There is a verse from the New Testament which begins with that same word. Unless: ‘Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth great fruit’. We have been stricken in recent times with especially grave losses, the deaths of those who in a special sense could be called the builders of the English Dominican Province of today: Fr Bede Jarrett through his years of provincialate, Fr Vincent McNabb through the leadership and inspiration of his teaching and his personality, Fr Hugh Pope through his work for the studies of the Province. Grains of wheat. They died in God as they had lived in God; and so from their deaths as from their lives new life is given to us. And now another builder is taken from us, and taken at a time when his wisdom and strength and prudence were most urgently needed, so that those of us who lived with him and depended upon him feel very lost; and yet his building too is not in vain but will go on, because Christ lived in him, and when he built the house it was the Lord that built it.