The Marian Garden: Ancient and New

Where rare virtues, harsh penances, heroic deeds, prayers, readings, and victories won over vices provoke us to follow. Furthermore, another goal is set before this work, namely the greater glory of GOD: whose providence, as it is common to all mortals, nevertheless appears more to His friends, because He bestows much greater gifts upon them. A desire had also stirred in me to pay the debt that children owe to their parents. For the wisest man of the Hebrew nation admonishes us: Let us praise glorious men, and our parents in their generation Ecclesiasticus 44:1. Since, therefore, all the heavenly ones are to be followed by us with praises, we must certainly prefer our fathers. For if (as someone once said) we cannot return enough thanks to the parents from whom we were born, what, I ask you, shall we pay to those from whom we have drawn not a miserable body, but a divine spirit? Shall we not save the stars of their age and the suns from darkness? Shall we circulate them through the world by public printing? So that the great traces of their ancestors may be shown to Religious men living today, so that they may diligently follow such great guides, since examples are accustomed to provide force and move the soul. Hence