Spiritual Bouquets

What Is a Spiritual Bouquet? §

When a friend goes in for surgery next Thursday, there isn’t much you can do, but you can pray for her every day until then and let her know. A spiritual bouquet is that promise written down: a card listing the prayers you’ll offer for her, each one a flower, and how many of each.

The flowers are usually simple: Masses attended, Holy Communions offered, rosaries, a Holy Hour, the Stations of the Cross, a novena, a day’s fast, a kindness done for her sake. Bouquets are given before a big day, such as a first Communion, a wedding or an operation, and to someone going through a hard time.¹ Some are very large. After Hurricane Ian in 2022, Catholics in the Diocese of Venice, Florida, made one of 2,399 offerings for the storm’s victims, among them 821 rosaries.¹

Underneath it is a kind of prayer the Catechism traces back to Abraham: intercession, “asking on behalf of another,” which in the Church is “an expression of the communion of saints” (Catechism, 2635). In that communion, “the least of our acts done in charity redounds to the profit of all” (953), so a small sacrifice has its place beside the prayers. No Church law governs a bouquet, and you’re free to shape it to the person.

Where the Custom Comes From §

The words are four centuries old. St. Francis de Sales, who died in 1622 (Benedict XVI, general audience of 2 March 2011), told the readers of his Introduction to the Devout Life to close their meditation by gathering “a little bouquet of devotion”: a thought or two to carry through the day, as someone walking in a garden picks a few flowers to keep. He named the chapter for it: “The Conclusion and Spiritual Bouquet.”² In the Carmel at Lisieux it still meant a word to carry away. Whenever St. Thérèse visited the convent’s founder, Mother Geneviève, she asked her for a spiritual bouquet, and one Sunday she was given this: “Servez Dieu avec paix et avec Joie,” serve God with peace and with joy (our translation).³

Thérèse also counted good works as flowers. Before her first Communion in 1884, her sister Pauline made her a little book: each small act Thérèse offered made a flower, and each short prayer a bud.⁴ Ten years later Thérèse made one like it for Sister Marie-Madeleine, a novice preparing for her profession on 20 November 1894: fifteen days, each with a flower and a short prayer, under the title “Fleurs Mystiques destinées à former ma Corbeille de Noces,” mystical flowers to make up my wedding basket (our translation).⁵

Those books held prayers the one preparing would say herself; a bouquet today holds the prayers other people say for you. No source we found dates the first such card.

How Is a Spiritual Bouquet Different from a Mass Card? §

A bouquet can go with a Mass card, but the two promise different things.

Behind a parish Mass card is one particular Mass. The priest applies it for that person, which is the Church’s word for offering it for them (canon 901). Each offering given and accepted is owed a Mass of its own (canon 948), and the parish writes it in a book kept for the purpose: the intention, the offering, and the Mass once it has been said (canon 958).

A spiritual bouquet promises the prayers of the people who give it. No priest takes it on, and no parish book records it.

An enrollment is a third thing. Many religious communities offer enrollment cards: the person is enrolled in the Masses and prayers the community offers for everyone on its list, often for a year, or for always in a perpetual enrollment.⁶ Some call these cards spiritual bouquets, as the Salesians of Don Bosco do for enrollments of the living⁷ and a Benedictine abbey in Massachusetts does for its sympathy cards.⁸ That’s a real gift of prayer, and a good one to give. It’s simply a different promise from a parish card, which is one Mass for one person, and from a bouquet you make yourself. Wherever you go, ask what the card promises (the questions worth asking).

Is a Mass Attended the Same as a Mass Said for Them? §

No, though both are good. When you pray for someone at Mass, your prayer joins the Church’s own offering: in the Eucharist, the Catechism teaches, the lives of the faithful, “their praise, sufferings, prayer, and work, are united with those of Christ and with his total offering” (Catechism, 1368). Fr. Edward McNamara, then a professor of liturgy in Rome, answered a reader whose friend had said that offering up a Mass in this way wasn’t valid: “Actually it is not a question of either/or but of and/and. Any Catholic may offer up the Mass in which he or she participates for any good intention.”⁹

But applying a Mass for someone is the priest’s act (canon 901). So “Masses attended” on a bouquet means Masses where you’ll pray for the person, not Masses said for them. If you’d like a Mass said for the person too, ask a parish office or a priest, and put it on the card as a line of its own: “A Mass will be offered for you at [Parish] on 9 May” (wording for the intention). Write “Masses attended” for the rest, so no one takes one for the other.

How to Make a Spiritual Bouquet §

Decide who it’s for and when you’ll give it. Then:

• Gather the givers, if there are to be several: a household, a class, the choir. Ron Bolster of Franciscan University of Steubenville suggests starting with a simple card that anyone taking part can sign.¹
• Let each person choose what they’ll do, and promise only what they will.
• Give it a time: by the wedding day, every day until the surgery, the month after a funeral.
• Count it. One person keeps the tally and writes the totals on the card.
• Give it before the day, or at the wake or the funeral.

A Catholic Women’s League council in Alliston, Ontario, gathers one every year for the seminarians to be ordained that spring, with a sign-up sheet in the narthex, and asks people to “Attend Mass and offer it for this intention.”¹⁰ The Diocese of Des Moines offers templates to print, one of them a large bouquet with places to tally Masses, rosaries, Holy Communions and visits to the Blessed Sacrament.¹¹ A plain card does just as well.

What to Write on a Spiritual Bouquet §

At the top, the person’s name and the occasion; then each prayer and how many; at the foot, who it’s from. A line in your own words is welcome, but the list says most of it.

For a Wedding

A Spiritual Bouquet for [Name] and [Name], on Their Wedding Day

• Masses attended: 12
• Holy Communions offered: 12
• Rosaries: 20
• A Holy Hour, the night before

With love from Aunt [Name] and Uncle [Name]

For a Priest

An ordination, an anniversary of ordination, his feast day or his retirement are all good times. When Pope Francis marked fifty years as a priest in December 2019, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore invited the Catholics of his archdiocese to add their prayers to a spiritual bouquet for him.¹²

A Spiritual Bouquet for Father [Name], on the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of His Ordination

• Masses attended for him: 140
• Rosaries for him, and for vocations: 85
• Holy Hours: 30
• Days of fasting: 12

From the people of [Parish], with thanks

For Someone Who Is Ill

A Spiritual Bouquet for [Name], for His Recovery

• Masses attended: 8
• Divine Mercy Chaplets: 30
• Stations of the Cross: 4

From the Tuesday Bible study

Or, in a line:

• Every day until your surgery, the four of us will pray a decade of the rosary for you at supper.

For Someone Who Has Died

A bouquet can be for someone who has died: the prayers are for the one who died, and the card goes to those who mourn. The Church, the Catechism says, “also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead,” and it adds St. John Chrysostom’s words: “Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them” (Catechism, 1032). Address it as you would a Mass card (what to write, and on the envelope), and give it with one if you like.

A Spiritual Bouquet for the Repose of the Soul of [Name]

• Masses attended: 10
• Rosaries: 15
• Stations of the Cross: 3
• Works of mercy offered for him: 5

From the St. Vincent de Paul Society at [Parish]

Or, in a line:

• We’ll pray the rosary for your mother every evening this month.

From a Class

A Spiritual Bouquet for Mrs. [Name] and Her New Baby

• Hail Marys: 22
• Visits to the Blessed Sacrament: 9
• Good deeds: 40

From the second grade at [School]