Stand on tiptoe and you will reach Heaven', says St Francis of Sales, and perhaps that is a good I description for us to begin with in thinking about prayer. Because the raising of the mind and heart to God so often gives us that insecure sense of being on tiptoe, reaching over the top of that high cupboard in the hall; we are quite sure it is there, that thing we are looking for, only we cannot quite see—and we cannot quite reach—and perhaps that little extra of the tiptoe will get our fingers onto it. There! We felt it! Just the merest touch, and now it has gone again! Silly of us to try, really; everyone said we were fools and should not do it; much better give it up before we strain, ourselves or overbalance—or shall We have one more try?

It is consoling at times to reflect that whereas men have prayed to God from their earliest origins, it is only comparatively recently that they have probed and analysed the structure and development of prayer. Consoling, because of the vast and ever growing literature on the subject which, if anything, becomes more remote and obscure.

In the recently published Paternoster Series (Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1s. 6d. each), four of the six booklets are directly concerned with prayer—all are reprints—and are written by well-known writers. The Path of Prayer, by Fr Vincent McNabb, O.P., might be called 'prayer meditated',

Although every type of Christian may derive much profit from the writings of Walter Hilton so that his Scale in particular has become a popular work of spirituality, we should not forget that the people for whom he wrote were of a very specialised type. He was addressing a particular person who must have been living the same sort of life as Mother Julian at Norwich, an anchoress shut up in her little house and devoted to the work of contemplation. He does in fact draw a sharp distinction, which many readers have to pass over in puzzlement and try to forget, between the common man and the one who is specially called. The gift of contemplation may be bestowed by God upon, any kind of person he may choose, ‘learned or lewd, men and women, those occupied in prelacy and to solitary also’.

It is not often recognised that members of Orders devoted to such activities as that of preaching were sometimes allowed to shut themselves up in anchorholds and to give themselves entirely to contemplation and to the work of their hands. But this was in fact the case in the later middle ages; and we find a pleasant example of it at the Dominican Priory of Newcastle-on-Tyne at the beginning of the fifteenth century in the person of Brother John Lacy.

The Latin word Officium, like the Greek word Liturgia, means duty or service; hence ‘Office’. Both these words describe what we know as Divine Worship—that which is the prime duty of man and the purpose of his creation.

The supreme form of worship is the Sacrifice the Mass. That is the central gem, and it has' a setting—the Divine Office. This setting is further elaborated by the Little Office and all the ceremonies which go to make up the official public worship of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. This is all known as 'The Liturgy'—the public, official and universal worship of God.

It was dark. Looking up from the floor towards the window I could feel, rather than see, the dawn breaking. But to try to sleep now was useless, even though the old priest in the next cell had at last become quiet. All night long his groans had sounded through the wall between us, getting more like a mad nightmare as the night wore on and as their echo rang up from the floor on to my ears and nerves. Old priests and old nuns left lonely in their cells during years of trial; it is not often that one has the grace of being so close to them, so I had asked God to let me share the old priest's pain; and the night had been long. The darkness lay heavy upon me, shutting me m upon my own emptiness.