Integrity, Integration—such words indicate the needs of our age. They are needs which now affect humanity as a whole. All mankind needs to be integrated into the unity which it potentially is. Failure to achieve this integration involves the danger of destruction of large parts of humanity. St Augustine's definition of peace still holds good. It is ‘the tranquillity of order'.

This problem of integration hinges on another problem of integration, the integration which involves the incarnation of the spiritual life in the material life. Disintegration is the disease of our time, the converse of that specialisation and expertise which to some extent cannot be avoided. Men tend to be divided up into those who try to solve humanity's problems on a spiritual level, who pray about them, and live a relatively secluded life, and on the other hand those men who try to work on a solely material level, who live a relatively active life, working in the social, political, economic and similar spheres.

Throughout the Church at the present time there is a growing movement of return to a closer love and more popular understanding and sharing in the prayer of the Liturgy. To a system which sees an earthly paradise in terms of the community, the Christian faith contrasts the fundamental truth of divine revelation that the relationship between man and God is one between a community of persons. But within that shared life of Christians there often exists a longing for greater simplicity and directness in the approach of the individual to God. For a baptised Christian does not primarily join an earthly society or adopt an ideology, he enters into a relationship with God, with three divine persons. God gives himself, adopts the Christian, who must then discover how to receive his adoption, how to get out of his own way, how to ‘die in order to live'.

It is a common theme in Marian theology that our Lady's motherhood of men means that in some way we are born of her when we are born into the life of grace. What that means exactly no one knows; there is divergence of opinions about the closeness of Mary's work in our souls to the work of the Holy Ghost. Evidently our Lady does not save us; to what extent God has chosen to associate her with himself in this divine work is not yet known, and perhaps never will be till we see it all in retrospect, in heaven.

Our Lady is our spiritual mother. Here we are on safe ground. If we ponder on that fact, work out its implications, act on it, we shall be sure of ‘thinking with the Church sentire cum Ecclesia. Our earthly mothers give us life, earthly life, though they do not create our souls. Mary gives us spiritual life—she is called Mediatrix of all graces but she does not give us grace as from herself, for it is God's own gift.

In the Rule of St Benedict the monastic day is divided into three unequal periods. The longest is that which is given to manual work, which might amount to as much as seven hours. The others, which were roughly equal and amounted to about half that time, were given to prayer, or the ‘work of God', and to lectio divina or sacred reading. Each of these elements in the monastic life, as we hope to show, were intimately related to one another, but it is with the lectio divina that we are primarily concerned today. There is no doubt of the nature of this reading in the time of St Benedict and in the centuries which followed. It was confined at first to the study of the Bible and the Fathers, especially the Latin Fathers, and above all St Jerome and St Augustine. To these were added later, perhaps through the influence of Cassiodorus, some of the classical writers, but the typical Benedictine study has always remained the Bible and the Fathers.

In the Our Father we have not merely a plan for addressing God, a formula of prayer, but a command: ‘Thus shalt thou pray'. Prayer is the expression of our attitude towards God. Our Lord says, ‘This is the way you've got to ask God for things—this is the way you've got to think of God and address him; the way I wish you to approach him.'

Take the Lord's Prayer in that sense. ‘What is God to you?’ says our Lord; and he begins ‘Father'.

St Thomas says that we are entitled to take as intended for us every meaning of our Lord's words and actions which they will legitimately bear. Therefore we must take God as an ideal Father. ‘I am your Father, I want you to think of me as your Father; and not merely to think of me but to know that I am your Father.’ Look at a little child and his father; he receives all he has and is from his parents, but quite soon goes on independently of them.

Of the three monotheistic religions of the Semites, Islam was the last to make its appearance upon the stage of history in the third decade of the seventh century. Unlike its two predecessors, Judaism and Christianity, its appearance was attended by a series of epochmaking events which mark the eclipse of the two great empires of the time, Byzantium and Persia. And, whereas the beggign nings and developpm ent of the two latter religions are surrounded by comparative obscurity, historians know almost all the significant stages in the rise and development of Islam, which forces itself, like a cataclysm, upon the attention of the civilized world by dint of military prowess.

