While the basic and traditional lines of the spiritual life are unalterable, being the fruit of the thought of theologians and the experience of souls, there is room for development in method and indeed, granted changing circumstances, the possibility of completely new methods. Of course the dictum Nil innovetur nisi traditum est is as true here as elsewhere, and new methods can never mean more than a new approach or a new combination of traditional methods. This present age is one in which circumstances would seem to demand such a new approach. It is an age which has seen the growth and development of a deeper appreciation of the place of the laity in the missionary activity of the Church.

In a lecture attempting to draw a picture of woman's soul as it should be in accordance with her eternal vocatio11 the following attributes were used: wide, silent, empv of self, warm, clear. The question arose of how these qualities are to be obtained.

If we want to find the ultimate explanation and full meaning of anything we must go back to the Beginning, End and Reason of all things—the Blessed Trinity And this is true of ‘the most holy rule of Silence’ which is called somewhere ‘a beautiful and most useful observance, conducing much to the formation of the religious spirit, to peace of soul and to the love of prayer’.

What do we mean by silence? Several quite different things which we may understand better if we consider the various words which we use as synonyms for silent: quiet, still, tranquil, noiseless, speechless.

The Letters of St Teresa of Lisieux, now first published in English, are an indispensable companion to her Autobiography. For they shed new light on her character and underline the special cachet of her sanctity. In the many short letters and occasional billets we are permitted to watch her soul as it were in working dress—and, let us say it at once, from the first letter to the last we see sheer sanctity. John Beevers, in his very understanding biography of her with the somewhat flashy title Storm of Glory writes: ‘St Thérèse of the Child Jesus is the greatest Saint of modern times . . . because she has liberated sanctity and made it obviously accessible to everyone’. It is this that strikes the reader so forcibly in her letters.

Granted the pre-eminence of charity among the virtues, the superiority of the contemplative over the active life, there is still a sense in which we are most. like to God when performing the works of mercy. For the whole order of things, the relations between creatures and the pale semblance of rights which we are permitted to assert in the divine presence, are dependent on the Creator's prerogative of mercy. Whatever is, is the consequence of God's mercy removing the defect that is non-existence; the even more abysmal deficiency that is sin is removed by his greater merey and by that very fact we are brought without merit into a still higher order of justice. This last was effected by a mercy determined to stir our hearts and to show how much God would be like ourselves: because divine beatitude can admit of no defects, God as God cannot suffer with us; but becoming man, he could both remove misery and feel it—he knew compassion.

We read in today's Gospel that our Lord went into the temple and drove out of it the buyers and sellers, saying to those who sold doves: ‘Take these things hence’. By that he meant that he wanted the temple to be pure: ‘It is my temple’, he seemed to say, ‘I have full right to claim it. I alone intend to dwell there. I alone mean to be its master.’