The author of the article on Mysticism in the Dictionnaire de Thèologie Catholique bases his study on the idea of the experimental knowledge of God. It is an idea that anyone wanting to treat the problem by the inductive and psychological method would be bound to arrive at. The theologian tries to confine this field of enquiry within concepts and laws, and he will define mysticism as the predominant influence of the gifts of the Holy Ghost in a Christian life. This is the standpoint we must take up if we want to discover St Thomas's attitude, and in the end our problem will amount to this: what place have the theology and the activity of the gifts of the Holy Ghost in the organism of the life of grace? Both, in fact, depend on those attributes that enrich and transform human nature, attributes called, in a word, the supernatural life.

It is consoling at times to reflect that whereas men have prayed to God from their earliest origins, it is only comparatively recently that they have probed and analysed the structure and development of prayer. Consoling, because of the vast and ever growing literature on the subject which, if anything, becomes more remote and obscure.

In the recently published Paternoster Series (Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1s. 6d. each), four of the six booklets are directly concerned with prayer—all are reprints—and are written by well-known writers. The Path of Prayer, by Fr Vincent McNabb, O.P., might be called 'prayer meditated',

Some have maintained that it was the apocryphal storips current towards the middle and end of the fourth century which created the idea that our Lady went up to heaven body and soul after death. This was the not the order in the case of the Gospels and the apocryphal gospels; the ‘former came first and then they were embroidered. So it would have been with the De Dormitione Beatae Mariae. It would have rested upon some foundation in the now forgotten tradition of the earliest times about the dormitiou of Mary. But it is not on these stories that the belief in the Assumption of Mary is grounded. Indeed, Pope Gelasius, while having a feast in his sacramentary for the Assumption, went out of his way to condemn those apocrypha as not being part of the canon of Scripture. It is an interesting point to note that, while denying their authenticity, he does not condemn the underlying truth.

St Bonaventure, who sees so clearly that theology has an object of its own—'the things we have to believe, when considered as such, pass into the class of things that can be grasped by the mind, and this because we now look at them from a second point of view’ (I Sent. I proem, q. 1.)—does not for all that think it anything but an instrument or stage in the movement towards Love. He states its aim like this: ‘Revelation turns us towards the affections', (loc. cit. q. 3, a. 1.) Albert the Great holds the same opinion: ‘Knowledge of truth is not sought through the intellect alone but through the affections and substance; hence it is not intellective but effective, for the intellect is directed towards the affections as towards it end'. (I Sent. d. 1, a. 4, ad 2m.)

This text lays bare the heart of the matter: the intellect is subordinate to the affectus. Cognitive activity, especially at the supernatural level, does not represent something autonomous, something with value in itself. To use Aristotelian terms, we have in theology not a speculative science but a practical one.

When, at the beginning of the year 1535, Blessed John Houghton, the Prior of the London Charterhouse, announced to his monks gathered together in Chapter that they must either renounce the authority of the Pope or suffer death, all cried with one mind and one voice: ‘Let us all die in our simplicity’. They had lived in simplicity, and it was in simphcity that they wished to die. But what exactly is this simplicity, which is the characteristic mark of every true Carthusian?

In a recent review of Thomas Merton's The Waters of Silence the reviewer concludes with this stirring challenge: ‘Thomas Merton writes for the world, and he writes, as he must, of a special glory of Catholic life that, despite its wonderful growth, inevitably remains the privilege of a small minority. A harder and more insistent task must be to reveal the depth and delight of the common life of the members of Christ whose lot is to live in the world, so that they, in union with the hidden ones, may sanctify it. Would that there were another Merton who might show, with something of his skill and grace and popular appeal, how the “Waters of Silence” may flow into a world that dies for lack of them.’

The Rhenish school drew into its orbit many of the contemplatives of the time. They were not of the stature of their predecessors. The sole exception to this mediocrity was of course Bl. John Ruysbroeck (†1381). This great mystic of Groenandael depends in more than one point on Master Eckhart, but he has been careful not to leave any ambiguity on his ‘dualist’ thought, that is, on his doctrine of the distinction between God and the creature. The Book of Supreme Truth (Dat boec der hoechster waerheit) has expressly stated this: ‘no creature can be or become holy to the point of losing its created nature and becoming God'. Certain expressions of Book III of the Spiritual Nuptials (De gheestelyke brulocht) did however give rise to the criticisms of Gerson.

