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 and woke at dawn and saw wide stretches of wonder and beauty, close to us all the time, but unseen, unsuspected. Just so will death wake us—and we shall see.

One day at Segovia a picture of Christ spoke to St John of the Cross. ‘“Brother John, ask me for what you wish, and I will give it you for the service you have done me”. And I said to him: “Lord, what I wish you to give me are sufferings to be borne for your sake, and that I may be despised and regarded as worthless”.’

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.

The Stimulus Amoris, long attributed to St Bonaventure but now known to be a composite work, the main part of which was written by James of Milan, a thirteenth century Franciscan, was extremely popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Walter Hiltou made a translation of it, adding many passages of great beauty and interest. The work has not been printed hitherto. We give a chapter in which Hilton's additions are printed in brackets. The text is taken from MS. Vernon.

In the same chapter from which we have drawn the text of our sermon we also read that our Lord said to his brethren: ‘Go you up to this festival day: but I go not up to this festival day’, a little before he had said these words: ‘My time is not yet come, but your time is always ready’. Today, therefore, we have to consider what is this solemnity or festival day to which our Lord orders his disciples to betake themselves and for which the time is always ready.

During the years between the two great wars it became apparent to two Catholic laywomen, one n doctor's daughter, the other a hospital nurse, that there was a great need for various forms of charitable activity in the countryside. They saw too, how a single-handed parish priest can be overworked and in need of help to enable him to carry on his apostolic work. They felt God was calling them to this end, so they gave up those things which go to make up the social life in the world, and while still living at home, consecrated themselves to God to be used as he willed in his service. They became tertiaries, and followed a rule of life. For some years it was very uphill work; they experienced great suffering and many difficulties until they were almost at breaking point, but they put their trust in God who, they believed, had called them to be his instruments in this work. In due course others with the same ideals joined them.

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.