bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
English Devotional Literature
Authors: Kirchberger Clare
Published: August 2024

The short pieces of English devotional literature recently printed in the LIFE OF THE SPIRIT are examples from a class of writing not yet fully investigated either by the students of Middle English literature or by the lovers of Middle English devotion. Before the days of printing priests were obliged to write, translate or copy matter for the instruction of their penitents, where the possibilities of preaching were insufficient. Thus it comes about that the MSS of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are full of long and short pieces, often without attribution of authorship or with fictitious attribution. Anonymity was a virtue in those days—a sure refuge in time of trouble. The major works of English doctrinal, devotional and mystical literature have been or will be dealt with by Conrad Pepler, O.P. They came to printed sooner or later, but a great number of secondary works have not yet seen the light. Of the complete ones many are of such uneven quality and of such great length that one could hardly encourage their publication in these days. Such is the Chastising of God's Children, a long treatise on the nature of and remedies for spiritual temptations not reprinted since Caxton's edition of 1492.
The Daughters of the Church
Authors: Pond K.
Published: August 2024

Among the new forms of religious life which now seem to be a characteristic of this present age is that lived by the Daughters of the Church in their monastery at Bruges. Their ideal is both contemplative and active To a casual visitor to the Béguinage—for the 'Monastère de la Vigne' occupies the 700 years old Béguinage, which was dying out for want of subjects, with a new monastic cloister, refectory and cells built out at the back of one the old Béguine's cottages—the life may seem almost wholly contemplative. What is most apparent as one crosses the quadrangle, whether by day or, if one is privileged to be a guest in the house, under a clear, bright winter's moon as one makes one's way to the church for Matins, is the almost palpable sense of the presence of God, of the nearness of the supernatural, of silence, of recollection, of a life lived on another plane or in another dimension caught up in God.
The Silence of the Cloister
Authors:   A Religious
Published: August 2024

The Father utters one Word and that Word is his Son. He Utters him in everlasting silence and in silence the soul has to her him.

—St John of the Cross.

If we want to find the ultimate explanation and full meaning of anything we must go back to the Beginning, End and Reason of all things—the Blessed Trinity And this is true of ‘the most holy rule of Silence’ which is called somewhere ‘a beautiful and most useful observance, conducing much to the formation of the religious spirit, to peace of soul and to the love of prayer’.

What do we mean by silence? Several quite different things which we may understand better if we consider the various words which we use as synonyms for silent: quiet, still, tranquil, noiseless, speechless.
Time to Keep Silence
Authors: Pursglove Grace
Published: August 2024

On the 16th March, 1902, Emilia Emaldi was delivered of her second child and, to her great joy, a son. Her friends had previously told her to prepare the long robe as he would be a priest. The thought gave her much pleasure as it was her dearest wish to give a son to the priesthood.

At this time, the family lived in S. Lorenzo near Lugo in the beautiful province of Ravenna in north-east Italy. Three years later they moved to the ancient seaport of Ravenna, but with the entry of Italy into the war in 1915 the heavy bombing forced them to return to Lugo. They suffered great hardship, and the father, Francesco Emaldi, was forced to work at anything which came his way in order to make a living.

The boy, who had been christened Alfeo, was nervous and naughty. He adored his father, whom he always obeyed promptly, but although he loved his mother dearly he behaved badly towards her.
The Catholic Fellowship of the Sick
Authors: Jackson Mary
Published: August 2024

For the last twelve years there has been increasingly engaged in France a great new labour-a gigantic labour, indeed, to make both more human and more holy the great, grey, hidden world of the chronically ill or disabled. It began very simply in 1942 when a group of invalid girls met a certain invalid priest at another girl's bedside. There indeed was the archetypal idea, the gathering together in charity and friendliness of the isolated sick, with the hope of priestly instruction in their common and difficult vocation.

The movement of the Catholic Fellowship of the Sick is now fully organized in several dioceses and has the full and formal approval of the hierarchy. Its manifesto is apparently the little book of Fr Thierry-d'Argenlieu, O.P., who, chronically ill himself, is one of the leader of the movement.

There exists an enormous new world of the sick, declares Fr d'Argenlieu, partly as a result of war conditions and poor housing, but more due to the advance of medicine. ‘A heild has been brought into being', he says, ‘that used not to exist when both people's vitality was greater and when mortality was higher, too.'
I Come Quickly
Authors: Morrissey Daniel
Published: August 2024

There was a day when you could have heard it said that theologians knew nothing about the liturgy, and conversely, that liturgists knew very little theology. That misinformed attitude has disappeared, and it is now recognized that theological and liturgical studies enrich and complement one another. There cannot be two Gods—one for theologians, another for liturgists. The Church simultaneously instructs our minds through dogma and our hearts through symbol. The liturgy would be no more than exaggerated drama without roots deep in the truths theology defends and explains; and were it not for the living contact with Truth found in the liturgy, theology would be only an elaborate system of religious mathematics.

