Suchergebnisse

Issue 48.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1989. ; R~,vw:w voR R~:I,~cIous (ISSN 0034-639X) is published hi-monthly at St. Louis University by the Mis-souri Province Eduealional Inslilule of the Society of Jesus; Editorial Office; 3601 Lindell Blvd., Rm. 428; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Second-class postage paid al St. Louis MO. Single copies $3.00. Subscriptions: $12.00 per year; $22.00 for two years. Other countries: for surface mail, add U.S. $5.00 per year; for airmail, add U.S. $20.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write: Ri~v~i~w t:oR R~:,ucous; P.O. Box 6070; Dululh, MN 55806. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to R~:v~:w voR R~:,.~(aot;s; P.O. Box 6070; Dululh, MN 55806. David L. Fleming, S.J. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard .A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors JulylAugust 1989 Volume 48 Number 4 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to Rv:v~:w voa R~:u{:lot~s; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave.; Berkeley, CA 94709-1193. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from R~:v,v:w vo~ R~:uctous; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, M! 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service fl~r the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society fl~r the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. PRISMS . Religious life in no way merits the descriptive word dull. Currently conferences, workshops, and books deal with the theme of "refounding religious life." Another approach looks more towards a "creating of re-ligious life," often with the addition of "for the 21st century." Along with the recent publication of Pope John Paul II's letter to the United States bishops responding to the findings of the 1983 papal commission study of religious life in this country, we find ourselves confronted with various challenges which indicate that religious life remains a valuable concern not only for those who are dedicated to this special form of Chris-tian living, but also for those who support it and are the collaborators and recipients of its service. Religious life takes on its many different forms as a response by those people to God's call to point the way in bridging anew the gap be-tween the lived values of Gospel and culture. Any particular grouping of religious challenge the rest of the Church peoples (including other re-ligious) to a continuing conversion call in one or other aspect of their Christian living. Religious frequently make uncomfortable the govern-ing and teaching authority as well as their own benefactors and friends by their witness and service in those very areas where the Church may b~ slipping into more secular values and ways of acting than gospel val-ues and gospel acting. It is not surprising that religious have been in the forefront of the liberation theology and base-community movement in Latin America. The charism or grac~ which identifies the special call to a particular religious grouping often attracts some kind of participation by both di-ocesan priests and laity. The Third Orders of some of the older religious institutes and the sodalities of some of the more modern apostolic oiders are examples of a long-standing tradition of affiliation. Today there are many more questions about various ways of belonging within the relig-ious grouping--often referred to as "memberships" in the religious fam-ily. Sister Maryanne Stevens, R.S.M., raises some of these issues in her article, "The Shifting Order of Religious Life in Our Church." We are still in the early stages of this new focusing of collaboration in life and in ministry, and there are difficulties and obscurities still to be resolved. We will continue to find it necessary to clarify the identity and responsi-bilities for members dedicated in a specially graced form of life from 481 41~2 / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 other parties with different vocations and yet somehow drawn by grace to a similar model of discipleship. As part of the special spiritual legacy which monastic life, particu-larly in its more contemplative form, has been to the Church, this spe-cial form of religious life may have its own contribution to offer in terms of ecumenical efforts. Fr. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O., opens up some possible ways of considering this question in his article, "Monasticism: A Place of Deeper Unity~" The AIDS crisis predictably draws forth a religious life response since it presents a special need calling for a gospel ministry. Robert Sirico, C.S.P., calls us to reflect upon our own reactions of fear and stigma concerning those with AIDS .within our own religio.us groupings as well as those AIDS patients whom we intend to serve. The issue of confidentiality is a particularly sensitive point both in our religious com-munity life and in our ministry. His article, "An Improbable Fiction?: Religious Life Confronts the AIDS Crisis," was originally printed in the October 1988 In-formation, the bulletin of the Religious Formation Con-ference. Re!igious life, with all its graced attempts to respon~l to gaps between the Gospel and culture, today finds itself, along with the wider Church and with the contemporary world, caught in the gap itself. As a result, the questions and issues will necessarily have only tentative and at-tempted responses while the Church and our world remain in this in-between time. Reflecting this kind of ongoing response, in FORUM we publish two recent letters from Father Stephen Tutas, S.Mo, president of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, to its members. All of us continue to need prisms through which we might more quickly catch the movements and fleeting images of God's grace alive in our everyday religious life world. Each time we come to see a new aspect or see in new ways, we face the personal challenge of reinte-grating the truth of our lives, our relationships, and our work. May some of our writers in the articles in this issue be those prisms for us. David L. Fleming, S.J. Reproducing the Pattern of His Death John McKinnon, S.T.D. Father John McKinnon is a priest of the Diocese of Ballarat in Victoria, Australia where he is currently the Vicar for Religious. He works extensively with the various Ministry to Priests Programs and has played a pioneering role in the development of lay spirituality in Australia. His address is the Center for Human Development; 24 Custance St.; Farrer, A.C.T. 2607; Australia. ]n speaking about spirituality, I think that we Often tend to focus immedi-ately on the various ways by which we may seek to foster it--prayer, reflective ministry, and so forth--rather than on what it is we are seek-ing. Spirituality to me speaks of the way we look at life and respond to it. It is the assessment and response that we draw from the level of our own spirit, from that inner point of our self, that is closest to God. It is made up of the values, beliefs, convictions, insights, and so forth, ab-sorbed and developed over the years, which enable