This article, and the four which follow, will be about revelation, about the community God has established, and about the sacraments that constitute it: they are theological, concerned with God and his dealings with men. Most of what I say will probably be pretty familiar stuff to you, but some of it may be new; this is because I shall be drawing on the results of the great theological revival which has been going on for some years in the Church but which has not yet had its full effect in England. A word in passing about this revival, because we will be constantly coming back to it. It is one aspect of a quiet reformation, a surge of new life within the Church. The most obvious signs of this are the liturgical movement, the return to the scriptures and the Fathers and, above all, the new understanding of the place of the laity in the Church.

Israel's first call to holiness was full of the awe of Sinai, that dread meeting with God on the mountain:

I am the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that I might be your God.

You shall be holy, because I am holy. (Lev. xi, 45-46.)

So far from being ‘a serious call to a devout life', this shattering contact with the ‘wholly other’ is the very source of their life as a people. They live constantly in the memory of this encounter; they respond to its claims with a fanatical insistence on their separateness. The Red Sea divides them now from a profane world; they have been brought out of Egypt to be shattered and remoulded around this experience. God has spoken to them out of the thunders and lightnings of the holy mountain, and in that moment of history they have been set apart; still trembling in the grip of that fearful revelation Israel grows to nationhood as a chosen people.

‘As the kingdom of God in its perfect form does not lie in mere knowledge, but rather in the life that the knowledge awakens, so it could not be prepared for by the mere knowledge that it was approaching, nor even by the knowledge, outwardly communicated, of what it was. It could be prepared for only by bringing in, and that in ever fuller tides, the life of which it consists…. What we meet in the Old Testament are two concrete subjects and their relation. The two are: Jehovah, God of Israel on the one hand, and Israel, the people of Jehovah, on the other; and the third point, which is given in the other two, is their relation to one another. And it is obvious that the denominating or creative factor is the relation to Jehovah.’

Thus a very great theologian, nowadays somewhat neglected, has defined the scope and significance of the old testament. It is the record of a people chosen from among the peoples to live in the light-giving and life-bringing presence of Yahweh, and to draw from that presence ‘in ever fuller tides’ supernatural light and life. And this process is to continue until at last the Light of the World comes ‘that they may have life and have it abundantly’ (Jn. 10,10).

‘Look (said the Eternal Father to St Catherine) at the ship of your father Dominic, my beloved son, and see how perfectly it is rigged. He wanted their sole concern to be my honour and the salvation of souls by the light of true knowledge. This light was to be his main object, but he did not neglect real voluntary poverty. He observed it himself, and as a sign of this and his disapproval of the contrary he left as his last will and testament to his sons his own curse, and mine, upon any who might have private possessions. But he took as his particular aim the light of true knowledge, for the uprooting of the errors of the times. He assumed the office of the Word, my only-begotten Son , … he was a light, which by means of Mary I placed in the world within the mystical body of Mother Church, as an uprooter of heresy.

What is the liturgy? What does one mean by a grammar school? What has each to do with the other? The burden of this paper is to essay some answers to each of these questions, endeavouring to develop maturer concepts of education and liturgy, and to make practical suggestions about the place of liturgy in the life of the school. The liturgy has an important part to play in the Catholic education of all children, so that much of what I have to say will apply to other kinds of school, and it will apply for the most part equally to girls and boys, though I shall generally refer to boys. My own teaching experience in Catholic schools has been largely confined to the grammar school, but this is not the sole reason why I have preferred to speak of the grammar school and the liturgy. I believe that the grammar school offers exceptional opportunities not only for training its own pupils in a right sense and practice of liturgy, but also for assisting the whole Catholic body in this country to arrive at a more realistic understanding of the liturgical life of the Church.

From the sonorous periods of the eighteeneth and nineteenth centuries to the friendly intimacy of Billy Graham, preaching has always held a central position in protestantism. The sermon, for many, is the major attraction of the service, and often the quality of a man's preaching seems the chief determining factor in the size of his congregations. The clergymen of detective stories are so often in their studies on Saturday afternoon preparing the next day's sermon that we should suspect the worst if we found them doing anything else. But though we are quite accustomed to priests’ excusing themselves from our dinner parties to finish their Office, I think most people would be astonished if a priest said he must leave to work on a sermon. Somehow, apart from special occasion sermons (such as weddings and funerals), most of us don't seem to take preaching very seriously.