One consequence of this necessary and dynamic interaction between theology and the liturgy is that many of the problems encountered in the worship of God find their solution in theological principles.
Progress In Faith
Authors: Deman Thomas
Published: August 2024

Between having the faith and not having it, the difference is assuredly clear-cut; and we rightly divide men into believers and unbelievers. But there still remains to be considered the manner in which believers possess the faith. Is it not true that in certain people. perhaps in a great number, it is poor, lifeless, distorted? And even if in certain cases faith is strong and steady there is always the danger of routine and distortion. Converting people is not everything; it is of primary importance to ensure the rectitude and vitality of the Christian's faith. We should like to offer a few suggestions in this connection. They will be based on theology. For the development of faith among Christians will have all the more chance of being efficacious if it respects the true nature of this virtue: just as a living being grows and becomes stronger by following out the laws inscribed in its organism.
St Augustine, The Doctor of Grace
Authors: Taylor Paul A.
Published: August 2024

Many of our Saints have but a limited appeal, even among the ranks of the faithful; few of them indeed. may be said to have a great following outside the Catholic Church. One thinks of St Vincent de Paul, St John of the Cross, more than any other perhaps St Francis of Assisi. But there is one whose position is quite unique, whose chief works belong to the great classics of human literature, whose influence on Christian thought has never been surpassed, not even by the Angelic Doctor. Augustine is truly the bridge between antiquity and the medieval period; not only was he the most prolific writer of the early Fathers, but also his epoch was one of transition, and violent transition, from the dying age of universal Roman sway to a new age, that of the barbarian peoples. As he lay dying on 28th August, 431, there came to his ears the cries of the Vandal armies laying siege to his episcopal town of Hippo.
Strength Against Temptations (Part II)
Authors: Flete William
Published: August 2024

Saint Austin says, then are holy men most speedfully heard of God, when he gives them not that that they covet (but after that he knows the best for them). God gives unto some men sweetness of devotion in the beginining of their turning for to (draw them out from the love I of worldly things) and for to make them sad and stable in his love. Which sweetness afterward he withdraws that they should get them more meed and higher to be crowned (in the bliss of heaven). For since virtues, as says the philosopher, stands in that thing that a man may not come to (without strength and hardness), therefore that this is most hard to get is most of virtue when it is gotten. [But to be stable and lasting in the love of God and soothfast belief, in time of temptation and withdrawing of all actual and sensible devotion, is more hard than it is when a man feels sweetness and devotion and therefore it is more needful.]
The Way, The Truth, The Life
Authors: Elwes Cary
Published: August 2024

Is it fanciful to see in these three titles combined the summing up of past history, the salving and transforming of the ancient glimpses of Truth; It may be fanciful, but it has an aptness suitable for our purposes. And even if more symbolic than real, the titles apart, Christ did in his Person and teaching sum up the past, even the pagan past.

The world in ancient times seems, speaking broadly, to have been four parted: the Greek world fumbling for truth, the East finding a path to tread, a Way, and the rest seeking survival, the mystery religions; then, quite apart, the little people of the Jews. Christ called himself the Way. The Buddhists and the Confucianists were seeking ways to peace of mind; the first by progressive annihilation of the all or by one's absorption in the All, the beyondnothing; the second by a concentration on manners, on social peace. These Eastern religions or philosophies were concerned with the art of living. They each seem to have begun through the agony of s°ul rising from intense suffering.
The Purity of Mary
Authors: Fagan John
Published: August 2024

Mary, chosen to be the Mother of God; Mary, chosen and therefore fitted by God to be his Mother; Mary, treated ever afterwards by God in accordance with her sanctity, both personal and official; these are the connecting links in the chain of our knowledge of Mary. Just now our attention is directed to the third and final of these links—the definition of her Assumption into heaven. Here, to vary the metaphor, we have not merely a passion for tying up the loose ends of doctrine; what we see is rather the providential climax of a centuries-old process-the vindication of our Lady's place in Christian tradition.

