I suppose one of the things the importance of which seems to be everywhere recognised is the extraordinary way in which human beings are subject to their environments, are influenced and affected by them. Some sort of subconscious power registers all sorts of details which we didn't know we had even noticed and years after some insignificant act or word comes to life. A name in a newspaper brings back an old world, just the chance hearing of a name and back out of the past springs vividly to our imagination just a scene, and we realise from that how very much we are under the spell of circumstances. At times it would seem that we owe to heredity all that we are, not necessarily to our immediate parents but to our ancestors in the past, a throw back, and now all that idea is given up and what people do think a great deal of is surroundings, the lines in which our lives are cast.

Any Catholic who takes his spiritual life seriously must A have echoed St Peter's words when the moment comes for leaving the divine presence after Mass or Benediction. Here he would remain, here he would always be. But for him, as for the chosen three, the bright cloud falls and he must descend the mount. He must go down into the everyday world, often like the apostles to find himself faced with an apparently insoluble problem, a demoniac child. This may be a personal grief or a realisation of the spiritual state of the world sharpened by contrast with the timeless peace from which he has freshly come.

In discussing the purification of the exterior senses the Ancren Riwle naturally goes into the matter of the mortification of hearing. We may well anticipate that silence should play a large part in the life of a recluse, both as a mortification and penance in itself, and as a way to the full flowering of the love of God. For though it be only a means, and a negative one at that, silence does in fact lead the soul forward to contemplation in a very direct way, so direct that it provides a special foundation for the theological virtue of hope:

For prayer is the breath of hope, and it is impossible to ask God for anything or to raise the mind to him without this theological virtue.

Today when the world is shattering into splinters like glass to the blast of a bomb, it seems difficult to assume or profess that Christ has been the Light of the World. So many have never heard of him, so many have been snatched from his loving care—so it seems—by the wilful action of militant anti-Christian people, so many self-styled followers of Jesus seem to be following their own desires and not at all treading the path to Calvary, beyond whose brow is illumination and light.

No one will deny that in his teaching and in his life our Blessed Lord and Master has been a shining Light; he taught a way that shines with holiness and love, which could, if followed, lead to peace and joy. Indeed those who truly followed Christ, and follow him today, have been and are at peace and in joy, with a peace and joy beyond all others, and recognisably so even to those who refuse to follow this same light.

Sunday, the day of joy, commemorates the cause of our joy and looks forward to its consummation in eternity. There can be no Christian life without Sunday, no Sunday without the Mass. Here is the setting of the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus Christ, and its acceptance is the condition of any Christian recovery. Too often Sunday is confused with its secondary aspects: obligations, abstention from servile work, the merely natural rest in the cycle of time demanded by man's nature. But the first day of the week is the day of resurrection, far older as a feast than Easter. Its holiness enshrines the central mystery of Faith, and the Sabbath that marks the creative rest of God is transfigured now into the day of the new creation of grace.

A child in trouble or in disgrace goes first to its mother for comfort and forgiveness. When in fear of its father's anger it hopes for its mother's help in turning anger aside. It is not surprising that after a long period of self-sufficient rationalism, in a time of widespread misery and persecution, men should begin to show a new appreciation of their own sinfulness and weakness and their dependence on God by turning first of all to our Lady, God's Mother and ours. Unlike ours, her heart has never faltered for one moment in its love of God and its love of mankind. All its desire has been for God and the showing of his glory among men. Her heart has never lacked courage or patience; it has been always what our hearts should be and are not. Thinking of it we see our own shortcoming; we see, too, a source of sympathy and help. Our Lady is the first, most perfect, fruit of Christ's redeeming work and cooperates with him in the rescue of sinners and the perfecting of his Church.

