You live in an age that is twisted out of its true pattern and among such people, you shine out, beacons to the world, upholding the message of life.’ (Phil, ii, 15.) These words of St Paul to the Philippians might be addressed to members of Secular Institutes at the present time. It would be difficult to find in the world a nation, a city, a family, living its life according to the true pattern, the pattern of Christ. He is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life', yet how small is the number, even amongst Christians, of those who follow him. The message of life is unheeded, unrecognized even, jammed as it is by powerful propa ganda, lies, secularization, false values and materialism—the message of death. The profound meaning of the Incarnation’ the ‘sanctification of the profane', the divinization of humanity, this has become obscured and mankind throughout the world searches gropingly and often unwittingly for the realization of Christ's message: ‘I have come that they may have life and may have it more abundantly'.

The term devotio moderna is used strictly to describe a particular school of piety in the Netherlands which looked to Gerard de Groot (†1384) as its founder: ‘totius modernae devotionis origo'; they were Augustinian Canons, with a famous centre at Windesheim near Zwolle, and many abbeys in the area. Gerard de Groot was in touch with his fellow-Augustinian John Ruysbroeck (†1361), and so with the school of the German mystics. The ‘modern’ Augustinian school reached its greatest and most lasting renown with the writings of Thomas à Kempis (†1471), whose Imitation of Christ is the supreme product of the school of the devotio moderna. In the early sixteenth century there was the influence of the current humanism, with for example Erasmus of Rotterdam (†1536), who himself began at Deventer with the Augustinians of de Groot, and then for a time was an Augustinian himself, and the notions of the devotio moderna became modified.

To discover the meaning it is sometimes better to walk round the city like the children of Israel round Jericho than to attack the walls directly with battering rams and force of arms. So we shall be talking about the subject rather than on it, about the growth and effect of the Liturgy in the daily life of a particular lay community and the personal experiences of some of its members.

For many years we lived our life together with no accepted religious beliefs and our background was therefore opposed to anything in the nature of a liturgical action—we believed that a gesture or a word which did not spring from our own personal need or experience was a measure of our insincerity and was to be avoided if at all possible.

IN 1311 it was decreed at the Council of Vienne, in the south of France, that ‘whoever obstinately presumes to assert, defend, or hold that the rational or intellective soul is not of itself and essentially the form of the human body, is to be classed as a heretic'.

The nature of the soul is properly speaking a matter of philosophical enquiry. But it is clearly a matter which touches Christian Faith very closely. There have been and there are all sorts of Philosophical opinions about the soul and human nature which would make the Christian gospel of salvation quite meaningless; which the Church therefore does not hesitate to condemn. Nowadays one would think immediately of any form of materialism which does not allow for the immortality of the soul.

But in this condemnation the Council of Vienne was concerned With the opposite kind of error, which could well be called spititualist, and would in effect deny the body its proper place in the scheme of salvation.

The week of prayer for Christian unity culminates with the feast of the conversion of St Paul on January 25th. St Paul is probably the most energetic and tireless worker for unity whom the Church has ever known. Many passages in St Paul's epistles are devoted to the theme of unity and the epistles themselves bear witness to his work for it.

But when we read these epistles we are struck immediately by St Paul's tremendous sense of the power of intercession and its importance in the life of Christians. Thus he writes to the Romans:

'For God is my witness … that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers’ (Rom. i, 9).

Recently I was given the new H.M.V. issue of Chaliapin singing excerpts from the opera Boris Godunov. A copy of the Russian text, with a line-by-line literal translation, is provided with the record. Chaliapin's wonderful voice and artistic sense make a whole of the music and of the words, so that even if one were quite unable to follow their meaning, some of the highly-taut emotions would be received by the listener.

I put the record on for a friend one afternoon and gave him the text. At a first hearing it is not easy to follow. For twenty minutes we listened to a great dramatic performance. When it was finished, I asked what he thought of it. ‘He had a wonderful voice; and he was putting his whole heart into it, but I couldn't follow why he sang just as he did.

The death of Pope Pius XII made the Catholic Church and the Papacy a headline news item for several days. Through the newspapers, the radio and the television we Had a glimpse of the Church's world-wide embrace, and of its ancient origins. For instance, the vast body of people in the two- mile long procession from Castel Gandolfo and lining the route, were only a symbol of the millions all over the world who look to the Pope as their spiritual father and acknowledge his authority as the successor of St Peter. And one was reminded how the pope himself during the years of his pontificate received many of these millions there in Rome, and spoke to many of them in their own language.

