As yet we know nothing in detail of the agenda, doctrinal and disciplinary, for the deliberations of the Vatican Council to be convoked in the near future by Pope John XXIII. These no doubt will be made known to us as the Commissions go forward during this year with their preparatory work. We can however take the coming Council as a symbol, as all its predecessors have been, of the historical development of the Church's life and teaching. It is a symbol of what may be called the togetherness, in doctrine and life, of all the parts of which the Mystical Body of Christ in the world is made up. Another word for this might be the conciliarity of the Church; both of these are clumsy words for what they are here used to express, namely the living and. spreading of the faith by a society in which by grace every individual person is deeply concerned and closely united with his neighbours in the whole. This holds good of the total hierarchy of its being, from its highest ruling authority down to its humblest member.

The title of The City of God is taken by St Augustine from that verse of Ps. 86 (87), which is paraphrased by the wellknown hymn, ‘Glorious things of thee are spoken, Sion city of our God'. Is this city, in his mind, a picture of the Church? Clearly yes, but of the Church in its widest, its cosmic dimensions, the Church which is the heavenly Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, that Jerusalem which is above, which is our mother (Gal. iv, 26), of which the earthly Jerusalem is the type and figure. We attain some apprehension of this city of God by contrasting it with another city, the city of confusion, the diabolical city, of which the archetype is Babel, Babylon.

These two cities are cosmic because their history begins with the creation and ends with the end of the world. In their beginning and end they are clearly distinct—distinct in the holy angels and the fallen angels at the beginning of creation, distinct in the company of the blessed and the company of the damned at the end. The Church as it will be in the resurrection is the society of the just, and of the just alone.

In 1861 Syon Abbey at last came back from Portugal to England, having been driven into exile, for the second time, in 1558; and this year in their present home, their third since their return, at South Brent in Devon, the abbess and her sisters can look back with especial thankfulness over their long history of trials and wanderings endured for God's glory and the true faith. And in this year of prayers for the cause of the Forty Martyrs, Syon, which gave one of her sons, the ‘Angel', Blessed Richard Reynolds, to witness with his blood to her constancy, should be in the minds of all Catholics in England as they thank God for his mercies shown to them.

It is not surprising that an English house of St Bridget's order should have been founded soon after its approval and her canonization in 13 91, for England had been long renowned for the great devotion in which the Blessed Virgin was here held, and the Bridgettines were and still are very specially dedicated to her.

Psychologists, especially Jungians, have drawn our attention to the fact that in the myths and legends of the ancient world, and in the rites and ceremonies of primitive peoples, there is a recurrent pattern, varying in the arrangement of the pieces, but always conveying the same idea. There is a hero who challenges darkness, dragons, or deep waters, is slain, and rises, communicating new life to all his fellows. The hero-victim is more strong and glorious after his conquest, the light shines more brightly after its conflict with darkness, and the waters that close over the victim's head become the womb from which he is re-born, a man more complete and perfect than he was before.

The pattern is deeper down in the universe than the myths that express it. The earth itself subsists by a process of decay and renewal, of species striving after perfection, and the vegetable world repeats almost monotonously its theme of seed-time and harvest, fall, and winter sleep. Probably the scientist sees a repetition of the same design in the miniature worlds his microscope reveals.

A lay organization whose major work is the giving of closed retreats is exceptional enough to be interesting. Such is the Banyakaroli movement to be found in parts of Tanganyika. This organization has changed somewhat during its existence but only in the sense that as a need was found the movement adapted itself to meet it.

The story began in 1941 when a Father Heise was at Kashozi, Tanganyika. This priest examined the local Catholic Action organization critically and decided that it had no influence in the parish, that its members were all getting on in years, their zeal had diminished and they were unable to adapt themselves to the problems of the younger generation. Considering that a complete renewal was necessary Father Heise selected three young married men to be the core of a new movement and sent them out to the villages to gain recruits. The nucleus were trained through a monthly day of recollection, observed in complete silence and followed by an instruction.