Alpha and Omega—these, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, are used to signify that Christ include within himself all. He is the beginning and the end, the sum total of all things, from which all creatures derive, to whom they all tend. This title is true of Christ because he is God from whom all creatures derive and towards whom they all tend. God is the sum total, the beginning and the end. But he is not the sum total or the beginning and the end in the Eastern sense that creatures are an emanation from God, that history is the slow return into God of all that came out.

We all derive from God as things made from nothing by the act of his power, we tend towards him as creatures who behave as he designed us to behave, and as godlike men with grace who will see God as he is in himself.

The ‘Science of the Cross’ could never be an easy discipline, for each stage of learning brings us face to face with a demand which seems more impossible than the last. One of these lessons is repeated so insistently and frequently that we should become weary of it, did we not acknowledge in the depths of our heart that-we had never really learnt it; it is that which teaches us our uselessness. There are always a certain number of ardent souls who surrender themselves so fervently to the ‘Science of the Cross’ that their own uselessness is quickly made clear to them; they gladly give back their whole personality and their gifts to God, confident that he will use them in his good time and in his way; faced with the choice of ‘all or nothing’ they choose nothingness and receive all. Two such heroes of the spiritual life were Pere Jacques de Jésus, a French Carmelite, and Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Carmelite from Eegina Pacis Carmel in Cologne, stories of whose martyrdom, movingly told by members of their communities, have now been published

Father De Foucauld, the modern Desert Father, has a world-wide renown and considerable interest has been shown in his Fraternities, the Little Brothers of Jesus, which have sprung, as it were, from his very life-blood. But less is heard of the Little Sisters of Jesus, who are in many ways quite different from the usual type of religious Congregation. They lead a contemplative life and yet it is lived not inside an enclosure but outside, amongst the materialistic workers of France as well as the nomadic Infidels of the Sahara. It is a life of poverty, labour and love; its purpose is to imitate as closely as possible that of Jesus the Carpenter in his workshop, Jesus the Lover of mankind who, in his public ministry, shared the life of the common people, his heart and soul overflowing with love for God and man.

Thus the desire of the Little Sisters is to live among the poor in such a way as to be identified with the poor. And their poverty is authentic for they have no secure background of dowry, income or organised charity; their Fraternities are maintained by the work of their hands.

We claim to take for granted in the purposes of this essay the central facts of Christ, his reality in history, his verifiable effect, and the chief truths of his life, as they were preserved at least till a generation ago among the divided sects in the break-up of Christendom, and as they are now, and for ever will be preserved, only by the Catholic Church. Thus the divinity of Christ is here assumed, and the doctrine of divine grace and merit which lie poured out upon mankind by his death; his identity with his mystical Body, the Church whose life is but an extension through time and space of his own Incarnate Being; and chiefly here the thesis of his vivifying and redemptive work in the minds and wills of the men who decisively accept his Church.

The small local train from Lucerne winds its way up the wooded mountains to the famous medieval shrine of our Lady of Einsiedeln. There is no official pilgrimage going on at the moment, only a few peasants and hikers. The pilgrim from England looks out of the window at the grandiose lines of the mountains, with the Itigi in the distance, and wonders what he will find at this sanctuary of our Lady, once as renowned throughout Europe as Lourdes is today. Now the abbey comes into view; and at once the note is struck that will sound again and again during these thirty-six-hours; the note of contrast, of dissonance: the rich, overladen baroque building set within the wondrous simplicity of the Alpine scenery, a strange encounter between the pretentious architecture of self-centred Eenaissance man and the glory of the mountains made by the Lord.

At 4.15 next morning the pilgrim is woken up by a tremendous noise—the bells of Einsiedeln, as powerful as the surrounding mountains, calling all the neighbourhood to Mass.

How I should like to deepen my spiritual life by more prayer and reading; but I simply haven't the time—this complaint can often be heard from many who earnestly desire a more intimate relationship with God and feel that what prevents them from achieving it is mainly lack of that minimum of leisure which is indispensable for an intense life of prayer. Yet, if we look at the Saints we shall discover the paradoxical phenomenon that the more they prayed the more time they seemed to have for their apostolic work. Whether we take St Dominic or St Teresa, St Bernard or St Catherine of Siena, we are confronted with the fact that they accomplished in a very short time tasks sufficient for several ordinary long human lives, and in addition gave what seems to us a disproportionate amount of time to prayer. It looks, indeed, as if our Lord's promise that to those who seek first the Kingdom of God all else will be added includes also time. If we give time to him he will give it back to us with interest.

