Life today is puzzling for many men and women. The problems and the answers to them are far from clear-cut; nor are they confined to those living entirely worldly lives; there are many seeking the things of the spirit who are having a time of difficulty and perplexity. The lay contemplative comes in for his or her fair share of these difficulties. It seems to these men and women that they have been given a very clear mandate by God. They are to live in the world and yet give him whole time service; thev are to follow as closely as they can yhe way of life that our Lord and his blessed Mother trod. They are increasingly aware of our Lord's words that some devils are only cast out by prayer and penance. It becomes more and more clear that most of our devils today are of this category and that God is leading these souls by a way of prayer and penance which is literally demanding whole-time service.

While the active life is the life of the soul acting as the form of the body (that is, the life of the individual as a member of the human race), the contemplative life is the life of the soul in its purely spiritual reality,, the life of the person, the complete being, the ‘whole'. For by definition the ‘whole’ suffices to itself. It has all.

It lacks nothing. The contemplative life is the perfect life: in itself it has neediof no assistance. It can be entirely solitary.

But, it being granted that the human person is a person created, a part of the divine ‘whole'; it being granted also that it has been multiplied by the Creator, are we not going to discover that the nature of the person implies an ‘order’ or organisation, a ‘spiritual society'? It is certainly true that there exists an ‘order’ of persons, and even an order of creatures purely spiritual—the angelic hierarchies. But it is only a question there of a ‘communicatio in forma', an analogical similitude, in the fact that all these creatures possess an intelligence which has for its final perfection the contemplation of God.

I am convinced that a life lived together with others is much more profitable than the life of a solitary. In the first place, we are none of us self-sufficient as regards the needs of the body, but depend on each other for its necessities. For just as the foot possesses one capacity but not another, and cannot exercise its own office without the help of the other members of the body, nor supply what it lacks out of its own resources—so also in the solitary life even what we have becomes useless, because what we lack becomes unobtainable. For God the Creator has ordained that we should have need of one another as it is written, therefore we are closely linked to each other.

But apart from that, the love of Christ itself does not suffer that each of us should look only to himself. Charity, as St Paul says, seeketh not its own. The eremitical life, however, aims precisely at this, that everyone should look after his own needs. This, however, clearly militates against the law of charity which the Apostle himself fulfilled, who did not seek his own profit, but the salvation of many.

In general the higher reaches of the spiritual life are characterised by a method in prayer of praying without a method. Human methods are human activities. In the passive type of prayer the activity is divine so that the method is God's method, the plan of which the soul can only guess. At the same time spiritual guides must give some indication as to the best way of co-operating in this divine method, and The Cloud of Unknowing as well as teaching the soul how to ‘nought’ itself in order to allow God to work freely, also suggests the type of human co-operation which is least likely to hinder the divine work. This may be called the method of prayer inculcated by The Cloud. It amounts to the reduction of all prayers to the most comprehensive and the least articulated. The long ex tempore monologues in which some people indulge while on their knees, a monologue which considers all the various attributes of God and his wonderful deeds and activities, has to be undertaken for the sake of instruction in faith.

Of how one should seek and find the spiritual nativity in the light of grace, by self-effacement and the suppression of all natural light.

Of the price of sufferings and afflictions, and in particular of the three offerings of the Magi.

We are come indeed to adore him and to offer him our mystical gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. The reasonable soul, by its natural light alone, comes to the knowledge of the existence of God. But what is he? Who is he? Where is he? So many questions to which she gives no answer and of which she ignores the solution. Hence, for the holy and religious soul, arises a loving desire to seek God with ardent solicitude. She wants to know what he is, who is this hidden and unknown Being.

Then, in this laborious searching, suddenly there appears a star, and this is nothing but a ray of heavenly grace, a divine light which seems to say interiorly to the soul: he is born! At the same time this light leads the soul to the place of his birth which no natural light could have pointed out to her. And so we see that all who seek for this nativity by the light of reason alone do not arrive there: they stray and lose their way, they make no progress in virtue.

Joy', wrote G. K. Chesterton on the last page of Orthodoxy, ‘is the gigantic secret of the Christian'. One of the greatest possessors of this secret was that gentle and genial bishop, St Francis de Sales. ‘God is the God of joy', he wrote; ‘the spirit of joy is the true spirit of devotion'.

The worldly connotation of devotion is a dismal one. The opening chapters of the Introduction to the Devout Life were intended to dispel that erroneous opinion. The way of the soul to God should be one of joy; indeed it can only be one of joy, for sadness and melancholy are diametrically opposed to the happiness that comes from drawing near to God. ‘I cannot conceive', Francis wrote to a saddened soul, ‘how you can let your heart be filled with such deep sorrow, considering you are a child of God, entrusted to his loving kindness, and consecrated to his love'.