The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1910-10-29
THE NTEPNoUNTAIN CATHOLIC OCTOBER 20, 1910

70, lSlU.
| full shaping and trimming which the skilled YER
derer alone can give, it is the same.
For exceptional spiritual efforts, the agency to
| be employed must be exceptional, and, what is
more, exceptionally spiritual As there is con-
fessedly latent spiritual influence exercised by
one person upon another and which cannot be
fully explained so there is equally wonderful
and even more inexpicable influence exerted by
soul upon soul. The strong acts upon the weaker;
and the more perfectly developed the spiritual
"ethos" of the man, the greater will be his power
for good.
The experience of the Church has ever uniform
y pointed to the Religious Life that by which
this singular spirituality of soul and mind is to be
acquired-a life which, when employed in actual
ministrations, is spent, so far possible, in COM
munion with God in meditation, in spiritual read
ing and prayer
"The world excluded every passion hushed,
And opened calm intercourse with heaven;
Here the soul sits in council, ponders past,
Predestines future action; sees, not feels,
Tumultuous Efe and reasons with the storm;
All her lies answers, and thinks down her charms"
1t is foreign to the trend of this article to
of this question, beyond stating it as fact, that
priests of Religious Community are best fitted
for such work that of preaching Missions. 1t is
in spirit of derogation to ordinary parish priests
living in the world, that those who, in measure,
live out of the world, said to be the best fitted
for overcoming the torpidity of spiritual life and
also best fitted for one phase of clerical duty
1t may, therefore, be accepted axiom that
priests must necessarily be trained for mission
work by mental and spiritual discipline; and that
the adoption of the Religious Life in Community
is the course of training which will be the more eff
fcacious The mixture of the contempIative with
an active life as in the case of the Redemptorist
Fathers, appears to be that which, in the present
age, is the most healthy phase of the Religious
Life; as affording safeguard against tendency
to secularity on the one hand, and to morbidty on
the other.
Cardinal Manning, in his "Plea for the Educa-
ton of the Clergy" published in 1868 very forci-
bly, dwells upon the requirements of the Religious
Priests trained to give Missions"
at is not enough" he writes, chat the priest
who is Missioner should be bameless in his life
and diligent in his ministrations remaining in all
other respects mean as to habits of mind and of
merchandising from other men.
There must be touch, a character, diferencing
him inwardy from other men, and sure, more or
less, to give outward evidence of itself. Whence
that note touch of difference should come it is
not difficult to Judge it must come, in some way
Of his peculiar vocation the live coal that touches
and marks him must be taken from the Altar"
And in similar spirit Canon Oakley speaks of
the prestly mind of the Religious as the great in
strument which, under God, the missionary priest
is to work with after ALL"
For mission" work, mere preaching machine,
mpelled by motive power external to itself, will
not do The priests who give Missions must of
necessity be men the reverse of commonplace They
must be marked by permissible independence of !
thought and feeling; by fearless determination
% preach unpalatable truths by an honesty and
sincerity which disarm suspicion, for the prop
rly directed exercise of these naturally and di- v
inely impaired qualities, their value as Mission f
Preachers in no small degree depends. u
We congratulate our Right Reverend Bishop
N the undoubted success of the Mission, and we o
congratulate him and the Catholics f
+ Salt Lake City the compliment paid the Il
Diocese by the Congregation of the Most High t.
,edeemer when it commissioned two of its most
Ioquent and scholarly priests to conduct the ex-
rcises of the Mission. "
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