Happily, just as we fix our minds on what may be called her external glories, there is a growing interest in her inner life, namely the devotion to her Immaculate Heart. This is an effort to seek for her personal worth. Here we are in fact studying the choicest fruit of the Redemption, by which and we are saved. One-sided stress ou, e.g., the Assumption, might lead to a dehuroanisation of Mary, just as in earlier days one-sided stress on the divinity of her Son led men to forget and even deny his humanity.
Fatima—The Golden Mean
Authors: Klimeck Esmond
Published: August 2024

For our discursive minds things in themselves one and undivided have to be separated, sub-divided, analysed, taken apart in a way which is sufficiently real in the case of a complicated piece of machinery or even with the human body, but which when applied to things that are not material—like the human mind—becomes most unreal and unnatural. In the case of spiritual entities just because they are so one and indivisible we endeavour all the more to divide them in a feeble effort to get some understanding of what must ultimately remain mysterious. So we find that there are as many divisions and sub-divisions in theology as there are in zoology or biology.

But there is nothing reprehensible in this. It is the legitimate attempt of the human mind to exercise its proper function in acquiring knowledge. The things of God lie beyond anything but a scrappy and imperfect knowledge, but the mind must try to pierce the veils—provided that it fully recognises its limitations.
The Perfection of Religious
Authors: Lallemant Père
Published: August 2024

There are three kinds of religious. The first refuse their senses nothing. If they are cold, they warm themselves; if they are hungry they eat; if the thought of some diversion comes to mind, they take it without deliberation; they are always intent on self-satisfaction, and do not know what mortification is in practice. They perform their duties without any interior spirit, without relish and without fruit.

These are in danger of mortal sin. Sometimes they are in a state of sin without realizing it, because they never seriously enter into themselves and their examination of conscience is extremely superficial. In this state of inattention innumerable objects pass through their mind each day, their heart is carried away and seems intoxicated with the turmoil of exterior matters; it is ceaselessly deceived by the illusions of nature and the devil, and it blindly follows their impulses.
Comment
Authors: G.P.
Published: August 2024

Verbum caro hie factum est.’ These words are written on the altar in the little Chapel of the Annunciation at Nazareth.

It is the significance of the ‘hie’ inserted into the otherwise familiar phrase which jolts the pilgrim into a sudden realization and awe. ‘Here'—here where he kneels, the Word was made Flesh. The two great columns representing the relevant positions of our Lady and the Angel Gabriel, even the remains of Mary's house itself, which can be seen through a grille in the wall, cannot deflect the attention from that marvellous mystery which here overwhelms the mind with special awe.

We are faced with the same ‘hie’ in the Grotto of the Nativity at Bethlehem, where the Latin inscription round the silver star reads, ‘Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary'. A simple statement that sets the mind reeling.
Roman Catholic Ecumenism
Authors: House Francis
Published: August 2024

Is ‘Catholic Ecumenism’ a contraction in terms? Many Catholics inside and outside the Roman Church do in fact appear to consider that the ecumenical movement is a wholly Protestant phenomenon. References to the dangers of ‘panprotestantism’ have been made in the Church Assembly itself! It is therefore interesting to note that a writer in Istina, the French Roman Catholic quarterly, considers that the use of the term ‘oecuménisme catholique’ is fully justified, because the word ‘ecumenism’ is properly used to designate ‘the totality of the attempts made by the Christian world for the restoration of Christian unity'.

There is in fact a considerable ‘ecumenical movement’ in the Roman Catholic Church, especially in France and Germany but not by any means without its reflection in Rome. Roman Catholic ecumenists are more numerous on the continent than many Anglicans realize. Among those writing in French we may specially recall the names of Fathers Boyer, Lialine, Dumont, Couturier and Congar, while the Germans include Metzger (martyred by the Nazis), Pribilla and Sartory.
The Spiritual Life: An Historical Approach—III
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: August 2024

During our study of the ‘Patristic Heritage’ in the second of these articles on the ‘History of Spirituality’ we considered the fulfilment of that heritage as reaching to St Benedict (ϯ547), for in St Benedict and his new Western monasticism we can see as it were summed up the ideals of the patristic age on Christian perfection. And with St Benedict we are on the threshold of the middle ages in Europe: the Roman Empire of the West had ceased to be, and the new nations created by the Goths and the Franks were emerging and leading to the Holy Roman Empire that was the political background of so much of medieval Christianity.
Some Books About The Bible
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: August 2024

Of all the biblical books that have appeared during recent months, the first one stands out as of particular merit among those we are describing in this note.