In general the higher reaches of the spiritual life are characterised by a method in prayer of praying without a method. Human methods are human activities. In the passive type of prayer the activity is divine so that the method is God's method, the plan of which the soul can only guess. At the same time spiritual guides must give some indication as to the best way of co-operating in this divine method, and The Cloud of Unknowing as well as teaching the soul how to ‘nought’ itself in order to allow God to work freely, also suggests the type of human co-operation which is least likely to hinder the divine work. This may be called the method of prayer inculcated by The Cloud. It amounts to the reduction of all prayers to the most comprehensive and the least articulated. The long ex tempore monologues in which some people indulge while on their knees, a monologue which considers all the various attributes of God and his wonderful deeds and activities, has to be undertaken for the sake of instruction in faith.

The contemplative life is of its nature a hidden life. It is often a reproach levelled at contemplatives that they separate themselves, not only materially, but also spiritually from the life of those living in the world. That the world of sin which the contemplative has quitted and that of grace where he intends to live, are opposed one to the other, is a fact. But that this includes an opposition between those who abide in the love of God either in the world or in the enclosure is not true.

The soul of the contemplative becomes the rendezvous of humanity and God, for she belongs to both. As he prays silently or chants the Divine Office his prayer and praise are the voice of the-world. When he suffers and offers himself in sacrifice he is a token for the expiation of the world's sins and shares in the sufferings of his brethren. He is ever in the presence of God, and within his soul Life itself is buried—hidden like the seed—in order to bring forth fruit and be communicated to others.

In entering a dark and strange room we have to depend upon external direction to find our way about it. We need some other person to speak and tell us where we are, or someone to lead us by the hand. We can rely only very meagrely upon our own powers of discretion. On entering the Cloud of Unknowing the soul needs the clear voice of some spirit other than its own to tell it where it is and whither going. There must be some interpreter near at hand to declare what the darkness means and to read the signs which appear in the experience of the soul. The minor works of the author of the Cloud are mainly concerned with the discernment of spirits, for it is the Spirit of God who is the principal interpreter while a director, such as the author, is needed to assure the soul when the Paraclete interprets and when the human or the evil spirit deceives.

Radicate et fundati in cantate as an ideal for the religious life is not older than the New Testament, but since that time it has been the inspiration of all religion. Each succeeding age has attempted to interpret it according to the spirit of its time, but no comprehensive interpretation has yet been achieved and one wonders what depths of meaning are still to be revealed. Like a jewel flashed in the sun it is continually revealing facets of scintillating beauty, and while one is paralysed by the beauty one now beholds, the beauty of yore is dimmed bub not diminished. Man's mind is finite and awaits the ultimate judgment, or appreciation of God, but our faith in the maturing life of the Church moves Us to hope that our interpretation of beauty, or charity, is the highest yet known to man. Other men may say ‘the old is better': other men have a right to their opinion. It is the Catholic Church.

In our own day a new congregation, with a new spirit and a new asceticism, is discovering a new application of this ideal of the religious life.

Of how one should seek and find the spiritual nativity in the light of grace, by self-effacement and the suppression of all natural light.

Of the price of sufferings and afflictions, and in particular of the three offerings of the Magi.

We are come indeed to adore him and to offer him our mystical gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. The reasonable soul, by its natural light alone, comes to the knowledge of the existence of God. But what is he? Who is he? Where is he? So many questions to which she gives no answer and of which she ignores the solution. Hence, for the holy and religious soul, arises a loving desire to seek God with ardent solicitude. She wants to know what he is, who is this hidden and unknown Being.

Then, in this laborious searching, suddenly there appears a star, and this is nothing but a ray of heavenly grace, a divine light which seems to say interiorly to the soul: he is born! At the same time this light leads the soul to the place of his birth which no natural light could have pointed out to her. And so we see that all who seek for this nativity by the light of reason alone do not arrive there: they stray and lose their way, they make no progress in virtue.

It may fairly be said that in ancient Hebrew poetry suffering holds the place reserved for love in the lyrical compositions of the literature of the West. It is, moreover, under the pressure of tragic events that suffering has become the leitmotiv of the latter part of the Bible in which the book of Job occurs.

It is true that there is very little mention of suffering in the accounts of the Thorah. Not a few massacres are there related– without any pity for the victims. The reason is that at the time of the conquest of Palestine and during the beginnings of the Monarchy the Hebrews were still an insensitive and uncivilised people. They were a young and conquering race. Their will to power was intact. The sages of the court of Solomon or of Jeroboam II were the diplomats or poets of a tiny nation possessed with the certitude that it would endure and conquer.

