bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
God's Kingdom and his Judgement
Authors: Middleton Neil
Published: August 2024

In an earlier issue of The Life Of The Spirit I said: ‘The kingdom of God is here, these are the last days and, therefore, this is the time of heaven; we await the completion of the kingdom of God only in the sense that for a little while the effects of this situation are suspended'. I think that the idea of the kingdom of God is neglected in popular Catholic instruction and thinking, and that if we are to understand the community of God properly then we must try to understand what is meant by the idea of the presence in the world of the kingdom of God. The difficulty facing most people when they approach this question seems to be engendered by a mistaken understanding of that ambiguous term ‘the four last things'. The phrase has too great a history in Catholic thinking to be abandoned, but we must see what is meant by it, or rather, we must see how it is applied.
The Liturgy as Prayer—II
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

I want to turn, in the second part of this article, to the eucharist, which is prayer par excellence. And I first want to draw attention to the scholastic distinction between ex opere operato and ex opere operantis. Certainly this distinction has led to a very mechanical attitude to the sacraments; so long as one goes through the motions then God produces the results. The distinction has probably been responsible for a good number of abuses, but it is valuable as long as it is not misapplied. I mention this because I am going to deal with the eucharist as a sacrament and as the sacrament of prayer. In this context it is most important to remember what the distinction means. Because, putting it very briefly, the first part of the mass is really all done ex opere operantis and the second part of the mass is increasingly done ex opere operato; that is to say the effect of the eucharist and our participation will depend largely on the way we prepare ourselves.
The Living Relationships of Social Work
Authors: Gloyne E.R.
Published: August 2024

‘Relationship is the soul of casework’ says Fr Biestek at the beginning of his book on the Casework Relationship. The forming of relationships between persons is one of the basic necessities of life, for man was made a social being. Relationship comes into every sort of personal and social situation. Nevertheless, the use of relationship in a particular way and for a particular purpose is the essential and basic factor in social work. It is, as Fr Biestek says, the ‘soul’ of casework and without it social work would be lifeless and meaningless. The theory of relationship in social work has been analysed by some of the ablest thinkers in the social work field. My aim in this paper is not to recapitulate what is in the text books or to attempt to summarise the literature about relationship. To do this would be both boring and ineffective.
On Doing Nothing in Particular
Authors: Edwards Mary
Published: August 2024

For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

That is how St Paul speaks of the plan of redemption to his converts at Corinth. And now here is Shakespeare showing man as instrumental in ‘declaring the glory of the Lord'. It is a passage from King Lear where the king, cast out into the storm by his unnatural daughters, sees, for the first time it may be, the close kinship of us all.
The Re-Formation of the Soul
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

One of the most fundamental ideas in the understanding of the ascent of the Christian towards God is that of transformation into Christ. But it is a difficult idea to grasp. So easily transformation-the taking on of a new form-slips into an identification which would be a type of pantheism. Otherwise it remains as a mere simile, suggesting that the lover of Christ becomes like Christ, simply because he performs the same sort of actions.

Another way of stating the same difficulty is to be found in the discussion concerning the nature of the unity of the Mystical Body. What sort of unity characterises the one Body of Christ on Earth? A formal unity? That would identify all the members with the head and they would lose their own personalities. Or is it simply a final unity arising from the fact that all are aiming at the same final point of beatitude? Such a union would differ in little or nothing from the union of human society.
Feelings in Prayer
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

Few things are more easily agreed to and more difficult to realise in practice than the fact that feelings count for next to nothing in prayer and the spiritual life. The position of the emotional life, that is to say, is readily accepted by the Catholic who realises that Faith even in its motive is supernatural, which is essentially of the Spirit and only accidentally concerned with the bodily or physical element of man. There are some who make the distinction between body and soul with too great a facility. And for them theoretically a man should be able to continue living a very highly supernatural life with no experience whatever, living entirely on the divine workings of faith all unfelt in the mysterious depths of his soul.
The Background of the Definition
Authors: Cary-Elwes Columba
Published: August 2024

Some have maintained that it was the apocryphal storips current towards the middle and end of the fourth century which created the idea that our Lady went up to heaven body and soul after death. This was the not the order in the case of the Gospels and the apocryphal gospels; the ‘former came first and then they were embroidered. So it would have been with the De Dormitione Beatae Mariae. It would have rested upon some foundation in the now forgotten tradition of the earliest times about the dormitiou of Mary. But it is not on these stories that the belief in the Assumption of Mary is grounded. Indeed, Pope Gelasius, while having a feast in his sacramentary for the Assumption, went out of his way to condemn those apocrypha as not being part of the canon of Scripture. It is an interesting point to note that, while denying their authenticity, he does not condemn the underlying truth.
St Cuthbert
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

