Devotion to the Sacred Heart is perhaps the most popular devotion of modern times, and in its present form it may be said to date from the revelations made by our Lord to St Margaret Mary in the 17th century. But though so ‘modern’ it is as old as the Gospels. Our Lord himself taught the Apostles. Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart', and when, after the Resurrection, he invited Thomas to put his hand into his side, the doubting Apostle must surely have felt there the beatings of the heart of whom he forthwith confessed to be his Lord and his God. St John, who leaned upon the Lord's breast at the Last Supper, and who has left us in his Gospel some account of the secrets he learned there, also describes how the soldier opened our Saviour's side as he hung dead on the cross, so that blood and water gushed forth, and it has always been the belief of saints and commentators that the lance pierced the heart too.

There can be few saints more unlike at first sight than St Teresa of the Child Jesus and St John of the Cross. Their personalities, their ‘ways’ of perfection, their appeal, are outwardly at the poles of recognised Christian spirituality. And this first impression seems confirmed by a glance at their respective cults, the extreme difference of their ‘clientèle'. How few, how very few, of the real devotees of either saint extend at all the same devotion to the other!

Yet both were contemplatives, both Carmelites and, more than that, the teaching of St John of the Cross was formative in a special degree, explicitly, in the spiritual life of the ‘little’ St Teresa.

In dealing with our conscience we try to remind ourselves of the fact that it is almost impossible to be sure to what extent we are answerable for the evil of our lives. We never know with what bias or handicap we start life. God only knows. He knows what is beyond our personal control. We can't really tell—we may be worse than we think ourselves, we may be better. We can only make a shrewd guess with no certainty. We don't even know whether we are in a state of grace or not; we can't go by feeling—self-complacency—there are no internal or external signs. We can be pretty sure we are trying, but we don't know for certain.

It is best to leave it to our Blessed Lord. When he was asked whether a large proportion of people would be saved he said, ‘Strive thou to enter by the narrow gate'.

The next day John saw Jesus coming to him and lie saitli, Behold The Lamb of God … Come and see … they came and saw where he abode and they stayed with him that day'.(St John I, 29.)

To say that sacraments are magic may be no more than vulgar abuse but it may be a scientific attack. In this short article we will suppose it is the latter and try to deal with it accordingly, and it may be worth while to say at the start that most of the reasons why men are tempted to classify Sacraments as magical are due to their being considered as more or less separate and independent elements. Indeed the writer seems to remember a learned lecturer in the Angelico College at Rome some years ago speaking of the danger of treating the Sacraments nimis avulsa from the person of Christ. This is a most important aspect of sacramental theology which deserves an article to itself. Here we would take it simply as a starting point for opposing an attack on the sacraments which reveals a danger in the use of them.

To a generation born and bred to conditions notoriously unstable there should be something singularly attractive, if at the same time somewhat elusive, in the thought of stability. Most people will instinctively think of it in its possible application to international, social, economic and financial affairs; to religious, and more particularly to Benedictines, it may more naturally suggest the vow of stability which was St Benedict's most far-reaching contribution to western monasticism. Yet the two aspects are more closely connected than may at first sight appear, the one in fact springs naturally from the other. In both connections there is implied a continuity, a stability, of contact with the source and origin, the Fons et Origo, of all things, a dimly-realised perception of a model and exemplar in accordance with which man and his world are to be ordered and fashioned.

It is almost a truism to say that a creature's primary duty is to glorify its creator, a duty fulfilled by the creature's being itself to perfection. The Lauds canticle, Benedicite, is an expression of this idea, the whole of creation singing a hymn of praise to God. But man occupies a special position in this choir, in that, of all its members, he alone is free in offering his praise. All carry out this work by living according to the nature God has given them-the animals, the trees and flowers, the very sticks and stones-but it is of their nature to be incapable of any. thing else. It is of man's nature to be free, and so his praise of God must be voluntary, if it is to be truly human. He has only two alternatives, either to glorify God by choosing to worship him, or to insult him by refusing. That is why man's service of God is meritorious, and his neglect blameworthy.

The spiritual life is the life we live in Christ. We are alive in him because he is the head of the body of which we are living members. From him we get light, life, movement, His ceaseless graces flow from the sacraments, those living streams circulating within the veins of his mystical body. Chief among these graces are the Church's teaching, the Liturgy, and then the words and living example of the saints who share with us membership of the same body which is Christ.

The Church is alive and life-giving and makes alive all those who are its living members: the branches live in and by the life of the true Vine. All the mysterious and wonderful influences that flood the Christian soul have their source in Christ now gloriously alive in heaven. From the heart of his divinity he sends us the Holy Ghost, given to us as an abounding personal gift.

1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. The Word of the Father uttered from all eternity. Adore him in the bosom of the Father. rejoice and exult in his infinite perfections, thank him that he is himself…. Humble ourselves and be glad that our poor, puny minds cannot comprehend him…. Love him with the love of the Father and the Holy Ghost. 'The Word is in your heart-he deigns to make his heaven within us. The generation of the Word is going on in our souls at this very moment. What a stupendous thought! Ask him to let us think of nothing else. care for nothing else, and to make our souls truly his heaven.

Activity in the part played by the individual's choice of a rule of life, by his seeking of solitude and shunning the world, is necessary for the first stages of the spiritual life, but it is of less importance in the soul's growth and formation than the purification which is brought about by God himself. As soon as the soul has begun to give herself generously to the work of her salvation, God begins to co-operate by sending her temptations or trials which show up the weaknesses and exercise the virtues which are most needed. We have called these trials passive because they are provided or allowed by God and the Christian does not have to choose the way to progress. But the will must choose to co-operate actively with God's grace in striving to master self and overcome the attack. In this way the first trials of the spiritual life require a great deal of activity and consequently are not technically Passive Purification in the sense generally accepted by spiritual writers.

