The subject of the Bible as a whole is the unique divine drama of the creation, fall, redemption and restoration of man, and in this drama God himself plays the central role as author, actor and producer. The drama is a real one, no mere puppet show manipulated by the author, and this means that all those engaged in it have the freedom to tamper with the author's intentions in the interests of their own vanity and pride. They can seek to be masters of the plot rather than servants of it. But this drama is such that no actor in it can ultimately frustrate the author's intentions. They can, for example, ignore the par which he is playing in his own works, but they cannot ultimately suppress it. Even when the play seems to be getting hopelessly out of hand, the author-producer has the will and the power to engage the most unruly sub-plot for his main design, which remains always evident in each new situation.

Mary, virgin yet a mother. Here on earth we can only hold her memory sacred while heaven rejoices at her presence. And in the same way heaven is the true home of every good which we on earth can only imagine to ourselves, we, who have to be content with a mere foretaste of that bliss which will satisfy every desire. In heaven there is true life, here life only in name. Lord, you endure for ever, your name is no forgotten as generation follows generation to the grave—generations of men, not angels, So if we want to know why a name and a memory is all we have while the reality is present in heaven, we turn to the Gospel where our Lord says: ‘This, then, is to be your prayer: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name’. Faith speaks here, reminding us in the very first words that we are the adopted children of God, and that our life on earth is only a pilgrimage.

There can be few saints of the late Middle Ages whose lives are so richly documented or so curiously varied as that of St Bridget of Sweden. A contemporary ot St Catherine of Siena, she lived in Italy for a quarter of a century and played politics almost identical with those of Catherine, yet the two women never met; but their lives resemble each otne at many points. Both of them were in their lifetime openly venerated as saints, a circumstance which must have been a further affliction to women each of a profound humility. Both of them were surrounded by ‘families'; and in either case it appears that only the family's devotion to its mother held it together. Just as Catherine Benincasa seems to have given most of her trust to the English friar-hermit, William Flete, so the favoured son St Bridget's largely Swedish ‘family’ was a Spaniard, the hermit ex-bishop Alphonse of Pecha; and Alphonse seems after Bridget's death to have suffered some of William Flete's neglect at hands of the other devotees.

On August ist, 1855, when the riots which had greeted the restoration of the Hierarchy in England were still a lively memory, a middle-class boarding school for boys Was opened at Netherton House, Clapham. The needs of its four Pupils were catered for by a Community of nine Religious, three of whom were already teaching in the primary school attached to the Redemptorist church. All nine of them were French, Brothers of the Christian Schools, an Institute founded by St John Baptist de La Salle in the seventeenth century and now making its first English foundation. The renting of the house on Lady Day seemed to augur well for the future of this initiative in the land that had once been Mary's Dowry. And so it proved. In May this year, 1955, some 250 Brothers and nearly 7,000 Pupils in thirty-one educational establishments in England and scotland, not to mention innumerable past pupils, relations and friends will be celebrating the centenary of that event.

One of the marks of the living Church is its ability to inspire leaders in every age especially fitted to meet the needs of the age. Never has there been a time when the spiritual soil was so infertile that it was unable to produce valiant men and women to answer the challenge of the world. In the past there was a St Dominic, a St Francis, a St Teresa. In later centuries there were names like Pernet and Hecker and Rice. And these are but a few of the thousands from the time of St Paul to our own day raised by God as leaders in their own particular day and hour.

Against this background of inspired leadership we are inclined to think that our own age, especially the years since the end of the first world war, are barren indeed. We see only spiritual aridity, the noxious weed of materialism run riot.

In guiding ourselves in the way of our Blessed Lord, we have to a certain extent to be left to our own conscience and we can't put on to the shoulders of any one else the decision. Obedience settles much in religion, but there must always be a Margin over ‘when?'. A number of tilings in the spiritual life are left to our own judgment, decision and prudence, details outside obedience, where authority may not or cannot enter. A vast region lies under our own rule. To guide this we have a Acuity that goes by the name of conscience. It is not the voice of God, not like God whispering; it is a moral faculty. We have born in us the musical faculty. Now that is part of us, it can be trained well or ill, made to choose that which is best in music or less good; also the faculty of speech, we can speak well or ill, pronounce our words well or not. Just such a faculty is our conscience, the power of selecting what is good or what is ill.