All revelation is God's response to our needs. All his truth is saving truth. It answers to the needs of our salvation, of our healing and our health, health of soul and body, of mind and will, both here and in eternity. The truths which he has revealed are not like hurdles in a steeplechase, which are set to test us during the race, but which bear no other relation to the winning post and the prize. The man, well-known to readers of Frank Sheed's Theology and Sanity, who said of the Trinity that he ‘wished there were four of ‘em, that he might believe more of ‘em', no doubt had the purest faith and charity, but his words do not express the true Christian attitude. Again, none of the revealed truths is an optional extra, which can be embraced by a few specialists but is of no particular relevance to the ordinary Christian.

EACH year in the United States 150,000 converts enter the Catholic Church. Considered by itself, this is a rather impressive figure. But when we consider that ours is a nation of some 170 million people (well over 100 million of them still outside the Church) and when we remember that there are some 40 million potential Catholic apostles, these convert statistics leave us little cause for complacency. The trial balance is even less encouraging when we recall that a considerable number of Catholics lapse from the Church every year. ‘But as far as conversions are concerned', says Fr Sheerin in The Catholic World, ‘Catholicism and Protestantism in America are like two great forces that have reached a stalemate in competing for the minds of Americans. Neither side is making any great gains.'

But the prospect of a nation's conversion must go beyond mere statistics. The mysterious workings of God's grace must be taken into account.

Some years ago there came into my hands a little book in Middle French entitled Le Saint Voyage de Jherusalem. Its author was a certain Seigneur d'Angleure, who in 1395 made the pilgrimage to the holy places, and included in his itinerary Mount Sinai and the monasteries of Anthony and Paul in Egypt. It was a very comprehensive journey; the Seigneur had an eye for detail and would have excelled today as a compiler of Blue Guides or Baedekers. He could not write a travelogue in the Morton style, however, still less Waugh's, and the value of his record lies in the remarkably complete list of relics and customs which he managed to ‘do’ with disarming simplicity and devotion. His piety is not repulsive, for the charitable anxiety of the good knight and his contemporaries to leave no event of scripture unmarked for the edification of the faithful covers a multitude of transgressions committed in their identification.

The Lord also presented himself to be tempted by the devil, in order to be our Mediator in overcoming his temptations by giving us not only the strength of his help but also the encouragement of his example. But Satan's first attempts after Christ's baptism to steal into the inner citadel of his mind by every possible entry were foiled, and every form of seductive temptation was used up in the desert without success; he, the spirit of death, had failed to overpower spiritual Life, and so he turned himself, avid for any sort of human death, to procuring the death that he was able and permitted to inflict on that mortal part which the Mediator of life had received from us. And it was precisely here, where he was able to achieve something, that he suffered total defeat; the moment he accepted the power to slay the Lord's flesh from without, the power by which he held us from within was itself slain.

Each year I am dazzled anew by what Paul Claudel calls ‘the atmosphere of glory’ that is the Ascension. Perhaps I am prejudiced, as the Ascension once marked the end of a long trial of ill-health when I was allowed to make my solemn vows and final monastic profession.

It was the odder as in the past I had so often been ill on that day. So much so that I wondered if lying on one's back were not, after all, the best way of looking up at the sky and, paradoxically enough, of following our ascending Lord to glory.

A very ancient ascensiontide hymn remarks that it was

‘after being spat upon, after being scourged,
after the cross, that he rose to the Father's throne'.

The beginning of the Ascension is the way of the cross. “We climb Calvary and mount the cross before we ascend to the Father. But the best way of ascending is to be in him, who is the way, who said, 'No man cometh unto the Father, but by me'. The way must also be in us.

July is the usual time for articles about SS. Cyril and Methodius, whose feast is kept on July 7th. Most of these are written by Czechs who think of the two brothers as their own and other Slavs’ apostles. It is true, of course, that these two Greeks did bring the gospel to the eighth-century Slavs living in central Europe, but excessive concentration on that aspect of their life and work may make us forgetful of their much wider significance. Perhaps it is not a bad thing to think of them, for a change, not primarily as the men who brought Christianity to a particular people nor in connection with their feast and die ‘Apostolate of SS. Cyril and Methodius’ but as men whose lives contributed to the growth and the unity of the Church. The Church indeed grows and is made one in a particular place among definite people, but the importance of that growth and unity comes from its universality, not from its particularity.