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.
A Homily of St John Chrysostom on the Passion
Authors: F.R.
Published: August 2024

And when Jesus was in Bethania, in the house of Simon the leper, there came to him a woman having an alabaster box of precious ointment, and poured it on his head as he was at table.’ (Matt, xxvi, 6f.) At first sight it seems as thoughts all the evangelists refer to the same woman, but in fact this is not so. I think that three of them do, but that John is describing another, and more glorious person—the sister of Lazarus. Matthew's apparently casual mention of Simon's leprosy is to show why the woman came so confidently to Jesus. Leprosy was a filthy and repellent disease; and yet she saw that Jesus had healed the man (or he would not have chosen to remain in his company), and had now gone to his home. This made her certain that he could easily rid her soul of sin. Again, the mention of the place, Bethania, is significant.
The Lapsed
Authors: Parnell M. T.
Published: August 2024

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.
Mature Christians in the World Today
Authors: Marinoff Irene
Published: August 2024

A christian is a man who believes that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. In saying this he does not mean that Christ was begotten of ‘a god’ and a human mother, as the Greeks and Romans conceived of their heroes, or that he was a kind of superman as some Christian denominations seem to think. Christ was-is-God himself, in some mysterious way identical with and yet distinct from the God or the old testament who thundered on Sinai.

A mature Christian is a man or woman who lives the life Christ brought us as an integrated personality. All his powers, intellect, will and heart, are fully developed, working in harmony to do God's will. By the heart I mean that centre of our being which responds to reality as a whole. It is the seat of our response to physical and moral beauty, to all values.
Sermon for the Epiphany
Authors: Tauler John
Published: August 2024

Nothing in this world is necessary to God or can rouse his desire. I am mistaken: there is one thing only that God desires ardently. He does everything to obtain it. What he wants is to find in the heart of man a centre always ready, that is to say, void of all else, so that he can accomplish in it and perfect in it his own work. Doubtless he rules with full authority over heaven and earth: nothing can resist his will; yet he seems to knock powerlessly because he is unable to carry out in the soul the work that he so loves and desires.
The Whole Christ
Authors: Meath Gerard
Published: August 2024

‘I perceive’, said the Countess, ‘that philosophy is now become very mechanical.’ ‘So mechanical’, said I, ‘that I fear we shall quickly be ashamed of it: they will have the World to be in great what a watch is in little; which is very regular and depends only upon the just disposing of the several parts of the movement. But pray tell me, Madam, had you not formerly a more sublime Idea of the Universe?’ We have now passed the mechanical phase of religious teaching and are come to a time when it is easy to be ashamed or at least timid about religion. And the one leads to the other. So soon as religion is reduced to a code of rules and embargoes adherence to any religious sect ceases to have any more significance than affiliation to a golf club.
Monasticism Today
Authors: Fitzsimons John
Published: August 2024

There is always a fascination about trying to discern patterns in the course of the world's history, and this perhaps as much as anything else explains the Phenomenally popular, as distinct from professional, interest in Professor Toynbee's Studies in History. A more particular source of fascination is picking out the turning points of history. Toynbee, for instance, suggests that the decline of the West began in what had hitherto been considered the high Middle Ages, to be precise in the years immediately. Mediately preceding the pontificate of Hildebrand. To be more precise he tracks it down to a small action on the part Hildebrand before he became pope, when he hired thugs to counter-attack the thugs who were stealing the offerings of Peter's pence from the altar of St Peter's.
‘Forgive Us Our Trespasses'
Authors: Steuart R. H. J.
Published: August 2024

By this shall all men know you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.’ Such was our Lord's last exhortation to his disciples. He insists on mutual charity, love; because when we put that into practice it brings all the rest in its train. Charity is patient, kind, charity envieth not; it calls for forgiveness of trespasses, offences, debts. ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us’ gives the Our Father a touch of meanig quite different from our ordinary language. To what do I commit myself when I say this? I acknowledge that I am a sinner: ‘All we like sheep have gone astray'; like silly sheep. The gates are open, but do we go through them? No! We are stupid, silly sheep gone astray, just following our own way.
Our Approach to Other Christians
Authors: Richards Michael
Published: August 2024

