The Church has witnessed within the last three decades a great revival of interest in the liturgy and in things liturgical. The great Pope, Pius X, whose motto it was ‘to restore all things in Christ,’ gave a powerful impetus to this movement. The eleven years in which he occupied the See of Peter were years full of achievement, and they have left a lasting impress on the Church. He drove out Modernism and raised the standard of traditional studies. He set up the Biblical Commission and the Biblical Institute, and inaugurated the revision of the Vulgate. The codification of the Canon Law was taken in hand, to be finished under his successor. But greatest and most fruitful of all his efforts, as it appears in the issue, were those which he devoted to the liturgy.

At the beginning of his pontificate he declared that ‘active participation in the most holy mysteries, and in the public and solemn prayer of the Church, is the primary and indispensable source of the true Christian spirit’ (Moiu Profrio, Nov. 22nd, 1903). The liturgy (he said again) is ‘the fountain head of Christian life.’ He regarded liturgical renewal as the direct road to his goal of restoring all things in Christ. And so we find him revising the breviary and the missal and the calendar, fighting vigorously for the restoration of the Gregorian Chant, and preaching early Communion for children and daily Communion for all. His object was to revive in the Catholic consciousness a practical belief in the mystical life of the Church, a genuine realisation of their fellowship with one another and with Christ.