The proper sphere of a Catholic craftsman who is responsive to the appeal of the liturgical movement is to translate its doctrine into terms of form and colour, and so help in presenting it to his fellow men through the medium of the senses. Let us be quite clear about this. His work is not that of a teacher, but of a translator of others’ teaching. His normal function is to get on with the job without explaining what he is doing or why he is doing it.

He may well consider the job important enough in itself, if he accepts the definition of Catholic philosophy that all truth has to pass through the senses before reaching the understanding. Nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu. And of these senses he may well recognise the eye as affording a more direct avenue than the ear, if he agrees with Horace:

A thing when heard, remember, strikes less keen
On the spectator's mind than when ‘tis seen.

Pope Pius XII, in his Encyclical Letter Fulgens Radiatur written to honour the fourteenth centenary of the death of St Benedict, invites ‘all classes of society’ to turn again to the Holy Rule that there they may find ‘the sacred principles of religion and the standards of life which are the most secure and most stable foundations of human society'.

It is clear that the Pope had a special reason for stressing the civilising and unifying effects of St Benedict's work. All men are now searching for a solid foundation on which to rebuild the unity of Europe. It is an appropriate moment, then, to remind us of the way in which Europe was first united in the spirit of Christ. ‘Not only England, Gaul, the Low Countries, Friesland, Denmark, Germany and Scandinavia, but also many Slavonic lands boast of their conversion by those monks, whom they consider their glory and reverence as founders of their civilisation.'

Well directed and earnest study, … and the clash of diverse opinions and their discussion, provided love of truth and due submission to the Church be their arbiter, will open rich bright vistas whose light will help to progress in kindred sacred sciences. These words of Pope Pius XII, written in 1943, present an ideal for liturgical enthusiasts. Before all else it is among students of the liturgy that we expect to find a spirit of tolerance and charity, because the inspiration of their study is Calvary, itself the source of charity. Bitterness in dispute is particularly out of place here. Disagreement itself is, as the Pope has pointed out, a sign of health: but when discussion becomes scrimonious something has gone wrong. Intolerance is bred from inaccurate thinking and the most inaccurate thought springs from the confusion of essentials with accidentals. Short vestments may be undignified and lacking in symbolism, but that does not convict the wearer of heresy.

Across the fair landscape of the Church's life, and dimming the sunlight of her holiness, and casting a shadow over her beauty, is that heavy cloud, which surely grows no less in these days of unpeacefulness, that cloud of lapsed Catholics. This blot is ever present with us, marring the joy and triumph of the Church's life, staining the robe of her perfection. The faithful are always there, the sweet odour of their prayers and good works rising like clouds of incense, ceaselessly up to God. New converts are received; but still that ugly cloud remains to darken our sun, and wound anew the broken Heart of God. There are the ever moving, tragic figures of the once-faithful turning away, repudiating the Light, casting aside the outstretched wounded hand they once held, turning their backs upon the love of God.

Have the courage of your own convictions': this is the sense of the above maxim. From it follows logically the duty of expressing one's own opinion even if it differs fundamentally from ‘official medicine'. For there are situations in which silence does not represent a virtue but a fault.

The judgment upon Theresa Neumann of Konnersreuth (Bavaria, Germany), pronounced in 1927 (Erlangen) by Professor Dr G. Ewald, late director of the ‘Psychiatrisch-Neuiologisehen Universitiitsklinik’ at Gottingen, is still today looked upon as a ‘dogma’ in medical quarters. His verdict is hysteria.

In my view that diagnosis is wrong, as I myself was able to ascertain at Konnersreuth on 12th and 13th October, 1944, with my own observations. As a pupil of the ‘Psychiatrische Klinik', at the University of Vienna, Paris, etc., I also may venture a judgment on this question, since, as is known, the famous researches into hysterias started from Vienna.

It is not unreasonable to try to discover why St John chose the Greek word ‘logos’ in describing the second person of the blessed Trinity to Greek-speaking converts. The only way to discover why is to see just what meaning it had in current speech to induce him to consider it suitable for his purpose; and to see secondly what modification or modifications he had to introduce into its meaning so that it really would fulfil its function as a key word in Trinitarian doctrine. We may find that its chief virtue was that it was, of all the terms to hand, least likely to be misunderstood.

The word ‘logos’ was used by Plato, the Stoics, Philo and Plutarch. It was current coinage in Greek thought, one of those words whose meaning was fluid enough, somewhat as democracy or liberty are in our politically-minded age. But at the back of all these interpretations or uses and shades of meaning of ‘logos', there still remained one which may be summed up in another: reason.