It is a truism that a controversialist should know and understand his opponent's point of view; but where relations with non-Catholics are concerned, it may well be that the time of controversy is over and that knowledge of others is now to be regarded rather as essential material for the rebuilding of a native Catholicism than as a weapon for attack and defence. The missionary practice of the Church has always been not to destroy a people's beliefs and practices but to correct, supplement and direct them to their true end; and this applies particularly to work amongst other Christians, where we speak from faith to faith. The non-Catholic Christian already believes in and follows our Lord, although his understanding of him is incomplete; it is our task to remove from his mind those misconceptions which hinder the full realization of the truth, making it possible for him to see the Catholic faith as the complete expression of that which he now holds imperfectly.
Spiritual Studies in England
Authors: Greenstock David L.
Published: August 2024

The circumstances of life in any country, its history and the racial characteristics of its people all influence, to a greater or a lesser degree, that country's literature, including its theology. The last twenty-five years have seen a change in the atmosphere in which English Catholicity in all its branches has to live, work and develop. Religious controversy still exists, but it is less important now than it was, let us say, fifty years ago. Catholic activity is increasing and there is a marked interest in all the problems relating to the spiritual life.

However, since the English character is essentially practical in its outlook, the study of spiritual theology—to include under that term both ascetical and mystical theology—tends to be mainly directed towards the practical problems of everyday life. The study of spirituality in England tends to restrict itself to the translation of the works of the great mystics, both at home and abroad, and to the divulgation or popularization of those doctrines which have most application to the Pr actice of religion.
The Ground of Union
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

We have seen that all true prayer is in Christ and is in the form of petition or desire, the ‘ground of our beseeching’ being the Incarnate Word who is semper interpellans pro nobis, making unceasing petition on our behalf. In order to recognise the full import of this healing doctrine we must go deeper to discover the ground of the whole spiritual life, particularly the ground of the full Christian life of union. And when we come to consider this ground we have always to insist on its subjective element. Of course the ground of the Christian life is Christ, of course it is life per Christum in Trinitate; and yet it is possible even with this realisation to be carried away into a misty conception of the spiritual life which is really no more than some high poetic, or perhaps neo-platonic, yearning for the One, the super-essential Being in whom we live and move and have our own being. Therefore it is necessary to purify this objective conception of the Christian life of union with the subjective: in other words the ground of all Christian life and all Christian experience and perception is the Faith. Nothing. neither visions nor experiences, neither the gifts nor the heights of prayer, can supersede in this life the faith which alone puts us in direct relationship with the intimate life of the Godhead.
Of the Homelessness of God
Authors: Gorres Ida Friederike
Published: August 2024

What we are having to go through during these years, so full of war's unprecedented waste, drives us to seek ever more closely for the meaning of such happenings. However many and varied the answers which are given, one thing stands out clearly, that there is discernible in these events not only a world-wide call to reflection and repentance but a special message from God. Rearing upon the present, lighting up the past and foreshadowing the future, this message lays bare the causes of what is happening and so points out the way to victory, just as the keen-eyed doctor looks at the symptoms of sickness in order to come upon the cause of the evil and the means of healing at the same time.
Reciting Divine Office
Authors: J.C.
Published: August 2024

In March 1946 the editors of La Vie Spirituelle printed a questionnaire relative to the recitation of the Divine Office. In January 1947 under the title ‘Lauda Jerusalem Dominum’ they published a summary of the 345 answers received. These were from priests, nuns and the laity most, though not all, of whom were tertiaries. While in most cases replies showed great attachment to the practice, comments on the length and language of the Office—as well as on the attitude of mind of many recitants raise some interesting problems. It was also seen that despite the goodwill shown towards their obligation (priests) or practice (laity), many were far from understanding the Church's end in establishing this. The book therefore includes a valuable chapter, ‘Towards a better understanding of the Office’, setting forth the origin, history and purpose of the breviary and another on the question of Latin.
‘Welcome Sister Pain’ (II)
Authors: Parnell Mary-Teresa
Published: August 2024

I Pass on now to Mental pain which is a condition of the soul, and yet I do not wish to put this under the category of actual Spiritual Pain, because I wish to reserve for that category the pain which is entirely due to the actual intervention of God directly, and not due to the ‘growing pains’ of the soul.

We are probing deeper now into the mystery of pain, probing deeper, and at the same time, paradoxically, mounting higher. I speak of the condition of the soul caused by the mental pain of aridity, isolation, desolation, and the insatiable hunger of the soul for God.

