The Mass, said St Vincent Ferrer, is the highest act of contemplation. This relation between the Mass and contemplation, and hence between the priesthood and the contemplative life, is something which has received very Jittle attention; and yet it is something of supreme importance W the spiritual life of a priest, and in the whole conception of contemplation and the contemplative life. For too long, contemplation has been regarded as a matter of individual piety, the final phase in a system of meditation and mental prayer, to which few are expected to attain and which has no apparent relation to the sacramental and liturgical life of the Church. Garrigou-Lagrange has done much to correct this tendency, by showing that contemplation is not to be regarded as an extraordinary grace to which only a few can aspire, but as part of the normal perfection of a Christian life; the development of the grace which we all receive at baptism under the influence of the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

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.

For those who are of the diocesan clergy, the undisputed authorities must naturally be our Lord himself, St Paul and the Popes: from them we shall seek for the principles of our conduct, and then consider the practical application of those principles to our lives.

I suppose it is the experience of nearly every priest that in the course of time his outlook on the daily offering of the Mass undergoes a considerable change. At first the thought uppermost in my mind as I say Mass is that what I am doing is very wonderful. It may be because the theology of the Eucharist is still fresh in the memory; but, whatever the reason, the aspect of the Mass that chiefly appeals in those early days is what theologians describe as ex opere operato: I am above all intensely conscious of the marvellous power which God is manifesting in and through myself. At my words bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, in my person the Word Incarnate is offering himself in sacrifice to his Father. It is with a feeling of awe, almost of fear, that I tremblingly handle the frail host and gaze wonderingly in the chalice at the blood which Christ has shed for me. And this sentiment, mingled with a feeling of exhilaration, which holds me when I realise that I am acting as God's minister in the miracle of transsubstantiation, is so overpowering that I can hardly think of anything else.

If we were truly humble, we should never be astonished to find ourselves giving way to sin. We should indeed be horrified but not surprised. This is one of those things that are so hard, so impossible, to understand. Once we have really begun to try to see what we are like, we recognise ourselves to be the most evil of all creatures. This is no mock humility. At least, we can put it another way round by saying that we know more evil against ourselves than against anyone else. I know others in history or amongst my acquaintances who have done worse things than I, but I cannot say truthfully that they are worse because I do not know. I do not know either their temptations or their conditions of interior life, nor do I know their motives; and until one knows motives one cannot tell whether what was done was sinful or not. The Catholic Church never claims to judge intentions, to judge why people do what they do. She may condemn acts, but never persons in their own consciences: ‘All judgment must be left to the Son’. It follows, then, that I know worse against myself than against anyone else. I know that I am a sinner.

In September 1931, a young priest entered the Carmelite Monastery at Lille, which is under the patronage of the Little Flower. It was a month of stirring events in the world of high finance and politics, for the question of the gold standard was throwing the money-markets into confusion and unemployment was kindling the flames of class-hatred. The British Association was in session at the time, listening amongst other things to a broad-sweeping address from General Smuts, an address in which he painted his holistic Deity on a canvas large enough even for the views of his audience.

Our Lord, remembering the family occasions in his home town, once remarked on the joy of a mother who has just brought a child into the world. The joy is not merely the negative one of relief from pain; it is, he implies, a human joy because she knows that a man child now has existence apart from her own and yet so close-tied to her own existence that his very blood is hers. Our Lord, thinking of that, must have thought too of the reciprocal joy of the son belonging to his Mother, a separate being and yet the same blood—and more than that, the same mind and the same words, as his bringing forth continues to his maturity. The son belongs to his mother all those years as she, even more than his father, inspires his imagination with homely pictures and places on his lips homely words, the first being those of ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’.