It is with a consciousness of our own sins and failings that religious life makes its appeal to us. We enter the cloister because we are conscious of evil in our hearts. It is not indeed of itself a sufficient motive to force anyone into religious life far less to keep him there, this consciousness of sin, the mere sense of sin. We were drawn by the fact of positive love of God. It is not the mere escaping from danger. To look upon a cloister as a place from which is shut out temptation, a haven of rest, cannot be a motive. It does not take us long to find we cannot escape temptation as long as we have our own hearts, from them we cannot escape. A stricter relationship with the outside world may alter our temptations, that's all. We do not shut out the worst offender—ourselves.

All human misery comes from avarice: corporal misery from the refusal to give one's belongings; spiritual misery from the refusal to give one's time and one's heart.

All the sufferings, acute or dull, all the bitterness, the humiliations, all the grievances, the hatred and despair of this world, are an unsatisfied hunger. Hunger for bread, hunger for help, hunger for love.

From the little lad who heaves great sobs because his mother slaps him for no other reason than that her nerves are on edge, to the too old grandfather whom his grandchildren now always forget to kiss; from the plain young woman left alone in her corner, to the wife upon whom her husband no longer deigns to cast his eyes, to the abandoned woman who throws herself into the Seine; from the friend whose companion fails on purpose to keep his appointment to the twenty-year-old boy who dies alone at night in his hospital bed whilst the infirmarian is drinking coffee in the kitchen; from the small poor-law child to the man who is going to be executed, all have suffered from a penury, from a stinginess of love.

The new Apostolic Constitution, Provida Mater Ecclesia, which recognises what are called Secular Institutes (that is to say, Associations which, without public vows and without community life, dedicate themselves to the perfection of the spiritual life by means of the three evangelical counsels practised in the world) appears to envisage these Institutes as directed always to an apostolic purpose and the works of the active life. We would here take the opportunity to consider how this same Constitution, with very little adaptation, might be extended to include similar associations whose aim would be a purely contemplative life lived in the world, and in fact a revival in modern conditions of the hermits and anchoresses of a former age. While hermits have always existed in the Church (though they are perhaps fewer today than ever in her history), their mode of life in solitude has never been recognised as a form of the canonical state of perfection nor has it had her approval and guarantee as a safe way of life, unless it became to a large extent conventual.

The classical characterisation of this period of the beginner, or the purgative way, is given in the words of St Thomas: Primo incumbit homini studium principale ad recedendum a peccato et resistendum concupiscentiis ejus, quæ in contrarium caritatis movent: et hoc pertinet ad incipientes in quibus caritas est nutrienda, vel fovenda, ne corrumpatur. ‘At first it is incumbent on man to occupy himself chiefly with avoiding sin and resisting his concupiscences, which move him in opposition to charity: this concerns beginners, in whom charity has to be fed or fostered lest it be destroyed.’ (II-II, 24, 9.) This aspect of struggle against lower nature and the war against vice is therefore the depressing but dominant feature of the age; but this does not mean a purely stoical attitude to self-mastery—it is always that ‘charity may the more abound'.

Today when the world is shattering into splinters like glass to the blast of a bomb, it seems difficult to assume or profess that Christ has been the Light of the World. So many have never heard of him, so many have been snatched from his loving care—so it seems—by the wilful action of militant anti-Christian people, so many self-styled followers of Jesus seem to be following their own desires and not at all treading the path to Calvary, beyond whose brow is illumination and light.

No one will deny that in his teaching and in his life our Blessed Lord and Master has been a shining Light; he taught a way that shines with holiness and love, which could, if followed, lead to peace and joy. Indeed those who truly followed Christ, and follow him today, have been and are at peace and in joy, with a peace and joy beyond all others, and recognisably so even to those who refuse to follow this same light.

September 29th of this year marks the third centenary of the birth of a notable mystic, Benoite Eencurel, a Dominican tertiary whose memory is still fresh in the French Alpine valleys where she lived until 1718. Her immense influence in counteracting the local, withering effects of Waldensianism and Jansenism may still be felt by those who visit the sanctuaries which she there founded and which give title to the devotion to Notre-Dame de Laus.

About seven miles from Gap, in the Departement of Hautes Alpes, and across the range of low mountains which lie between the little cathedral city and the Durance Valley, is the charming and picturesque little valley of the Laus, wherein nestles a group of hamlets of which St-Etienne d'Avançon and St-Etienne du Laus are chief.

It was only after her fortieth year that Battista Vernazza began to write her spiritual experiences—the special interior graces conferred on her from time to time; it has been thought wonderful that she could find time for this in the midst of the many exterior duties her new office implied, but it may well be that the very fact of their distracting nature made her the more anxious to refresh her soul by this spiritual work. She continued to write during the rest of her life in spite of other absorbing offices, for she was only relieved of the Procuratorship to become successively Mother Vicaress and Abbess. Her writings fill six large volumes and consist of colloquies, spiritual treatises and disserations—notably one on the Pater Noster and (for she retained her love for poetry) twelve Spiritual Canticles treating of the mystery of our Lord's life and four on divine love, also five sonnets; and to these must be added her letters.