Aridity is dryness in the life of the spirit. It sometimes seems as if the very colour, and music, of prayer were dead and silent. We pray, and our very words seem meaningless and hollow; there seems no response from God. We may be even utterly bored and unable to concentrate; vocal prayer seems meaningless, like speaking to a blank wall; mental prayer is impossible. It is indeed as if all the colour of life had turned grey, and all the music was mute. ‘Surely’, the wretched bodies out, ‘I must have sinned very greatly, have displeased God in some terrible way.’
The ‘De Imitatione’
Authors: Searle John
Published: August 2024

The Bible excepted, no other book in Christendom has circulated so widely as ‘The Imitation.’ Prepared during one of the darkest hours in European history, between the dead or dying Middle Ages and the alluring dawn of the delusive Renaissance; and as the picturesque Michelet writes: ‘L’Imitation de Jésus Christ, le plus beau livre chrétien après l’Evangile, est sorti, comme lui, du sein de la mort. La mort du monde ancien, la mort du moyen âge, ont porté ces germes de vie.’

The most precious of the early manuscripts is the famous Antwerp Codex written by Thomas himself, with the subscription Finitus et completus anno domini MCCCCXLI per manus fratris Thome Kempensis in Monte Agnetis prope Zwolles. Before the war there were still in existence sixty dated manuscripts of the fifteenth century, and about thirty undated ascribed to that century.

Although the evidence is overwhelming in favour of Thomas à Kempis as the author, after his death other claimants to that great honour were put forward, the most notable being Jean Gerson, Chancellor of Paris.
Carried on the Wings of Eagles
Authors: Barry Philip
Published: August 2024

We must often have found comfort in that frequent image of the Psalms, that of the mother-bird sheltering her young ones under her wings: ‘He shall cover thee with his pinions and under his wings shalt thou shelter’. We should perhaps find even greater comfort in that image in the realisation that it connotes especially the abiding presence in the tabernacle. For that image came from the tabernacle of the desert. It was there that it originated. It was suggested by God himself when he bade Moses to remind the Israelites how he delivered them from Egypt, and walked with them, led them, carried them through the wilderness as an eagle carries her eaglets: ‘Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob…: You have seen what I have done to the Egyptians, how I have carried you upon the wings of eagles and have taken. you to myself’ (Exod. 19).
Sigrid Undset, T.O.S.D.
Authors: Scarre A. M.
Published: August 2024

Sigeid Undset's conversion in 1924 aroused something like consternation in Norway. There are few Catholics in the country—not quite three thousand— and there is much prejudice and accompanying ignorance of Catholic teaching. And yet her intimate friends and those who read her books carefully had long been aware of the trend of her thoughts. As far back as 1915 she wrote to a friend that ‘the Eoman Church has at least form and is not irritating to one's intelligence’. Later on she remarks that Eoper's life of his father-in-law, Thomas More, is one of the most beautiful things she has ever read; and her preoccupation with and widening knowledge of the middle ages, the ages of faith, in Preparation for the writing of her masterpiece, Kristin Lavransdatter, no doubt played a great part in enabling her to take the final step.
Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, a Mystic in the Family
Authors: Graef H. C.
Published: August 2024

Siena may be called the city of unusual vocations. There is St Catherine, who brought back the Pope from Avignon and was espoused to our Lord; St Bernardine, ardent Apostle of the Name of Jesus, and, very near our own time, Bl. Anna Maria Taigi, mother of a large family, mystic and confidante of Popes. She was born in the same year as Napoleon (1769) with whose family she was later brought into close relation. Unlike in this to her great compatriot, she gave no early signs of future sanctity. She was the daughter of an apothecary, a spendthrift who went to Rome with his family when Anne was six. She was sent to a convent school where she learned embroidery and afterwards her father found her a job as housemaid with a rich lady of doubtful reputation. In her house she spent three years, learning all the secrets of female vanity and becoming conscious of her own attraction for men. It was a perilous position for a poor and pretty young girl, and the dangers were not altogether removed even when, in 1790, she married Domenico Taigi, a valet in the Palazzo Chigi, considerably older than herself.
The Simple Sight of Sin
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

Mother Julian was able to resolve the conflicting paradoxes involved in the relation between the world and God because she had attained to that concrete touch by which the Spirit of God brings all into one. By the ‘touch’ of divinity the Spirit draws all the experience and ideas of a life-time into the immediate orbit of the single and simple reality of his being.

