With these impressive words begins the epistle to the Hebrews, and we are taught that God it is who commands all history, and God who reveals himself by speaking through all the sacred history of Israel as also to the new Israel of God or body of Christ. The stress in the text is first of all on God who has all the initiative, and who brings about a continuity in old and new testament covenants because the same loving God brought all essential history to its real conclusion in the revelation of a Saviour who is Lord of all.

Our text also speaks of ways many and various. Two points are made: the frequency of God's utterance, and the variety of ways in which his message comes to the world. Let us try to illustrate that frequency and the many ways and modes.

‘And he said to them: “Go out over the whole world and preach the gospel to the whole of creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who refuses to believe will be condemned”’ (Mark xvi, 15). Our Lord shows us in these words that there are three stages on the way of salvation. First there must be preaching: the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ must be proclaimed to all creation; the revelation made to prophets and apostles must be passed on by preachers to all human beings. But God's revelation demands response on the part of man. That response is faith. God has taken the initiative: he has revealed himself to us and sent his only-begotten Son to die for our sins, that we may be saved; but as St Augustine says, ‘God who made you without your assistance, will not save you without your co-operation'. In response to his initiative he requires our faith.

One of the most obvious things in. the world today is the fact that a priest cannot fulfil his sacerdotal function without being a spiritual director. It is not enough to administer the sacraments and preach the word of God in general from the pulpit. He must convince his flock of the message of Christ by an ‘I-Thou’ relationship born of a highly personal commitment, which we can refer to here as spiritual direction. The desire and need for spiritual direction on the part of the laity has been expressed persistently, pleadingly, over a rather long period of time. It can no longer be ignored. It is imperative that all priests respond with zeal, intelligence, and untiring labour.

So many Christians have become aware of their apostolic responsibility and at the same time are conscious of their spiritual poverty.

These words, used by more than one contemporary of Blessed Richard Reynolds, suggest at once light, purity, strength; a gaze turned ever to truth, that ‘otherness’ which we associate with the life of the angels and which makes them so ready to give help to sinful mortals.

For what will be said about one of our proto-martyrs in this short account, I have had to rely on the research of the late Dom Adam Hamilton, O.S.B., of Buckfast Abbey in his book, now out of print, called The Angel of Syon (published by Sands & Co.), and on a shorter work by Dom Ernest Graf, published in 1934 for the fourth centenary of the martyrdom.

The birthplace, family and exact date of birth of our subject still evade us, but it seems to be more or less accepted that he was born at Pinhoe, near Exeter, in 1488 or 1489.