The next day John saw Jesus coming to him and lie saitli, Behold The Lamb of God … Come and see … they came and saw where he abode and they stayed with him that day'.(St John I, 29.)

Qui confcxsioni Patris et Filii connex-us est non potent a confensione Patris et Filii separari.(St Hilary, De Trinitate,II. 29.)

The mystery of the blessed Trinity is the most unfathomable of the articles of our faith; but it is likewise the most fruitful for our spiritual life. Many souls, nevertheless, even really interior ones, are more inclined to adore it than to strive to know it well. Doubtless they understand that God is within them, that he lives in them and bestows his graceon them; many even willingly recall that this God living in them is the one God in three persons; and they are overcome by a sweet emotion, a humble reverence when they realise that at every instant the great mystery of the generation of the Word by the Father, the procession of the Holy Ghost from the breathing forth of the mutual love of Father and Son, is accomplished in their heart. But generally their thoughts stop there.

The period of ‘great business', described by Rolle in the Incendium Amoris as the purgative way to ‘sweetest rest', has passed, and the obscurity of the night of the senses leads the soul on to this more secure life in Christ. The hermit was perfectly aware of the difficulties of the first period and the progress the devout man had to make to reach this sweetness. For some the progress is rapid and often accompanied by special graces from God.

They that are sickerly ordained to holiness in the beginning of their turning, for dread of God, forsake sins and worldly vanities: and then they set their flesh under strait penance, afterwards setting Christ's love before all other, and feeling a delight in heavenly sweetness in devotion of mind they profit mickle.

The stimulating article of Fr Oswin Magrath's on Contemplative Secular Institutes has raised issues which must have been in many minds since the publication of the Constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia. After the priest and religious has spoken, a lay-person may perhaps be allowed to present the same idea from a different angle.

It was surely not without a special significance that the Constitution was issued on the Feast of the Purification of our Lady, and there can, indeed, be no better guide for ‘contemplatives in the world’ than she, who led the sublimest life of contemplation in the most humble circumstances, as what seemed to her neighbours a carpenter's wife in a small town. The Queen of contemplatives had no need to cut herself off from her fellow creatures in order to enjoy an unbroken communion with her Creator.