Ruysbroeck's mystical teaching explains, then, in what Measure man can arrive at union with God. At the beginning pf his career as a writer, he admitted the possibility of the intuitive vision of the divine essence.

Although every type of Christian may derive much profit from the writings of Walter Hilton so that his Scale in particular has become a popular work of spirituality, we should not forget that the people for whom he wrote were of a very specialised type. He was addressing a particular person who must have been living the same sort of life as Mother Julian at Norwich, an anchoress shut up in her little house and devoted to the work of contemplation. He does in fact draw a sharp distinction, which many readers have to pass over in puzzlement and try to forget, between the common man and the one who is specially called. The gift of contemplation may be bestowed by God upon, any kind of person he may choose, ‘learned or lewd, men and women, those occupied in prelacy and to solitary also’.

Unless the spiritual life is based on a sound psychology it will never be secure from illusion and misspent energy. Those for example who fancy the soul to be some strange spark burning within the massy flesh, which threatens to extinguish the fire by the melting of excessive fat, will plunge into mortification of the flesh with the ardour and the malpractice of a manichee. Those who think the soul is exclusively mind will turn to education and culture as to infallible ways of salvation. The concentration of interest upon the soul alone leads to the unbalanced self-consciousness which we have already considered. Hilton's skilful balance between the subjective and the objective, the self-knowing and the God-knowing in the spiritual life guarantees that the foundation of his scale is perfectly sound; and if we look more closely into his subjective doctrine we shall find how happily he holds the balance.

In 1950, two important works on the priesthood were published. The first was a posthumous work of the late Rector of Wonersh, Mgr Hallett, a small work but invaluable, the result of many years of experience in the training of the clergy. The second was a new translation by Fr Henry Davis, S.J., of St Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care. The latter has had a considerable influence on priestly spirituality in England ever since it was translated in the ninth century by Alfred the Great. It had been familiar in England in recent times, especially through Bishop Hedley's edition, Lex Levitarum.

Many treatises have been composed to reveal the intricacies of the way to heaven in terms of the ‘three ways’. The division is hoary with age and inescapable in its simplicity. Wherever there is life there must be a beginning, it must grow and develop, and finally it must reach its fulfilment. The beginners, the progressing or proficients and the perfects make the ground plan for the purgative, illuminative and the unitive ways, and for all the other methods of measuring the supernatural growth of a soul in the life of God. But the majority of the treatises, which analyse the stages of the growing Christian, are devoted to one single aspect of Christian life.

Few things are more easily agreed to and more difficult to realise in practice than the fact that feelings count for next to nothing in prayer and the spiritual life. The position of the emotional life, that is to say, is readily accepted by the Catholic who realises that Faith even in its motive is supernatural, which is essentially of the Spirit and only accidentally concerned with the bodily or physical element of man. There are some who make the distinction between body and soul with too great a facility. And for them theoretically a man should be able to continue living a very highly supernatural life with no experience whatever, living entirely on the divine workings of faith all unfelt in the mysterious depths of his soul.

While Christianity was claiming to have found true wisdom, secular philosophy was still seeking it with all its might. Since Plato with his amazing intuitions had constructed a system of philosophy directed towards the Possession or contemplation of the Unchanging, a current of philosophy had been trying to take the realities of metaphysics by storm and enjoy them, if only for a moment, at the risk of neglecting the patient labour and slow deduction championed by Aristotle. After painting his splendid picture of the universe, from the One to the lowest degree of being, matter, Plotinus sets up an ideal for the human soul. “There are as many ways of living possible for the soul as there are levels of reality: at the bottom, life in the world of the senses, whether it be the life of pleasure, in which the soul is entirely passive, or the active life, the rule of which is given by the social virtues. Higher up comes reflection, in which the soul gives itself up to its autonomous activity, judging and reasoning.

After painting his splendid picture of the universe, from the One to the lowest degree of being, matter, Plotinus sets up an ideal for the human soul. ‘There are as many ways of living possible for the soul as there are levels of reality: at the bottom, life in the world of the senses, whether it be the life of pleasure, in which the soul is entirely passive, or the active life, the rule of which is given by the social virtues.’ Higher up comes reflection, in which the soul gives itself up to its autonomous activity, judging and reasoning.