DOES the religious life have anything to say about how men should live in society? People tend to think that anyone entering chooses a life that is, in human terms, a-social. Even religious orders which exist to be of direct use to society only perform their function from outside society, without getting intimately involved with the lives of the people they serve. And today, more than ever, religious are being reproached with this, even by Catholics. Religious life is too ‘other', and religious poverty, in particular, bears slight resemblance to the real poverty in which so many people spend their lives. In fact the religious orders have abandoned the poor and grown indifferent to human misery; it has even been suggested that they aggravate it by their insistent appeals for the means to maintain themselves in their vast establishments. As it stands religious life is not only a-social but quite possibly anti-social as well.

The name of St Francis Xavier is too well known to require any introduction in these pages, yet it is strange that Matteo Ricci, who took up the work interrupted by Xavier's premature death, remains comparatively unknown, even in Catholic circles. This may well be due to the cloud under which Ricci has been for so many years on account of his revolutionary approach to'the evangelization of the east; his apostolic methods among the Chinese gave great scope to his genius for adaptation, but like many other pioneers, Ricci had to pay the penalty of antagonism from those who were less farsighted. It is therefore gratifying to find the present Holy Father holding up Matteo Ricci as a model for all missionaries and thus finally vindicating his apostolic work which has been so widely misunderstood, both in Ricci's own day and also in ours.

Medieval saints are often difficult to understand. They flourished at a period when things were so very different from today that, however hard we try, we just cannot enter into their minds. We can't apply their lives to our own. Joan of Arc was inspiring but rather terrifying; some of the early monks did heroically saintly things which just amaze us. This is true, also, to a great extent of the mystics, but there is one big exception to the rule, and that is St Bridget of Sweden. She was, indeed, a mystic—she had more than her fair share of visions—and yet there was much in her life which can appeal to the modern Catholic. That she was an outstanding personality is attested by the great respect that the Swedes still bear for her even though the majority of them have abandoned the faith which was her guiding principle in life.

It is to Pope St Pius X that the modern liturgical movement owes its greatest debt, and it is from his motu proprio of 1903, issued within three months of his election as pope, that all subsequent initiatives derive their authority. His immediate concern was the reform of sacred music, but he stated unequivocally the principles of any true liturgical advance, namely the need to ‘maintain and promote the dignity of the house of God, in which the solemn mysteries of religion are celebrated, and in which the Christian people gather to receive the grace of the sacraments, to assist at the holy sacrifice of the altar, to adore the most august sacrament of the body of the Lord, and to unite themselves with the prayer of the Church in the public and solemn celebration of the liturgical offices'.

It is very useful for us, dearly beloved, to remind ourselves of the deeds performed by the Saviour of mankind, provided that we undertake to imitate in action what we venerate in faith. There are lessons to be learned as well as wonders of grace to be admired in the unfolding of the sacred mysteries of Christ, and while we acknowledge him in a spirit of faith we should also be following him in the pattern of our behaviour. Even the small beginnings from which the Son of God started, when he was born of his virgin mother, can instruct us how to make progress in piety. Both human littleness and divine greatness are there to be perceived by upright minds, combined in one and the same person.

The survey that follows is translated from the French. It appeared in the Supplément de La Vie Spirituelle, No. 48, for the first quarter of 1959, and has also appeared in our Dutch Dominican contemporary Tijdschrift voor Geestelijk Leven. Fr Schillebeeckx is a Flemish Dominican, a distinguished theologian, and we hope that his assessment of certain continental developments will be of interest to our English readers, though it may appear strange, and not perhaps be found wholly congenial, to those only familiar with our island scene.

TO understand the religious sensibility of our time, we have to return to the forms of Christian life which characterized the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The modern way of living the faith is very largely a reaction against these older forms.

It is a common mistake to visualize Galilee as a small area of country bordering on a lake. In fact it is one of the largest regions of Israel. For travellers who have arrived at Haifa by boat, the first introduction to Galilee will probably be Nazareth. This is a pity because Nazareth is the one black spot in the whole district. Commercialism has reached such heights there that the street vendors have degenerated from nuisance to menace.