Contemplative life produces an all-embracing love of God and our neighbour. We see this in a study of the Carmelite Rule and in a reading of the great Carmelite mystics. ‘To love’, says Saint John of the Cross, is to labour to divest ourselves and to detach ourselves from all that is not God. (Ascent, 2). We are to be detached from ourselves, from self-love, thus only shall we come to love God, and to love our neighbour for his sake. A Carmelite writer tells us. ‘Saint John is the Doctor of the Cross because he is the Doctor of Love. It is a cross radiating love, a tremendous love of God, and of man and of all the beauty that God has created. The same writer continues: Throughout his works John of the Cross has sung of the depths of beauty, the demands, the sufferings, the triumphs of love'.

Pride was the cause of the sin of our first parents. The particular part of their nature of which they were thus proud was the intellect; it was and is the most wonderful of the faculties with which God has endowed man's soul. It was with the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge that man, in his pride, desired to glorify his intellect. ‘With this knowledge of the Gods', suggested the Devil, ‘man will really be able to glory in his own nature for he will be the equal to God. The Devil made the false suggestion that knowledge of good and evil would give, would in fact be, a divine wisdom.

But God had not created man so that he should glory in his own created human nature, but only in God's creative nature, his uncreated infinity.

Richard Rolle has been called ‘The Father of English Mysticism and it is to him we turn for the first introduction to mysticism in its strict sense among English writers. He was born some hundred years after the Ancren Riwle was written, and yet he is historically the first of the group of English mystics who experienced and wrote about the higher degrees of mystical prayer. Perhaps the greatest era of English sanctity had already passed when he was born in the last decade of the 13th century. There had been a succession of men and women from the time of Venerable Bede who had been led by the Spirit of God to transports of divine love and wisdom. But they had not been reflective in the way that the men of the 14th century were reflective so that the description of their lives does not enlighten later generations as to the nature of their prayer or their manner of reaching high degrees of contemplation. Rolle, amidst a profusion of Latin and English writings, did proclaim these hidden experiences, and his message was received with enthusiasm.

We cannot take leave of Richard Rolle without listening to his principal message and the one which is the dominant theme of the illuminative way. His greatest work was on ‘The Fire of Love’, his most unique mystical experience was the burning of love in his breast, and his poetry which did more than anything else to spread his spirit among his contemporaries is concerned with the sweet love of Jesus, his Spouse. Love is thought, with great desire of a fair Loving.

The illumination as we have seen comes principally from the shining of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the beginning of infused contemplation. But this light cannot of course be separated from the Word whose function it is to enlighten the understanding. Indeed the activities of the second and third Persons of the Blessed Trinity in this respect cannot be separated; it is the one action of the Verbum spirans amorem.

The classical characterisation of this period of the beginner, or the purgative way, is given in the words of St Thomas: Primo incumbit homini studium principale ad recedendum a peccato et resistendum concupiscentiis ejus, quæ in contrarium caritatis movent: et hoc pertinet ad incipientes in quibus caritas est nutrienda, vel fovenda, ne corrumpatur. ‘At first it is incumbent on man to occupy himself chiefly with avoiding sin and resisting his concupiscences, which move him in opposition to charity: this concerns beginners, in whom charity has to be fed or fostered lest it be destroyed.’ (II-II, 24, 9.) This aspect of struggle against lower nature and the war against vice is therefore the depressing but dominant feature of the age; but this does not mean a purely stoical attitude to self-mastery—it is always that ‘charity may the more abound'.

It may be as well to begin, in the approved scholastic manner, by defining one's terms; or at least by delimiting the field of discussion-a very necessary step surely with a paper so ambiguously worded as this one! Orthodoxy, my Lord'. said Bishop Warburton, is my doxy-heterodoxy is another man's doxy'. No doubt we could improve on that and together hit upon a less question-begging statement of what we mean by ‘orthodoxy'. All the same, I must try not to confuse the issue by taking too much for granted. And what are we to understand by that indeterminate phrase ‘religious experience'? At the beginning of the century William James devoted a series of Gifford Lectures to The Varieties of Religious Experience-a work still being reprinted even in these days of paper shortage. James was, professedly an empiricist, with but a limited gift for philosophical generalisation, so that his collected data have both the interest and the tediousness of a case book'; but they serve to show how varied are the phenomena which have been placed-whether legitimately or not is another question!—in the category of ‘religious experience’.

If we are right in supposing that when Richard Rolle describes the third and highest degree of love he is really considering the illuminative rather than the unitive way, we can fit him very neatly into a pattern of spiritual development. Thus we discover his own personal experiences of burning love and heavenly sound entering into his description of ‘Singular Love’ which is in his own eyes the most perfect state. The special but accessory favours which he had received from God at the beginning of this new way of life were the love in his breast, which was so fervent as to convey even a physical sensation of heat, and an interior sound of heavenly music. And these we find as part of the permanent state of love which he calls ‘Singular'.

Only recently the liturgy has recognised this title by a votive Mass in honour of the Priesthood of Christ. One of the oldest of his titles, its origins stretch back not only through the history of the Jewish people but through the history of the whole world.

Jesus our brother, Jesus the Man, the Everlasting Man, Jesus the representative of our race before the throne of God, his and our Father, stood and stands before that throne in the character of priest. Chosen by God he was, before ages began, a worthy representative, performing the supreme act of a priest: sacrifice.

