Day 24 from Father Palau's prayer book

I. Thyme, rosemary, mint, desmayo. Choose for our gardens certain plants that serve to adorn it with their greenness and perfume it with their fragrance, such are the thyme, rosemary and mint. They are fragrant, aromatic and medicinal plants. Among them put the purple coloured flower desmayo and if there is not enough beauty in all these, put together in the bouquet the gillyflower its principal, or if you want, with the queen of the flowers the rose, and we shall have a complete piece of great garland. II. Penance 2. We are taking here penance in the broadest sense: the repentance of a fault, the flagellation and mortification of the flesh with afflictions and use of sackcloth and the limit of servile work respective of the arts of each, the mortification of the senses, all these is presented by the thyme, rosemary, mints and other strong herbs which are planted along the pathway of the garden, and when stepped on and compressed, it exudes its special fragance and are medicine for the body and soul. They have no beauty for they lack flower, but put it not far from the desmayo and other lowly ones, and if all these put together they have no merit in themselves, join them to their principal and their queen, charity and temperance will elevate them to a sublime rank and will constitute one of the adornments of the crown. III. Penance in Mary 3. This virtue, penance, insofar as it implies repentance for sin and contrition for faults, has no place in Mary; but she directed whatever was painful, hard and bitter for the forgiveness of our sins. IV. The bouquet to Mary 4. Have you sinned? You will not be forgiven without penance. Be sorry for the sin and arm yourself to subdue and to overcome the flesh. Arrange your practices of mortification and penance according to the advice of your confessor. Have you sinned? Offer to God a penance such as his justice demands. Have you sinned? Ready your heart and present it to the Mother of mercies, ready and resolve to undertake the hardest penance which any other penitent has ever done before you; dispose yourself, I said, because sin calls for it. You must be ready to do it in the way and manner that will be imposed on you by the tribunal of penance. Offer to innocent Mary a repentant heart and say to her: Presentation of the bouquet PRAYER. Lady, there goes the plants and strong herbs as a sign of my repentance of my sins. Receive them, present them to your Son and grant me the forgiveness of all of them.