When Pius X restored the ancient praction of frequent Communion he brought new opportunities for a full Christian life to countless members of the Church. Today we owe that saintly Pope a great debt for his wisdom and charity in opening wide the channels of God’s grace through this the greatest of sacraments. But such benefits always bring with them further responsibilities, and one of the ways in which Catholics today could show their gratitude to Pius X is by insisting upon the whole of his teaching on this subject which embraces the responsibilities as well as the benefits. The sacrament of Christ’s body is now of such easy access that is is possible to approach the alter without much preparation and even out of routine. Pius X insisted that the more frequent our holy Communions the more careful should be our preparation for the reception of Christ’s body.

In speaking of that personal side that should be in our love and service of God it should be taken for granted that the life of service implies a certain growth in knowledge and love, and the service which after all is only an expression of that knowledge and love should also increase and grow. In all living things there is an ebb and flow this is found in the spiritual life in very great measure. The growth is not necessarily maintained for long, it has setbacks. It is not necessary that one should notice growth. “The Kingdom of God cometh not by observation’. We may notice it or we may not. In the lives of the saints from their own words it would seem they were often not conscious of it, did not seem to themselves to have seen any improvement, sometimes quite the reverse. St Francis of Assisi says many things that suggest that he saw no increase in his knowledge or love. So to notice the growth is not necessary to us; that other people should notice it—yes, but that we should—no. It is not ordinarily evident to the individual himself.

Catholic teaching on prayer and methods of prayer seems sometimes to neglect the sacramental system of the Church. Great emphasis is necessarily laid on the personal activities of the Catholic who sets out to lead a life based on communion with God; still greater emphasis is rightly laid on the part played by God directly on the soul in this communion, as the soul grows passive under the divine influence; but little is said of the divine activity through the sacraments in relation to this life of prayer, which after all is the final purpose of every influx of grace. These divinely given means of receiving grace work ex opere operato and do not depend merely on the subjective use made of them by the recipient. Therefore as means of prayer they should contribute to a new power, independent in some manner of the personal spiritual exercises of the individual. If a man desires to pray he adopts a method in addition to the ordinary daily exercises of morning and night prayers.

One evening in summer on the rocky slopes overlooking the Sea of Galilee from the north, Jesus had fed five thousand people with a few pieces of bread. Next day these same people and Jesus were crowded into the synagogue in Capharnaum. Our Lord was speaking to them: ‘I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the desert and are dead. This is the bread that comes down from heaven that if any man eat of it, he may not die…. I am the living bread which came down from heaven…. If any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world’ (John 6, 48-52).

Unlike all other great spiritual teachers Christ claimed not only to lead and point to a better life, he made the astonishing claim that he was that life. Further, he put it in the form that he was also the instrument by means of which we acquired this life, he said he was the ‘Bread of Life’. This bread, or food, was in fact to be, as he promised, his flesh.

Blessed Nicolaus was a hermit, respected and beloved not only by his contemporaries, but to this day in his native land of Switzerland, in his great shrine in Sachsen, and in several chapels as well as his own memorial chapel at Ranft.

The Swiss believe that it was owing to his prayers and protection that their country was immune in the 1914-18 war and in this one; and the gratitude of the nation has shown itself in a large fresco painted in his memorial church at Ranft, showing Switzerland as a sort of island, upheld by Blessed Nicolaus, amidst the general welter of slaughter and suffering of the rest of Europe. He is considered one of the nation’s heroes, indeed, had it not been for his prophetic vision and wisdom Switzerland might never have become a country at all.

Nicolaus had many visions, but in the first great vision he suffered pains; for God, in one moment, freed his body from the bands of necessities such as other men are heir to; the piercing light raised him from the ground, and taught him he was to seek all in God.

The most important truth for our interior life is an ever more exact knowledge of the God who dwells in us. His goodness, his providence, his justice, and all his attributes seem to grow beneath our gaze, when we consider them in the light of the mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption; now we know these only by revelation.

But we receive the greatest light from our knowledge of the Blessed Trinity. There is but one true God. This God who is in us entirely is the God one in nature and three in Persons. This assertion confounds us. This living Trinity, which we are accustomed to represent in I know not what distant heaven where he unveils his splendour for the angels and saints, this adorable Trinity is in us, it lives in us. In me. at this moment, as at all the other instants of my life, God the Father in knowing himself begets his Son and gives to him his whole divine nature so as to make him his equal, consubstantial with himself.