There are three places in Lima intimately associated with St Rose: St Dominic's Church, where she is buried and where she habitually prayed during her lifetime; St Catherine's Convent, built on the site of the house where she died, where are. preserved many relics of her life; and the Church of St Rose, the first ever to be dedicated to her, built beside the site of her parents’ home and garden, which are still preserved. This church and adjoining garden and buildings contain all the most important places and objects associated with her.

The convent is an enclosed one, and the chapel installed in the room where S't Rose died, in which are preserved all the mementoes connected with her, is not open to the public. It is important, however, because it was there that the Spanish Dominican scholar, Fr Luis Alonso Getino, discovered in 1923 the sheets on which the saint had recorded, in a most original form, the mystical graces which she had been granted; this record completely alters our ideas of her character and mentality. I believe they are still unknown to the English reader.

A few months ago we promised to provide some regular contributions for religious men and women. It has proved a surprisingly difficult task to discover writers willing to undertake this responsible work. However we are fortunate to have secured from the posthumous papers of the late Very Eeverend Father Austin Barker, O.P., S.T.M., a profound and thorough treatment of the foundation of religious life. In his essay on obedience the author, who was Professor of Metaphysics at the English Dominican House of Philosophy, takes the opportunity of showing the natural basis for the complete self-dedication of the vow of obedience, so that his words do in fact provide wholesome doctrine for all readers, be they lay or religious. But the final chapters which, as we are publishing the essay serially, will only appear in The Life of The Spirit after several months, are concerned more exclusively with the vow of obedience and its implications. We publish below Father Barker's introduction to his essay under the title which he gave to the whole work.

No one who has any acquaintance with modern ‘mystical’ I writings which come from the pens of such as Aldous Huxley or Gerald Heard will be unaware of the existence of dangers in the doctrine put forward by The Cloud of Unknowing. This book has become so popular with people who are not specifically Christian and who think they find an identical teaching in Indian and Sufi writings that it is suspect by many devout Catholics who are yet seeking courageously for perfection and would find otherwise much assistance in its pages. It is easy to point to its strong Dionysian origins, reaching this East Anglian spiritual director through the Victorines and stretching back through the Pseudo-Dionysius to Neoplatonic philosophy. So with a careful choice of texts a student could work out a detailed, parallelism between the pagan writings of Plotinus and Proclus and the Christian author of The Cloud.

Numberless, my beloved children, are the tokens of love and of the infinite goodness of God in our regard. Wherever we turn we see in all directions signs of his protection and his tenderness; so much so that, ‘iSTo one can hide himself from his heat’ (Ps. 18). This immense goodness, in which no evil can have part, and which is not something added to God but his very nature and essence, this goodness, I say, what else can it desire but to love, to give Itself, to manifest Itself, to communicate and transmit Itself? All this It does as far as It can. without respite, with no respect of persons, with perfect justice. And so, there is no moment, or point of time however short, in which God does not will with all his strength to fill every reasonable soul with all good things, with all grace, all his gifts and all riches. There is no instant in which he does not desire to make his dwelling within her, to abide in her trustfully and with delight, to purify her and preserve her from all evil, to adorn her with virtues as with so many precious stones.

All over the world today Holy Church is celebrating the coming down of the Holy Ghost whom God sent visibly and with such glory to the apostles and chosen disciples. Of course it was necessary that those men, whose mission it was to be an example to the world and who were to lay down the way of perfection to all who should come after them, should themselves be enlightened and filled with the fervour of divine love, above all their contemporaries. It was only just that they should be consoled with a fuller grace of the Holy Spirit who had been deprived of all joy and altogether abandoned, left desolate within and without.

The books of the Hebrew Bible may be divided into three groups: the Torah, the Prophets and the ‘Writings'. This latter part is made up of works composed, collected or published for the most part after the return from exile to Babylon. One of the books it contains has as its title the single word Job. It is the name of a person who from the very first lines is presented to us as a just man, a believer, one who is rich and fortunate in life. The reader then leaves earth to catch a glimpse of what is taking place in heaven. Job is accused by Satan of self-interest in his piety. Yahweh allows S'atan to afflict Job in the first instance in his material possessions, and his family. Job accepts this trial. Still sceptical in the face of this proof of disinterestedness, Satan obtains from Yahweh permission to strike Job in his person, by disease.