order to extinguish its flames, and upon the Church Militant in order to gain the victory for it."  St. Therese of Lisieux 

Painting: Knaus, Ludwig; Girl in a Field, 1857

In This Garden

"'Let my beloved come into His garden,' says the spouse of the Canticles...   Now, the Divine Spouse comes into His garden when He comes into a devout soul, for since His delight is to be with the children of men, where can He repose better than in the soul that He has made in His own image and likeness?

"In this garden He Himself plants the loving delight that we have in His goodness, and on which we feed our souls."  (St. Francis de Sales, from Treatise on the Love of God)