And the third day there was a marriage in Gana of Galilee … But Thou hast kept the good wine until now … (John2, 1).

Good exercise for Lent would be the study and sharing in the mind of Christ Jesus as it was immediately before and during his Passion.

At times, reading the strange stories of the Saints, we may feel: ‘This incident cannot be true: it jars on my artistic sense; it conflicts with my knowledge of history; it is “out of keeping” with theology'. Then we may feel irreverent; that it may be we who are ‘out of tune’ with sanctity. On the one hand, ever since the future Benedict XIV's De. • • beatiftcatione etc., ii. c. 32, it has been clear that the Church does not and cannot demand the assent of faith to any ‘private revelation'; but ecclesiastical approbation can ask our human belief in them according to the rules of prudence which offer them to us as probable and piously believable. The encyclical Pascendi (ASS; vol. xl; p. 649: 1907) says that the Church, when allowing the publication of such events, does not go guarantee for their truth, but simply does not prevent matters being published for which motives of human belief are not lacking.

Have the courage of your own convictions': this is the sense of the above maxim. From it follows logically the duty of expressing one's own opinion even if it differs fundamentally from ‘official medicine'. For there are situations in which silence does not represent a virtue but a fault.

The judgment upon Theresa Neumann of Konnersreuth (Bavaria, Germany), pronounced in 1927 (Erlangen) by Professor Dr G. Ewald, late director of the ‘Psychiatrisch-Neuiologisehen Universitiitsklinik’ at Gottingen, is still today looked upon as a ‘dogma’ in medical quarters. His verdict is hysteria.

In my view that diagnosis is wrong, as I myself was able to ascertain at Konnersreuth on 12th and 13th October, 1944, with my own observations. As a pupil of the ‘Psychiatrische Klinik', at the University of Vienna, Paris, etc., I also may venture a judgment on this question, since, as is known, the famous researches into hysterias started from Vienna.

If we are right in supposing that when Richard Rolle describes the third and highest degree of love he is really considering the illuminative rather than the unitive way, we can fit him very neatly into a pattern of spiritual development. Thus we discover his own personal experiences of burning love and heavenly sound entering into his description of ‘Singular Love’ which is in his own eyes the most perfect state. The special but accessory favours which he had received from God at the beginning of this new way of life were the love in his breast, which was so fervent as to convey even a physical sensation of heat, and an interior sound of heavenly music. And these we find as part of the permanent state of love which he calls ‘Singular'.

Sometime in the first few years of the fifth century a deacon at Carthage began to feel discouraged about his work and wrote for advice to St Augustine. His letter prompted the short treatise known as De Gatechizandis Rudibus, a book on the matter and method to be used the preliminary instruction of would-be Catholics, which was to become one of the best known and influential of Augustine's works. Io considering the personal worries of the deacon Deogratias, he laid down principles whose force has in no way lessened with time. The treatise has all the psychological wisdom and the epigrammatic vigour which so often make Augustine's writings sound almost contemporary in modern ears. It springs from experience, as its illustrations show, and the repeated assurance that the problems of Deogratias were common to all engaged in routine instruction.