us to give meaning and pattern to the myriad experiences of life, and on which we base our deliberate choices. Basic Attitudes for Christian Spirituality For us as Christians these values, beliefs, convictions, and so forth are powerfully affected by our faith in tl~e person of Jesus and our'con-tact with him. This faith in Jesus and contact with him need to be per-sonalized and deepened through time spent intimately with him in prayer. The truth of any person is leai'nt most deeply only by opening to that per-son in love. Friendship is built on time spent together; it is expressed and nourished in devoted action. And it seems to me that both are equally indispensable. In his Epistle to the Philippians, in a very intimate and personally revealing passage, Paul writes about himself: 483 tlS~l / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death. In this way I can hope to take my place in the resurrection of the dead (Ph 3:10- ~). In writing this he was merely outlining his own response to the invi-tation of Jesus, recorded in Mark's gospel: "If anyone wants to be a fol-lower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and fol-low me" (Mk 8:34). Paul wanted to follow Jesus into the triumph of his resurrection, but he clearly realized that following Jesus meant firstly shar-ing his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death. The motivation for Paul's choice to follow Jesus was based on his knowledge of Jesus. Knowledge. in the Hebrew mind was not an aca-demic "knowledge about," but an enfleshed knowledge made possible only by love. I would think that only in this "love-knowledge" rela-tionship could any of us find the inspiration to face life as Jesus faced death, and to run the risk of "losing our life in order to find it," sus-tained only by trust in Jesus and the subtle intuition that in that way we might in fact find our life and live it to the full. Paul's comment in Philippians 3:10-11 seems to sum up for me the essential features of any disciple's looking at life and responding to it. It sums up the authentic Christian spirituality. Indeed, the pattern of Je-sus' death reveals the deepest dimensions of Jesus' own spirituality. I presume that Paul was not a masochist, and that Jesus was not in-viting his disciples to suicide. Jesus loved life. There is a sense in which we can say that in his moments of dying Jesus was never more truly alive and, indeed, living life to the full, at a depth and with an intensity that he had never had to muster before. The conclusion drawn by the centu-rion in Mark's gospel, who had known Jesus only in his dying moments, is also very revealing. Mark writes: The centurion, who was standing in front of him, had seen how he had died, and he said, 'In truth this man was a son of God'(Mk 15:39). In wanting to reproduce the pattern of Jesus' death, Paul was paradoxi-cally expressing his own desire to live life to the full. The Source of Salvation The Epistle to the Hebrews (5:9) says that Jesus "became for all who obey him the source of eternal salvation." We open ourselves to salvation as we in turn obey Jesus, as we attune our hearts to his, and through his to the Father's. It becomes ours, therefore, as we plumb the Reproducing the Pattern of His Death truth, as we accept the dignity and worth of every other human person, and as we commit ourselves to that dignity totally. That is why St. Paul dan write in his Epistle to the Philippians that he wants "to reproduce the pattern of Jesus' death." He sees that sim-ply as the way to become fully alive, and eventually "to take his place (with Jesus) in the resurrection from the dead." To obey Jesus and to find salvation mean to reproduce the pattern of his death, or, as the gos-pels put it, to take up our cross and to'follow him. What does this involve, then, for us? It means that we commit ourselves, too, to the vision and the priori-ties of Jesus; that, like Jesus, we let life touch us; that we respond to these temptations in the same way that Jesus responded to his. Our spiri-tuality is to be modeled on the spirituality of Jesus, on his values, be-liefs, and resources. Sharing His Sufferings No one can,be protected from the vicissitudes .of life. We do, how-ever, have some control over the nature of the inner suffering consequent upon these vicissitudes. In the face of the evil of the world we can choose our response. W.e can choose the inner suffering of absurdity and despair, of the sterile meaninglessness of a world without God, of the superficial and unsatisfying logic of the short-term, of the poisoning and paralyzing choice of bitterness and the refusal to forgive. We can face life with no hope and look on everyone as beyond redemption and on the world as condemned to an unchanging sameness. The other alternative is to taste the suffering involved in living the consequences of our own integrity with its seeming powerlessness; the feelings of irrelevance and nonserise involved in trusting a God who, we believe, makes sense of the meaningless sometimes only in the long-term; the dying-to-self ,involved in forgiving and the price of the perse-verance involved in pouring oneself out for others, trusting against hope that they may one day change and be converted. When St. Paul prayed to share the sufferings of Jesus, he was pray-ing that his sufferings would be those involved in the second alternative. Those were the sufferings of the dying Jesus. Those sufferings were the way to life. Context of Commitment It is the context of our life that gives flesh to the living out of our spirituality. I would like briefly to allude to a few consequences of this 4~16 / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 spirituality of Christ as it touches the lives of all involved in active min-istry, priests, religious and laity. To some extent we can shield ourselves from the difficulties of life by choosing not to love. That, however, would be to betray our call to discipleship. The source of Jesus' experience of failure was his commit-ment to love. Luke makes this point quite clearly in his final prelude to the public life of Jesus, the meeting at Nazareth of Jesus and his fellow townspeople. There Jesus declared his manifesto in the words of Isaiah: The spirit of the Lord has been giv~en to me, for he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free, to proclaim the Lord's year of favor (Lk 4:18); and it was there that he was violently rejected by the former companions of his childhood. The starting point of our imitation of Christ is a~commitment to depth in ourselves and to share with others the wonderful good news of God's love for all, and consequently to allow our own liberation to grow, to share in the liberation of others, and to work together for justice and free-dom for them. The Call 1. Being Authentic The choice to be authentic means firstly that, like Jesus, we accept and respect both the wonderful dignity of our human nature and at the same time its limitations. It means that we accept the' fact that to be human is to grow. To re-fuse to grqw is to be untrue to the thirst for life and fullness imprinted on our nature by