Modern reflection on the sacrament of penance stresses three points: the special dimension of sin committed after baptism, i.e., its relation to the Church; the cultic nature of the sacramental remission of this sin; and the pastoral value of the sacrament of penance. The angle of approach is theological rather than juridical or moral, seeking an understanding of the sacrament of penance in the light of the mystery of the Church.

The Church is the continuation in time of the incarnation of Christ and the realization through the centuries of the salvation of mankind worked by him. One aspect of the incarnation and of the work of salvation was to manifest the definitive, eschatological judgment of God on sin; this aspect is seen above all in the death of Christ: ‘God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and of sin, hath condemned sin in the flesh’ (Rom. viii, 3).

Israel encountered the one true living God at Sinai in a manifestation of fire and storm, and when they set out again to take the land he had promised their forefathers, they were bound to him in the living bond of the covenant; as his people and a holy people they were to worship him alone, and to obey the elementary moral law he had established among’ them. Whatever the religious practices of Israel had been until then and whatever they assimilated from their neighbours in Canaan and further afield, only that was now acceptable which could be used or reinterpreted in the light of this unique revelation and relationship. The golden calf was not acceptable as an image of the living God, because he could not be represented by lifeless images.

THE full significance of our Lord's ‘Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God’ (Matt, v, 8) is only to be understood in a setting of worship. Behind it is the thought of the psalm: ‘Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord; or who shall stand in his holy place? The innocent in hands, and the clean of heart…’ (Ps. xxiii, 31f). Man must become pure in his inmost being; and he must do so as a preparation for worship. But the man who conceives such desires discovers within himself impeding faults. These cause him grief; and the acknowledgment of being in such a state is to be penitent. Penitence as a prelude to the sacrifice of worship is the theme of Ps. 1: ‘A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit; a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Some years ago there came into my hands a little book in Middle French entitled Le Saint Voyage de Jherusalem. Its author was a certain Seigneur d'Angleure, who in 1395 made the pilgrimage to the holy places, and included in his itinerary Mount Sinai and the monasteries of Anthony and Paul in Egypt. It was a very comprehensive journey; the Seigneur had an eye for detail and would have excelled today as a compiler of Blue Guides or Baedekers. He could not write a travelogue in the Morton style, however, still less Waugh's, and the value of his record lies in the remarkably complete list of relics and customs which he managed to ‘do’ with disarming simplicity and devotion. His piety is not repulsive, for the charitable anxiety of the good knight and his contemporaries to leave no event of scripture unmarked for the edification of the faithful covers a multitude of transgressions committed in their identification.

The survey that follows is translated from the French. It appeared in the Supplément de La Vie Spirituelle, No. 48, for the first quarter of 1959, and has also appeared in our Dutch Dominican contemporary Tijdschrift voor Geestelijk Leven. Fr Schillebeeckx is a Flemish Dominican, a distinguished theologian, and we hope that his assessment of certain continental developments will be of interest to our English readers, though it may appear strange, and not perhaps be found wholly congenial, to those only familiar with our island scene.

TO understand the religious sensibility of our time, we have to return to the forms of Christian life which characterized the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The modern way of living the faith is very largely a reaction against these older forms.

ST HYACINTH MARISCOTTI could be called the patron of back-sliders or the saint of the second chance. A study of her life would do much to ‘confirm the weak knees’ of all those of us who are so prone to say, ‘Sanctity is not for me'. Born at Vignarello in the papal states, of a noble and wealthy family, in the early seventeenth century, young Clarice Mariscotti was sent to Viterbo to be educated in the Franciscan convent. She was not remarkable for her piety and probably suffered from having a sister who was a nun in the same convent. Doubtless the sister also suffered, and one can readily imagine that the friction between the reproachful piety of the one and the misdemeanours of the other may have had unfortunate repercussions on a difficult temperament, giving rise to Clarice's later behaviour.

Serlo was Abbot of Savigny in Normandy from 1139 to 1153 when he retired to Clairvaux; he died in 1158. He was a contemporary and admirer of StBernard; and it was no doubt largely owing to St Bernard's influence that in 1147 Serb submitted the whole group of Savigniac houses to the Cistercian Order. Among these were several in England, including Buckfast and Quarr. Serb had a reputation as a preacher. Of his thirty-four sermons known to survive—not all of them, however, are complete—the greater part were included in the sixth volume of the Bibliotheca patrum Cisterciensium, edited by Tissier in 1664. The rest remain apparently still in manuscript. An exception is that translated here, which was published by Dom Wilmart in the Revue Mabillon, tome XII (1922), pp. 26-3 8. The following is a rather free rendering of the Latin. A third section on prayer seems to be wanting. Perhaps time ran out and it was never delivered.