And what might this noble Lord do of more worship and joy to me than to shew me that am so simple this marvellous homeliness? (e. 7, p. 16.)
The Silent Joy
Authors: Gerard S. M.
Published: August 2024

When one has traced the bridegroom and the bride motif in the pages of the Old Testament and seen with what divine persistence God wooed his chosen people lest the alliance be forgotten: ‘I will espouse thee to me forever’ (Osee 3, 19), one is the more forcibly struck by the few references in the Gospels of the New Testament to Christ as the Bridegroom of the Covenant. In the writings of the Four Evangelists the nuptial theme practically disappears, at least as far as direct allusion to Christ's fulfilment of the promised espousals goes. It is as if the actual presence of the ‘young man’ whom Isaias prophesied would come and ‘dwell with the virgin’ (Isaias 62, 5) made all further allusion unnecessary. Even in the Gospel of St John, where we find more evidence of the fulfilment-sense than in the other Gospels, there is only one mention made of the Bridegroom
Death
Authors: Jarrett Bede
Published: August 2024

One of the things we have learnt from the intense study of nature is that behind every desire of man and of all living things there is some justification and some fulfilment. That whatever men have persistently longed for and desired has some reality. Nature does nothing uselessly. God implants in human hearts no desire however fantastic that has not fulfilment. Dreams in one generation become commonplace realities in the next. Look back a thousand years and read the dreaming literature of that period and now we have got beyond the dreams and live in the reality. Man is never satisfied. As fast as one desire is satisfied new desires spring from our mind. Man has always desired to live; he naturally hates death. There is a sadness connected with the last time he does anything.
Liturgical Formation in the Spiritual Life
Authors: Griffiths Bede
Published: August 2024

If we ask ourselves what is the place of the liturgy in a Christian life, we can only find an answer by going back to the origins of both. The origin of the liturgy is to be found in the Last Supper. Whether or not this was strictly a Paschal meal, as it would appear to be, there is no doubt that it was one of those sacred ceremonial meals which were customary among the Jews, at which certain ritual blessings were given, a ritual offering was made, and prayers and hymns were sung. We have here clearly all the elements of a liturgy. If we want to see what was the place of this liturgy in the early Church we cannot do better than turn to the Acts of the Apostles, where we read that after Pentecost, the disciples ‘occupied themselves continually with the Apostles ’teaching. their fellowship in the breaking of bread and the fixed Ries of prayer’ (Acts, 2, 42). So Mgr Knox: but another reading of the Greek gives an even better sense.
The Life of Christ in the Liturgy
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

Acritic suggested that Dom Gregory Dix in his monumental The Shape of the Liturgy had some brilliant liturgical intuitions, even though he was not always accurate or Profound in his details. This criticism may or may not be justified of the book as a whole; but there was surely a brilliancy of intuition in Fr Dix's treatment of St Cyril of Jerusalem and his relation to the development of the liturgy in the West as well as in the East. The realisation that St Cyril introduced a new type of symbolism into the universal prayer of the Church was surely something of a discovery and all its implications may not have been fully appreciated even by Fr Dix himself. At all events, it may be useful to summarise his discovery for the benefit of those unacquainted with this book, and to point to one important implication which bears upon the whole question of the way Christian men express themselves in prayer together.
Modern Dislocations in Religious Life: II. Applications
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

Many of the problems of modern religious the may be traced back to the over-emphasis of one or other of the two elements already discussed in a previous article: the individualistic asceticism of the solitary, and the collective the of the liturgical servants of God. It is therefore possible that the solution of these problems may be sought in the realisation of a balanced monastic life paying more conscious attention to the two main sources of its natural existence. First, then, the modern difficulties springing from the individuaHstic and ascetical element in religious life. These are multiple, but they may usefully be classed as they refer to three main topics: Penance, Contemplation, and Perfection.

In the first place the penitential side of monastic observance has thrived too much upon the neoplatonic suspicion of the body, so that today the rules regarding the giving up of the good things of life have taken on a positive, objective character.
The Medieval Guest
Authors: Edwards Tudor
Published: August 2024

The exhortations and counsel of St Benedict in his Rule on the reception of guests are too well known to be repeated here. Their importance however can never be sufficiently stressed and their wisdom and beauty can never be aufficiently praised. There is in the Luxembourg Museum of Paris a painting by Dauban of a stranger being received by s convent. It is a perfect interpretation of the 53rd chapter of the Rule, with a poignant beauty and a moral for all humanity.

