During last year's Life of the Sprit conference at Hawkesyard it was the sense of the meeting that worship is essentially connected with eating together and working together. Though it is often difficult for the readers of this review to eat together there seems no reason why they should not work together. The following article is an attempt to start a common work, in the sense that the author is quite gaily incapable of carrying it to completion, but hopes that others may do so. It is also an attempt to play together, because one of the most depressing features of Catholic reviews is their lack of play in expressing opinions: it is as though the shadow of infallibility falls upon any Catholic arguing his point, and he becomes hidden in a cloud of ‘beastly earnestness'. Knowing that the shadow of infallibility will not fall upon the following article we can begin the work with light hearts.

One of the Scribes … asked him which was the first commandment of all. But Jesus answered him, The first commandment of all is,

"Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one God;
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God
With thy whole heart,
and with thy whole soul,
and with thy whole mind,
and with thy whole strength."

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.

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.

The Mystic, says St John of the Cross, is a loving an enamoured, soul—alma enamorada. And he describes this love as the ‘labour to divest ourselves and to detach ourselves for God's sake from all that is not God’ (Ascent, ii, 5,7). When we come to analyse the immense and complex meaning of such sentences as this in the work of the Mystical Doctor we discover the two great influences that went to make up his theology, as in a lesser degree they made up the theology of nearly every Christian mystical writer. The first tradition may be called the philosophic background which was earlier in history, coming from the far East and from the purity of Greek thought, and the second, the fundamental Christian theology of love was explained rather than implemented by the former tradition of thought.

In her autobiography Margery Kempe reports our Lord as saying to ‘this creature’ (herself): ‘Fasting, Daughter, is good for young beginners, and discreet penance, and for to bid many beads, it is good for them that can no better do, and yet it is not perfect. But it is a good way to perfectionward. For I tell thee, Daughter, that they that are great fasters and great doers of penance they would that it should be held the best life; also they that give themselves to say many devotions, they would have it that that is the best life; and they that give much alms, they would that there held the best life. And I have oftentimes, Daughter, told thee that thinking, weeping and high contemplation is best life in earth. And thou shalt have more merit in heaven for one year of thinking in thy mind, than for an hundred year of praying with thy mouth, and yet thou wilt not believe me, for thou wilt many beads whether I will or not.'

‘Draw me.’ After being impelled almost irresistibly to beg for the divine embrace, after reflecting on the incomparable worth of God's love and realising that without the assistance of the Beloved she cannot attain to it, the soul calls upon him to draw her to himself. Is it then necessary that the Spouse should be drawn to follow him, as if she came unwillingly and not of her own free choice? Is she so weak that she cannot walk alone? Or is she so reluctant that pressure must be brought to bear upon her? Her request is due to none of these causes. Abundant evidence exists in the physical universe of the law of attraction. The rain in the clouds is attracted towards the earth: the moisture from the warm earth is sucked up as vapour towards the sun.

Tonight I am so tired that I don't know whether I'll be able to write anything about the vow of chastity at all. However, if His Majesty wills it, something will be written. The joy and peace of these past days since May 4th have been wonderful. I wake up every morning with happiness at the thought of it—of this precious promise between Jesus and me. And then I go to Mass and I am tired and almost fall asleep, and I am sorry that he has a bride who can pay so little attention to him. But he has willed it to be so. He has chosen me… .

To write about this vow is difficult because my appreciation of it is limited; it is difficult, too, because I cannot write of it without writing about everything else—about my whole relationship with God, about the marvel of his love for me. I cannot think of chastity without thinking of charity.

Nature abhors a vacuum: and terrible things can happen to a man with an empty heart. That is one reason why it can be more difficult for a priest or a religious to be a good Christian, living a really vital Christian life, than for happily-married lay people. The latter can without too much difficulty integrate their love of each other into their shared love of God, sanctifying the one and deepening the other. What of the priest and the religious?

One sometimes meets among lay people a dangerously romanticised idea of this vocation. For them, these are men and women set apart, dedicated, living in the sanctuary, their whole lives are spent close to God, their minds and hearts filled with God, and with a charity which causes them to think of all other human beings as ‘souls’ to be served and saved. And to move the more sentimental, there is that appalling painting of the young monk with cowled head gazing wistfully through the narrow gothic windows of his tiny cell at the world he has lost for ever…

Prologue: While I was yet a boy at school and took great delight in the company of my fellows, in the midst of the habits and vices with which that period of life is usually beset, my energy was wholly given to affection and devoted to love; so that nothing seemed to me more pleasing, nothing more joyful, nothing more useful, than to be loved and to love. So, fluctuating between diverse loves and friendships, my mind was dragged hither and thither, and being ignorant of the law of true friendship, was often deceived by its mere image. At length there came into my hands Cicero's book on friendship, which immediately presented itself to me as useful by the sanity of its opinions and as enjoyable by its perfection of style. And although I did not see myself fit for such friendship, I rejoiced at having found some rule of friendship to which I could conform the course of my loves and affections.

Love for God assuredly cannot be taught. We did not learn from others to rejoice in the light or to seek to live; no one taught us to love our parents or those who brought us up. In the same way, and indeed much more truly, the lesson of desiring God is nothing external to us. But as soon as the living creature was formed—I am speaking of man—a sort of seminal principle was implanted in him, having within it a native propensity to love. The school of God's commandments takes charge of this: the right place to cultivate it carefully, to rear it skilfully, and with God's grace bring it to perfection. We welcome your zeal, then, as indispensable for this end.