The title of The City of God is taken by St Augustine from that verse of Ps. 86 (87), which is paraphrased by the wellknown hymn, ‘Glorious things of thee are spoken, Sion city of our God'. Is this city, in his mind, a picture of the Church? Clearly yes, but of the Church in its widest, its cosmic dimensions, the Church which is the heavenly Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, that Jerusalem which is above, which is our mother (Gal. iv, 26), of which the earthly Jerusalem is the type and figure. We attain some apprehension of this city of God by contrasting it with another city, the city of confusion, the diabolical city, of which the archetype is Babel, Babylon.

These two cities are cosmic because their history begins with the creation and ends with the end of the world. In their beginning and end they are clearly distinct—distinct in the holy angels and the fallen angels at the beginning of creation, distinct in the company of the blessed and the company of the damned at the end. The Church as it will be in the resurrection is the society of the just, and of the just alone.

‘And he said to them: “Go out over the whole world and preach the gospel to the whole of creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who refuses to believe will be condemned”’ (Mark xvi, 15). Our Lord shows us in these words that there are three stages on the way of salvation. First there must be preaching: the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ must be proclaimed to all creation; the revelation made to prophets and apostles must be passed on by preachers to all human beings. But God's revelation demands response on the part of man. That response is faith. God has taken the initiative: he has revealed himself to us and sent his only-begotten Son to die for our sins, that we may be saved; but as St Augustine says, ‘God who made you without your assistance, will not save you without your co-operation'. In response to his initiative he requires our faith.

The De Trinitate is not the best known of St Augustine's works. But in my opinion it is his masterpiece, of a far greater doctrinal importance in the history of the Catholic faith than the Confessions or the City of God. It is indeed something of a theological portent, and as befits such a portent it took an uncommonly long time in coming to birth. As he himself says in a letter to the Bishop of Carthage which prefaces the work: ‘I was a young man when I began it, an old man when I had it published'. It seems that he began it about 400 A.D. Twelve years later it was still unfinished, and his friends getting impatient managed to publish the first eleven books of it and part of the twelfth, which was as far as he had got, without his consent. At this he stopped work on it altogether for some time, but was at length prevailed on to finish it— there are fifteen books of it in all—and publish it, perhaps round about 418 A.D.

In a gospel passage which is seldom quoted with reference to the spiritual life, our Lord reminds us that no father, asked for a loaf or an egg, will hand his son a stone or a scorpion, and since earthly parents give their children only wholesome food, We may be certain that our heavenly Father will show even greater loving wisdom towards us. Each day we ask him to give us this day our daily bread and, at least in England, usually obtain it. We also ask for patience, charity and such other virtues as we may be in need of; we ask him to increase our devotion and remove our distractions. Very often it seems that our heavenly Father hands us stones instead of virtues; scorpions instead of grace. It seems that the only answers to these prayers take the form of despondency, failure to be charitable or patient, or show any other admirable quality; our distractions are worse and our sensible devotion sinks to zero.

On the eve of the Sabbath and Festivals a hymn is regularly sung in all Synagogues and Jewish homes, called ‘Yigdal’ (Magnificat). It contains in poetic form thirteen principles of the Jewish faith, originally formulated in the twelfth century by Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher who had such a profound influence on his contemporaries (such as Thomas Aquinas), and among them there is a verse which runs, ‘He will send our Anointed (Messiah) at the end of days to redeem them that wait for the end—his salvation'.

That is one of many allusions to the coming of the Messiah in the Hebrew Prayer-book in general use today. Some of them actually mention his descent, as the phrase in the Festival Amidah: ‘May our remembrance rise and come and be accepted before thee … together with the remembrance of Messiah, the son of David'.

What a distance there is between the words ‘works of mercy’ and that irritating slogan of prosperity, ‘We've never had it so good'.

It is the distance between the good Samaritan and the welfare state.

Perhaps it is true that people in England are being better cared for than ever before. It is comfortable to believe that most of the natural tragedies of humanity—sickness, old age, incurable disabilities—come under some heading or other in health services or charitable organizations, and that everyone is taken care of ‘from the cradle to the grave'. We only have to look a very little way under the surface and behind the scenes to know that it is not true.

It is a sad fact that all round us are numbers of men, women and children, chronically sick, or dying slowly of incurable disease, or so severely and permanently disabled that it is not possible for them to live anywhere but in the ‘chronic’ wards of hospitals, where their very beds are often needed for more curable patients.

