I spent this morning preparing some lectures on John Locke. He is, I think, a dull writer but I found a passage in his Introduction to the Essay which expresses very nearly my own feelings in reading this opening paper. ‘Everyone’, he says, must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham, and in an age which produces such, masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr Newton, with some other of that strain, ‘tis ambition enough to be employed as an underlabourer in clearing the ground a little.’ At this conference then which has brought together so many Boyles and Sydenhams of the spiritual life I shall try only to clear the ground a little.

Let us begin—in the fashionable manner—with our present situation. Many of us have not met before. Suppose we engage upon our first conversation. There is an imperative need to find pics of conversation no matter how inconsequential. As acquaintance grows into friendship, however, small talk becomes unnecessary. Pauses in the conversation cease to be embarrassing.

We live today in a world which has lost the ability to meditate. Such a generalization must exclude the individual souls who are trying to follow the advice of Proverbs, ‘keep him in thy thoughts wherever thou goest', and those who have entered religion. But taken by and large it is a fair commentary on the present situation, as can be seen from the following extract from a broadcast talk, given some years ago by Bertrand Russell: ‘As men grow more industrialized and regimented, the kind of delight which is common in children becomes impossible to adults, because they are always thinking of the ”next thing” and cannot let themselves be absorbed in the moment. This habit of “thinking of the next thing” is more fatal to any kind of aesthetic excellence than any other habit of mind that can be imagined, and if art, in any important sense, is to survive, it will not be by the foundation of solemn academies, but by recapturing the capacity for wholehearted joys and sorrows which prudence and foresight have all but destroyed.’

The present century has seen a great number of changes not only in the world at large but even very fundamental characteristics of the Church life. Among these the liturgical changes are perhaps the most startling. In the last five years these revolutions have emanated from Rome herself, though the preparatory work was done for the most part in France and Germany. The restored Easter Vigil and the new directives for Holy Week are but instances of the intervention of the highest authority in the general manner of conducting ourselves in church. Looking further afield to the Church at large, we see increasing acceptance of Mass offered facing the congregation, the development of the vernacular, the stream-lined architecture of new churches, the popularizing of the missal and many other activities which our grandfathers would never have tolerated. All this liturgical enthusiasm contrasts strongly with the general temper of Catholics in the last century. In those days the congregation, knelt, stood or sat mute and vainly unaware of what was happening at the altar, while the priest mumbled the low Mass unintelligibly or the ‘picked’ choir entered with gusto into Gounod's Ave Maria during the Offertory of the parish sung Mass.

Hundreds and thousands of books on prayer exist. Many of them are handbooks from which one can learn of and be instructed in the science and art of prayer. I am not going to speak about those things, but about attitude. I have met with regard to prayer.

I know full well the difficulties connected with this attempt. The word ‘prayer’ touches us off in our emotions and it may make us feel embarrassed, apprehensive, or even hostile to hear about it, as it may come very close, too close, to the innermost secrets of our hearts. The idea of prayer may bring up deeply hidden wounds and despair when we think of times when we prayed in anguish for a chalice to be taken away, and it was not. Our distress may have started in childhood when we were taught to pray, and when we were told that prayer is always answered. We may have prayed and asked for a sunny day, or mother's understanding or father's safety, and it rained, and mother did not understand, and father was killed.

Dearly beloved, today in our sacred celebrations we are paying the tribute of honour due to the day when Christ the Saviour of the world first showed himself to the nations of the world. Today there should be born anew in our hearts the same joy that once filled the breasts of the three Wise Men when, having journeyed in accordance with the message of a new star which had become their guide, they worshipped to face the King of heaven and earth, whose promised coming had been the object of their faith. Nor in truth is that day to be considered as belonging entirely to the past, as if the power of the mystery then revealed were something finished and done as if nothing reached down from then to our own times except an event belonging to the sacred history, an event which while it forms part of what we must believe, is yet to be celebrated only in memory. No: God has willed that the Epiphany of Christ be a gift that lasts and bears ever-increasing fruit, so that we can experience in our days what had but its beginning then.