The Jewish priesthood was a confined thing. A symbol, may be, of things to come, yet so much a symbol, so much a superficial creation, as not to merit, at least in its decrepitude, much honour. This fact of its passingness, its shadow-character, was even admitted in the Old Covenant.

Zacharias, in the most ‘Christian’ passage of his prophecy, describing the Orient who is to come to cleanse sins, says, 'Behold the stone that I have laid before Jesus: upon one stone there are seven eyes: behold I will grave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts; and I will take away the iniquity of that land in one day (3, 9). The prophet is describing the rock of Christ and his saving graces, and he puts before us the principal Remedy for sin in a way which we may find echoed in the Ancren Riwle. After analysing the deadly sins and having realised their proximity to the very core of our being, we may be easily carried away into a negative war against vice, wholly human in its inspiration and, in consequence, Stoic in its effects. We must strive to overcome the evil tendencies of nature, certainly, and we must use to intensity the ascetic practices of mortification, specially designed for the overcoming of the flesh. These are particularly to be looked for in the first way of purgation, which is par excellence the ascetic way. But such activities are primarily penalties for past sins.

Anyone who has reached the period of spiritual life known as the Night of the Senses will find that prayer has so changed its character as to be almost a new kind of human activity. Hitherto the time devoted to actual prayers will have been divided up between liturgical practices and private meditations. The Christian will have become accustomed, perhaps through the habits formed during many years, to set about these devotions in a methodical way, always bearing in mind the adage that if he wishes to prosper he must, while leaving all to God in his petitions, act as though all depended on himself. He will have learned a manner of assisting at Mass; he will have recited the same number of Paters and Aves, acts of contrition and charity, while he knelt beside his bed at morning and night; his rosary or ‘stations’ will be prominent in his regular horary; and finally his times of quiet at meditation will be organised by a method, interspersed with ‘acts’ and sometimes predominantly concerned with struggles against distractions and drowsiness.

The popularity of this prayer in the books of times earlier than ours is well shown in accounts of the lives and deaths of the English Martyrs, that is, of those saints who were put to death for their Faith between the years 1535 and 1681. In those days, when the alleged activities of the Stationers’ Company made all Catholic printing and book-selling contraband, we find repeatedly that ’Manuals of Devotion’ were found in the presses of the intrepid printers, or that in the search through their houses the pursuivants found ‘divers psalters’. So it was with Carter and Webley, with Collins and Duckett; all truly martyrs. The books were often proclaimed our Lady's psalters, meaning what were also called Books of Hours; perhaps because the new man-made religion so ignored our Lady that her faithful children were all the more dedicated to her service. Often too the books used by these hunted. Catholics had in them the Psalter of Jesus, in English as we have it now.

Such customs as that of fixing plaques or statues of our Lady on oak-trees, or of giving these shrines titles of ‘Our Lady of the Oak', were both widespread and ancient. There was a famous Virgin of the Oak in Norwich and, according to tradition, our Lady of Penrhys, burned at Chelsea with our Lady of Willesden and our Lady of Walsingham, was found by shepherds hanging on the trunk of an oak on the summit of a mountain at the head of the Rhondda Valley. There is reason, too, to suppose that our Lady of Willesden may have been yet another instance of what was originally an oak-tree sanctuary.

By far the most important shrine, however, of this particular cultus of our Lady still survives in Central Italy, in the Shrine of St Maria della Quercia (Oak-tree), just outside the Porta Santa Lucia at Viterbo, on the road to Bagnaia.

The period of ‘great business', described by Rolle in the Incendium Amoris as the purgative way to ‘sweetest rest', has passed, and the obscurity of the night of the senses leads the soul on to this more secure life in Christ. The hermit was perfectly aware of the difficulties of the first period and the progress the devout man had to make to reach this sweetness. For some the progress is rapid and often accompanied by special graces from God.

They that are sickerly ordained to holiness in the beginning of their turning, for dread of God, forsake sins and worldly vanities: and then they set their flesh under strait penance, afterwards setting Christ's love before all other, and feeling a delight in heavenly sweetness in devotion of mind they profit mickle.

Purification continues to be an unpleasant part of life up to the very last breath, however advanced in holiness a man may be. The first stage in the way of perfection is called ‘purgative’ or purifying only because that ascetic activity is the predominant one at the beginning. A man has to struggle to abandon vice when he turns to God and sincerely tries to follow him. And so he purifies himself and opens his heart to the purifying action of God in the ways already suggested in previous articles. God himself also cultivates the soul as the farmer first cultivates the soil with plough and harrow. But at the point we have reached we come to the first outstanding transformation; the Christian soul is about to be converted once more and to enter upon a new form of life, fuller and more fruitful. He begins to enter another kind of asceticism, asceticism, a a dark night of the senses in which the spirit becomes far freer than before.