How that, the first year since the promulgation of Our Apostolic Constitution, Provida Mater Ecclesia (cf. A.A.S., XXXIX, n.4, p.114) has happily passed, since I We have before Our eyes so great a number of souls (hidden ‘with Christ in God’ (Col. o, 3) who aspire to perfection in the world and gladly ‘with generous heart and willing mind’ (2 Mac, 1, 3) consecrate their whole life to God in the new Secular Institutes, We cannot refrain from giving thanks to the Divine Goodness for this new militia which has increased the army of those professing the evangelical counsels in the world; and in this way the Catholic apostolate is providentially strengthened in these our times—times of trouble and sorrow —by a strong force.

The object of our creation is union with God and that is the sole reason that justifies our being here. God's creation of us is a very great mystery; we cannot understand how this union can possibly be. God's infinite perfection, our imperfection; God in his splendour, we in our misery. And yet we believe, and the bridge that unites us is our blessed Lord. We must ask ourselves how it is possible that God can be united to such, worthless human beings. We could understand union as a reward to chosen spirits, faithful, undeviating, precious souls, but that we should be of that company seems astonishing. If it were a reward for heroic sanctity; but just ordinary souls…. And yet we realise that. Union is not easier between precious things, but between yielding things. It is impossible to mix diamonds with anything. It may be our very worthlessness that makes union possible.

What is a priest? He is a mediator between God and man (Summa III, 22, 1), that is, he stands halfway between God the Creator and man the created, giving the sacred things of God to the people and offering the prayers of the people to God. Says St Paul, ‘Every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God, that he may offer up gifts and sacrifices’ (Heb: v. 1). A priest then has duties to God and man, and these duties are duties of love.

First let us look at his duties of love to God. And here I would speak not of the whole of a priest's duty to God. I would put aside for the moment his daily divine office, his prayers and meditations and benedictions, his officiating in the sacraments of baptism, penance and the rest. I wish to limit myself to one single act with which the priesthood is infinitely bound up. I mean of course the Mass. What is the Mass? It is Calvary.

To our Venerable Brethren Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops and other local Ordinaries enjoying peace and communion with the Apostolic See, Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.

Although we have on many occasions ordained special prayers to be offered up throughout the world, and have often ordered the Catholic cause to be commended to God with greater insistency, no one will be surprised that in these present times we have once more seen tit to bring the I duty of special prayer home to souls.

In times of difficulty and hardship, more especially when the Powers of darkness seem to be given free rein to dare all within their power for the disgrace of the Christian cause, the Church has always been wont to implore God's help with greater fervour and perseverance, knowing that he is her author and defender. She has at the same time had recourse to the intercession of the saints in heaven, above all to that of the august Virgin the Mother of God, the support of whose patronage is surely the most powerful help in difficulty. Sooner or later the fruit of such pious supplication and of confidence in the divine goodness becomes apparent.

The Sacrament of the Eucharist is the sacrament to which all the others are ordered. The reception of all the others should be followed by it. It is the crown and consummation of the sacramental system. The sacrament of the Eucharist is not merely the consecrated species of bread and wine, which really and substantially contain the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ and which we receive in Holy Communion: it is also the words of transubstantiation uttered by the priest, which are the vehicle of Christ's substantiative action and make physically present to its his priestly act of self-oblation. The sacrament of the Eucharist in so far as it does this thing, makes present in a sacrament, but really, the priestly action of Christ, is called the Mass. The Mass is thus the supreme sacrament in its active part, as Holy Communion is the supreme sacrament in its passive Part.

If it be true that the rhythm of parish life should be accepted as the Church's normal means of bringing her members to their vocation of holiness, the danger of a false mystique must yet be faced and avoided. It is easy enough to envisage an idyllic order in which social circumstances and personal integrity alike encourage the growth of the Mystical Body as manifest in a local congregation of the faithful. But the facts are often painfully otherwise, and an appeal to a high achievement may trickle away into the lowest common denominator of what is customary.

The immediate difficulty springs from the fragmentation of parochial life, reflecting as it does the broken unity of social life everywhere. The crowded congregations at Mass may deceive; they must certainly be related to the crowds who have fallen away. And even the faithful, so often pitifully unaware of the deep resources of the faith they cling to, have largely ceased to be conscious of the God-given bond that brings them together. There can be no substitute for what is essential in any organism, and the Church is animated by the Holy Ghost himself.

The renewed interest in prayer and mystical theology has so far given insufficient attention to the writings of one who, if not actually at the fountainhead of such speculation, at least hold a position very near the source. We mean the writer known to tradition as Denys the Areopagite. So solid and forthright a personage as Ullathorne was able to describe his writings as ‘theology in its purest form, divested of controversy and written as if by a spirit with a pen of light'; and to declare that the study of these writings had ‘formed a real epoch in the history of his mind'. This small collection of treatises has, in fact, exerted a regular, uniform influence on spiritual writers throughout the Middle Ages down to modern times, and this particularly in England.

