There are some people who are said not to know what fear is. If there are any such, which is doubtful, they are generally to be found among those who do not think or have no imagination. Their very lack of fear often brings them into inescapable danger, and then they are surprised that they are not ready for death. It has been said that everyone is afraid; only the brave confess it.

There are certainly some people who are so timid in their disposition, or nervous in their temperament, that they are constantly tortured by fear. They are afraid of almost everything; they are afraid when they need not be; indeed they are afraid of things that do not even exist. Some are in such a state of fear, yet cannot tell precisely what it is that they are afraid of; it is fear they are afraid of, and of what they know not.

Lining, as many Catholics today are forced to do, in what might almost be called a pagan atmosphere, it is not perhaps surprising to find that some awkward paradoxes have grown to become quietly accepted. One such detail of Catholic life, which for many people goes unnoticed, is the fact that the sacrifice of the Mass has come to mean little or nothing in relation to our everyday lives. There is a terrifying separation between ourselves, our actions, and the source of all aid and strength, the Mass. For a large number of Catholics, Sunday is the only day of the week when they can hear Mass. For six other days they must live and work in machine-shops and offices where often Christian Ideals are openly considered weak, insufficient and out-dated.

Before Sennacherib, that new and still more powerful king, the policy of Judah fluctuated between restless schemes for alliances, especially with Egypt, and the firm independence of all but the power of God which Isaias taught, and which ultimately prevailed. It was then that he saw with clarity the mystery of creation, and was enabled to vest with reality in his mind that which faith, without sight, imposes. He expresses it under the humble image of a potter making pots as he will; the analogy becomes a permanent tradition in the Scriptures. It has a triple significance. It shows the emergence into the certitudes of the reason of the fact of substance, the independence of one's existence of any but the divine Being. Substance is the immediate term of creation, upon which all else in the creature as being accident depends mediately.

The translation of two sections of the Gospel which is given below is an experiment of a sort that seems quite popular nowadays. Its purpose is to make the Gospel strike the English reader with the same kind of impact, the same force and freshness, that it would have had upon the Greek-speakers for whom it was immediately written. It is an attempt to clear the incense-laden air of nineteen centuries, to find the Gospels unembalmed, unritualized; yes, unconsecrated and stripped of the sacred vestments with which every generation has adorned them. Not that this solemnizing process is in any way to be regretted, or that the versions which it has influenced are bad versions. They are signs of a proper reverence for what is holy.

When our Lord Jesus Christ sat down to his last supper he did so, as he had done during all his earthly ministry, not as a host at a table of his very own, but as a guest in the house of another. He who could, had he wished, have turned stones into bread, was content to share the lot of those who have passed beyond being able to help themselves, and who enrich the lives of others by receiving from them. He did this for our instruction. Giving and receiving is a reciprocal action. In that act of humility whereby he, the master, washed his disciples’ feet, he set forth in a final and unmistakable fashion what he had previously been teaching: that his disciples were to love one another as he had loved them, stooping to each other's lowliest needs, cherishing each other with a really personal devotion. In this way they would always find him with them.

Father Plé has honoured me with the formidable responsibility of replacing him during this course of study. It is certainly not because of my ordinary work, for I am a professor of philosophy, and, which might seem even worse, professor of scholastic philosophy! That seems sufficiently remote from directing souls, or from canon law! The only qualification I have for speaking here is my collaboration in the organization and the work of the ancelles—that is to say, that part of the active branch of the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion concerned with an up-to-date apostolate.