G.H.'s letter in the August-September issue of The Life of The Spirit has found wide interest. Two priests and two doctors have already given their expert advice on a situation in which an ordinary person with no specific psychological experience or training is called upon to meet, efficiently and in a Christian manner, the difficulties of living with a neurotic Member of the family. The correspondents pointed to the danger of being eaten up by the neurotic and admonished those who are in constant contact with them to be prudent and not to mistake for Christian charity a weak, doormat-like attitude which allows the neurosis of the individual unlimited freedom in producing itself in ceaseless speech, the performance of all those many and varied antics of which the neurotic is capable and intruding into the privacy of other members of the family. The nature of neurosis and the correct attitude towards it was widely discussed and, if in approaching the problem from a slightly different angle, I touch on something that has been said before, I beg the reader's indulgence.

It is with the intellect that we contemplate. Christian contemplation is an activity of faith, and faith is an intellectual virtue. The gift of the Holy Ghost which plays a leading role contemplation is wisdom, because, as St Thomas says, it belongs to wisdom, according to Aristotle, to consider the Highest Cause; and wisdom is obviously rooted in the intellect. But contemplation is also intimately linked with charity and is therefore an activity of the will. This is due, St Thomas explains, to the nature of the gift of wisdom; it implies a connaturality with divine things, and this connaturality can come only from charity. He writes: ‘Wisdom denotes a certain rectitude of judgment according to the Eternal Law. Now rectitude of judgment is two-fold: first, on account of perfect use of reason, secondly, on account of a certain connaturality with the matter about which one has to judge. Thus, about matters of chastity, a man after inquiring with his reason forms a right judgment, if he has learnt the science of morals, while he who has the habit of chastity judges of such matters by a kind of connaturality.

For the ordinary person, hemmed in by his everyday and often monotonous job, it is very difficult to see any link between his life and the love of God. Exasperating anxieties with regard to meeting his financial commitments, and often worries with regard to health and well-being of his family, seem to preclude any connection between his life as he has to live it and that love of God as exemplified in the lives of saints and possibly 'good' people he happens to know. He may be punctilious about his religious duties, and feel in some dim way that God does hear his prayers, but somehow the love of God is not a reality for him. He wants to love God but does not know how!

Spanish Catholics—that is to say, Spain—arc commemorating this year the fifth centenary of St Vincent Ferrer's canonization. Thus, 1954, the Jubilee Year of St James the Apostle, has found a worthy successor, for, amongst the thousands of names forming Spain's imposing contribution to hagiology, hardly one has a greater significance for the student of history, as well as for the layman, than that of this Valencian saint. It would be pointless and extravagant to try to evaluate what each of the great saints has given to the chronicle of human happenings, since their deeds and words are outside the scope of earthly speculation.

Richard Challoner was a man of varied an great achievement, but two tilings stand out in their significant for all English-speaking Catholics. The first was his revision of the Rheims-Douay English version of the Bible. This revision almost amounted to a new translation; till recently it was the only Bible current among Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland, and was used almost as exclusively in the United States (cf. the preface to the Confraternity New Testament). The second was his compilation and writing of a prayer-book, The Garden of the Soul, which was first published in 1740. This book has since gone through countless editions, and is still the best-known Catholic prayer-book in the English language. So great has been its influence that, in the form in which it left the hands of the, author, it has given rise to the term ‘Garden-of-the-Soul Catholic‘ to designate one of solid unostentatious piety (combined perhaps with a certain lack of imagination). I do not know, but I suppose that its influence has been scarcely less in America, at any rate for a considerable time.

In a recent issue of The Life of the Spirit a question of the utmost importance was raised in a letter about neurosis. And among other points that of having an objective view about neurotic illness is worth serious consideration.

In a neurosis there arc two factors to be considered: the fundamental disorder of the psychic structure—the unhealthy psychic tensions which are die source of further trouble (the so-called ‘nerves’ of the ‘highly strung’ person)—and the consequent result of this psychic tension in terms of the reaction to life and its problems. The fundamental inner tension is not a single, definite fear of some evil, but rather a general, unspecified fearful attitude. And although this psychic tension is to be found in both introvert and extravert personalities its result in terms of adaptation to the demands of life is different in each type of temperament. The introvert whose psychological constitution is of a generally fearful kind tends to develop an illness which is itself a psychic disorder—depression, anxiety, morbid fear—and so is called a psychological illness.