Inside the Franciscan enclosure, however, all is well, and the pilgrim kneeling in the grotto of the annunciation forgets any rabble outside. Two pillars mark the places where our Lady and the angel Gabriel stood, and beside the altar of the tiny chapel is a grille through which the rest of the primitive house can be seen.

MAX THURIAN is a member of a Protestant religious community, and his book Marriage and Celibacy is his second contribution to the series which the S.C.M. Press is publishing under the general title of Studies in Ministry and Worship. His first book in the series was entitled, Confession. The greater part of the book now under review is concerned with celibacy, and it is clear that the author is by no means the kind of Protestant who assumes that because something is found in the Catholic Church it is therefore bound to be wrong or even wicked. On the contrary, we find that most of what he says about marriage and celibacy agree with Catholic doctrine. The apparently small divergence from Catholic doctrine is, however, most significant; it is like a wedge which with the greatest ease opens up a wide chasm between his whole manner of thought and that of a Catholic theologian.

Near the Arch of Titus and overlooking the Forum is the Church of St Francesca Romana, or as it is more frequently called, the Basilica di Sta Maria Nuova. In the confession is a statue of a woman with an attendant angel, and in the crypt, in a glass case, are the remains of that woman dressed w a. religious habit. Every hundred years the casket is taken to an obscure convent under the Capitol Hill in the Tor di Specchi, which is the house of the order of Oblates founded in 1433. Here the sisters remove the old habit, rotten with age, and dress the skeleton of their revered and beloved founder in a new habit, and the body is then returned to its tomb in the church.

Frances was born in one of the palaces on the outskirts of Rome, in the square now named Piazza Navona and not far from the church of St Agnes, in 1384. Her parents were of noble birth and the child was brought up in a pious and prosperous household in the midst of considerable luxury. At a very early age she announced her wish to enter a convent, but her parents insisted that she should marry, in 1396 and at the age of twelve, a rich nobleman, Lorenzo Ponziani.

It is 1936—or could be ‘39, or ‘29, or any of the pre-war years. The Catholic Evidence Guild speaker, in the market square, is surrounded by a motley crowd; some noisy, and angrily putting their point of view; others genuinely interested, ftod asking a carefully-thought-out question; some frankly bored, but hoping for blood to enliven the proceedings.

How many of us were familiar with the scene—and few of us realized the full significance of what we saw.

A speaker? Yes, we saw the speaker—heard him too—and were impressed with his lively answer, and obvious desire to impart his own love for his faith, to those who would listen to him. We rather wished that we had his courage, or his gifts, or both. But we didn't see the point of his speaking in the market square; it wasn't quite respectable, not the sort of thing that a real Catholic would drag his faith to.

After the apostles themselves, as we see them in their writings and in the Acts, who is there better than the Father of the Preachers to show us the laws of apostolic life? St Dominic in fact exhibits very strikingly certain realities which are most essential in such a life. They form what one might call the Law of the Five Beats. The more one meditates on it, the more one comes to think that it deserves to be classical.

Today the first ‘beat’ in order of time does not seem, for most apostles, to be contemplative withdrawal into God. They are in the world, they have experience of it, and grace presses them to proclaim the gospel to it. They begin with what was for St Dominic the second and the fourth ‘beats': they can already taste the experience of combat for the faith.

Historic examples of steadfast faith are collected and put in writing, because they bear witness to the power of God's grace, and help to inspire men; when read they come before us again, as it were, so that God shall be honoured and men given strength. Surely similar accounts from our own times ought to be circulated, as being just as useful for both these purposes? At some future date these contemporary examples will themselves be respectably historic, and thus of use to coming generations; even though at present they carry less weight, because what is past is considered more hallowed than what is new.

The first five verses of this psalm, from ‘My heart has uttered a good word’ to ‘Your right hand will conduct you wonderfully', Augustine has interpreted as being addressed to Christ, partly by God the Father, who utters a good word when he eternally begets the Son, and partly by the psalmist speaking prophetically. Then he continues in the same vein:

Your arrows are sharp, very potent.’ It means his words, piercing the heart, arousing love. As the bride says in the Canticle, ‘I have been wounded by charity’ (Cant, ii, 5). She means that she is in love, that she is on fire, that she is sighing for the bridegroom whose words have pierced her like arrows. ‘Your arrows are sharp, very potent', both piercing and effective. ‘Peoples will fall beneath you.’ They have been struck and have fallen.