Some twenty years ago Pius XI pointed out how important is the role of the contemplative in the Church. He said that they who assiduously fulfil the duty of prayer and penance contribute much more to the increase of the Church and the welfare of mankind than those who labour in tilling the Master’s field; for unless the former drew down from heaven a shower of divine graces to water the field that is being tilled, the evangelical labourers would reap indeed from their toil a more scanty crop. It is true that his words were addressed to cloistered religious, but they are none the less of universal application.

Signs are not wanting that the truth of the Pope s words is beginning to be understood outside the cloister. It is surely not without significance, too, that Pius XI should, just a year after writing the words quoted above have canonized St Theresa of Lisieux and made her Patroness of Missions, and a year afterwards declared St John of the Cross a Doctor of the Church. St Theresa was a Carmelite nun living in the direct tradition of the two great Carmelite teachers, St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross, and the Little Way that she describes in her Histoire d’une âme interprets to modern readers the essence of the teaching of these Carmelite masters, and points out its application to modern needs and conditions. In this she is important as they in their day, no less than in our own, were important for another reason—namely, that living as they did in full flood of the counter-reformation they yet carried on the traditional in their teaching on the spiritual life and prayer.