‘Social Justice’ could hardly be bettered as a phrase: it has a nice, modern ring about it, and no discernible meaning. The modernity of the phrase must, I think, be traced to the word ‘social', because after all ‘justice’ is a very old word, and in any case the modern campaigners do not seem to be so intense about that part of the catch-phrase. We are all, it must be agreed, ‘socialists’ in some sense nowadays, whatever our views on justice may be. It is understandable therefore that in the phrase ‘social justice’ the emphasis will be on ‘social', and that the word ‘justice’ will be added merely for rhythmic reasons. The rather medieval-sounding question—but is not all justice social?—is thus irrelevant from the start; and any attempt to understand how the same groups of people can demand at one and the same time the abolition of the death-penalty and the introduction of birth-control, or can deplore the control of government by capital whilst enthusing about the control of capital by government, would do best not to start from the notion of ‘justice'.

One of the most obvious things in. the world today is the fact that a priest cannot fulfil his sacerdotal function without being a spiritual director. It is not enough to administer the sacraments and preach the word of God in general from the pulpit. He must convince his flock of the message of Christ by an ‘I-Thou’ relationship born of a highly personal commitment, which we can refer to here as spiritual direction. The desire and need for spiritual direction on the part of the laity has been expressed persistently, pleadingly, over a rather long period of time. It can no longer be ignored. It is imperative that all priests respond with zeal, intelligence, and untiring labour.

So many Christians have become aware of their apostolic responsibility and at the same time are conscious of their spiritual poverty.

‘Don't you think it would be nicer to be a proper nun’? This question, seriously addressed by a priest to a member of a secular institute, reveals the unfortunate lack of understanding of the vocation to a secular institute. Why ‘proper nun?’ Because in his mind was the erroneous idea that members of secular institutes are, since they take vows, some sort of nun, semi-nuns, not quite the right thing.

But women in secular institutes are not nuns in the world, not nuns in mufti. They are lay women who keep their lay status, even though consecrated fully to God by the practice of the evangelical counsels, poverty, chastity, and obedience, and dedicated to the apostolate in the world.

It was to make this absolutely clear to all who knew us and to all who would come to know us, that we, an institute dedicated to our Lady of Mount Carmel, were led three years ago to take a most decisive step. I say ‘led’ because we believe that our decision was taken under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

In talk and writing about religion the expression ‘the spiritual life’ is well known. It is assumed not only to have meaning but to mean something very important. It will not, therefore, be out of place to examine these assumptions in a review that is called LIFE OF THE SPIRIT, a title which has affinity, if not identity, with the expression in question. ‘The spiritual life', ‘the life of the spirit', how shall we distinguish them? Perhaps any distinction there may be will emerge later.

The spiritual life is considered to be something that a religious man should seriously engage himself in, and an important part of it for him will be his ‘spiritual exercises', notably assistance at the sacrifice and reception of the sacraments, but also prayer, public and private, vocal and silent, and ‘spiritual reading'. To settle on the measure and manner of these, he will sometimes, even regularly, have recourse to a ‘spiritual director'.

Recent studies (cf. in particular The Destination and Purpose of St John's Gospel, by J. A. T. Robinson, in New Testament Studies, 6, i960, 117-113) have radically questioned certain common assumptions about the fourth gospel. It is too often taken for granted that the evangelist is addressing his message to gentile Christians, and that he considers the Jewish nation—the Judaei—as lost to God, and as rejected by him because they have rejected Christ. But it is surely significant that in his gospel, alone among the books of the new testament, the word ‘gentiles’ never occurs. The dramatic narrative centres almost exclusively on what the author regards as the crisis of Judaism.

Brothers, I have little strength, but God's word has plenty. Let it be effective in your hearts. You can listen strongly to what I am saying slowly and feebly—by complying with it. As though from his own thunder-cloud the Lord has thundered from the prophet Isaias; and if you have any sense, it has made you shiver. He spoke quite plainly, and these words need no explanation, only action. ‘What use have I', he says, ‘for the multitude of your sacrifices?’ (Isaias i, 11).

On March the 25th 1347, in the Fontebranda, Siena, were born to Jacomo Benincasa and his wife Lapa, twin girls, the last of a family of twenty five. One, Giovanna, died shortly after birth, the other, Catherine, lived to become the glory of her city.

On January the 23rd 1802, over four and a half centuries later, in Saint Giles Rookery, one of London's slums, was born to Edmund Hallahan and his wife, Catherine, Margaret, the only child of povertystricken parents, but who grew up to be one of the very faithful followers of the dyer's daughter.

Both belonged to the people, but whereas one was the daughter of well-to-do parents, the other was the child of a casual—a very casual—labourer. Catherine died at the age of thirty three on April the 29th. Margaret doubled the life's span of her prototype and died on May the n t h at the age of sixty six.