Gospel Gleanings, by Thomas Nicklin (Longmans; 2 is.), is in fact a series of very scholarly studies of a number of points which cover most of the field of research in the subject. The sections were written at various times, and now, in the author's old age, have been gathered together into a unity. Many of Mr Nicklin's conclusions have stood the test of time, having been first stated in various articles or lectures, published, unpublished, or privately printed during the last fifty years, but they are now assembled for the study of all. And they are valuable and often new contributions. The Catholic reader is cheered to find these mature fruits of Anglican scholarship presenting the orthodox conclusions that he himself has long been taught, and presenting them with all the apparatus of recent studies.
Secular Institutes: III—‘Not of the World’
Authors: Melia Teresa
Published: August 2024

Vows in Secular Institutes are not recognized by the Church as the public vows of religion, but they are more than the private vows of individuals. They are termed ‘semi-public’ or ‘social', indicating a contract not only with God, but with the specific Institute in which the member takes the vows. Thus the member is bound to the Institute, and the Institute becomes responsible for the member.

As a rule, the vows are taken for a period which varies according to the Institute, and after temporary vows the member usually takes final vows. Whereas religious may not have a period of temporary profession extending beyond six years, this period of trial in Secular Institutes can be extended by particular constitutions, or by the lawful superior, to ten years. This is because of the absence of the common life, and because of more prolonged and more direct contact with the outside world, the process of formation in Secular Institutes will ordinarily be slower than in the more sheltered religious congregations.
The Jesus Psalter
Authors: Merrick M. M.
Published: August 2024

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.
A Diurnal for March
Authors: Jarrett Bede
Published: August 2024

The more we fall back on God the more he will support us. Under us are Everlasting Arms. Into thy hands, O Lord, I come. Our hands are put together, clasped, when dying and when dead. A sign of complete dependence on him. Let us recognise now, before we are dead, that he is master. Do we fear death? We must comfort ourselves with the thought that he rules all the world—death is only the veil torn saunder—death lifts the veil and shows what has been there all the time. As though we passed through a strange country while we slept the darkness nud woke at dawn and saw wide stretches of wonder aud beauty, close to us all the time, but unseen, unsuspected. Just no will death wake us—and we shall see.
The Goal
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

Renewed interest in the problem of God's vocation has recently been awakened by the autobiographical sketch of a woman who lived as a nun but ‘without a vocation’ for twenty-eight years before metaphorically ‘leaping over the wall’ to return to the world. Many individuals have experienced the problem for themselves in trying to find out what it is that God wants them to do. ‘What is my vocation?’ a young man or woman will ask, and he will spend many months investigating avenues which may be according to the divine plan which is so very difficult to discern. The difficulty is often based on a false interpretation of a true doctrine.
St David Today
Authors: Evans Illtud
Published: August 2024

Who is St David? Or perhaps we should rather ask: what is he? Is he a symbol only, the human equivalent of leek or dragon, mythical, providing a happy opportunity for a patriotic toast or for the annual generalisations of public persons? Or does he remain powerful in his own right, with something still to say to his own people? There is no harder task than the rediscovery of what is familiar. To see the room in which you sit as new, to know your friends afresh; yes, but good-natured habit and, even more, laziness are always urging us to accept instead of to enquire. For the myth grows old and respectable, and its origin was forgotten long ago. Fourteen centuries of time and an infinity of change separate us from St David. To rediscover him means by-passing almost the whole of our history and surrendering quite a lot of our prejudices.
The Road to Carmel
Authors: Stein Edith
Published: August 2024

Perhaps I shall leave this house soon after Christimas. The circumstances which have compelled us to arrange my transfer to Echt are strongly reminiscent of the conditions at the time I entered. There is, no doubt, an inner link between them.
That they may be One
Authors: Lockhead Marion
Published: August 2024

The tram-car, fuller than any English tram would dare to be, went jangling and clanging through the streets of Rome, out beyond the walls, on the Grottaferrata; we dismounted, directed by eager and friendly voices, near the convent of the Cistercian nuns where we were to be guests. The fact had impressed those whom we had told of our intended visit. ‘What! You are going to stay with the Seplote Vive? Do they take guests? You're not thinking of taking the veil, are you? How on earth have you managed that?’
The Unity Octave
Authors:   A Discalced Carmelite
Published: August 2024

On the eve of the feast of St Peter's Chair at Eornswhen the octave of prayers for Christian unity begins, I am reminded of our Lord's prayer, I recorded only by St John, perhaps because he was leaning on his Master's breast at the last Supper, where he could hear every word. That strange, mystic prayer asked for a stupendous privilege for his loved ones. And these loved ones were not only the apostles, for our Lord said that he prayed not only for these, but ‘for them also who through their word, shall believe in me’.
Christ In The Koran
Authors: Fakhry Majid
Published: August 2024

