In the preamble to its Constitution on the Liturgy, the second Vatican Council has clearly established the place of liturgical reform within that framework of the Church's inner renewal which is the Council's primary concern. ‘The sacred Council has for its aims the daily reinvigoration of the Christian life of the faithful, the better adaptation to the needs of our own time of those institutions that are subject to change, the fostering of everything that can contribute to the union of those who belief in Christ, and the strengthening of all that can call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church. For those reasons the Council considers it has a special obligation to undertake the reform and promotion of the liturgy.’

There is a great movement of rapprochement taking place in the world today, not only between Christian and Christian, but also between Christian and Jew. More has been written on ecumenical work among Christians than on the Christian-Jewish dialogue, which is yet in its infancy and is perhaps regarded with the same half-conscious suspicion and diffidence that the Christian unity movement at first aroused; but the most recent news from Vatican II shows that the relation of the Church to the Synagogue is at last receiving serious attention.

Those of us who have heard Elgar's ‘Overture to the Dream of Gerontius’ will not have forgotten its awesome atmosphere of religious mystery. God is calling a Christ-dedicated soul home to complete union with himself; but first there must be a pilgrimage of purification, since only holiness can abide even the veiled presence of the All-Holy.

In some Company you can feel very much the odd man out if you can't tell your conversion story. I can't: I'm a ‘cradle Catholic’. At least, until recently I thought I couldn't. But after all, faith is man's response to God's action in history, and history includes us. (Is this why it's ‘bunk’?).

‘What do you ask of the Church of God?’ ‘Faith’, said my godmother for me. My convert friends said it for themselves. And yet in a sense, in a very important sense, otherwise the priest would never have let them get that far, they already had faith. To ask for faith is an act of faith.