Doubtless there were guests even among the primitive communities in the deserts of Nitria and the Thebaid, although such a specu Istion is beyond the scope the present essay. During the earlier history of the monasteries, the hd 12th centuries for example, hospitality was a sine qua non of monastic life. In some cases, in-deed, as of the abbeys of Reading and Battle, the foundation-charters indicated that the providing of such hospitality in the district was the motive of the founder.

The relationship between Church and State, between Church and Society, was then very different from what it is today. The Church was closely interwoven with the entire national fabric.
The Lay Apostolate
Authors: Pius XII Pope , Scott Murdoch
Published: August 2024

Venerable Fathers, dearest sons and daughters, it is a
source of great consolation and joy to Us to see before this impressive gathering of representatives from every continent and from every part of the world, met together here at the very centre of Christianity to celebrate this world Congross on the Lay Apostolate. You have been studying the nature and purpose of this work, you have given much thought to the present state of the world and you are acutely aware of the grave respon sibilities which are upon us of this generation to look to the future. These have been for you days of ceaseless prayer, a time for a searching examination of conscience and, withal, an opportunity to exchange views and experiences.
The Mother of God in Scripture
Authors: Kehoe Richard
Published: August 2024

To treat of the motherhood of the Blessed Virgin according to the Scriptures is as overwhelming a task as it would be to treat of Christ according to the Scriptures. For one whole half of the mystery of redemption, as set forth there, is summed up in the person of the Blessed Virgin. Under Christ, and in Christ, the Blessed Virgin plays in the work of the redemption a companion, complementary part to his; being the Eve to his Adam, the Woman answering to the (Son of) Man that he is. It is accepted that it is necessary, in order to appreciate the Scriptural witness to Christ, to study the Bible as a whole and in its full inspired weight of meaning. The same is true of the Blessed Virgin. It is not sufficient, in the Old Testament, to dwell on a number of the more explicitly prophetic texts, nor in the New Testament on the great scenes, say, of the Annunciation, Bethlehem, Cana, Calvary.
Te Deum Laudamus
Authors: C.K.
Published: August 2024

Thee God we praise. But to speak of this Godhead I dare not presume, for since I cannot prove, nor conceive thine hid works, that thou hast made in a creature, what should I say to the maker that is a creator? For all philosophers that have laboured in divers sentences, as in grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, all, they proved by reason in their faculties, till they came to one point, that was called, prima causa. And here they stood still and could proceed no further. And that first causer, they said, might well be called a God. And so we, to the same first causer of all things, we say: Te Deum Laudamus. ‘Thee God we praise', that art so curious a maker of diversities of things. And Te dominum confitemur, ‘we knowledge thee', a lord that of everything art so wise a disposer and so noble a keeper.
Growth of the Soul
Authors: Jarrett Bede
Published: August 2024

In speaking of that personal side that should be in our love and service of God it should be taken for granted that the life of service implies a certain growth in knowledge and love, and the service which after all is only an expression of that knowledge and love should also increase and grow. In all living things there is an ebb and flow this is found in the spiritual and life in very great measure. The growth is not necessarily maintained for long, it has setbacks. It is not necessary that one should notice growth. “The Kingdom of God cometh not by observation’. We may notice it or we may not. In the lives of the saints from their own words it would seem they were often not conscious of it, did not seem to themselves to have seen any improvement, sometimes quite the reverse. St Francis of Assisi says many things that suggest that he saw no increase in his knowledge or love. So to notice the growth is not necessary to us; that other people should notice it—yes, but that we should—no. It is not ordinarily evident to the individual himself.
The Bread of Life
Authors: Elwes Columba Cary
Published: August 2024

One evening in summer on the rocky slopes overlooking the Sea of Galilee from the north, Jesus had fed five thousand people with a few pieces of bread. Next day these same people and Jesus were crowded into the synagogue in Capharnaum. Our Lord was speaking to them: ‘I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the desert and are dead. This is the bread that comes down from heaven that if any man eat of it, he may not die…. I am the living bread which came down from heaven…. If any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world’ (John 6, 48-52).