Of the three monotheistic religions of the Semites, Islam was the last to make its appearance upon the stage of history in the third decade of the seventh century. Unlike its two predecessors, Judaism and Christianity, its appearance was attended by a series of epochmaking events which mark the eclipse of the two great empires of the time, Byzantium and Persia. And, whereas the beggign nings and developpm ent of the two latter religions are surrounded by comparative obscurity, historians know almost all the significant stages in the rise and development of Islam, which forces itself, like a cataclysm, upon the attention of the civilized world by dint of military prowess.
The Way of Perfection in the English Mystics
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

The time is ripe for reintroducing readers of English to the growth of the spiritual life according to an English idiom coined from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. This idiom has largely been lost to the English tongue through the deservedly victorious attack of the Spanish and French “spiritualities” which have carried the day since the counter-reformation. St Teresa, St John of the Cross, St Francis de Sales and the vast horde of spiritual writers thrown together by the French controversies, Jansenism and Quietism, these have soaked into English writing on the same topic and the healthy, robust, if a trifle easy-going, spiritual writings of Rolle, Mother Julian, Hilton and the Cloud have been left to the academic scholars of middle English and to the rising tide of dabblers in “mysticism.” In view of the multiplicity of men who have become interested in this exotic-sounding subject, it is imperative to publish some form of introduction to the English Mystics if they are to be used as spiritual guides.
The Theological Foundations of Mysticism
Authors: Graef H. C.
Published: August 2024

St Thomas did not write a special treatise on mystical theology. In the golden age of Scholasticism there were no hard and fast divisions between systematic, moral, ascetical and mystical theology; but systematic theology furnished the rules by which to deal with the practical questions of the spiritual life. And so the Angelic Doctor gives us the principles of mystical theology, embedded in the Prima Secundæ of his Summa Theologica, which deals with man, made in the image of God, and with his virtues and vices in general (especially question 68, on the Gifts of the Holy Ghost) and in the Secunda Secundæ, which treats of particular virtues and states of life (especially questions 180 to 182, on the Contemplative and Active Life) and in his whole teaching on Grace and the Virtues.

The mystical life is nothing less than the life of grace lived at its highest level.
St Nilus, A Spiritual Director of the Fifth Century (II)
Authors: Graef H. C.
Published: August 2024

Saint Nilus's characteristically balanced view of the life of prayer and action leads him, like St Thomas at a later date, to prefer the ‘mixed’ or apostolic life. ‘bishop,’ he says, ‘is a man accomplished both in action and contemplation (praxei kai gnosei), more perfect than the ascetics in the desert’ (Oratio ad Albanum, 704A). It is a high ideal, difficult to attain, and calling for expert guidance. In his Liber de monastica exercitatione St Nilus traces the portrait of the perfect spiritual director which is as valid today as it was then. ‘Those’, he writes, ‘who would undertake the guidance of others must first have fought their own passions and prudently stored up in their memory the experiences of this warfare so that they may hand them on to others and thus make victory easier for them.’ (Mon. Exerc, 25; 752A). This ‘tight against the passions’ is a typical conception occurring in many of the Greek Fathers who are influenced by Stoic philosophy.
The Mysticism of the Rosary
Authors: Wellesley Michael
Published: August 2024

There is no doubt that of the many methods of prayer which the Church has placed in the hands of the faithful for their sanctification, the holy Rosary is among the surest and best. It is a well of grace whose source is the God-Man himself; not above even the least of his little ones drawing therefrom the sweet, fresh waters of everlasting life; inexhaustible to the most profound intellects, a summa theologica of the Catholic Faith. It is safe and sure because it is sound theology, and assures to prayer that objectivity which it should possess if it is to avoid the easy pitfalls of idle dreaming and speculation, and it fixes the gaze of the mind and the aspirations of the heart on the precious mysteries of our Lord's life, rather than a barren and too often harmful preoccupation with our own interior life, which is so characteristic of this age of amateur psycho-analysts and morbid introspection.
‘Welcome Sister Pain’
Authors: Parnell Mary-Teresa
Published: August 2024

‘Welcome Sister Pain,’ sang the Seraphic Father seven centuries ago, and his words did not sound so strange in the ears of those around him, as they would have done today. For this is an age that regards pain as in itself an evil thing, something to be avoided at all costs, something ugly, something to which death itself is preferable, even if by death the materialist means darkness and annihilation. Even many Christians take up this attitude to a certain extent, and the majority outside the Catholic Church are vastly perturbed at what is termed ‘the problem of pain.’

But the Catholic child, brought up as he is to ‘offer up’ his toothache and the sting of his grazed knee or his cut thumb, finds less difficulty, as he grows up, to face the ‘problem of pain.’ It all fits into the scheme of things, so to speak, and he has learned, if not to understand and even puzzle about it, at least to accept it and use it.
The True Basis of Religious Life (Continued)
Authors: Nicholas M. J.
Published: August 2024

There only remains to apply this doctrine to the two great questions of religious life, which seem to constitute the chief problem for modern souls, namely, the question of observances and of religious obedience.