our creating Father. But growth is painful. It is some-times easier to refuse to grow and to change, to opt instead for the fa-miliar and the unchallenging, even to obstruct and to attack change both in ourselves and in the institutions that we make up. Integrity means that we make peace with gradualness and that we re-spect the laws of sequential growth in ourselves and in others. It means that we accept the need for performance and ambition in the establish-ing of our own sense of identity, and it equally means that we be pre-pared to relinquish in time our reliance on performance in order to sur- Reproducing the Pattern of His Death / 487 render to the risk of intimacy, of forgiveness, and of grace. Eventually it means that we move to the even broader task of universal love and of generativity. Each of these transitions can be painful, and the tempta-tions to stay as we are, to secure our own comfort and peace, are strong. We do so, however, at the price of our integrity and the call of our cre-ating and redeeming God who sent. Jesus that we might live life to the full. Being authentically human means that we need to make peace even with our weakness. We have some strengths, but we do not have them all. What we admire in others is often beyond our own reach, and vice versa. We cannot do everything. None of us is "superman." We live, for example, in a day that has only twenty-four hours and not twenty-eight. We are not called to do whatever is good, but to discern what God is asking of us, to do no more than that, and to surrender the rest. Jesus had to choose between consolidating where he was, or going "to the neighboring country towns, so that I can preach there, too" (Mk 1:38)-- he could not do both. With time the very process of aging brings us in touch With new weakness and limitation. Eventually we have to make peace even with our sin. At the price of our sense of self-reliance we have to surrender to the need for forgive-ness and of mercy. In doing so we find our true dignity, and learn to re-spect ourselves because we are loved by God. A further consequence of the choice for discipleship is that we com-mit ourselves to follow our own duly informed and educated conscience. Jesus allowed himself to be led by the Spirit. It is so easy to avoid fac-ing truth and its .consequences and to persuade ourselves that what we are really doing from fear of the opinion of others or from a concern for our own comfort is being done for the sake of pastoral flexibility or main-taining peace or some other equally inadequate.excuse. And yet, at the same time, we also have to recognize that often we are not sure what our conscience is asking of us, and we have to live in uncertainty. Basically the commitment we make to ministry is a commitment to love. We know that love is the only kind of power that can ultimately give life and bring freedom. The commitment to love immediately rules out the possibility of using other kinds of power, all other kinds of power, even ostensibly for the good of people. It applies across'the board, within the Church as well as in the broader world outside. It pre-cludes manipulation, coercion, persuasion. It is notoriously ineffective. It raises whole issues of the interrelationship of institution and individ-ual person, because institutions made up of imperfectly converted and 41~1~ / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 motivated people necessarily require some kind ofsanctions. It requires clear perceptions of priorities; and the constant readiness to change and to repent, because our ongoing experience and reflection reveal that we do not consistently discernpriorities clearly and choose appropriately. The commitment to love also involves a commitment to non-violence (which is not the same as non-resistance to evil). It is the un-willingness to counter violence with violence; it is the choice to over-whelm evil with love, rather, than to double it by retaliating. Non-violent resistance sometimes calls for total self-sacrifice; more often it means apparent ineffectiveness. There are plenty of champions of jus-tice who are prepared to seek it~with violence. That was not Jesus' way. His non-violence made him unpopular, no. doubt, to the Zealots, the "ur-ban guerillas" of his day; it makes his followers equally unpopular in our day. It is~also ineffective. It ensured the inevitability of Jesus' arrest when he was apprehended in Gethsemane, but also elicited his strict cen-sure there of the violent response of one of his followers (Mt 26:52-54). It makes sense only in a world where God is the basis of meaning. It means that we may have to leave free, to go their own way, even to walk into disaster, those whom we love or for whom we have respon-sibility. That was the experience of Jesus. He had to let his ow.n special friends, hi's own diSciples, walk unheedingly into unfaith. He could not, and would not ev.en if he could, live their lives for them. He could not, would not, make their decisions for them. He had to let them_, grow up. Handing them over into the loving hands of his Father did not help all that much. He had learnt the requirements of love precisely from that same Father. As far as the Gospels are concerned, Judas did not come back. On the other hand, the Peter whom he had to leave to walk into utter perplexity and loss of faith did grow up and was a wiser and greater man. We follow the same paths as Jesus. The choice to love makes us notoriously vulnerable. Where our way of life is one that involves our working closely with others, an option for love may mean at times all the pain and frustration of working for consensus. The democratic vote can sometimes simply mean the coercive imposition on the minority of the will of the major-ity. At times it may be appropriate. Often it is not. An honest commit-ment to consensus will mean for many the readiness to devote the time and effort needed to develop the necessary skills of listening, assertion, and negotiation. We need to face the temptation to ineffectiveness, at times even to irrelevance, the jibes of naivete and so forth, and, like Jesus, explore the Reproducing the Pattern of His Death depth of our own authenticity, listen to his heart and to the heart of our creating Father. We need to listen to our own hearts, and somehow trust that integrity, truth, and love make sense, the only sense, and that our God is a God of the long-term, and not of efficient and immediate re-sults. 