Mes de Maria - Day 23

May 23

The white simple and double gillyflower (viola)

He who contemplates attentively the white simple and double gillyflower will see in the first, all the qualities of a true flower and it opens our sight upon presenting it. White as the snow, its flowers clustered in many branches, abundant, long lasting, not delicate, and beautiful and one of those aromatic perfumes very pleasant to the sense of smell.

Who does not see here?

Chastity and virginity

The white simple gillyflower teaches us chastity and the double, virginity.

All the state of life follows chastity in a common sense; this is, within the rules of temperance. The single man and single woman as well as the married man and woman, widow and widower have to be chaste.

Flora offering to Mary

Virgin Mother, the purest among creatures, receive this branch of flower: I give you a heart resolved, determined and ready to keep chastity within the rules of temperance and the laws of my state of life or profession: receive most pure Mother, receive this flower of mine, I entrust it to your care; take care of it.

Recite five Hail Marys

Invitation: Reflection - One flower comes from another flower. A virgin conceives and its seed is a flower not a plant but virginity, and the Virgin Mother is pure and does not lose her purity in childbirth. If the virgin double gillyflower comes near to the simple, touches its roots and fertilizes it, that is, gives it the quality to produce virgin gillyflower like itself, double gillyflower, whose flower gives forth another flower as seedling. Who does not see here the virginity, the maternity and the fecundity of one and the same being?

Text: Mes de Maria - Francisco Palau, OCD - CM Founder