In the widest sense, we mean by observances the obligations of a religious rule; in a narrower sense they are penitential and restrictive practices. Père Lemonnyer called them, ‘The means of the means, and, according to St. Thomas, they are subordinate to the vows. It must be admitted, however, that monastic tradition has given them a capital importance and they formed an essential part of all ancient rules. The religious leaves the world to do penance and, in the course of time, three things have come to be considered as essential among the various obligations of religious life, namely, poverty, chastity, and obedience, and to form the direct subject of the vows; perhaps the reason why there is no explicit vow of penance is because its subject matter would be too vague, and, in any case, it is enough to have promised obedience to a penitential rule.
A Meditation for Prime
Authors:   The Fifth Prior of the Grande Chartreuse
Published: August 2024

Truth must be placed in the centre of your life as something beautiful.

Yet you must not sit in judgment on anyone who hates her, but have compassion on such a one.

Look at yourself too, why—since you desire to come to her—do you refuse to receive her when she reproves you for your vices? For see how many things Truth reveals.…

Without beauty or comeliness, and nailed to a cross, Truth must be adored.

The nobler and more powerful a created being is, so much the more freely must he subject himself to Truth. Indeed it is because he is subject to her that a man is powerful and noble.

The unstable things of time vex and weary you: why then do you not flee from them to other know that beyond is to Truth?

Yet you must bitter and contrary things, Truth is to us most bitter and contrary, because separate adversi- ties fight against one or more worldly pleasures; but Truth attacks them all at one and the same time…

You cannot hate anyone without committing sin. For the work of holy men is to desire the welfare of sinners.
Is Mysticism Normal?
Authors: Graef H. C.
Published: August 2024

The mystic state, surrounded with so much splendour in the lives of the saints—is it really nothing but the ‘normal’ development of the virtues and the gifts? Why, then, do the mystics, a St Bernard, a St Catherine of Siena, a St John of the Cross, seem so different from ourselves? How can the mystical life, which in them abounds in visions, locutions, stigmata and other marvellous experiences, rest on the same principles as our own, devoid of all these things? It would seem to be this consideration that has led many modern theologians and spiritual writers to assume that the mystic state is ‘extraordinary’ in the strict sense, i.e. that it is not in the normal way of sanctity. In fact attempts have been made to divide the spiritual life into two completely separate compartments: the one ascetical and ‘normal’, with an ascetical purgative, illuminative and unitive way, the other mystic and ‘extraordinary’, with the same three ways. There is no necessity to repeat the arguments against this view so convincingly stated by theologians like Saudreau and Garrigou-Lagrange.
Mind, Will and Feeling in Prayer
Authors: Valentine Ferdinand
Published: August 2024

If we consider objectively the question of whether in practice meditation should be the proximate or remote preparation for prayer, what are we to say? In deciding, two factors should be taken into consideration:

(i) In practice when following formal meditation it is difficult, frequently impossible, to decide such questions as: When should I begin to make acts and for how long? Am I using my imagination enough or too freely? Am I thinking too much or too little? When I cannot think at all what shall I do? This last question is the nodal point of the whole problem. Most of us find it possible to pray when it is quite impossible to think. At morning prayer simple ideas in the form of acts can be elicited by the will, whereas constructive thinking often cannot. We have control of the one, too little control of the other. For this reason formal meditation imposes such a strain on average Catholics (and not least on over-worked religious sisters) that they give it up in despair, either because they cannot think or else because they want to pray; often it is both.
A Medieval English Poem on the Passion
Authors: I. E.  , A. R.
Published: August 2024

There was recently discovered in the library of Llanarth Court, Raglan, a Book of Hours of the early fifteenth century which is of more than usual interest. The chief contents of the book are those customary in a Book of Hours of the Sarum Use, namely, the Little Office of Our Lady, the Penitential Psalms, the Office of the Dead, a collection of prayers to our Lord, and one to a Guardian Angel. A considerable number of leaves is missing from the MS., which in its present state begins at once with Lauds and lacks part of Prime and the whole of Terce and Sext. There are no miniatures, but there are a number of elaborately decorated initials, with floriated designs in gold, blue and red, some of which have been damaged by a later binder's trimming of the upper margins. Twenty leaves have been heavily annotated in the lower margins by a sixteenth century Protestant owner of the book. Presumably the same owner was responsible for the erasure of the commemoration of St Thomas of Canterbury at Lauds, in conformity with Henry VIII's suppression of liturgical honour to that saint.
Our Knowledge After Death
Authors: Jewell Walter
Published: August 2024

It is a commonplace to talk of death as the Great Change, but even men who revert quite often to the life of the spirit may sometimes realise with a kind of mild shock how utterly spiritual our lives must then become. We have before us an altogether unique experience, and it is natural enough that we should await its inevitable advent with interest and curiosity.

