In that most helpful little book by Fr Bede Jarrett, No Abiding City he gives us the key to what is meant by ‘Detachment‘. We are pilgrims in this world, travellers; ‘here we have no abiding city', and so we must ‘travel light', as the saying goes. There is a great temptation in the modern world to accumulate more and more things—they all seem necessary somehow, and the advertisements in any paper or periodical that we open try to persuade us that we must have this or that—and so perhaps we get it and then persuade ourselves that we cannot possibly do without it.

Or if we are not attached to ‘things', we may become attached to sitting in a special chair, a special way of doing things, a special seat in church. We can become attached to our comforts and our food. In religious life, we can become attached to some devotion, some particular way of singing the Mass, or to some ‘feelings’ we experience when taking Holy Communion or saying some prayer, and then one day the feelings are taken away and we realize that it was the ‘feelings’ to which we were attached and which were so important, and not Holy Communion or prayer.

It seems reasonable enough to have a Church calendar, It seems obvious that the chief events of our Lord's life should be arranged round several pivotal feasts and the whole neatly distributed throughout the year. All healthy lives have a rhythm in harmony with the seasons of the year. We plant, cultivate, harvest, let the soil pause in a rest, then begin over again. We mark off anniversary dates of births, deaths, victories, catastrophes. Some are family affairs, but those of national importance are celebrated with a regularity and a protocol which is a test of our patriotism—lest we ourselves forget or lest we fail to pass on the torch to the next generation.

'Little children, love one another.' Do we really love our neighbours as we should? And are we to love them as the world thinks we should? How often do we hear people accuse us of appearing to be unkind, or harsh or callous. 'Look here', they say, pointing out some case of social injustice, or one or hardship. 'Do you call that loving your neighbour?' And they scoff: 'Call yourselves followers of Christ?' One old man I met told me that he believed that organized religion was the prime cause of all the trouble in the world today. We try to console ourselves that these people fail to understand Christ's teaching, but if that is so we should surely try to enlighten them.

In her autobiography, St Teresa of Lisieux has entered accurately, sometimes forcibly, a number of her peculiarities of disposition and character. They are so striking that no attentive reader can miss them. Most of her biographers however explain them away without realizing their true significance or dismiss them as of being of no importance. One well-known Teresian, for instance, speaks of St Teresa's ‘truly excessive sensitiveness’ and leaves it at that. ‘Excessive’ is the right word, ‘sensitiveness’ is not, and we believe that after considering the facts of the case, we shall come to the conclusion that this ‘sensitiveness’ of St Teresa has a medical signification and deserves another name. Why should we be reticent about any element of her personality? Every saint must build up his sanctity with the materials at hand, with, or in spite of, his temperament and constitution, his physical and mental gifts or deficiencies.

Taken one by one, the idiosyncrasies of St Teresa may seem obscure. Take them together and you soon perceive a logical link between them all. They are in fact extremely important since her personality is inexplicable unless you give them due consideration.

The unity which Christ gave to men in his Church appears to be lost, and must again be found. That theme, repeated by Christians almost everywhere, reveals a longing which he is going to satisfy according to the extent we allow it to grovv within us. Every Christian worth the name must pray, nowadays, for reconciliation with all others who are still separated from them—not, it should be remembered, in spite of their loyalty to the same Master, but, so they are convinced, because of it.

Such prayer, and whatever work we may have to do to supplement it, springs not from any human feelings of urgency in the face of the present political situation, nor even from a desire for greater effectiveness in missionary work, nor from impatience at the unreality of life in a divided Christian community. Prayer for unity is a normal part of our imitation of Christ. It is more than that; it is part of our share in his life. He prayed, and prays in us, to his Father and ours, that all may be one.

The latter years of a Catholic who has held the faith from birth, and practised it consistently on an ordinary working level, represent a period when much that supported the soul falls away, when former spiritual helps are shed and life is left with only the necessities for carrying on. As on the natural physical level these years are a stern test of the individual, of his traditions, good sense, the breadth of view experience has brought him, so the soul taking stock of its spiritual resources looks back to the things that have remained and receives its last challenge of final perseverance. Thus the sum total of what life has taught on both levels lies open now in behaviour and reaction to circumstance.

To understand the sacramental principle, it is necessary to recall the Plan of Redemption. God, three Persons, knowing and loving each other, exists from all eternity. When he chose to create other beings out of nothing, there was but one model, himself. Therefore, each creature is a unique reflection of God. It is itself and, at the same time, it is, to intelligent beings, a revelation of God. This quality of being real yet symbolic makes every creature, in the wide sense of the Latin word, a sacramentum, or, in Greek, a ‘mystery’. The correct attitude towards creatures saves their dignity from two false extremes. Some people would make each creature an absolute in itself—unrelated to anything else, no more than its physical constituents. The opposite error limits the creature to its function of symbol, ignores its value as an individual reality, credits it only for the power to suggest something else. Saint John Chrysostom has neatly described the creature as sacrament: ‘that of which one aspect is seen and the other aspect is believed’.

