God spoke and the world began. God uttered his word and the echo will not die since reality is that echo. ‘Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy face? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there: if I descend into hell, thou art present.’ For evermore we shall be within earshot of God. ‘See how the skies proclaim God's glory, how the vault of heaven betrays his craftsmanship! Each day echoes its secret to the next, each night passes on to the next its revelation of knowledge; no word, no accent of theirs that does not make itself heard, till their utterance fills every land, till their message reaches the ends of the world.’ (Ps. 18.) The trees speak in their fashion, and the birds in the trees; the fields in spring; the waves roar entrance along the whole coastline. All echo the word of God.

This Word of life which was from the beginning, which we have heard and seen with our own eyes, have gazed upon and our very hands have handled—this it is which we proclaim unto you… .’ (1 John, 1, 1.) With burning love and earnestness St John speaks of that knowledge and first-hand contact with the Lord Jesus which was his privilege. And now he can use these same words of the great Saint and Doctor St Thomas Aquinas. For he too loved our Lord, constantly and above all else, and by long familiarity with the things of God and long gazing upon the truths of God was enabled supremely to proclaim to thousands of others the saving truths of God.

But let us start, as St Thomas would surely start, with the Word of God; and meditate not on St Thomas and the Word of God, but on ‘The Word of God and St Thomas'.

The Church of God, quickened by the Spirit given at Pentecost, is alive even in her past. Her saints do not depend upon any human memorial to keep their name living, for they rejoice already in an undying communion with all the faithful in whom God's grace is operative and, like a cloud of compassionate witnesses, they support by their prayers those who still struggle to live as they lived and die as they died. It is, then, to rescue ourselves from our forgetfulness that it is good to recall a great English missionary who, on 5th June, 754, twelve centuries ago this summer, was killed by a band of the people he had already given his life to convert.

Wynfrith—it was only later that he took the Latin name, Boniface—was born in the West-Saxon country beyond Selwood a little before 675.

The collect for the feast of St Catherine of Alexandria, having recalled the legend of the saint's body carried to Mount Sinai by angels, asks that we, by her intercession, may come to the mountain which is Christ. It is a symbol presented with the suddenness of mist clearing from a rocky summit, a dramatic image that brings one back to a consideration of the immense richness of mountain symbolism in liturgy and scripture.

It may well be that the mountain is the easiest of the great symbols of the Church for us to understand today, easier than water or fire, for instance. The townsman is too used to think of water in terms of turning on the tap, of heat and light in terms of pressing switches, but with the hills, he returns to reality; in increasing numbers more and more people are discovering the fascination of mountaineering.

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.

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.