Missions are the Church in a state of growth. They are not merely an outside activity by which external additions are made to the Church, nor are they just the geographical expansion of the Church as it is. They involve a real growth and development of the whole Church, of doctrines, practices and life, and of every individual who shares in that life. For missions are the development of the catholicity of the Church.

Catholicity is of the very nature of the Church. It is the property by which it is able to adapt itself to every human group and incorporates all genuine human values, while remaining one and transcendent. Being of the nature of the Church, it tends to realize itself as fully as possible, until the whole of humanity has been gathered up.

Until the Church has in fact incorporated every human group, and established itself in every nation, its catholicity is undeveloped, though complete as a power.

In every mission periodical you open now you will find articles on adaptation, on developing Cathohc life according to local custom, on ‘making the word flesh'.

The name of St Francis Xavier is too well known to require any introduction in these pages, yet it is strange that Matteo Ricci, who took up the work interrupted by Xavier's premature death, remains comparatively unknown, even in Catholic circles. This may well be due to the cloud under which Ricci has been for so many years on account of his revolutionary approach to'the evangelization of the east; his apostolic methods among the Chinese gave great scope to his genius for adaptation, but like many other pioneers, Ricci had to pay the penalty of antagonism from those who were less farsighted. It is therefore gratifying to find the present Holy Father holding up Matteo Ricci as a model for all missionaries and thus finally vindicating his apostolic work which has been so widely misunderstood, both in Ricci's own day and also in ours.

After the apostles themselves, as we see them in their writings and in the Acts, who is there better than the Father of the Preachers to show us the laws of apostolic life? St Dominic in fact exhibits very strikingly certain realities which are most essential in such a life. They form what one might call the Law of the Five Beats. The more one meditates on it, the more one comes to think that it deserves to be classical.

Today the first ‘beat’ in order of time does not seem, for most apostles, to be contemplative withdrawal into God. They are in the world, they have experience of it, and grace presses them to proclaim the gospel to it. They begin with what was for St Dominic the second and the fourth ‘beats': they can already taste the experience of combat for the faith.

This article is concerned with the spiritual life of a mission, and. not with the spiritual life of a missionary. That is a different matter. A man may be a saint but yet unsuited to missionary work, as a good concert singer may be unsuited to opera. If the missionary can be both saint and missionary, well and good, but the essential thing is that he be a good missionary, understanding the technique of the work.

What is the root purpose of missionary work? The answer is simple: it is not merely to convert a number of people, to build a school, to teach the children to sing hymns—and wear European clothes?—but to plant the Church. The spiritual life of a mission means the spiritual life of the mystical body, lived by the people there. It means the Church as she is in herself, as the popes have written about her in encyclicals, as the great ages of the Church have known her, and as history has revealed her.