‘How can that be', said Mary, ‘since I have no knowledge of man?'—and in these words showed herself holy in body and spirit, a virgin without stain and vowed to rem.ain so. The angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Don't question me about it', he said. ‘This plan is far beyond my reach, and no thought of mine can attain it. It is the Holy Spirit, not an angelic spirit, that will come upon you, and you will be overshadowed by the power of the Most High, not by any power of mine.'

Mary must not be content with a place among the angels; the parched earth cries out to her for relief that they could never and she will scarcely have left them behind when she will find what her soul longs for.

Three admitted facts of our actual times impose themselves on us more imperiously than the rest.

First is this need for experience which we touched on towards the beginning of this article. We have said that it needs to be kept within legitimate limits. Then everyone will take care not to be satisfied with notions which have no spiritual value, any more than with observances which are followed because they are prescribed or recommended but which are, in consequence, burdens: they must become the means of liberation. The actions of the clergy and of the faithful, the functioning of institutions should lead to an increasing experience of lucidity, coherence, control and peace. Every spiritual man knows, with an immediate intuitive certainty, that these are normally the criteria of an authentic spiritual experience. Let us put it that in other times one could leave the ‘spiritual senses’ in penance to the extent of opposing the effective and the affective, and imagining a charity which was not affective; today there could no longer be a question of living the Christian life without a certain sense of its success—success in its own order, which is, let us repeat, that of faith and hope, but which must no less, normally, be ‘palpable to the heart'.

'The woman who is abreast of current thought, who knows the topics of the moment, religious and secular, and who follows her daily Mass in her Missal, and the news of the world in her morning paper …'. These words might be a self-portrait of Mrs Boland, the efficient boxtender who organised the sale of pamphlets in Westminster Cathedral from 1912 onwards and who in 1924 founded the Boxtenders’ Association.

Nowadays we are familiar with the Catholic Truth Society cases in our churches, and are inclined to take this contribution to present-day propaganda for granted. The origins of the C.T.S. go as far back as 1884—there were various developments—the first meeting was convened in the house of Lady Herbert of Lea, under the chairmanslaip of Dr Herbert Vaughan, then Bishop of Salford, who had already started a similar project in his own diocese. The date of the foundation meeting was carefully chosen—the fifth of November. This is no place to deal with the history of the C.T.S., it suffices to say that the scheme withstood the consequences of two major wars.

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.

As for the means employed by classical yoga there can be no question of reviewing them here. We must, to begin with, insist on their extreme seriousness, which gives food for thought.

At their basis are ‘curbs’ and ‘disciplines’ such as non-violence (ahimsa) and chastity. In the logical scheme of yoga these are only the preliminary dispositions for entry upon the Royal Way itself. It is generally said of them that they are not peculiar to yoga but common to all spiritual codes of conduct, that the equivalent is to be found in Christian asceticism. This is certainly true in principle. But why is it that, except for rare exceptions, they can scarcely be said to transform man in our Christian West, whereas they seem in general much more effective among the Indian adepts of yoga? It is to these simple ‘curbs’ and ‘disciplines that classical doctrine attributes the most extraordinary ‘powers ‘. For instance the normal effect, perhaps topical enough, of ahimsa is to make a man so peaceful that animals, instead of running away from him or attacking him, feel the radiance of his goodwill and gentleness and come to him; the true practitioner of non-violence meditates quietly in the jungle.

The Mass is constructed round the Passion of Christ. After the consecration the priest says, 'Wherefore, O Lord, we thy servants, as also thy holy people, calling to mind the blessed passion of the same Christ thy Son…' In every church there is at least one crucifix, every Catholic home has a crucifix in a place of honour and at the end of every rosary there hangs a crucifix. Yet so often our thoughts shy away from meditating on the Passion of Christ. The more one thinks on the Passion, especially on the crucifixion, the more unbearable does it seem to be. Nevertheless the great saints have always stressed this necessity of meditating on the Passion.

In the cemetery of Loyasse on the hill of Fourviére, overlooking the great city of Lyons in France, there is a special plot reserved for departed priests. Here last September I came to pray at the grave of my friend Abbé Paul Couturier. He died on March 24th, 1953, aged seventy-two. ‘Il fut un Apôtre de l'Unite des Chrétiens', so runs the inscription on his gravestone. But the past tense is surely a little deceptive and out of place. For to thousands of Christians all over Europe, in these isles and in America, whether Roman Catholic or Anglican, Orthodox or Protestant, the Abbé Couturier is still a messenger sent by God awaken them to the intolerable scandal of disunity and to proclaim the way to hasten its end—a way all can follow without denying anything of God's truth as it has been shown to them, and without any disloyalty to their respective traditions. For it was the special grace of this humble priest of Lyons to see that the cause of Christian Unity is primarily a matter of the spiritual life.

Some men in shrift tell a long fit in fair words, as it were a long treatise, and with a dry heart and cold as lead, more by custom than by contrition of heart. Those men though they say mickle they receive not ever in shrift the virtue of the sacrament. And truly againward, there are many simple Christian men rough and rude, that when they are touched then loathe their life in sin. They wail and weep if they may, and run to Holy Church for help. And if they would shew their sin fully, scarcely then they shew any so clearly as they would. But they are letted sometime for simpleness, sometime for uncunning and sometimes because they are so sorry and ashamed of themselves that they desire to shew all their sins with the circumstance and they cannot bring them forth.