Yet the liveliest imagination will not help us in a matter so completely beyond the veil of the senses. In Paradise Lost Milton uses all the mighty imagery of a great poet to depict the war of the angels, and yet leaves us with a profound sense of unreality. We find ourselves in the position of being able to imagine almost any set of circumstances on this side of the grave, and yet quite unable to use such power to illumine conditions on the other, simply because it is a realm of the spirit. Neither does it help us to reflect upon our entry into this world, for that was the beginning of life and thought itself.
The Passion of St Andrew
Authors: Ross Anthony
Published: August 2024

After our Lord's ascension the Apostles were separated and went to preach in different countries. Andrew went to preach the Gospel in Scythia. From there he came into Europe and preached in Epirus and in Thrace, and after that in Achaia which is a part of Greece. There he converted many people and established churches. Among those whom he converted was Maximilla, the wife of Aegeas, who was governor of that part and chief judge. Aegeas was angry when he found that his wife had become a Christian and began to try to force Christians to sacrifice to the heathen gods. Then St Andrew went to him in the city of Patras, and said:

'You who are a judge should know your own judge, who is in heaven. Knowing him you should worship him and withdraw your support from false gods'.

Aegeas answered: ‘You must be Andrew, who preach the false law which the princes of Rome have ordered to be destroyed'.

“The princes of Rome', said Andrew, ‘have not known how the Son of God came and taught that idols are devilry, and support of them an offence against God. Those who cling to idols will be left by God.
Blessed Angela of Foligno (1248-1305)
Authors: Devas Dominic
Published: August 2024

The following pages merely give a few glimpses of the spiritual teaching of Blessed Angela of Foligno. Apart from her Instructions and Letters we owe what we have to a certain friar Arnaldo. He was, it seems, her cousin; and he appears first, in anything but an appreciative mood, on the occasion of Angela's mystical experience in the church of San Francesco at Assisi. Fortunately he was spiritual enough to see beneath the surface, which appeared mere hysteria to others, and to appreciate Angela's genuine holiness. Later on, as director and secretary, he drew from her an account of her spiritual experiences and thoughts, and set them down; but not in the contemporary Tuscan that Angela would have used, but in Latin. His task was no easy one. Much of what Angela spoke must have been hard to grasp in any case—she once told him she could not recognise what he had written down as hers—and everything had to be done rapidly.
Laudare, Benedicere, et Praedicare
Authors: Dunstan Fr
Published: August 2024

However gladly I have accepted this invitation to lead you back to the well-springs of the intensely Catholic tradition enshrined within this Priory, I confess my shortcomings and would, in all sincerity, beg your indulgence whilst I ask you to praise and bless and proclaim a simple fact—the fact that our Father, Dominic, was not imprisoned in his own century, but lives for every century; that his mission was not temporary but eternal; that he represents a Catholic inspiration, simple and inexhaustible. In that fact I see the whole raison d'étre of this Feast.
A Certain Man Made A Great Supper
Authors: Eckhart Meister
Published: August 2024

Acertain man made a supper, a great evening meal. If you entertain in the morning, you invite all sorts of people, but in the evening you ask important people, people dear to you and your close friends.

Today Christians keep the feast of the supper which our Lord prepared for his disciples, his close friends, when he gave them his holy body to be their food. This is its first meaning. But the supper has yet another meaning. Morning and noonday must pass before evening comes. God's light breaks into the soul, morning dawns there, and in this light the soul soars up into the high zenith of its noonday. And thereafter it is evening. And there is yet a third meaning to this idea of the evening. When the light fades, it is evening; when the glamour of the whole world fades in the soul, it is evening there and the soul finds peace.
The Life of St Katherine
Authors: Ross Anthony
Published: August 2024

[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'.
The Opening of a Retreat
Authors: Jarrett Bede
Published: August 2024

We all of us realise that our supreme purpose in God. We have no other end; this is our natural end, our purpose, why we exist—union with God. It is the only thing we are here for. Also we believe that the union begun here is only fully got at seross death—attained on the sher side of dust. Union with God is reached when we reach him is heaven—then only. We live by faith, we don’t know here, we do hereafter. We cannot help the sought sometimes, ‘supposing it isn’t true! Only the dead know—se live by faith.

