The world has little belief nowadays in the existence of a personal devil. If you meet Satan only, let us say, against the background of the Parisian society of Baudelaire's day you may be tempted to dismiss him as just part of the paraphernalia of a fashionable dilettantism; if you know him only in terms of medieval gargoyles and illuminations you may think him just one of the many childish fancies of a superstitious age. But in fact it is very unsound and unscientific to leave the matter there. Underneath all the superstitions of the Middle Ages, the fashionable posings of a later society, the unreasoning panic of the recurrent periods of witch-baiting, there does lie a world of a very different sort: a world of deadly and horrible seriousness where men know exactly what they are doing and do it and effectively, a world that you know to be real because of its horror. That world is with us still.

‘Welcome Sister Pain,’ sang the Seraphic Father seven centuries ago, and his words did not sound so strange in the ears of those around him, as they would have done today. For this is an age that regards pain as in itself an evil thing, something to be avoided at all costs, something ugly, something to which death itself is preferable, even if by death the materialist means darkness and annihilation. Even many Christians take up this attitude to a certain extent, and the majority outside the Catholic Church are vastly perturbed at what is termed ‘the problem of pain.’

But the Catholic child, brought up as he is to ‘offer up’ his toothache and the sting of his grazed knee or his cut thumb, finds less difficulty, as he grows up, to face the ‘problem of pain.’ It all fits into the scheme of things, so to speak, and he has learned, if not to understand and even puzzle about it, at least to accept it and use it.

The thirteenth century is universally recognized as the peak of the later medieval period; by the middle of the fourteenth Christendom was well on in the decline which led to the Renaissance and the Reformation. There are many causes of the decline and amid the mounting miseries of war, pestilence, and corruption it is often difficult to distinguish cause trom effect. The tale is well known: the Black Death carried off the flower of Europe as no war could have done. The Hundred Years War began towards the middle of the century and brought with it increasing desolation and poverty to the lower classes. In England the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 revealed the unhappy state of the populace, and similar disturbances occurred in France, Germany, and other European countries. The common people, then as now, had to bear the brunt of the wars, and, then as now, it led to a great deal of unrest and impatience both with Church and State.

There only remains to apply this doctrine to the two great questions of religious life, which seem to constitute the chief problem for modern souls, namely, the question of observances and of religious obedience.

In the widest sense, we mean by observances the obligations of a religious rule; in a narrower sense they are penitential and restrictive practices. Père Lemonnyer called them, ‘The means of the means, and, according to St. Thomas, they are subordinate to the vows. It must be admitted, however, that monastic tradition has given them a capital importance and they formed an essential part of all ancient rules. The religious leaves the world to do penance and, in the course of time, three things have come to be considered as essential among the various obligations of religious life, namely, poverty, chastity, and obedience, and to form the direct subject of the vows; perhaps the reason why there is no explicit vow of penance is because its subject matter would be too vague, and, in any case, it is enough to have promised obedience to a penitential rule.

Do you not say: There are yet four months and then the harvest cometh? Behold I say to you, lift up your eyes and see the countries, for they are white already to the harvest. (John 4:35).

We are living in the days of a great harvest. As I travelled here this afternoon, I looked out on the fields of standing corn, and my thoughts turned to our soldiers fighting today in the wheatfields of Normandy, the vineyards of Provence and the olive trees of Tuscany, where the corn, the grapes and the olives are ready to yield their harvest of wheat and wine and oil. A fructu frumenti, vini et olei sui multiplicati sunt, as the Psalmist sang so long ago, ‘of the fruit of their corn and wine and oil have they been given increase.“

These soldiers of ours in the armoured vehicles of modern battle, as they pass the peasant toiling at his harvest, are themselves reaping today the relentless harvest of war that has at last been made possible by the work of shipyard, foundry and factory, and months of hard training and exercise.

Truth must be placed in the centre of your life as something beautiful.

Yet you must not sit in judgment on anyone who hates her, but have compassion on such a one.

Look at yourself too, why—since you desire to come to her—do you refuse to receive her when she reproves you for your vices? For see how many things Truth reveals.…

Without beauty or comeliness, and nailed to a cross, Truth must be adored.

The nobler and more powerful a created being is, so much the more freely must he subject himself to Truth. Indeed it is because he is subject to her that a man is powerful and noble.

The unstable things of time vex and weary you: why then do you not flee from them to other know that beyond is to Truth?

Yet you must bitter and contrary things, Truth is to us most bitter and contrary, because separate adversi- ties fight against one or more worldly pleasures; but Truth attacks them all at one and the same time…

You cannot hate anyone without committing sin. For the work of holy men is to desire the welfare of sinners.