It is to Saint Thomas More and to the School of More, as his home in Chelsea was called, that honour must be given for leadership and inspiration in the movement for the higher education of women in England and in the subsequent development of education for the people. For the former, the court of Henry VIII and Catherine, his Spanish Queen, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, provided a model. Around the royal table, More and his daughters and many other scholars stood and took part in the discussions. In his home, More entertained as his friends and as tutors for his daughters learned and scholarly men, Vives, Erasmus, Richard Hyrde, Dr Linacre, John Clement and others. Here round the fire in winter and in the spacious grounds in summer, that intellectual community of scholars was founded, whose life work was to open the gates of learning and scholarship first to women and later to the masses of the people.

Thunder voices prefaced the breaking of the four seals in John's heavenly visions, but prior to the sounding of the seven trumpets and the blaze of fire on the heavenly altar ‘there was silence in heaven'. So, silence issues forth in trumpet calls and in the angelic prayer-action at the altar alight with flame. All public worship expresses itself vocally, for only such prayer can express corporate worship and fellowship prayer; but the Catholic Church has devised a service of silence, just as she has produced Orders of Silence, and that service is Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. The Rite begins with the O Salutaris; it ends with the Tantum ergo, but the interspace is Silence. The High Priest, Heli, was an unwise father but wise as a spiritual director, for how great was his wisdom when he bade the child Samuel respond to the voice of God with these words: ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’ Here is the perfect counsel for those who kneel before the Host exposed. All is silence: the Word is silent; silently the candles immolate themselves in honour of the Unseen Light; the flowers praise their Creator by their beauty and fragrance, but silent is their tribute. Silence is the soul's receptive mood; it is the ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’ When we say prayers, God listens to us; but when we are silent we become listeners to the voice of God.

’Hath God cast away his people? God forbid! … Goo hath not cast away his people which he foreknew… Even so at this present time there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace.’ Thus wrote Saint Paul to the faithful at Rome: to those who had accepted Christ as the promised Messiah of Israel and the Saviour of mankind. For Christ did not found the Church independently of Israel but used the faithful of that nation in the establishing of it, as the prophet foretold: ‘For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make to stand before me, saith the Lord: so shall your seed stand and your name.’ (Isaias 66, 22.) During his lifetime he prepared his new Kingdom out of the material of the old, and if the old seemed to reject him it was he who in reality rejected those who refused to acknowledge him as Christ and Lord. So he had charged his Apostles, saying: ‘And whosoever will not receive you: when you go out of that city shake off the very dust from your feet as a testimony against them.’

In the Gospel the Lord commends three practices: fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. Fasting restores man to himself; almsgiving restores him to his neighbour; prayer restores him to God. Nothing so takes man away from himself as impurity; nothing so alienates man from man as cruelty, and nothing so separates man from God as ingratitude. Fasting prepares the way for temperance which overcomes impurity. Almsgiving enkindles mercy which crushes cruelty. Prayer brings devotion and fervour which foster gratitude. This is the armour of God whereby we withstand the attacks of the devil. Fortified by these weapons, Moses turned the wrath of God from the people, put Amelech to flight and merited to receive the divine revelation. With this armour, David escaped the plots of Absolom. Elias, using the same weapons, freed himself from the hands of Jezabel. Ezechias laid low the army of Sennacherib by fasting and prayer more than by lances and spears. The Lord consecrated the very beginning of his public life with fasting and Prayer.

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.’

It is not difficult to trace in the works of Walter Hilton a direct line of prayer from its inception until it reaches the union of marriage with God. And though for this reason many will be familiar with the plan, it may be convenient to extract the holy Englishman's teaching on the subject from both books of the Scale of Perfection and to combine them here into a single and brief account of an English way of prayer.

We may begin with a rather profound definition of prayer as ‘naught else but a stying desire of the heart into God, by with drawing of the heart from all earthly thoughts’ (Scale i, 25, p. 44). This desire rising direct to God himself is indeed the guarantee of true progress in prayer. Indeed it is impossible often to tell from any other sign whether or no one is praying at all. Distractions and dryness flood the spirit to such an extent that it would seem no corner had been left for prayer.