God is our purpose. It is our one business to get nearer to God. You know yourself, don’t you? Your insufficiency, temptations, sina. You have examined your conscience, unfessed your sins of com ission and perhaps greater sine still of omission, you know what you could and should have done, the great gulf that separates and shrouds God—God in his wisdom, God in his beauty, God in his love. And yet you have got to meet—you and God. Absolute Truth with your miserable untruth, Wisdom with your blindness, Strength with your winning and shrinking, Generosity with your desperate selfielt.
'Back to the Fathers'
Authors: Leahy D. J.
Published: August 2024

The last part of a book that an author writes is the Introduction, and usually it is read to the best advantage at the end of the text. A well-known Professor of Serif ture in Rome used to advise his audience to study Biblical Introduction after one had acquired a working knowledge of the Biblical text itself.

Not by their own choosing but by force of circumstances ove the last fifty years Professors of Scripture have had to concentrate on Biblical Introduction. Rationalists and Modernists were attacking the very nature of the Bible as the Word of God, afl. the Higher Critics were elaborating theories about the origins of movements among the Israelites and about the origin of the particular Books of the Bible, and the Church had to give guidance. This has not always had its desired affect; for good people went away with the impression that the less they had to do with the Bible the safer they would be, and those whose calling demand study of the Bible used to remark that they learned a great deal about Wellhausen and the Documentary Theory but knew very little about the text of the Pentateuch, and apparently were not eager to make up the deficiency.
The Song of Songs
Authors: Kehoe Richard
Published: August 2024

Making a very valuable and attractive addition to the rapidly growing series called La Sainte Bible the Canticle of Canticles has now appeared, translated and introduced and provided with brief notes by Père A. Robert, Professor of the Institut Catholique of Paris. It makes also a suitably delightful little book for the reading of such lovely poetry; and it is a pleasant and skilful translation. But with all its magic beauty everyone knows how difficult a book this is to interpret—'without parallel in the history of biblical exegesis’ is how the difficulty of it appears to Père Robert. Yet after reviewing some of the principal theories of interpretation he chooses and yops his own with a masterful assurance.
Secular Spirituality
Authors: de Bedoyere Michael
Published: August 2024

According to a recent enquiry there is reason to believe that perhaps as few as five per cent of Catholics in this country can be said to relate their religion to their lives.

I am not altogether certain about what is meant by the relation between religion and life in this context. I presume what people have in mind is the type of regular church-goer whose ordinary business and home life shows no outward sign of Catholic activity or whose behaviour is even known to be lax and irregular. Yet of course, it may be that there is real spiritual life unperceived by the observer, and it may also be that the irregularity and sin stimulate an intense, if painful, spiritual preoccupation. On the other hand, constant church activity with membership of many a society and sodality is compatible with a life, both in its religious and secular outlook, that is spiritually very shallow. It is always yery hard to judge what is really going on between God and any individual soul.
The Discipline of Death
Authors: Prince J. F. T.
Published: August 2024

If the chief agony of death is caused by hanging on to life, the worst thing about going blind is the way you chng to light, follow it even in your dark dreams. (Some dreams blaze with light and everything is seen with crystal clarity. Then waking up is frightful) But I am thinking about real objective light, especially daylight. I hate the night now as much as I did when I was a child. I stay's up, dozing or trying to get some wireless station somewhere to that hasn't gone dead, often not turning out the lamp till I hear the first birds. Thatis about four a.m.—just now! Then I let up the blind and the grey light comes into the room and gets warmer and warmer. I can sleep then, feeling happier, just as when, as a child, I always felt safer after I had heard them opening the bakehouse doors in Church Street and knew that it was morning. That, too, used to be at about four o'clock
Concerning Praise
Authors: Albert S. M.
Published: August 2024

Religion’, says St Thomas, ‘denotes properly a relation to God’ and ‘consists essentially in those acts by which man worships God by subjecting himself to his lordship’. (Summa, II-II, 81, 1). Whenever there is a special kind of lordship, there must be a special kind of service, and it is evident that lordship belongs to God in a special and singular way, because he made all things and has supreme dominion over all. Therefore a special kind of service is due to him, called ‘religion’, ‘piety’, or ‘worship’ (Ibid. ad 3. Cf. In Boeth: 8, 2).

But this worship must be of a fitting nature both as regards its object and as regards the one by whom it is offered. Its object, God, is a spirit, and therefore his worship must consist essentially in acts whereby the mind or soul is directed to him. But the worshipper is man composed of body and soul; wherefore his acts of worship must include a bodily element, both to give God the service of the whole man, and to incite himself to internal acts of religion by external ones—‘from things seen to the love of things unseen’.