In a previous study concerning knowledge after death, we saw that men are the lowest of all intelligent beings, the infants of the spiritual universe. In this life knowledge has to be presented to us pictorially through the senses, for like children we need our crayons and our blocks.

We need them no less for expression. We not only look at pictures, but paint them. We respond to the music of life by striking its chords. No matter how profoundly spiritual the thought of the mystic, he must convey it, if at all, by lips and hands and images drawn from the material world about him.

This being so, how shall we view the life and speech of angels? We know them to be, not unions of spirit and matter, but purely spiritual beings. These intricate bodily organisms of ours are totally unnecessary to them, for angelic knowledge goes behind all colour sound and texture to the inner nature of created things. This kind of knowledge is at present a closed book to us, although a book that death must open.

At times, reading the strange stories of the Saints, we may feel: ‘This incident cannot be true: it jars on my artistic sense; it conflicts with my knowledge of history; it is “out of keeping” with theology'. Then we may feel irreverent; that it may be we who are ‘out of tune’ with sanctity. On the one hand, ever since the future Benedict XIV's De. • • beatiftcatione etc., ii. c. 32, it has been clear that the Church does not and cannot demand the assent of faith to any ‘private revelation'; but ecclesiastical approbation can ask our human belief in them according to the rules of prudence which offer them to us as probable and piously believable. The encyclical Pascendi (ASS; vol. xl; p. 649: 1907) says that the Church, when allowing the publication of such events, does not go guarantee for their truth, but simply does not prevent matters being published for which motives of human belief are not lacking.

The human body formed by the Holy Ghost in the chaste womb of the Virgin Mother, and the mystical body which she brought forth by her travail on Calvary are both alike the body of the Incarnate Word. Indeed, one may say in a sense that the human body was assumed for the sake of the mystical body so that the mystical body could also be formed; just as, according to St Thomas, the first effect of the Sacrament of the holy Eucharist, of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ on the altar, is the unity of the mystical body. Therefore the members of the mystical body are likened to the members of Christ's physical body, his hands and feet, etc. and therefore they must serve his purposes, be used in his work in the same way, and, if completely united to him, to the same extent as were his other members.

Qui confcxsioni Patris et Filii connex-us est non potent a confensione Patris et Filii separari.(St Hilary, De Trinitate,II. 29.)

He who called himself the Light of the World said to those who followed him: ‘So let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven'—and from that day to this the light has been shining in the hearts of men.

What exactly is this light that shines in the disciples of our Lord, that, very near our own time, shone with such splendour in the great little saint of Lisieux? Though Jesus calls it your light', it is not a light that is ours by the very fact that we are human beings, as is our memory, our reason or our will; it is something that we have received in a very special way, for it is the divine gift of faith. And this light of faith that is in us our Lord bids us not to hide under a bushel but to let it shine.

The new Apostolic Constitution, Provida Mater Ecclesia, which recognises what are called Secular Institutes (that is to say, Associations which, without public vows and without community life, dedicate themselves to the perfection of the spiritual life by means of the three evangelical counsels practised in the world) appears to envisage these Institutes as directed always to an apostolic purpose and the works of the active life. We would here take the opportunity to consider how this same Constitution, with very little adaptation, might be extended to include similar associations whose aim would be a purely contemplative life lived in the world, and in fact a revival in modern conditions of the hermits and anchoresses of a former age. While hermits have always existed in the Church (though they are perhaps fewer today than ever in her history), their mode of life in solitude has never been recognised as a form of the canonical state of perfection nor has it had her approval and guarantee as a safe way of life, unless it became to a large extent conventual.

Today, dearly beloved we are celebrating the feast of all the saints in one joyous solemnity. Those saints whose fellowship is the delight of heaven; whose protection is the joy of earth; whose triumphs are the Church's crown; whose confessing of the Faith glows brighter in esteem, the braver their torments made it. For the harder the fight the greater the warriors’ glory; and many and varied are the sufferings which furnish the triumph of martyrdom. As the severity of their tortures increases, so too does the reward. Our Mother, the Catholic Church, extending far and wide throughout the world, was clearly taught by Christ Jesus, her Head, to fear neither insults, nor tortures, nor even death itself. Strengthened ever more and more, not by resistance but by endurance, she was the inspiration of the triumphal glory of all those whom the penalty of imprisonment brought together in a glorious army, with one and the same ardent courage to fight the battle.

The mystery of the blessed Trinity is the most unfathomable of the articles of our faith; but it is likewise the most fruitful for our spiritual life. Many souls, nevertheless, even really interior ones, are more inclined to adore it than to strive to know it well. Doubtless they understand that God is within them, that he lives in them and bestows his graceon them; many even willingly recall that this God living in them is the one God in three persons; and they are overcome by a sweet emotion, a humble reverence when they realise that at every instant the great mystery of the generation of the Word by the Father, the procession of the Holy Ghost from the breathing forth of the mutual love of Father and Son, is accomplished in their heart. But generally their thoughts stop there.

In our age of psychoanalysis and complicated machinery simplicity is a quality of life and character much, underrated, if not actually despised. Perhaps this is the reason why so many of the Saints recently placed on the altars by the Church for our example are men and women of striking simplicity, and even children. St Bernadette, the Curé d'Ars, St Thérèse de Lisieux, Bl. Maria Goretti—a peasant girl, a peasant priest, a young Carmelite cultivating the childlike spirit in its integrity, and a child martyr for purity. It seems as if the Holy Ghost deliberately opposed simplicity to the neurasthenic complications of the modern world.

Our age is given to despise simplicity, perhaps because it is so difficult to understand and even more difficult to attain, except for those in love with it; and it certainly is almost impossible to define.