Indeed, the monks tended their herbs with both devotion and science, turning prayer into a practice of healing. Those gardens were early pharmacies, cataloguing what the tongue and the body would later call “medicinal plants.” When we use basil, lavender, or willow today, we are, in a way, following a path laid out by those who saw flowers as both symbols of grace and as tools for mending wounds. It’s a reminder that our modern remedies are built upon a quiet, disciplined respect for what nature has long offered.

It is a quiet continuity, almost a silent testament, that the same vines that grew in cloister walls now line pharmacy shelves and kitchen counters. We inherit both the medicine and the meditation, and perhaps that balance is what keeps our modern practices from becoming mere routine.