In 1955 Italy in general and the provine of Novara in particular have been celebrating the Centenary of the death of Antonio Rosmini. While some point to his sagacious views on the Risorgimento, and others turn back to his philosophy which anticipated the revival of Thomism, others venerate him as the founder of the Institute of Charity and a master of spiritual life.

His work in this direction was indeed inspiring: and one could hardly find a better example of it than what he wrote on the Magnificat for his Convent at Domodossola, that the nuns might recite it with fuller attention, deeper faith and fuller joy. The essay gains in interest when we know that he wrote it in 1849 after he had failed in a negotiation with Pius IX who had felt compelled to flee from Rome and who then turned against the conciliatory policy he had shared with Rosmini, allowed his works to be attacked, and refused the Cardinalate he had previously offered. None of these disappointments shook the profound spiritual life of Rosmini.

Thunder voices prefaced the breaking of the four seals in John's heavenly visions, but prior to the sounding of the seven trumpets and the blaze of fire on the heavenly altar ‘there was silence in heaven'. So, silence issues forth in trumpet calls and in the angelic prayer-action at the altar alight with flame. All public worship expresses itself vocally, for only such prayer can express corporate worship and fellowship prayer; but the Catholic Church has devised a service of silence, just as she has produced Orders of Silence, and that service is Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. The Rite begins with the O Salutaris; it ends with the Tantum ergo, but the interspace is Silence. The High Priest, Heli, was an unwise father but wise as a spiritual director, for how great was his wisdom when he bade the child Samuel respond to the voice of God with these words: ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’ Here is the perfect counsel for those who kneel before the Host exposed. All is silence: the Word is silent; silently the candles immolate themselves in honour of the Unseen Light; the flowers praise their Creator by their beauty and fragrance, but silent is their tribute. Silence is the soul's receptive mood; it is the ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’ When we say prayers, God listens to us; but when we are silent we become listeners to the voice of God.

When the vice of Accidie has got hold of an unhappy man's mind, it breeds detestation of the place of his habitation, weariness of his cell, and makes him spurn and despise the brethren who live with him, or near him, as all neglectful and unspiritual. For every task to be done within the confines of his dwelling, it makes him slow and indolent. It will not let him either rest in his cell or give himself to reading. Ofttimes will he groan that he had dwelt there so long, and made no progress in good nor acquired any spiritual fruit, so long as he is bound in that fellowship. He depicts the fellowship of the brethren elsewhere as sweet and full of spiritual converse. On the other hand, all that he has near about him is hard and difficult, and he says that not only is there no edification in the brethren among whom he dwells, but also that the very necessities of life can only be there obtained with immense toil.

'The woman who is abreast of current thought, who knows the topics of the moment, religious and secular, and who follows her daily Mass in her Missal, and the news of the world in her morning paper …'. These words might be a self-portrait of Mrs Boland, the efficient boxtender who organised the sale of pamphlets in Westminster Cathedral from 1912 onwards and who in 1924 founded the Boxtenders’ Association.

Nowadays we are familiar with the Catholic Truth Society cases in our churches, and are inclined to take this contribution to present-day propaganda for granted. The origins of the C.T.S. go as far back as 1884—there were various developments—the first meeting was convened in the house of Lady Herbert of Lea, under the chairmanslaip of Dr Herbert Vaughan, then Bishop of Salford, who had already started a similar project in his own diocese. The date of the foundation meeting was carefully chosen—the fifth of November. This is no place to deal with the history of the C.T.S., it suffices to say that the scheme withstood the consequences of two major wars.

A technique of freedom? The expression is, quite certainly, too strong. A title says what it can, as briefly as it can. Properly speaking we have no right to hope from our own efforts anything but conditions favourable to the play of our freedom—let that be clearly understood from the start. Nevertheless we shall see better what we ought to hope from the means, and what cannot be expected of them, if we take up the matter in several different ways.

The word ‘means’ is wholly valid only when applied to material things. You hit a nail with a hammer and you (who are not clumsy) drive it in, and even do so in such a way that the effect is exactly proportionate to the communication of your energy to the nail and the resistance of the wall.

The ‘means’ is sufficient to the ‘end’. But when you ask yourself what you are going to do to become more vitally, more fully free, no-one will teach you the great means of all the means: it is simply to be free. There is no other means, and all that you can do will be worthwhile only in order to vary this means according to the particular case.

Nevertheless we must pay attention to what there is, so to speak, legitimate in our contemporaries’ pretence. Let us listen to their complaints.

Appeals like that of Katherine Mansfield to her husband awake in us an emotion which demands to be taken seriously. ‘Do you like living the old mechanical life at the mercy of everything? Living only with a minute portion of yourself?' There is incompleteness, as if non-existence in the personal sense, division, if the modern world encourages ‘personages’ and excites push', if it gives too much weight to too much of the ego-one set of selves coming into conflict with another set, and all obscuring the self deep within us—if the abundance of shoots, going off anarchically in all directions, is exhausting the sap of the tree of life in us, we are not wrong to hope from religious practice some remedy for this evil, nor to be astonished and disturbed if, on the contrary, the evil overtakes religious practice itself.

The Liturgy is a great subject, sometimes an inflammatory one, known to generate devotion, enthusiasm, even heat. But there is a possibility of avoiding the controversial, making the study exploratory, seeking out the facts and their relations which help us to live better the life of union with God. So, for security reasons, it is well to begin by putting liturgy in its place by defining terms.

Liturgy is the Church's official dispensation of the Mysteries of Christ. It is the ‘whole’ body of the official prayers and sacramental actions whereby the communication of men with God is carried on in the Church'; ‘the life-dispensing, life-preserving, and life-restoring activity of Ecclesia, the Mystical Christ‘. In less technical words: Liturgy is the official communication of divine Life by Christ through the Church. The liturgy consists of four inter-related parts: the sacraments, the sacramentals, Divine Office and ritual prayers, and the Liturgical Year—all centred in and drawing their source from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which, as the re-enactment of Calvary, is the core of the liturgy.