‘We should remember’, says St Thomas Aquinas commenting on the Ave Maria, ‘that of old it was a very great thing for angels to appear to men, and also was it the right thing for men to show them reverence. Thus to the credit of Abraham it is written that he showed hospitality to angels and reverenced them. But that an angel had shown reverence to man was a thing unheard of until the time when he reverently greeted the Blessed Virgin saying: Ave, Hail’ Thus in the eyes of Catholic theologians the veneration of our Lady began at the Annunciation when she was accorded honour and respect by the messenger of God himself.

During the Marian Congress which preceded the definition of the dogma of the Assumption last November, G. Gaetano di Sales, who leads a movement Pro Rogalitate Mariae, gave a paper on the meaning of the ‘Miraculous Medal’ and of the symbol of our Lady with a globe in her hand. He pointed out how specially indebted he was to this Marian devotion as he had been brought back to the faith by a special grace received in the Chapel of the Apparitions from which the devotion sprang. The following summary will convey the substance of the paper read in Rome.

In a recent review of Thomas Merton's The Waters of Silence the reviewer concludes with this stirring challenge: ‘Thomas Merton writes for the world, and he writes, as he must, of a special glory of Catholic life that, despite its wonderful growth, inevitably remains the privilege of a small minority. A harder and more insistent task must be to reveal the depth and delight of the common life of the members of Christ whose lot is to live in the world, so that they, in union with the hidden ones, may sanctify it. Would that there were another Merton who might show, with something of his skill and grace and popular appeal, how the “Waters of Silence” may flow into a world that dies for lack of them.’

The love of Lady Poverty is not a simple thing, a plain virtue, but a complexus of spiritual qualities which extend to the whole of the spiritual life, since poverty is one of the fundamental means of perfection, and therefore something which involves the practice of perfection. In order to be able to envisage it properly and grasp its function, it is important to distinguish clearly the virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost which play an immediate part in the practice of holy poverty, and make up its spirit. Poverty deals with man's relationship to material things, and their perfect use, or non-use.

If you were to ask each of us, ‘Are you willing to die to yourselves?’ we should all reply sincerely, ‘Yes; we are willing….’ But it is not enough to say or even to think so, for it is possible to deceive ourselves. Dying to ourselves is no theoretical problem composed of abstract thoughts and reasonings; nor does it consist in making resolutions for the morrow which is always later…. It means putting them into practice. To die to ourselves externally is to detach ourselves from all ties, whatever they may be; but this detachment must be complete, whole, lrrevocable, and there must be no looking back. This is going a long way….