August brings to many people a period of rest and relaxation, a time for an instinctive worship of the elements—the sun and the sea, the rocks and the rivers, worshipped consciously of old by their forefathers. It is not usually a time for striving very earnestly for Christian perfection save perhaps for the religious who choose this month for their annual retreats. People often feel that in the holiday season they can legitimately let go their efforts towards virtue or to overcome their particular habitual faults. They feel, perhaps, if they ever think about it, that they are—always legitimately of courseleaving our Lord and his ideals a little on one side, a holiday from religion as well as from work.

This false sense of the purpose and need of a holiday may even develop a false conscience. For it is in fact an erroneous conception of the rest from work that is usually provided at this season.

Learned critics have so learnedly and so critically examined and analysed Chaucer, both the man and his works, that it is easy for us to forget that we have more in common with him than many even of his greatest critics have. For like us he was a Catholic. More fortunate than us, he lived at a time when England was Catholic. It was in Chaucer's own lifetime that the Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury spoke for all special inheritance, and her own Dowry, as we are commonly called, ought surpass all other Christian nations in the fervour of our praise and devotion.’

There is in our lives a natural rhythm to which we must all conform: we are born, we grow to adolesence, reach maturity and then die. This larger individual rhythm, which is repeated in all animate nature, has its smaller counterpart in each cell of our bodies, and then again our bodily functions fit into the larger rhythms of our lives. All the rhythms must in their turn harmonize with the mighty throb of nature herself, whose endless cycle of the seasons brings home to all of us our ultimate dependence upon the Creator—God himself.

Mankind used to be very conscious that he was only a small part of the whole: he was much more aware than he is today that he had his appointed place in the vast scheme of things, and that he must co-operate with, rather than go against, nature. He knew, too, that certain work had to be done at certain seasons of the year in order to live at all.

There are some people who are said not to know what fear is. If there are any such, which is doubtful, they are generally to be found among those who do not think or have no imagination. Their very lack of fear often brings them into inescapable danger, and then they are surprised that they are not ready for death. It has been said that everyone is afraid; only the brave confess it.

There are certainly some people who are so timid in their disposition, or nervous in their temperament, that they are constantly tortured by fear. They are afraid of almost everything; they are afraid when they need not be; indeed they are afraid of things that do not even exist. Some are in such a state of fear, yet cannot tell precisely what it is that they are afraid of; it is fear they are afraid of, and of what they know not.

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.

October is the month which the Church has dedicated to the angels, and it is also the month in which the daily public recitation of the rosary before the Blessed Sacrament is obligatory in all churches. A coincidence? Perhaps; but a coincidence, whatever the word may mean, which is worth looking into.

Supposing our own recitation of the rosary has suffered some check, or has through our own fault become stale and wearisome like the prophet's valley of dry bones, then a consideration of the mysteries via the angels will perhaps breathe new life there too, as in the Mass, and prove a starting point for the quickened appreciation of our beads. For after the Mass, the rosary is the most important Catholic devotion, and if it is being neglected, then all is not well with us. The rosary has been called ‘the people's liturgy’—and that is the real answer to those unfortunate people who are irritated and distressed, and whose prayer seems to be altogether disturbed by the sight of the Mass-goer who is fingering his beads instead of turning the pages of the missal.

When Augustine, Columba and Aidan converted the English in the sixth and seventh centuries, their devoted labours profoundly affected the national literature. Despite the hazy general belief that English History and Literature set off together in 1066 on their long march, England from before the time of Alfred had had a great tradition of prose and verse. Indeed, in the ninth century, she had a considerable body of prose hterature when other languages had hardly even begun verse.

English poetry from the seventh century onwards gives abundant proof of the ardour with which the Teutonic conquerors of Britain embraced the religion of Christ; and in less than a century these once pagan invaders had made their adopted land into a splendid home of Christianity. The Church's influence on the English way of life was deep and wide. Churches were built, monasteries established, and schools founded; no mean accomplishment in such war-like days.

The subject of the Bible as a whole is the unique divine drama of the creation, fall, redemption and restoration of man, and in this drama God himself plays the central role as author, actor and producer. The drama is a real one, no mere puppet show manipulated by the author, and this means that all those engaged in it have the freedom to tamper with the author's intentions in the interests of their own vanity and pride. They can seek to be masters of the plot rather than servants of it. But this drama is such that no actor in it can ultimately frustrate the author's intentions. They can, for example, ignore the par which he is playing in his own works, but they cannot ultimately suppress it. Even when the play seems to be getting hopelessly out of hand, the author-producer has the will and the power to engage the most unruly sub-plot for his main design, which remains always evident in each new situation.