2. Forgiving We are familiar with the temptations to bitterness and to unforgi-veness. Not only is our world polarized; in some ways, too, our Church is also. Forgiveness is a decision. It is a decision that has consequences. When we decide to forgive, we surrender our right to use the memory of the wrongs again, either for our own self-pity or to store up and accu-mulate them in order to attack again whoever has hurt us. In a situation of ongoing disagreement or.difference, forgiveness in-volves a commitment to seek whatever common ground there is and to work for reconciliation and even at times for consensus. It involves the need to move beyond the words or the positions we may have adopted to listen to our own hearts and to the hearts of those with whom we dis-agree. It is a consequence of choosing the spirituality of Jesus. It leads to life and to peace, but it has its price. ~Forgiveness can seem like the surrender of our own dignity and self-respect, or of our loyalty to our friends and respect for them. 3. Committed . Perhaps our greatest temptation is to lose hope in people. We get hurt through life. We lose o~ur enthusiasm, even our courage. We try some things and our efforts are rejected. We know the temptation to cut our losses: we do our job; we do what is expected of us. But we lose our com-mitment, and we do little or no more than seems necessary. It is difficult to keep pouring out our lives, to keep working enthusi-astically or to try to introduce innovations only to be met with little or no response. It is easier to settle down, to look after ourselves, to make life comfortable to lose hope. But to lose hope is tochoose against life. Jesus faced blankness, in-difference, rejection, mockery, and blasphemy. In the face of that he chose to pour out his life "for the many." He knew the temptation, but he also listened to his own depths and to the heart of his Father. He died still hoping against hope in people. And for many his hope and his com-mitment bore fruit. There is in the depths of every human person an open-ing towards truth and a connaturality with love. Jesus believed that. He saw it in himself. He wanted to set it free in everyone. He would never 490/Review for Religious, July-August 1989 give up hope in people's changing and being converted; he would go to death for the sake of that hope. A truly Christ-based spirituality calls for a commitment in 'hope to people. The Outcome Our active ministry and lifestyle, therefore, whether we be priests, religious or laity, present us with infinitely nuanced temptations tO,work other than in love--to compi:omise and to find our way around our con-sciences, to choose :power in one or other of its many forms, to lose pa-tience with the apparent ineffectiveness of non-violence and love, to avoid the risk of intimacy and to settle instead for subst.itutes. We lose confidence in our God who gives meaning, sometimes too late and only beyond the grave, to our striving, for integrity and authenticity, and we prefer more tangible results and accountable successes, even at the price of what we know we are really called to be. We know we can give lip- ~service to forgiveness but not have the energy.to follow up its conse-quences. We feel the enticing attraction to settle down, to make life com-fortable, to. be "realistic." It is by facing these temptations, recognizing them and naming them, and then by choosing instead to be authentic, to trust, to forgive, and to hope that we work out our salvation and come to savor that life in abun-dance that Jesus wishes to share with us. As we respond to life as Jesus did, we know his peace and his joy, and we get in touch with the "blessedness" he spoke about in the be-atitudes. There is ai~ irrepressible quality to these experiences. We do not have to force 6urseives to find them. They come of themselves. They do not depend on circumstances beyond our control, and require no "fly-ing- carpet" ride through life. Like Jesus who could thank his Father even on the night he was betrayed, like Paul who could write: ". as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so, through Christ, does our conso-lation overflow" (2 Co 1:5), we, too, find the unexpected presence and power of peace and joy within us. Even in the very moments of our "re-producing the pattern of his death," we "know Christ and the power of his resurrection" (Ph 3: 10). It might seem to be paradox, but our ex-perience knows it to be truth. The victory that Jesus has won over evil, and in Which we share, is not a victory in which everything has been done already for us. The vic-tory won for us by Jesus means that we now have within us the resources to face whatever comes and to. triumph in love. It is a victory in which we actively participate, and through-which, precisely by our own par- Reproducing the Pattern of His Death / 491 ticipation, we ourselves become more fully alive and more authentically human. No one can do that for us, not even Jesus. But he does do it with us as we allow his Spirit scope to breathe within us. Mission to the World A~ccording tO John's gospel, on the night of his resurrection Jesus ap-peared,~ to his disciples and commissioned them to do what he had done: As the Father sent me, so I am sending you (Jn 20:21). Jesus had been sent to engage with evil and to overwhelm it with truth ~r~ love. He showed the way to us. The Epistle to the Hebrews writes: As it was his purpose to bring a great many of his sons into glory, it was appropriate that God . . . should make perfect, through suffering, the leader who would take them to their salvation (Heb 2: 10). The same Epistle consequently recommends: Let us not lose sight of Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it t6 perf6ction (Heb 12:2i. We follow the path that Jesus has trodden. He has commissioned us to show the same way, to others. That is our mission: we show the way, and we show it by living it ourselves. We cannot live the lives of others for them, any more than Jesus could live ours. But we can show them and, by our love, we can empower them, as Jesus has done with us. Though we might all feel embarrassed to say so, really our mission to others must be summed up in the words of St. Paul, "My brothers, be united in following my rule of life" (Ph 3:i7), or, more succinctly, "Take me for your model, as I take Christ" (1 Co I1:1). Like Peter we would all like to follow in the footsteps of a popularly acclaimed and universally accepted Christ. But there is no such Christ. Like the two sons of Zebedee, we would like to share in a victory where struggle is not necessary. But there is no such victory. Jesus has won the victory, but it was won on the wood of the cross. We share in his vic-tory, but we do it as we drink his cup and are baptized with his baptism (see Mk 10:35-40). As with the mission of Jesus, so, too, then, with our own: the suc-cess of our ministry will be counted not by the numbers of those who may listen to us or cooperated in our projects but in the ones who are encouraged by our example and empowered by our love to engage with the evil in their own breasts and meet it in love. It will be found in those 492 / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 who allow the failures of their lives and of their relationships and the .fail-ure of their projects to touch them, and who feel the consequences of those failures, but choose, whether wearily or resolutely, to continue to reach out lovingly in trust, in forgiveness, and in hope. Jesus' message really is one of love, of peace, ofjgy, and of happi-ness- but not as the world understands and gives them. His message is one of victory, but of victory through the Cross, even for his followers. They have to engage with life and they have to let life touch them. It will hurt, not because God wants it that