It was our Lord himself who taught us that it is holy to be poor and chaste and obedient. But even as he spoke, and indeed for many years before his time, other Jews had already realized this independently, and had been striving in their own ways to practise these very virtues. The descriptions of the sect known as the Essenes in the records of Josephus and Pliny the Younger, and especially the new discoveries at Qumran, all bear striking witness to this fact. Where then did the idea originate that man can enter into closer union with God through poverty, chastity, and obedience? Clearly it was in the Old Testament, the common source on which our Lord and the Essenes both drew. And when we attempt to trace the idea back to its Old Testament roots, the trail leads us not, as we might have expected, to the temple, or to the altar, nor even, in the last analysis, to the vows of the Nazirites, but beyond this still further back to the remote nomadic past of ancient Israel, to what was probably one of the oldest of her traditions, the tradition of the Holy War.

Lubac, in his book Catholicism, has rightly pointed out that the term Catholic as applied to the Church since the second century is basically an intrinsic note. Nonetheless it has a popular use in our day as denoting the Church's worldwide commission: ‘Going, therefore, teach ye all nations’ (Douai) or ‘Making disciples of all nations’ (Knox). So, if we are asked what religion we belong to we invariably reply—'the Catholic'. By this we mean we do not belong to a merely national church or religion, such as the Anglican, but to the Church Universal. Yet our first name, given to us at Antioch, in the days of the Apostles, was Christian, i.e. the followers of Christ. Hence, Christian is our fundamental name, and the Christian Church is Catholic because she is meant to reunite all men in Christ.

The Benedictine maxim Pax inter spinas—Peace among thorns—is applicable to everyone who is trying to live the life of the spirit, but whereas the peace is supernatural and due to the indwelling of God in our souls, the thorns chafe the unspiritual parts of us, and because they are painful or irritating we are often more conscious of pricks than of peace. Our Lord warned us that following him entails many things which are hard to nature, but he also said that if we took up his yoke we would find rest to our souls, and the over-all pattern of the spiritual life as depicted in the New Testament is undoubtedly one of eager service and of joy. It could not well be otherwise, for the following of Christ is nothing less than the doing of God's will, and all our true happiness is grounded in union with him.

If American businessmen are right in the way most of them live now, then all the wise of the ages, then all the wise of the ages, the prophets and the saints were fools. If the saints were not fools, then the businessmen must be.

Such is the stern, uncompromising beginning of a leading article in Fortune when the Chancellor of the Jewish Seminary writes on ‘The American Businessman's Moral Failure'. He realizes that, in an industrial society especially, the manager bears tremendous responsibility: his customs, morals and attitudes pervade the whole life of the country. The tragedy, as this article stresses, is that most managers have lost sight of the moral sources of economic strength and that no country can reach the height of economic success achieved by Britain or the United States without a philosophy and a faith more concerned with the human spirit than the comfort of the body.

Nearly two years ago, the British Institute of Management programmed for official discussion: ‘Are we failing to stress sufficiently in our selection and development of management the spiritual aspects?’ and within the last two months Belgian employers have discussed—for the first time—'Evangelical Poverty and the Christian Employer'.

More than once it has been said that it is no use playing a harp to a jackass! I suppose we can see in such an assertion the obvious truth of the saying of St Thomas that whatever is received, is received according to the disposition of the receiver, and that's why the harpist ignores the jackass. Possibly too that's why the jackass does not bother to sqawk to the harpist! It seems to cut both ways.

The Tchaikovsky enthusiast might be quite ecstatic about a superb rendering of the Nutcracker Suite, but even he would not feel so enthusiastic about it if at the time he had a raging toothache. To the true appreciation of such music he could only hope to return when the toothache stopped and his disposition was better.

Let Them? … If only they would! But let us not blame them. What have we priests done about it? Not that I think that everything is solved by lusty singing in church. Far from it! It is the whole picture of the people's part in the liturgy that we must keep constantly before our minds. Our first task is surely with the theological basis of the liturgical movement. It will be seen for what it is, a pastoral movement, when and only when its underlying theology has been studied especially in the light of the doctrine of the Mystical Body. This threefold movement of thought (theology of the Mystical Body), action (the Mystical Body at work in the lay apostolate) and liturgy (the Mystical Body at prayer) is a twentieth-century phenomenon only in so far as it is an organized movement.

