In dealing with our conscience we try to remind ourselves of the fact that it is almost impossible to be sure to what extent we are answerable for the evil of our lives. We never know with what bias or handicap we start life. God only knows. He knows what is beyond our personal control. We can't really tell—we may be worse than we think ourselves, we may be better. We can only make a shrewd guess with no certainty. We don't even know whether we are in a state of grace or not; we can't go by feeling—self-complacency—there are no internal or external signs. We can be pretty sure we are trying, but we don't know for certain.

It is best to leave it to our Blessed Lord. When he was asked whether a large proportion of people would be saved he said, ‘Strive thou to enter by the narrow gate'.

Activity in the part played by the individual's choice of a rule of life, by his seeking of solitude and shunning the world, is necessary for the first stages of the spiritual life, but it is of less importance in the soul's growth and formation than the purification which is brought about by God himself. As soon as the soul has begun to give herself generously to the work of her salvation, God begins to co-operate by sending her temptations or trials which show up the weaknesses and exercise the virtues which are most needed. We have called these trials passive because they are provided or allowed by God and the Christian does not have to choose the way to progress. But the will must choose to co-operate actively with God's grace in striving to master self and overcome the attack. In this way the first trials of the spiritual life require a great deal of activity and consequently are not technically Passive Purification in the sense generally accepted by spiritual writers.

Across the fair landscape of the Church's life, and dimming the sunlight of her holiness, and casting a shadow over her beauty, is that heavy cloud, which surely grows no less in these days of unpeacefulness, that cloud of lapsed Catholics. This blot is ever present with us, marring the joy and triumph of the Church's life, staining the robe of her perfection. The faithful are always there, the sweet odour of their prayers and good works rising like clouds of incense, ceaselessly up to God. New converts are received; but still that ugly cloud remains to darken our sun, and wound anew the broken Heart of God. There are the ever moving, tragic figures of the once-faithful turning away, repudiating the Light, casting aside the outstretched wounded hand they once held, turning their backs upon the love of God.

The popularity of this prayer in the books of times earlier than ours is well shown in accounts of the lives and deaths of the English Martyrs, that is, of those saints who were put to death for their Faith between the years 1535 and 1681. In those days, when the alleged activities of the Stationers’ Company made all Catholic printing and book-selling contraband, we find repeatedly that ’Manuals of Devotion’ were found in the presses of the intrepid printers, or that in the search through their houses the pursuivants found ‘divers psalters’. So it was with Carter and Webley, with Collins and Duckett; all truly martyrs. The books were often proclaimed our Lady's psalters, meaning what were also called Books of Hours; perhaps because the new man-made religion so ignored our Lady that her faithful children were all the more dedicated to her service. Often too the books used by these hunted. Catholics had in them the Psalter of Jesus, in English as we have it now.

It seems to be the lot of some of the servants of God that they begin to exert a powerful influence only after their death. One such case, of course, was Soeur Thérèse of Lisieux, unknown at death, of world-wide renown within twenty years afterwards (before her beatification). Such too seems to be the case with Fr Charles of Jesus-Charles de Foucauld, the missionary monk and hermit of the Sahara.

His way of life can have but a limited attraction though his teaching and methods have anything but a restricted application. It is perhaps the very relevance of his method of apostolate that is drawing men to study what he did, and in some cases to imitate him, with the necessary adaptations of course, in the task of proclaiming the Gospel by their life. Crier l'Evangile par toute ma vie was his watchword; if it were indeed done by all Christians how quickly would the world be conquered for Christ.

Enerable Battista Vernazza is probably only known in this country to members of the religious Order to which she belonged and to those who have read Baron von Hugel's The Mystical Element in Religion. In it he studies the spiritual and mystical life of St Catherine of Genoa, 20 as illustrating his theme, and to her life he adds notices of considerable length on two of her friends and disciples: Ettore Vernazza and his daughter Battista, whose spiritual life Catherine greatly influenced, and in both of them Baron von Hugel finds affinities and contrasts with the character and supernatural experiences of the saint. No one undertaking even a brief sketch of Battista's life could overlook his valuable work, but it is written from a special point of view, as showing forth the outcome of St Catherine's spirit on those two disciples of hers though he recognises that 'they are in no sense simple copies of her', and that their lives are in themselves worthy of record; indeed the life of the Venerable Battista, consulted for this sketch, bears the title: Una Gloria di Genoval and her father, Ettore, was both a man of eminent holiness and one of the most prominent citizens of Genoa, where in 1867 a statue was erected to his memory, as a public benefactor.