way, but because of the sin of the world and the mutual destructiveness in which it takes shape. This sin of the world can be overwhelmed. Jesus has made it possible. But where it touches people, there people have to engage with it. Conclusion A truly Christian spirituality is one that responds to life as Jesus did. That is the only Christian spirituality. "All I want is to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection, and to share his suffering by repro-ducing the pattern of his death. In this way I can hope to take my place in the resurrection of the dead." As we treasure our experience and pon-der it in our hearts, as Mary did, I believe that our pondering can fruit-fully be done only by relating it to the pattern of his death. Other values and~insights will modify many forms of this basic Chris-tian spirituality; various lifestyles will determine the concrete shapes that it takes; and wisdom and experience will dictatehow best to ponder and to get in touch with those spiritual depths of Jesus. But all must be based firmly on him or they will fall short of salvation. And he wants so much that we share hig experience of life and taste that life "to the full!" Work and Leisure: Our Judeo- Christian Foundations Melannie. Svoboda, S.N.D. Sister Melannie Svoboda, S.N.D., is currently dividing her time between teaching and writing. She recently completed six years as novice director. Her address is Notre Dame Academy; Route one, Box 197; Middleburg, Virginia 22117. Recently I was asked to give a workshop on leisure and spirituality. As part of my research, I looked in the Reader's Guide to Catholic Periodi-cals to see what already had been written on the topic within the past few years. When I looked up the word leisure I was surprised to find very few articles listed under it, but I noticed, there were many articles under Lent. I looked up the word play and found even fewer articles under play, but there were many under Plato, and planned parenthood. Next I tried the word celebration. I found several articles under celebration but many more under celibacy, cemeteries, and censorship. Finally, I looked up the word fun. I found no :articles under fun, but plenty under fund raising, fundamentalism,, and funerals. This experience made me realize how little has been written on the topic of leisure and other related topics which, I feel, are fundamental to our Christian faith. This article will discuss the Judeo-Christian un-derstanding of leisure. It will begin with an exploration of the biblical understanding of the nature of work. Then it will look at the tradition of the Sabbath, the great 'leisure day,' and show how a balancing of work and leisure is essential to a healthy Christian spirituality. Let us turn first to the book of Genesis. What does Genesis tell us about work? It tells us many things. First, it says something extremely significant: God works. This concept of, a working God was something of an oddity among the peoples of that time period. Many other civiliza- 493 494 / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 tions envisioned their gods as beings who did not work. Their gods lei-surely romped around on mountain tops or lay around sleeping all day. But the Hebrews, based on their unique experience of God, saw their God differently. At the beginning of Genesis they posted a large orange sign with big black letters on it: Go~)AT WORK. But Genesis tells us something even more revelatory than the fact that God works. It tells us why God works. He works not because he has to work; he works because he wants to work. His work, creation, is not for his sake; his work is for others' sake, for humankind's sake, for our sake. In Genesis, God chooses to work because he chooses to share some-thing of himself with someone else. So already in the opening pages of Scripture, work is seen as being intimately associated with the act of self-giving-- a self-giving for the benefit of others. A third thing we notice in the creation narrative is how God works. He seems to enjoy it! God is not portrayed as someone who hates his job or finds it mere drudgery. We do not see God complaining, for exam-ple, at the beginning of the fourth day, "Darn it! Today l've got to make those stupid birds! I'll never get them to fly--I just know it!" On the con-trary, God takes delight in the work process, pronouncing creation, the product of his labors, as "good" at the end of each day. In Genesis, we also notice that leisure or rest is an integral part of the work process. God rests not merely on the last day; he rests, he takes "time off," between each day of creation. The ending of each day brings closure to that particular day's activity. The seventh day, the Sab-bath, is just a longer rest period--an entire day of complete rest. But throughout his work, God has been taking other rests--"mini-Sab-baths"-- all along, Rest or leisure is part and parcel of the work proc-ess. Leisure, like work, must be good if God himself does it. In the creation account, Adam, like God, works. "The Lord then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it" (Gn 2:15). Work is not a punishment for Adam's sin. It is one of the ways Adam is made in the image of God, A working God means a working Adam. Adam's work is a sharing in the creative activity of God. Adam's work, like God's work, consists primarily in cultivation and care. But something happens to work after the Fal!: Adam sweats and Eve had labor pains. Genesis 'seems to be saying that after their act of dis-obedience, Adam and Eve suffered some serious consequences. All work--whether bringing forth new I.ife through farming or giving birth-- would now necessarily involve fatigue, frustration, and pain. Work and Leisure / 495 In summary, then, Genesis presents some fundamental attitudes to-ward work. Work is .good--even God works. Work is an act of self-giving directed toward the good of others. It consists primarily in culti-vation and care, in the bringing forth of new life. Work should basically be a joyful activity even though it often entails fatigue and pain. Rest or leisure is good, too. It is somehow integral to the work process. Altfiough Genesis beautifully describes work and leisure, it is in Exo-dus and Deuteronomy that we learn more precisely where leisure comes from and, more importantly, what leisure is for. For the Israelites, the concept of leisure is identified with the tradi-tion of the Sabbath. This tradition is expressed explicitly in the fourth commandment: "Remember to keep holy the Sabbath Day" (Ex 20:8). The key phrase in that commandment is "keep hol~,." What exactly does "keep holy" mean? The remainder of that commandment explains what it means: "Six days you may labor and do all your work,, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, your God" (Ex 20:9-10). The implication is that to "keep holy" means "not t.o work." But wl~y were the Israelites directed not to work on the Sabbath? The reason is found in Deuteronomy's version of the fourth command-ment. This version adds the following: Remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and out-stretched arm; because