The Feast of the Transfiguration on 6th August is one of the major feasts of the Byzantine rite. It is the feast of light and has a significant position in the cycle of the mysteries of Christ. Ontologically speaking it lies between the mystery of the Incarnation, celebrated at Christmas, and the redemptive suffering followed by the Resurrection of Easter Sunday. At Christmas the Eternal Light shone forth in human shape ‘from a virginal cloud'. At Easter he breaks the chains of death and reveals his risen glory. On Thabor he empowers his disciples to recognize him through the veils of flesh.

The Transfiguration comprises all the mysteries of the divine economy, and is an inexhaustible treasure of spiritual wisdom. Already in the first vespers of the ante-feast on 5th August we find the following prayer:

Come let us mount with Jesus in his ascent to the holy mountain, and there hear the voice of the Eternal Father (lit.: who has no beginning), bearing witness by a light cloud and the Holy Ghost to the nature of his Eternal Sonship: illumined in the spirit we shall, in the light, behold the Light.

Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, it began to seem that the differences between Protestant and Catholic in France might soon be settled, and that the great division between Christians, little more than a century old, could be healed. That hope faded, but the Bishop of Meaux was one of those who, having caught it in his student days, never entirely lost it, and whose work for re-union, which made him the greatest Christian peacemaker in Europe, remains as a point of departure for all those who set the same hope before them today.

How then shall our thoughts be ordered in this matter of the Creation, and in what manner may we search as to the things which nature can accomplish? Let this be answered: that it is by the nature of Christ who, abounding in the fullness of his Godhead, hath all things done according to his Will, even the Will of his Father; by this standard alone and in no wise by the mere nature of the Universe, must we conduct ourselves. As in the sacred record, when he was seen to heal the leper and to pour new light upon the sightless, the people glorified not some course of medical cure, but, in astonishment at the power of the Lord, gave unto him only (as it is written) the glory, so even must we.

From a psychological point of view, what is it that distinguishes the life of a monk as described by Cassian from the ordinary life of a person living in the world? The question is an interesting one, and it is suggested that the answer lies in the striking simplification (or better, the simplicity) of the life of the monk as compared with life in the world. This fact, incidentally, is implied in the word monachus, which means one living alone for a single purpose.

In his book, The High Church Tradition, Canon G. W. O. Addleshaw makes an unfavourable comparison between the scholastic theologians of the Counter-Reformation and the seventeenth century Anglican divines. ‘The theology of the Tridentine divines is embalmed in scientific treatises; the High, Churchmen were content to expound theirs in sermons delivered to ordinary congregations.' Men like Suarez and Bellamine when they wrote as technical theologians, were not, however, trying to do the same sort of thing as the Caroline divines, and the comparison is hardly a valid one. The men' who should be set beside John Donne, Lancelot Andrewes, or Jeremy Taylor are writers, preachers and priests like Bérulle and Olier, Bossuet, Bourdaloue and Fénelon. Dislike of our scholasticism and legalism is one of the commonplaces of the Anglican critique of Rome; we may think that others see over-clearly in us those things on which they lay least stress. We have our great men in the fields which the Church of England has most cultivated, and would like to set them confidently beside theirs in what the Abbé Couturier called émulation spirituelle, that friendly rivalry in the race which we all run for the same prize.

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.

When the vice of Accidie has got hold of an unhappy man's mind, it breeds detestation of the place of his habitation, weariness of his cell, and makes him spurn and despise the brethren who live with him, or near him, as all neglectful and unspiritual. For every task to be done within the confines of his dwelling, it makes him slow and indolent. It will not let him either rest in his cell or give himself to reading. Ofttimes will he groan that he had dwelt there so long, and made no progress in good nor acquired any spiritual fruit, so long as he is bound in that fellowship. He depicts the fellowship of the brethren elsewhere as sweet and full of spiritual converse. On the other hand, all that he has near about him is hard and difficult, and he says that not only is there no edification in the brethren among whom he dwells, but also that the very necessities of life can only be there obtained with immense toil.

There is a limited pleasure to be had from neatness. Neatness at home and uniformity at work, both interpenetrating each other, are the modern substitutes for unity. They are habitual, even virtuous. The several relations between them are governed, not only by the overflow of factory method, business method and military method into the home, but also by the simple necessity, where many live in a narrow space, to slow things away, to be tidy. Here we witness an order that is imposed. Behind this lies the mountainous pile of things and information, and our own diminished understanding of their true relations.