Sometime in the first few years of the fifth century a deacon at Carthage began to feel discouraged about his work and wrote for advice to St Augustine. His letter prompted the short treatise known as De Gatechizandis Rudibus, a book on the matter and method to be used the preliminary instruction of would-be Catholics, which was to become one of the best known and influential of Augustine's works. Io considering the personal worries of the deacon Deogratias, he laid down principles whose force has in no way lessened with time. The treatise has all the psychological wisdom and the epigrammatic vigour which so often make Augustine's writings sound almost contemporary in modern ears. It springs from experience, as its illustrations show, and the repeated assurance that the problems of Deogratias were common to all engaged in routine instruction.

The stimulating article of Fr Oswin Magrath's on Contemplative Secular Institutes has raised issues which must have been in many minds since the publication of the Constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia. After the priest and religious has spoken, a lay-person may perhaps be allowed to present the same idea from a different angle.

It was surely not without a special significance that the Constitution was issued on the Feast of the Purification of our Lady, and there can, indeed, be no better guide for ‘contemplatives in the world’ than she, who led the sublimest life of contemplation in the most humble circumstances, as what seemed to her neighbours a carpenter's wife in a small town. The Queen of contemplatives had no need to cut herself off from her fellow creatures in order to enjoy an unbroken communion with her Creator.

Great abundance of ghostly comfort and joy enters the hearts of those who reverently recite or sing the Psalms in their praising of Jesus Christ. The Psalms drop sweetness into men's souls, pour delight into their minds and enkindle their wills with the fire of love, making them hot and burning within and lovely and beautiful in the eyes of Christ. And those who persevere in their devotions he raises to the contemplative life and often indeed to the song and joy of heaven. The singing of Psalms puts the devil to flight, moves the angels to come to our assistance, banishes sin, pleases God, fosters perfection, puts away and destroys strife of spirit and makes peace between body and soul. It brings desire for heaven and contempt of earthly things.

Since God is love, so too is Christ. But what is love? It is not enough to say that love is the giving of oneself as Christ our Lord did upon the cross for this act is but an outward expression of love and the same act could be not love but a crime. What then is love if God is love? It is not the urge we have for something we do not possess for God has all and more than all. He is infinity, and yet he loves.

Perhaps, to know its nature, we should begin with ourselves, for all our knowledge of God is known by analogy with ourselves. We have such things as qualities. He is these things. Whatever we obtain, that we obtain from him. He is that and more. He is knowledge; he is power, wisdom, prudence, peace, love. We have them as passing gifts but we know them best in our own souls.

The popular notion of Jeremy (otherwise known as Jeremias) is that of a gaunt, sorrow-seared figure thundering the wrath of God through the desolate ruins of Jerusalem. He is the prophet of grief, his message and his life full of warning and a submission that in its vehemence seems to be despair. Perhaps it is because the only quotation from his teachings used in the New Testament is: ‘A voice was heard on high of lamentation, of great mourning and weeping, of Eachel keeping for her children and refusing to be comforted for them for they are not'. ‘Refusing to be comforted'; Jeremy would allow no mitigation. In days of great violence he was a compelling character, he would not suffer his burning message to be quenched by the evil of those who were called the chosen of God.

It seems to be the lot of some of the servants of God that they begin to exert a powerful influence only after their death. One such case, of course, was Soeur Thérèse of Lisieux, unknown at death, of world-wide renown within twenty years afterwards (before her beatification). Such too seems to be the case with Fr Charles of Jesus-Charles de Foucauld, the missionary monk and hermit of the Sahara.

His way of life can have but a limited attraction though his teaching and methods have anything but a restricted application. It is perhaps the very relevance of his method of apostolate that is drawing men to study what he did, and in some cases to imitate him, with the necessary adaptations of course, in the task of proclaiming the Gospel by their life. Crier l'Evangile par toute ma vie was his watchword; if it were indeed done by all Christians how quickly would the world be conquered for Christ.

September 29th of this year marks the third centenary of the birth of a notable mystic, Benoite Eencurel, a Dominican tertiary whose memory is still fresh in the French Alpine valleys where she lived until 1718. Her immense influence in counteracting the local, withering effects of Waldensianism and Jansenism may still be felt by those who visit the sanctuaries which she there founded and which give title to the devotion to Notre-Dame de Laus.