of this, the Lord God has commanded you to keep the Sabbath (Dt 5:15). The reason for not working is found in the words "because of this." What does the "this" refer to? It refers to the exodus--the great work of Yahweh. In other words, the Israelites were directed not to work on the Sabbath in order to take time to remember their deliverance from bond-age in Egypt by a powerful yet loving God. In his book, Confessions of a Workaholic, Wayne Oates says that the chief motive for keeping the Sabbath was gratitude to God. It is not fear of God, nor the need to hew the line of ritualistic practice. Rather it is the motive of gratitude for deliverance from slavery, grati-tude for the gift ~f freedom. ~ But the Israelites were to do more than to set aside a day on which to thank God for their freedom--as important as that is. They were to express their gratitude to God by the way they used their precious gift of freedom during all the days of the week. Just as God had used his free-dom to free the Israelites from slavery, so, too, were they to use their 496 / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 freedom to free others from slavery--the slavery of ignorance, poverty, hunger, ill health, fear, old age or whatever form that slavery took. In his book, Flowers in the Desert, Demetrius Dumm, O.S.B., has written a beautiful section on the Ten Commandments. His treatment of the fourth commandment is especially relevant here. He sees the fourth commandment as a "transitional commandment"--one that comes af-ter the three commandments that are concerned with the Israelites' rela-tionship with God and one that comes before those six which govern the Israelites' relationship~with each other. The first three commandments called the Israelites to affirm the mystery of God, writes Dumm. They called the Israelites to trust in God's basic goodness, to see him not only .as powerful but as loving. The last six commandments direct the Israel-ites to affirm that same divine mystery present in every human being by the fact that he or she is created by God. Durum writes: Every creature deserves, therefore, to be respected because of its share of divine mystery. One of the most powerful tendencies of man is to eliminate mystery in his life because it cannot be controlled and thus seems threatening to him. The most natural way for man to control the mystery in :creation is through his labor. The Sabbath commandment or-ders the Israelite to interrupt his labor every seventh day as a reminder that that labor is intended by God to release the mystery in life and not crush it.2 What does all of this have to do with me personally and with my Christian faith? Maybe we can answer that question by taking a few "lei-sure moments" to reflect on these questions. What is my. attitude toward my work? Do I see it as a way of self-giving for the benefit of others, or do I view it as a drudgery or, worse yet, asia punishment? Is my work a way of earning God's love, or is it an expression of gratitude for God who loves me already? Is my work a way of serving others, or has it become my sole means of earning the esteem and respect of others? How is my work helping to free others from slavery--no matter what form that slavery might be? In my work, do I respect the divine mystery in creation and people, or is my work an attempt to control or manipulate creation and people? Have I become a slave to my work, or am I free to let go of it at times? Can I, for example, freely walk away from my work when lei-sure calls me to praye~, to relaxation, or to sleep? Have I learned the art of bringing each day.to a close, entrusting the fruits of my labor to the Lord? Do I set aside regular.time for leisure--for "mini-Sabbaths" and for longer ones? Do I use this "wasted time" to remember God's deliv- Work and Leisure / 497 erance.of me from sin, to reflect on his goodness to me, and to thank and praise him for his power and love? Can I just be with God or must I always be doing for him? Do I find the Lord both in my work and in my leisure? Do I take time to be with others, to enjoy their company, to play with them, to appreci-ate the divine mystery present in them? Or is the only time I am with others when I am working with them or for them? In conclusion, then, we have seen how a healthy balancing of work and leisure is essential for our Christian faith. In his article, "The Spiri-tual Value of Leisure," Leonard Doohan explains how work and leisure manifest our faith in God. Unlike those who profess some religions, we claim to believe that God is near to us, in us, in others, in the wonders of the world. Only in lei-sure dowe prove this belief by giving time to developing attitudes nec-essary to meet him. We also believe we can experience God personally and in community, but does our faith show this to others in the life we live? Are we "working" tourists who look at everything and see noth-ing, or do we pause, appreciate, wonder, and praise God who, we be-lieve, reveals himself in creation? It is not by work that we earn salva-tion, but in leisure that we appreciate that it is gift. Leisure is the cor-rective that puts work in perspective and shows forth our faith.3 NOTES ~ Wayne E. Oates, .Confessions of a Workaholic: The Facts about Work Addiction (Nashville: Abingdon, 1971), p. 35. 2 Demetrius Dumm, O.S.B., Flowers in the Desert: A Spirituality of the Bible (New York: Paulist, 1987), pp. 14-15. 3 Leonard Do6han, "The Spiritual Value of Leisure," Spirituality Today, 31 (June 1979), p. 164, Positive Wellness: Horizon for Religious Experience Jerome A. Cusumano, S.J. Father Jerry Cusumano, S.J., is a member of the Japanese Province of the Society of Jesus. He is currently engaged in studies at Arizona State University. His address is B:'ophy College Prep; 4701 N. Central: Phoenix, Arizona 85012. In this article I show how the integrated approach to health as exemplified in the holistic health movement can serve as a vehicle for opening a per-son's consciousness to the religious dimension of life. Since the goal of holistic health is "positive wellness," it is meant for those in good health who wish to achieve even better health, those who, in other words, are no longer focused on the negative problems of health such as giving up smoking, controlling drinking, losing weight, and so on. Holistic health encompasses at least the following four dimeffsions: nu-trition, exercise, awareness, and lifestyle. Since numerous self-help books as well as much scholarly research have more than adequately ex-plicated what is essential to each particular dimension, I do not intend to repeat here what has been better said elsewhere. However, I will briefly summarize what seems to be generally accepted in each area in order to establish a basis for the reflections which follow. 