It's very simple, you just have to do what you're told, and because you're told to do it'. But the religious does sometimes meet situations in which he legitimately hesitates whether he ought to obey or not. And then what becomes of'doing what you're told because you're told to do it'? And if hesitation can sometimes occur, how is the religious to know when this crucial moment has arrived?

‘Of course, religious obedience is not like what you find in the army. Religious obedience has got to be voluntary and interior, not just a matter of external discipline.’ But there is a sense in which obedience can never extend beyond external behaviour (Sum. Theol. II-II, 104, 5), and if this kind of statement only means that religious obedience must come from the will it is difficult to see that army obedience or any other should do otherwise, at any rate if it is to be dignified by the name of obedience.

You live in an age that is twisted out of its true pattern and among such people, you shine out, beacons to the world, upholding the message of life.’ (Phil, ii, 15.) These words of St Paul to the Philippians might be addressed to members of Secular Institutes at the present time. It would be difficult to find in the world a nation, a city, a family, living its life according to the true pattern, the pattern of Christ. He is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life', yet how small is the number, even amongst Christians, of those who follow him. The message of life is unheeded, unrecognized even, jammed as it is by powerful propa ganda, lies, secularization, false values and materialism—the message of death. The profound meaning of the Incarnation’ the ‘sanctification of the profane', the divinization of humanity, this has become obscured and mankind throughout the world searches gropingly and often unwittingly for the realization of Christ's message: ‘I have come that they may have life and may have it more abundantly'.

The death of Pope Pius XII made the Catholic Church and the Papacy a headline news item for several days. Through the newspapers, the radio and the television we Had a glimpse of the Church's world-wide embrace, and of its ancient origins. For instance, the vast body of people in the two- mile long procession from Castel Gandolfo and lining the route, were only a symbol of the millions all over the world who look to the Pope as their spiritual father and acknowledge his authority as the successor of St Peter. And one was reminded how the pope himself during the years of his pontificate received many of these millions there in Rome, and spoke to many of them in their own language.

Varro, a naval officer and the most learned of the Romans, refers to three kinds of theology, mythological, physical, and political—mythicon, physkum, and civile: St Augustine discusses the division in the De Civitate Dei. The first ranges from fable to myth and includes symbolic and poetic theogonies, the genealogies of heaven and earth; the approach is not scientific, yet Jungians are not alone in agreeing with Plato that the results may be educationally valuable. The last is concerned with public worship largely as a factor of social cohesion, and is accordingly dominated by the requirements of administrators and lawyers in both or either Church and State. Neither represents the theology of St Thomas.

In the first of these articles it was explained that the series is being written with the conviction that an historical approach to Christian teaching on the spiritual life, an enquiry into the thought of successive masters on the subjects of prayer and perfection, will be a powerful aid to the deepening of our own understanding of what the knowledge, love and service God means to each one of us today.

The roots of Christian thinking on prayer and the spiritual life are to be found with the Greek Fathers of the East, whose teaching sprang in the early centuries from the Gospel itself, forming a great heritage from which grew the medieval development in Western Christian thought (while the East has preserved, and continues to preserve, the treasures of the patristic heritage), and in the West at the close of the middle ages the systems of the devotio moderna in turn grew out of the medieval developments.

There are three kinds of religious. The first refuse their senses nothing. If they are cold, they warm themselves; if they are hungry they eat; if the thought of some diversion comes to mind, they take it without deliberation; they are always intent on self-satisfaction, and do not know what mortification is in practice. They perform their duties without any interior spirit, without relish and without fruit.

These are in danger of mortal sin. Sometimes they are in a state of sin without realizing it, because they never seriously enter into themselves and their examination of conscience is extremely superficial. In this state of inattention innumerable objects pass through their mind each day, their heart is carried away and seems intoxicated with the turmoil of exterior matters; it is ceaselessly deceived by the illusions of nature and the devil, and it blindly follows their impulses.

Verbum caro hie factum est.’ These words are written on the altar in the little Chapel of the Annunciation at Nazareth.

It is the significance of the ‘hie’ inserted into the otherwise familiar phrase which jolts the pilgrim into a sudden realization and awe. ‘Here'—here where he kneels, the Word was made Flesh. The two great columns representing the relevant positions of our Lady and the Angel Gabriel, even the remains of Mary's house itself, which can be seen through a grille in the wall, cannot deflect the attention from that marvellous mystery which here overwhelms the mind with special awe.

We are faced with the same ‘hie’ in the Grotto of the Nativity at Bethlehem, where the Latin inscription round the silver star reads, ‘Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary'. A simple statement that sets the mind reeling.