It is the business of the angels to mediate between God and mankind, to make his wishes known to us by enlightening our intelligence so that we may see more clearly what God wants of us, and thus may run more freely in the way of his holy will. It is their office to draw us ever closer to that love and praise of God which is their very existence; but whatever they are doing to help us, their gaze remains fixed upon the eternal Godhead, the Blessed Trinity. We are told in the scriptures that the angels have eyes at the back of their head as well as the front; in fact, in Ezechiel's vision the cherubim and the very wheels upon which they move are studded with eyes: ‘And their whole body and their necks and their hands and their wings and the circles were full of eyes, round about the four wheels.’

A number of things have been written of late on the opinion held by St Aelred on the Assumption of Mary. Since an unknown sermon of the saint, found recently and published by Dr C. H. Talbot, contains a decisive allusion to the point, it may be interesting to resume the discussion and set it against its true background. To those who have studied the sources likely to afford some evidence for the belief, the apparent hesitation of the Cistercians seems surprising, having due regard to their outstanding devotion to our Lady. A remarkable study by Fr E. Wellens of the Abbey of Westmalle (Belgium), throws some light on the real situation.

To begin with, a charming legend told by Caesar of Heisterbach will explain the circumstances. In a monastery of our Order in Lombardy, there was a noble and well-educated monk named Bertram, who could no longer endure hearing doubts about the bodily assumption of Mary.

Few things would have surprised, or indeed amused, Father Paul Nevill more than that someone should think it suitable to write about him in the pages of The Life of the Spirit. And that is a clue to the sort of man he was. During his thirty years as Headmaster at Ampleforth, Father Paul met many thousands of persons, very few of whom will not have been struck by the impact of his personality. He has been called the greatest of modern headmasters. Certainly it is true that his prestige not only among the senior officials of the Ministry of Education but also among his fellow members of the Headmasters’ Conference was very great. Yet his position as Headmaster of Ampleforth had little to do with the influence he attained. With his fine presence-great height, magnificent head, and natural grace—he was made for fame; but natural gifts of themselves achieve little the union in him of grace and nature that won him the unique place that was his in the educational world of this country.

God is Love: that is his name, that is his life, and God known must be God loved, God worshipped. ‘O taste and see how good the Lord is.’ The mind awakens to goodness and the will moves to possess it. God first loved us: that is what his goodness means. And our answer is to love him in return. For love is to be expressed. it is not a notion to be cherished, a choice in reserve; rather is it a life and all of a life, imperative and lasting.

Man is made for God: made to worship him, therefore, to give him the praise and acknowledgment his goodness demands. That is what religion is for: giving God what is his due, not adequately indeed, as though man on his own might ever match the infinite love of Love himself.

St Thomas reminds us of the following words of St Bernard: ‘The first and chiefest contemplation is the marvelling of God's majesty'. We learn from St Ambrose that ‘Glory is the shining Fact praised', and that the splendour of the Holy Trinity is the glory of God in himself. It therefore follows that man's end of life, which is the rendering of glory to God, is at once the most beneficial mode of ministering to his own happiness—and that of all others, since his relationship to God involves his relationship with all other men—and the greatest act of friendship ship he can render to his Creator. ‘Charity', says St Thomas, ‘inspires the soul with a sovereign love of him, who is supremely the object of love.’

The idea is current that virtue and intelligence have little to do with each other; the idea implied in the line of the song, ‘Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever'. We may readily agree that virtue has little do with mere smartness, or with that slick mental dexterity so much admired in the lower reaches of the commercial world; but it is certain doctrine that mature, adult virtue cannot dispense with intelligence since the will is the executive or directive faculty of the intellect.

The planning directive virtue of the moral life is prudence, and it is an intellectual virtue in the sense that its seat Is the intellect, and its function is to teach us how to act, applying general principles to conduct here and now in given concrete circumstances. It enables us above all else to keep the end or reason of action in view.

Our chief concern, brethren (sisters), is the love of God; and after this the love of our neighbour, for these are the two greatest commandments. To these ends we give the following directions for the regulation of monastic life.

The first aim of community life is the ideal of unity in community—all our thoughts and desires united and centred on God.