1 will treat the four basic factors in ascending order of importance. Nutrition Quantitatively, one should systematically "under-eat" in such a way as to maintain his body weight at the level it was when physical growth was completed, usually about the age of twenty. Qualitatively, one's diet should be based primarily on whole grains, raw vegetables, and fresh fruit. The diet should be, in yogic terms, sattvic, that is, nei- 498 Positive Wellness / 499 ther making the body sluggish nor stimulating it, but rather leaving it en-ergized and calm at the same time. Since one needs energy for exercise and calmness for awareness, a sattvic diet disposes the body properly for the next two dimensions of holistic health. Exercise Good food will not be adequately assimilated if the blood and oxy-gen circulation of the body are poor; conversely, a body kept in good condition will be healthy even on a poorer diet. Thus exercise is more important than nutrition for positive wellness. One needs to do some form of stretching exercises every day in order to maintain flexibility and alignment in the musculo-skeletal frame. What is gained during exercise times should be maintained at other times by sitting and standing in pos-tures which keep the shoulders and pelvis in line and the back straight. One also needs some form of daily aerobic exercise done for at least twenty minutes a session in order to revitalize and refresh the cardiovas-cular and respiratory systems by increasing the oxygen supply in the blood. The amount of time one devotes to exercise serves as a good gauge of one's desire for positive wellness. Nevertheless, even exercise is of less importance for positive wellness than the next dimension, aware-heSS. Awareness A period of at least twenty minutes a day should be devoted to some method of systematic awareness in the form of relaxation or meditation. The possibilities range over the spectrum from Feldenkrais's body aware-ness exercises or Jacobson's progressive relaxation method done in the prone, position, through the measured movements of Tai Chi done stand, ing and walking, to the one-pointed focusing of zazen or yoga done in the more demanding postures such as the full lotus. ~ Turning one's con-scious powers in on oneself while in slow m6vement and/or remaining still for a good length of time not only revitalizes the conscious mind and relaxes the body, but also provides a place where unconscious material, such as negative emotions, can .surface and be disposed of through aware-ness. While aerobic exercise refreshes one through an expenditure of en-ergy, in awareness one gathers his energy, concentrates it, and so re-charges himself. Furthermore, while it is possible to both eat well and exercise enough, and yet still lead a harried life, this is not possible for one who wishes to practice awareness regularly. The daily period set aside for purposefully quieting both body and mind through awareness presupposes a lifestyle conducive to such an activity. Thus awareness is 500 I Review for Religious, July-August 1989 both the support of and the fruit of an ordered lifestyle which is the fourth and most important dimension for positive wellness. Lifestyle In proportion as a stressful lifestyle has deleterious effects on the physical and psychical organism, so also a relaxed lifestyle is the single most important factor in promoting positive wellness. Such a lifestyle in-cludes a job ohe feels satisfied with and sees as worthwhile, as well as a personal life that has sufficient rest, satisfying human relationships, and some absorbing interests. Requisite to such a lifestyle, however, is a I . clear conception of the purpose of one's life, which serves as an implicit criterion by which one can judge which activities are to be undertaken and which relationsh.ips fostered. With a relaxed lifestyle and a clear pur-pose in life a man may reach a state of positive wellness even though he does not scrupulously follow all the directives with regard to nutri-tion, exercise, and awareness. Actually, a clear grasp of the purpose of one's life gives a meaning to striving for positive wellness. "Maintain-ing good physical and mental health is like preserving two fine instru-ments which can be used to carry out the purpose of life . Thus it is clear that the basis of holistic health lies in one's understanding the purpose of his life and learning how to achieve that purpose."2 Religious Experience The state of positive wellness, achieved and maintained by the inte-grated approach of the holistic health movement as summarized above, can dispose one to be more receptive to the transcendental and religious dimension of life. One becomes accustomed to an habitual state of vigor, energy, and wellness which hecan no longer do without. To use Glas-ser's term, one has developed a positive addiction to health itself. This addiction to positive wellness has its source in the good feelings gener-ated through the "spiritualization" of one's body by the increased vi-tality attained through conscious effort and the "physicalization" of one's mind by the greater calmness achieved through attention to bodily processes. At peak moments this dual action issues into a harmony which Glasser call the PA (positive addiction) state. "In the PA state the mind flows with the body. The two cease completely to be antagonistic to each other and blend into one. The state of positive addiction to health is experienced as a drive from within oneself, but not an instinctual drive such as that for sex, nor as a drive stemming from the force of one's will. One feels that he has tapped into another force which is now pulling him to higher levels of Positive Wellness health. Yoga terminology calls this force the Self as opposed to the self. However, it might just as well be conceived in terms of health itself. The healthier one becomes, the more he makes contact with the body's own innate drive to good health and experiences the power of that drive. He gradually opens his consciousness to the life force within him and allows it to work of itself. The healthier one becomes, the more he can tap into this life force. Paradoxically, this means that one becomes a "spiritual" person not by ignoring the body in the pursuit of higher interest, but rather by infusing the body with spirit, that is, by directing one's consciousness to the health of the body in such a way as to energize it as fully as possible. As a result one becomes a more suitable vehicle to channel the energy of life within himself and to others. "As you continue to develop your channels of energy, you will notice differences in your entire being, and these will likewise be observed by those around you, who also benefit from the increase in energy flow."4 Energizing the body through sustained, systematic daily care of one's health puts one into contact with a Life greater than one's own. It is this Life, more than individual will power, which makes possible the main-tenance of a sane lifestyle and consistent attention to nutrition, exercise, and awareness demanded for positive wellness. For some this may be the first step to recognition of transcendent being. For others it may be a preparation through a new experience of satisfaction from taking respon-sibility for one's life. As Bloomfield says, "There is joy in taking full responsibility for your health and happiness.''5 Children at play, fully alive and vibrant, exemplify the joy he speaks of. Theirs is a joy spring-ing from the flexibility and agility of their bodies as well as from the care-free state of mind in which they live. Paradoxically, Ardell notes, it is only as one grows older that he can fully enjoy youth.6 Conclusion If pursued within the holistic health framework the current quest of many for youthfulness and positive wellness can become the occasion for opening oneself to transcendent and religious experience. For positive wellness makes one aware of the source of Life itself. NOTES ~ M. Feldenkrais, Awareness Through Movement, (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), E. Jacobson, You Must Relax, (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1980). 