August brings to many people a period of rest and relaxation, a time for an instinctive worship of the elements—the sun and the sea, the rocks and the rivers, worshipped consciously of old by their forefathers. It is not usually a time for striving very earnestly for Christian perfection save perhaps for the religious who choose this month for their annual retreats. People often feel that in the holiday season they can legitimately let go their efforts towards virtue or to overcome their particular habitual faults. They feel, perhaps, if they ever think about it, that they are—always legitimately of courseleaving our Lord and his ideals a little on one side, a holiday from religion as well as from work.

This false sense of the purpose and need of a holiday may even develop a false conscience. For it is in fact an erroneous conception of the rest from work that is usually provided at this season.

And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul’ (Gen. 2, 7). Since that moment of creation when God raised Adam above all mere animal life by the communication of his own divine life, breath has helped to build a bridge between two worlds, the seen and the unseen, the world within and the world without. Breath—ruach, animus, spiritus— the life-giving medium, creates unity between body and soul, matter and spirit. It is that breath of God which moves and inspires, man: Spiritus est qui vivificat. The opening chapters of Genesis are perfectly paralleled and reach perfect fulfilment in the closing chapters of St John's Gospel.

It is a commonplace to say that charity is the fulfilment of the law. Did not St Paul say that charity is ‘the bond of perfection’ ? Charity is to the soul as the soul is to the life of the body, since it is the well-spring of our love of God, which in its expansiveness goes out to all others who claim our love. The love of God cannot stand still if it is not to become retarded and to lose its grip on the spirit. ‘In the way of God, he who does not go forward falls backwards.'l It is within human power, with the grace of God, to desire a greater love of God. As St Francis of sales said, ‘The disgusted sick man has no appetite for eating, yet has he an appetite to have an appetite; he desires no meat, but he desires to desire it.'2

In a series of Rules published by the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars in 1901, concerning the approval of new institutes with simple vows, it is stated that the constitutions of these institutes are to express that they do not bind under pain of sin. Similarly, an Instruction of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith concerning the foundation of religious Congregations in missionary territories insists that: ‘Since these Constitutions are to be observed not out of fear but out of love, they do not of themselves bind under pain of sin …’ And the ‘Statutes to be observed by External Sisters of Monasteries of Nuns’ (1931) affirm that nothing in these statutes, apart from what has been drawn from the Code of Canon Law or other laws of the Church, binds under pain of sin, though the Sisters are obliged to accept the penance imposed for infractions of their constitutions.

In October 1950, the Holy Father, addressing a Congress of Religious, explained the positions of religious and seculars, especially religious and secular clergy, in the Church. One sentence in the important and far-reaching document is the following: ‘It is of divine institution that clergy should be distinct from lay-people. Between these two grades is the state of the religious life, of ecclesiastical origin.’ ‘Inter’ duos hos grains religiosae vitae status intericitur … ecclesiastica origine dejluens… .’ (A.A.S., 1951, p. 27). Many of us then received a first impression that the Pope was reversing a teaching which we had regarded as traditional, and with some the impression seems to have lingered. The purpose of this article is to enquire whether it is true in any sense that Christ founded the religious life and what Pius XII really said in 1950.

This little book1 makes known for the first time to English readers the noly and hidden life of a German Ursuline nun who died in the odour of sanctity in 1918, at the age of thirty-five.

The story is a beautifully simple one. Sister Blandine was born in the saar district in 1883, the daughter of a farmer. She became a qualified teacher and taught in a little village school, until at the age of twentyfive she entered the Ursuline Novitiate at Calvarienberg near Ahrweiler in the Rhineland. In 1911, after taking her first vows, she was sent to Saarbrücken to resume teaching. Within a few weeks, however, illness caused her to be moved to lighter work at the convent at Trier. Here she remained, occupied in the school, until her last illness confined her to her room in 1916. She was bedridden for eighteen months, and died on May 18th, 1918.