Unlike all other great spiritual teachers Christ claimed not only to lead and point to a better life, he made the astonishing claim that he was that life. Further, he put it in the form that he was also the instrument by means of which we acquired this life, he said he was the ‘Bread of Life’. This bread, or food, was in fact to be, as he promised, his flesh.
The Religious Vocation
Authors: Pius
Published: August 2024

The Holy Year, which, through no merit of Ours but by the mercy of God, has been productive of greater benefits than it was humanly possible to foretell, has, in a wonderful series of public manifestations, given evidence of the great faith and fullness of life in the Church of Christ, our Mother. Among these important events your congress, your brotherly meeting, appearing among them as a shining light, now comes to take its place; it gives Us pleasure to welcome you with words of affection.

Church history shows no parallel of a meeting like the one which has recently taken place whereat its members, chosen from among those who are resolved on the goal of evangelical perfection, met in this notable congress to discuss their common interests and take counsel together.
Benedictine Monasticism
Authors: Byrne H. K.
Published: August 2024

A Simple statement of some elementary notions may fittingly accompany more learned essays on particular aspects of monasticism. A Benedictine's aim is the common aim of all Chris- tians. Only his method is, to some extent, peculiar to him.

It may be succinctly described as ‘monastic obedience'. The monastic vow of obedience seems to have been one of St Benedict's inventions. Before his time monks either lived apart and independently (as did St Benedict himself in his Subiaco days) or attached themselves by easily terminable engagements to a teacher or a series of teachers. Doubtless that often worked well, and the monk either persevered in his solitude or passed from teacher to teacher receiving from each some special lesson, some further benefit. But it obviously left the unstable soul without support and opened a fairly comfortable career to the work-shy. Indignant descriptions of some unsatisfactory typen maiven the first chapter of St Bene dict's Rule.
'With Native Honour Clad'
Authors: Bailey Bede
Published: August 2024

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.'
'That They All May Be One'
Authors: Molitor Dom Raphael
Published: August 2024

‘Ut Omnes Unum Sint.’ Why was it that our Lord did not include this prayer among the petitions of the Our Father? Surely it was because its content is too holy and its meaning too delicate and full of mystery. This petition could only be presented to the Father with the required purity and value by the lips of our High Priest, the God-Man, and by the infinite love of his heart.

Ut omnes unum sint. The prophetic eye of Jesus scans time and eternity. The faithful appear before him in their millions—men of the most diverse tongues and lands approach him, desirous to find in him deliverance and eternal salvation, love and peace, eager to live according to his will and example, to be like him in all things, forming a host of glittering stars. Each One in himself, separated from the rest, is a world of his own.
The Divine Office In Anglican Religious Communities
Authors: Anson Peter F.
Published: August 2024

‘There is so much of excellence and beauty in the services of the Breviary, that were it skilfully set before the Protestant by Roman controversialists as the book of devotion received in their communion, it would undoubtedly raise a prejudice in their favour, if he were ignorant of the circumstances of the case, and but ordinarily candid and unprejudiced.’ Such are the opening words of No. 75 of Tracts for the Times, which was entitled The Roman Breviary as embodying the substance of the devotional services of the Church Catholic. It was published in 1838, and its author was John Henry Newman. After the title the following verse is printed. The words contain a deeper meaning today than when they were composed.
The Little Brothers of Jesus
Authors: Anson Peter F.
Published: August 2024

Nobody who passes by that shabby little house in a back street in the poorest quarter of the fishing port of Concarneau would suspect that two rooms on its first floor make up the ‘monastery’ of a small contemplative religious community. None of the many summer visitors to what is also a popular Breton holiday resort would ever guess that the four young men, garbed as labourers or fishermen, who might be Noticed entering or leaving this house are professed religious, following a rule of life which, in its own way, is as strict as and perhaps harder than that of Carthusian or Cistercian monks.

One of these Little Brothers of Jesus was waiting for me at the barrier of Concarneau station when I arrived there on a July evening this summer. I managed to spot him in the crowd because of a small badge, composed of a red cross and heart, pinned on to the much washed open-necked khaki shirt he was wearing.
Cyprian the Christian
Authors: Durnford G. M.
Published: August 2024

It is a deplorable loss to Catholic reading that ‘The Library of the Fathers', the classic series of translations edited by Pusey, Keble and Newman should have been allowed to remain unfinished and long out of print. Moreover, it is already more than a century since these vernacular versions first appeared, and they have never been surpassed: fine scholarship and loving care alike went to their making, and when we pray for England's return to the Faith, the re-availability in our language of that patristic literature whose istudy birmght the greatest of English converts into the Church should be covered by our intention.