One of the most fundamental ideas in the understanding of the ascent of the Christian towards God is that of transformation into Christ. But it is a difficult idea to grasp. So easily transformation-the taking on of a new form-slips into an identification which would be a type of pantheism. Otherwise it remains as a mere simile, suggesting that the lover of Christ becomes like Christ, simply because he performs the same sort of actions.

Another way of stating the same difficulty is to be found in the discussion concerning the nature of the unity of the Mystical Body. What sort of unity characterises the one Body of Christ on Earth? A formal unity? That would identify all the members with the head and they would lose their own personalities. Or is it simply a final unity arising from the fact that all are aiming at the same final point of beatitude? Such a union would differ in little or nothing from the union of human society.

The love of Lady Poverty is not a simple thing, a plain virtue, but a complexus of spiritual qualities which extend to the whole of the spiritual life, since poverty is one of the fundamental means of perfection, and therefore something which involves the practice of perfection. In order to be able to envisage it properly and grasp its function, it is important to distinguish clearly the virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost which play an immediate part in the practice of holy poverty, and make up its spirit. Poverty deals with man's relationship to material things, and their perfect use, or non-use.

The Gospel appointed to be read on the feast of the Assumption is the account of the two sisters, Martha and Mary, and the way they entertained Christ in their home. This may seem a strange choice for this feast. Our Lady is not referred to in the narrative; while the one who bears the same name is the great sinner converted into the great lover, St Mary Magdalen a very different person from the immaculate Virgin whose very perfection of purity seems to demand freedom from corruption. Some will conclude that it is the parallel between the contemplative resting at our Lord's feet and the glorious rest of the Assumption that the Church is anxious to emphasise here. Indeed the glorification of Mary's body reunited to her soul does represent the complete and perfect contemplative state, for our Lady has reached the Vision in which her whole being shares; and that was the heart's desire of the Magdalen.

Very little seems to be known in England as yet concerning this truly remarkable man. He is, indeed, all the more remarkable that his life attracted little attention, and that all his secular activities and circumstances were those of the most ordinary person, while there was no exterior manifestation of the very unusual, supernatural favours of which, for more than fifty years, he was the recipient.

It is not often recognised that members of Orders devoted to such activities as that of preaching were sometimes allowed to shut themselves up in anchorholds and to give themselves entirely to contemplation and to the work of their hands. But this was in fact the case in the later middle ages; and we find a pleasant example of it at the Dominican Priory of Newcastle-on-Tyne at the beginning of the fifteenth century in the person of Brother John Lacy.

For as mickle as the apostle says that without faith and true belief it is impossible to please God, therefore is it that our old enemy the fiend enforceth him night and day through false incastings of errors and false engines and imaginations and other such manner of wonderful devises, for to destroy and let our belief and our faith which is the groundstone of all holy kirk and beginner of all virtues. And them that he sees he may not cast down utterly from stabilness of this belief, he ceaseth not to cast them down by other diverse manner of ways (through his quantise and his wiles and his temptations). Wherefore we shall warily and ghostly withstand his wiles on this wise.

Father H. Urs von Balthasar wrote recently in Dieu Vivant (No. 12, 1948): ‘From the dogmatic point of view we no longer take the modern saints seriously because they themselves no longer have to be dogmatic…. They leave dogma to the prosaic work of “the schools” and become lyricists.’ Such a statement is not an isolated one among spiritual writers today. And we need hardly add that as a rule it is made with a view to deploring this separation of ‘sanctity’ from theology.

Some readers then begin to wonder whether sanctity in the Church has actually become a kind of lyricism or poetic enthusiasm. Is it a matter of ‘mystical’ intuition, rather exaggerated, a special ‘grace'» Moreover the mentality of many of our contemporaries, sincere Catholics though they may be, echoes these questions. For them the point of view of the ‘mystic’ which they identify with that of the ‘saint', the ‘irrationality’ of his conception of Christian life, of prayer and penance, are all things that should not be discussed. They are accepted or rejected; but in any case such a view of Christian life is not final.