The possession of an immortal soul opens up such wonderful possibilities to man that a thinker, over- whelmed by the greatness of life, once exclaimed: ‘However great things a man would say about the meaning of life, he would always say too little.’

These marvellous possibilities begin to be realized as soon as a soul is received into the bosom of the Church. ‘O marvel of Baptism', a convert joyfully exclaims. ‘If only we had faith, we should be wrapped in joy whenever we assist at a Baptism, if we remember the spiritual greatness of the neophyte, who becomes the living tabernacle of the Holy Ghost.’

All without exception can happily become temples of the Divine Spirit; in everyone the consoling word of Christ can be fulfilled: The Father and I will come and take up our abode in him.’

Since the Fall man has been haunted by the vision of peace, of a state in which the fulfilment of desire would be complete and undisturbed. The longing for peace is as universal as desire itself; for the very idea of desire includes the wish for peace, inasmuch as the full enjoyment of any coveted good can only be ensured by peace. Even wars, as St Thomas points out, are only fought for the sake of peace, in order to bring about conditions more satisfactory than the prevailing ones; while the very restlessness and sensationalism of an age merely indicates that the pursuit of genuine peace has been given up as impossible of fulfilment.

In one of the castles Jesus entered during his journey, a woman called Martha entertained him in her house. She had a sister called Mary. You have heard from the gospel the great happiness of the two women. Truly, great happiness was Martha's who received such a guest, who waited upon him and was busy in his service. Great happiness was Mary's who recognised the excellence of her guest, who heard his words and tasted his sweetness. The gospel narrates that our Lord Jesus Christ entered one of the castles and a woman called Martha entertained him in her house. She had a sister called Mary who ran to Jesus when he entered and sat down at his feet listening to his words. So closely did she attend to the words of the Lord that she took no heed of anything in the house, not even how much her sister was labouring.

Supernatural charity, ‘is the love which refers all things to God above all things, even man himself. Caritas or Agape is essentially a grace. From the New Testament we learn that God's ‘design was and is to animate man with his own love that man, in and through God's love or grace, should have a kind of equality of friendship, such that he could know God as God knows himself, and love God as God loves himself in the Blessed Trinity'.

St Paul's preaching of love was to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles mere folly. This is a love which abandons all thought of self, and becomes lost in its object. Its very opposite is that type of self-interest which makes people use others for their own ends, or to gloat over their misfortunes.

When St Dominic's successor, Blessed Jordan of Saxony, a man remarkable for shrewd common sense, was asked which was better, studying the Scriptures or praying, he replied: You might as well ask me which is better, eating or drinking. A meticulous critic might argue that liquid nourishment is even more indispensable than solid, that no man can be saved without prayer, that prayer can save those ignorant of the Scriptures. In the concrete, however, for ourselves, Scripture and prayer, like eating and drinking, are indispensable.

Must they however be wholly separated? Can they not be, to a considerable extent at least, combined? They can, because they are.

The liturgy—Mass and Divine Office—is largely (the Office mostly) prayer in the words of Scripture, and both Mass and Office provide lessons from Scripture. The liturgical Gospels cover the greater part of the Fourth Gospel, and for a rough guess two-thirds of St Matthew and a half of St Luke.

By this shall all men know you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.’ Such was our Lord's last exhortation to his disciples. He insists on mutual charity, love; because when we put that into practice it brings all the rest in its train. Charity is patient, kind, charity envieth not; it calls for forgiveness of trespasses, offences, debts. ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us’ gives the Our Father a touch of meanig quite different from our ordinary language. To what do I commit myself when I say this? I acknowledge that I am a sinner: ‘All we like sheep have gone astray'; like silly sheep. The gates are open, but do we go through them? No! We are stupid, silly sheep gone astray, just following our own way.

Don't let us make any mistake: we are ordered to make this prayer of petition. Go to God as to your absolute All—your father, brother, creator. I must turn to him as the lover of souls—as one who loves me beyond the dreams of imagination; who has only one care for me, that the best may be mine; who longs for me. ‘As the hart panteth’ (I am not afraid to put that the other way round) so does God long for me. People complain ‘I can't meditate I can't pray'. That is often another way of saying ‘I’m not interested enough'. Is it possible that I have not got enough interest in it? Am I sure that I really want it enough?