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1.
"When
I went forth from Paradise, I said: I will water the garden of plantings,"
said that heavenly Farmer, who being the true fount of wisdom, the Word of God,
flowing from the Father into the Father, begotten from eternity, in these last
days (by being formed by the Holy Spirit) made flesh in the womb of the Virgin,
went forth as a man to accomplish the arduous work of the redemption of the
human race: by giving Himself as exemplar of heavenly life, proffering to men
His very own Self. But because man was very frequently pressed by the
solicitudes of mortal life, he was turning aside the sight of his mind from the
intuition of this kind of exemplar: our true Solomon made upon the throne of
the Church Militant a certain garden of delight among others, distanced from
the stormy waves of the world, in which one might more quietly and securely be
freed from beholding and observing labors of this kind, He himself as an
exemplar entered into this world, to water it by the fecund waters of grace and
doctrine. This garden is indeed the holy Religion of the Friars Minor, which
firmly enclosed by the wall of regular observance, contented within herself
with God alone is adorned abundantly by new seedlings of sons. The beloved Son
of God coming upon this reaps the myrrh of mortifying penitence with aromatics,
which with a marvelous sweetness sprinkle about in all places an odor of
attracting holiness. This is that heavenly form of life, and rule, which that
excellent Confessor of Christ Saint Francis wrote down; and taught equally by
word and example to be observed by his sons.
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