The Hebrew Psalter became and has been for centuries the great hymn-book of the Church. The wonder of this book of ‘Praises’ has, very rightly, been made manifest through its long history. Very closely akin are the Canticles in St Luke's Gospel. These represent a genre of their own: we might say, New Testament ideas in Old Testament dress. Thus the Magnificat of our Lady is modelled on the Canticle of Anna (I Sam. 2, 1-10) and recalls the Song of Miriam (Exod. 15, 1-21), the Benedictus echoes the language of psalms and prophecies, and the Nunc Dimittis is redolent of passages in Isaiah.

Alongside the more hebraic traditions of prayer and praise we can discern the beginnings of more specifically Christian, and indeed Christological, hymns.

David fulfils the long-hoped-for ambition of all Israel in taking Jerusalem, and establishes himself there with the ark of God, the central, sacramental thing in the religion of the chosen people. He is unaware that his own kingly office is to become a no less venerated centre in the dynasty he founds. For to be king of Jerusalem entailed far-reaching consequences. To be the anointed of Israel gave him an office that could be set in rivalry beside the priesthood of the house of Aaron; and to the general populace of Israel (especially the tribes that had no love for Levi and what they deemed its pretensions) he, not the successor of Aaron, was the spiritual head of the nation.

Padre Pio da Pietrelcina is not widely known, in England, and the occasional references to him give the wrong emphasis. If he is mentioned, it is usually as ‘that supposed stigmatist somewhere in Italy'; so that the immediate impression is adverse, even damning. Now that is as it should be. The masters of the spiritual life cry out to us: Beware of hysteria! Avoid strange phenomena! Live by Faith!

Early in the morning, before five, the sacristy door at St Giovanni Rotondo, near Foggia, opens and Padre Pio comes in to say Mass. He comes in slowly, almost shuffling. A tired face, the beard tinged with grey; a large nose, slightly splayed-out from suuff-taking; eyes that pierce and laugh, while the mouth and cheeks follow the eyes; a face serene, radiant, simple. Quite stout, quite short—you see such figures every day on the roads of Italian towns and countryside—the Cappucini.

Is it the mission of Christianity only to save the souls of those whom we can persuade to come to church, or is it equally part of our mission to Christianise society? Father Michonneau and his collaborators in the parish of St Colombes in Paris have long been convinced that too exclusive a concentration on the first of these tasks is responsible for the relative failure of the Church among the industrial masses of the continent. In his parish, a few years ago, not more than five per cent of the total population could be regarded as practising Catholics. His book is an impassioned plea, fully supported by the late Cardinal suhard and blessed by Archbishop Cushrng of Boston, for the adoption of more realistic methods in dealing with such a situation. To begin with, they were convinced they had no right to spend all their time attending to the needs of the five per cent who were faithful, and forgetting the ninety-five per cent who were growing up with little knowledge of Christ and no knowledge of the Church.