St Alphonsus said, ‘Lord, I am poor, but I give thee as much as I can; having resigned to thee my will, I have nothing more to offer thee.'

To give the will unreservedly, in generous love, to God, is to give him all. The wise man said, ‘My son, give me thy heart’, but before the heart can be given, the will must choose to give it, for the will is always the prime mover. In yielding it to God one seeks deliberately to negate the effects of the fall, and ally oneself with the creator's original plan for mankind. One shoots an arrow back into Paradise, with a string attached to it that leads one, as Theseus in the maze, through all the intricacies of life straight to union with God.

There is a department of theology known as ‘spiritual theology’ or ‘ascetical and mystical theology', or from a more historical standpoint ‘history of spirituality'. (The word ‘spirituality’ is unwelcome in English, but corresponds to, the perfectly acceptable ‘spiritualité’ in French.) This ‘discipline’ or subject within a course of theology is, from an academic point of view, something of a Cinderella among the subjects in which the clergy are trained, and indeed in the 1930s the Angelicurn in Rome claimed to be almost uniquely advanced in possessing a chair of historia spiritualitatis, the chair being first occupied by Père Paul Philippe, O.P., who subsequently became Commissary of the Holy Office (the modern title of the Inquisitor General). But the subject as an historical discipline was gaining recognition at that time, and the great Dictionnaire de Spiritualité was begun by Père Marcel Viller, S.J., in 1937 as a counterpart to the great Dictionnaires in other areas of theology.

May I begin by welcoming you to the Haus der Begegnung (meeting house) and to the Abbey of Niedcraltaich. We have come together for a singular enterprise, and as far as I know nothing of the sort has taken place before since Christendom became divided. We, Protestant and Catholic Christians, are to spend these days of spiritual retreat together … .

Regarding reunion, nothing could be further from the spirit of Niederaltaich than any expectation of patent solutions. We do not much care for over-simplified and smooth formulae. But we do Know this; it is certainly not contentious thought, nor is it even only strenuous intellectual effort that will heal the wounded Body of Christ. The forces conducive to reunion lie deeper, and must be sought on the level of a spiritual growing towards one another. And this coming nearer together in spirit should surely be well served by these coming days of shared retreat.

If we were to go by modern political boundaries, we would think of St Cuthbert as a Scotsman. For the first instance Bede gives of the power of his prayers occurred at the mouth of the little river Tyne between North Berwick and Dunbar, and it was presumably in that district that he was born and bred. When he became a monk a few years later, it was at the abbey of Melrose. But then modern political boundaries have nothing to do with the case; those were the days, after all, when the Scots were the inhabitants of Ireland. In fact Cuthbert was a Northumbrian Angle , and the kingdom of Northumbria stretched along the whole East coast from the Humber to the Forth.

Religion is caught not taught—an old tag—and with secondary education for all there is now more time for the catching. Secondary modern schools (or ‘streams’ in comprehensive schools) cater for seventy per cent or more of the population of the country, a large proportion of school-aged children not suited, in the judgment of the educationalist, to acadernic or intellectual study. For these the proven methods of the grammar school are not applicable, as anyone who has stood in front of forty such will acknowledge. ‘Teach us if you can', they seem to say, as we hesitate, searching desperately for some grain of knowledge remaining from yesterday's lesson on which to build today's. It has taken, and indeed still takes, a long time for many people to realize that what served for secondary education for the educated and educable classes for the past centuries will not serve for the secondary modern child.

Varro, a naval officer and the most learned of the Romans, refers to three kinds of theology, mythological, physical, and political—mythicon, physkum, and civile: St Augustine discusses the division in the De Civitate Dei. The first ranges from fable to myth and includes symbolic and poetic theogonies, the genealogies of heaven and earth; the approach is not scientific, yet Jungians are not alone in agreeing with Plato that the results may be educationally valuable. The last is concerned with public worship largely as a factor of social cohesion, and is accordingly dominated by the requirements of administrators and lawyers in both or either Church and State. Neither represents the theology of St Thomas.