Among the first members of the series, in 1839 to be exact, there appeared the ‘Treatises of Saint Cyprian' the third-century bishop and martyr of Carthage, to be followed in due course by the companion volume of his Epistles.
Spiritual Progress
Authors: Gardeil A.
Published: August 2024

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.
Love of the Word
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

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 Second Sunday of Advent a Seemon
Authors: Tauler John
Published: August 2024

Numberless, my beloved children, are the tokens of love and of the infinite goodness of God in our regard. Wherever we turn we see in all directions signs of his protection and his tenderness; so much so that, ‘iSTo one can hide himself from his heat’ (Ps. 18). This immense goodness, in which no evil can have part, and which is not something added to God but his very nature and essence, this goodness, I say, what else can it desire but to love, to give Itself, to manifest Itself, to communicate and transmit Itself? All this It does as far as It can. without respite, with no respect of persons, with perfect justice. And so, there is no moment, or point of time however short, in which God does not will with all his strength to fill every reasonable soul with all good things, with all grace, all his gifts and all riches. There is no instant in which he does not desire to make his dwelling within her, to abide in her trustfully and with delight, to purify her and preserve her from all evil, to adorn her with virtues as with so many precious stones.
Aspects of the Chalice
Authors: Baldwin Dominic
Published: August 2024

Though a study of the liturgy is undertaken to find the meaning of, to get behind, so to speak, the elements (the words, actions, things) of the Church's ceremonies, it may seem a little strange that we should look for a symbolical meaning of necessary a receptacle as a chalice or cup in any religious rite in which a liquid is used. But man's knowledge begins with the senses. Metaphors, sensible (corporeal) representaons or similitudes are not only natural to man but naturally pleasing to him—for which reason St Thomas says, it is fitting that pmtual things are given to us by means of metaphors drawn from corporeal things, sub metaphoris corporalium.

Man has always tended to express his religious or spiritual ideas in terms of his physical environment and his reactions to it, in terms of things that are vital and familiar to him. Though this anniiarity has perhaps clouded the modern sophisticated mind, the Principle remains fundamentally true.
Sharing the Sacrifice
Authors: Hollings Michael
Published: August 2024

The central act of the liturgy is the mass. It is an act in two senses, that of something done, and that of drama in the highest order. But despite the amount written round it in recent years, the idea of being a spectator only still infects many, perhaps the majority, of lay men and women. The mass remains a service which we attend, not a sacrifice which we offer. Some of this vagueness is due to the care necessary in separating the priest from the people, in that we say the priest alone has a priestly function, by ordination, while the people are in no way priests, even though they too share in the offering. This is inclined to cloud the part of the people, to obscure the public nature of the mass. For the mass is by nature public and social, whether it is said in the solitude of the Sahara by Charles de Foucauld or in the Piccadilly-Circus crowd of a London Midnight Mass. The priest offers sacrifice for the whole Church, for the living, for the dead.
The Divine Office as a Method of Prayer
Authors: Griffiths Bede
Published: August 2024

A priest of my acquaintance once told me that when he was a young religious, he had had a great devotion to the divine office. In order to get the best out of it, he decided to make a careful study of the psalms. So he got out the best commentaries and studied their meaning in Latin and Hebrew; and when he had finished, he found that the psalms had ceased to have any meaning to him as prayer at all. This is, perhaps, an extreme example, but it illustrates a fact of great importance, namely, that prayer is not necessarily an exercise of discursive thought, and that study of a certain kind can be an obstacle rather than an assistance to prayer.

There is no doubt that for a great many priests and religious, if not the majority, the divine office is not a congenial method of prayer. It is a duty which has to be performed, which has its own special grace and virtue, but it is not generally felt as a personal method of prayer and approach to God.
The Liturgy of the Sacrament of Penance
Authors: Hennig John
Published: August 2024

One of the most significant features in modern Church life is no doubt the interest taken by the laity in the liturgy. The liturgies of the Mass and of the Sacraments of Baptism, Holy Orders and Extreme Unction in particular invite us by the variety of their ceremonies and texts to follow them in all their details and, in fact, are well known in both their historical development and their present form. There is perhaps one lacuna in this liturgical discussion. Apart from the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, no Sacrament is more frequently received by us than is the Sacrament of Penance; and yet we rarely hear of the liturgy of this Sacrament and its history. In fact, some Catholics might be surprised at the application of the term ‘liturgy’ to the Sacrament of Penance.

In his Encyclical The Mystical Body of Christ, the Holy Father has complained of a neglect, at present found in many countries, of the Sacrament of Penance.