The parish church is the place of God's meeting with his children. God's house is the Christian's home, and home is the place to which you return.

The life of grace is for the members of Christ a common life, whose redemptive source is one, whose end is one. Its unity is symbolised by, indeed is effected on, that altarstone of sacrifice which gives to the church its meaning and reveals to the people of God their destiny.

Within the single circle of Christian life there are infinite varieties of Christian living. Each soul unique: but for all alike the need and fact of redemption, of incorporation in Christ the Lord of all. The irony is that the life of the Spirit, which is primarily the common life of unity, of being made one with and through Christ our Lord, should so largely be considered in terms of individual perfection.

In an old number of ‘Punch', in those days a very anti- Catholic paper, there was a picture of a small child about five: ‘Gran'ma', she says, ‘please I want to be a nun'. ‘Good gracious, child, whatever has put such a dreadful idea into your head?’ ‘Well, you see, Gran'ma, I've found the world is very hollow; even my doll is stuffed with sawdust— so please, I should like to be a nun.’

This early Victorian idea of a nun has unfortunately not yet died out. To many, even now, she appears as a disappointed, not too happy creature, who has somehow lost her way in the world. Many, even good Catholics who are ready to admire the active Orders who teach and nurse (God bless them!) regard the life of an enclosed contemplative religious as ‘pure waste of life', and do not hesitate to say so. This attitude, we hope, is the result of ignorance rather than of malice. They do not know anything about it, still less do they understand. They do not understand the distinction between a career and a vocation.

We use the word ‘perfect’ in so many contexts that it is easy to lose sight of its etymological meaning (‘per’, thoroughly, ‘facere', to make). We need to look to its roots in order to understand St Thomas's use of the term. He speaks of ‘first perfection’ and ‘second perfection’ (I. 73. 1). ‘First perfection’ is God's gift to every man as he enters upon this life; he has a nature which is perfect, ‘thoroughly-made’, in that it lacks none of the finely-adapted faculties proper to a rational being. Activity is the very raison d'etre of these faculties and in bestowing them on a nature God imparts to it the ability to act, to operate. He who ‘created heaven and earth’ has been prodigal even of his power, since he willed to create a world which should mirror his omnipotence as well as his goodness.

Just two years ago His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, issued the Apostolic Constitution which established canonically those groups of laity who had banded themselves together for the same purposes as those in religious Orders but without the external structure of religious life. This recognition of Lay or, as they are more commonly known, Secular Institutes is of considerable importance both for these groups of laity themselves and for the whole Church in keeping her contemporary, abreast of the times and adapting her apostolic mission to the changing conditions of modern life. Eeaders of LIFE OF THE SPIRIT have shown great interest in this document on this account and have Hi particular wanted to know the principles upon which this new form °f dedicated life rests. Many have evidently hoped that these principles would enable the whole gamut of religious life, both contemplative and active, to be reproduced under essentially lay conditions.

There is a verse from the New Testament which begins with that same word. Unless: ‘Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth great fruit’. We have been stricken in recent times with especially grave losses, the deaths of those who in a special sense could be called the builders of the English Dominican Province of today: Fr Bede Jarrett through his years of provincialate, Fr Vincent McNabb through the leadership and inspiration of his teaching and his personality, Fr Hugh Pope through his work for the studies of the Province. Grains of wheat. They died in God as they had lived in God; and so from their deaths as from their lives new life is given to us. And now another builder is taken from us, and taken at a time when his wisdom and strength and prudence were most urgently needed, so that those of us who lived with him and depended upon him feel very lost; and yet his building too is not in vain but will go on, because Christ lived in him, and when he built the house it was the Lord that built it.

I have been asked to speak to you about your spiritual responsibilities. Better than anyone you know the weight of them, and very specially at a time when the religious life is suSering from some disrepute, from reproaches, attacks, even from a recruiting crisis. The misunderstandings, the calumnies even, which circulate among people of the world, whether practising or not, are hardly worth considering. On the other hand, what does deserve attention is the opinion of those Christians, priasts or layfolk, who seem to be the active elements of what His Eminence Cardinal Suhard calls ‘the springtime of the Church'.

Increasingly nowadays priests, and holy priests of good judgment and experience, hesitate to recommend the religious life to their penitents. On their side, many young girls, apparently called to evangelical perfection, seek something other than the religious state, in so ‘far at least as they are able to know it.

Whether Christ, should have lived alone or in company with others. It would seem that he should not have liyed with others but should have adopted a solitary life.

For it behoved Christ by his manner of life to declare himself not merely true man but also true God. It does not behove God to associate with men, as witness Daniel 2, 11: ‘For the thing that thou askest, 0 King, is difficult; nor can anyone be found that can show it before the King, except the gods who live apart from men'. Aristotle, too, states (I Polit. 2): ‘Who lives alone is either a beast’ that is to say, he is ostracised on account of his savage character, ‘or he is a god', that is, if he seeks solitude as being most conducive to contemplating the truth. Therefore does it seem unfitting for Christ to have associated with his fellow men.