About seven miles from Gap, in the Departement of Hautes Alpes, and across the range of low mountains which lie between the little cathedral city and the Durance Valley, is the charming and picturesque little valley of the Laus, wherein nestles a group of hamlets of which St-Etienne d'Avançon and St-Etienne du Laus are chief.

It was in the late afternoon of a perfect summer's day that we set out from the Slipper Chapel with cross-bearer and acolytes to meet the pilgrims of the Cross. We had to hurry as we were rather late. We had arranged to meet the Cross at Barsham, but as we reached the brow of the hill that looks down upon the old manor, we saw the pilgrims marching towards us like a small compact battalion in battle array. We waited for them to reach us. They came as conquerors without slacking speed as they climbed the stiff hill. When they reached us, the Cross was erected and the Chaplain of the Slipper Chapel sprinkled it with holy water. Not a word was spoken; the Cross spoke for itself for it had come into its own. The last rays of the setting sun shone upon the white beams of ash. The pilgrims then went through the normal hourly routine of the stations of the Cross.

The prince of the world holds all men captive by earthly things, which he uses to agitate and frighten them. He causes them to stumble through vain thoughts, shameful desires and worldly ties, with which he ever allures and captivates all the sinful race of Adam. For the word that the Creator spoke to Cain: ‘A fugitive and vagabond shalt thou be upon the earth', has become the type and image of all sinners. After the Fall, Adam's race bore this image within: they were perpetually agitated by imaginations, fears, and all sorts of perturbations, desires and lusts. For the prince of this world tosses about every soul that is not born of God. For as out of the one Adam the whole human race spread over the earth, so the one evil of the passions has submerged this whole sinful race, so that the prince of evil can easily sift every one of them through their material, material, vain and exciting imaginations.

Enerable Battista Vernazza is probably only known in this country to members of the religious Order to which she belonged and to those who have read Baron von Hugel's The Mystical Element in Religion. In it he studies the spiritual and mystical life of St Catherine of Genoa, 20 as illustrating his theme, and to her life he adds notices of considerable length on two of her friends and disciples: Ettore Vernazza and his daughter Battista, whose spiritual life Catherine greatly influenced, and in both of them Baron von Hugel finds affinities and contrasts with the character and supernatural experiences of the saint. No one undertaking even a brief sketch of Battista's life could overlook his valuable work, but it is written from a special point of view, as showing forth the outcome of St Catherine's spirit on those two disciples of hers though he recognises that 'they are in no sense simple copies of her', and that their lives are in themselves worthy of record; indeed the life of the Venerable Battista, consulted for this sketch, bears the title: Una Gloria di Genoval and her father, Ettore, was both a man of eminent holiness and one of the most prominent citizens of Genoa, where in 1867 a statue was erected to his memory, as a public benefactor.

[The original account of St Katherine of Alexandria kas disappeared under a mass of medieval additions. As B. James's version will serve to show, the additions are not only beautiful but have a theological importance and a historical value as documents illustrating the history of medieval spirituality. Those who are not concerned about historical values will find the legend worth reading for the doctrine it contains, and there is no reason to doubt the existence of the saint or the main outlines of her character.]

There was once a heathen king and queen who ruled well, although they worshipped idols. They had one daughter, Katherine, so beautiful that the people never ceased to wonder, and more clever than any child of her age. So learned and wise was she that her father set aside a tower in his palace where she might gather books around her and study as she liked. He sent for the seven wisest men in the land to teach her, but before long she was the teacher and they her pupils. When the princess was fourteen years old her father died, and left her to be queen of that land. Soon the Parliament of the country met, and as the young queen sat crowned, with her mother beside her, a lord rose up and kneeling at her feet said:

'Most high and mighty princess, I am commanded by the queen your mother, and by the lords and commons of this land, to beg your highness that some noble knight may be found to marry you; one who will rule and defend your kingdom as your father did until now'.