2 S. Rama, A Practical Guide to Holistic Health, (Honesdale, Pennsylvania: The 50~. / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 Himalayan Publishers, 1980), p. 13. 3 W. Glasser, Positive Addiction, (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 56. '~ R. Shames, The Gift of Health, (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), p. 140. 5 H. Bloomfield, The Holistic Way to Health and Happiness, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 274. 6 D. Ardell, High Level Wellness, (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), p. 67. Full Circle Morning did come! Rise with the full-day Sun! Work begun. Thy Will be done! Day half-spent, Rest in the noonday Sun! Renewed, refre~shed--run! Day-work, toil done. Daystar, noon, setting Sun. Rest! Be still! Tomorrows come . . . maybe? Glory be! Walter Bunofsky, S.V.D. 1446 E. Warne Avenue St. Louis, Missouri 63107 Striving for Spiritual Maturity: Ideals as Obstacles Wilkie Au, S.J. Father Wilkie Au, S.J., has been working in psychological counseling and spiritual direction. He served for six years as novice director for the Jesuit California Prov-ince. He may be addressed at Loyola Marymount College; Jesuit Community; P.O. Box 45041; Los Angeles, California 90045-0041. The metaphor of a journey captures well what most adults come sooner or later to realize about spiritual and psychological growth: it is a never-ending series of changes and struggles. In a word, it is a hard road to travel. It is tied to the ways we respond to the crises of human life. These crises are both predictable and unpredictable. The predictable ones have been outlined in the literature of deve!opmental psychology, which de-picts the pattern of adult growth, not as an undisturbed straight line, but as a zigzag process often full of setbacks and frustrations. The unpre-dictable crises are easily recognized: sudden illnesses, career disappoint-ments, interpersonal misunderstandings, the loneliness of ruptured rela-tionships, the separation of death or divorce. When faced with the strug-gles that are the inescapable conditions of growth, people frequently ask themselves: "Why go on? Why keep trying, if there is no chance of suc-cess? What difference does it make any way?" The frustrations of seem-ingly endless change--new jobs, new residences, new relationships-- force many to question whether it is worth all the effort. These are nei-ther theoretical nor abstract questions. They emerge from the concrete experience of striving to grow in holiness and wholeness. These quan-daries frame the struggle to love as Jesus commanded. An effective spirituality today must strengthen the individual's com-mitment to the ongoing process of sanctification and maturation. It must 503 ~i04/Review for Religious, July-August 1989 do this by reminding us that God is always close by with divine love and power to help us in our struggles. As followers of the risen Christ, we are called to believe that "the power.by which life is sustained and in-vited toward wholeness is no human creation and abides and remains steadfast even in a world where death does have dominion over every individual." ~ As in other human journeys, we reach the destination of our spiri-tual pilgrimage only gradually. However, there is a paradoxical nature to the spiritual sojourn. While alive, we will never fully reach our goal of union with God and others. Yet, being on the spiritual path is already a way of attaining that end. God is to be enjoyed not only at the end of the search, .but all along the way. The Christmas story of the magi illus-trates this truth. God was present to them not only when they joyfully arrived at the cave in Bethlehem, but also in the original stirrings that sent them off in search of the promised Messiah. God's presence was also experienced in a guiding star that directed them through dark nights and in a dream that warned them of Herod's threat. They experienced God's support, too, in the encouragement they gave each other through-out an uncharted search that took them miles from home. God is more present to us than we think. Our search for union with God is life-long, often a strenuous trek punctuated by dark passages. If we are to persevere, we must take cour-age in God's abiding presence all along the way. Even as we are travel-ing towards God as destiny, Emmanuel is already with us in manifold ways. The disciples of Jesus were once given a dramatic lesson about how Christ is ever-present. One day they were crossing the Lake of Gali-lee when a fierce storm enveloped their little boat. Frightened by vio-lent winds, the apostles were stricken with panic. Suddenly, Jesus ap-peared to them walking on the water. He told them, "It is I. Do not be afraid" (Jn 6:21). Jesus then calmed the storm, and the boat quickly came to shore. The significance of Jesus' words is clear when we look at the original text. The Greek has Jesus saying "ego eimi" which liter-ally means "I am." In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the phrase "ego eimi" is used as a surrogate for the divine name (Ex 3:14). It is Yahweh's response to Moses' question, "Who shall I say sent me?" In placing these words in Jesus' mouth, John ex-p~' esses the early Church's belief in the divinity of Christ. The good news affirmed in this Johannine passage is identical to that contained in Mat-thew's story of the magi: God is always with us in our journeys through life. This truth must permeate our consciousness, especially when our Striving for Spiritual Maturity / 505 fragile boat is rocked by waves of worry and troublesome torrents. In our fear and confusion, we need to recognize the presence of the risen Jesus drawing near to us to still the storm. Calm will descend on us when we hear Jesus say, "Do not be afraid. It is I." Letting Go of Flawless Images ~The journey metaphor most accurately reflects reality when it is seen as a zigzag pattern i'ather than as an uninterrupted straight line. Human growth is not a process that moves relentlessly ahead in a single direc-tion. It, rather, is a mixture of progressions and regressions. At times, we experience forward movements; on other occasions, slips indicate re-gress; and sometimes, no matter how much effort we expend, we find ourselves at a standstill, seemingly stuck at a developmental plateau. Is this wrong? To the contrary. Accepting the jerky aspect of growth and relinquishing the illusion of a forever smooth-flowing journey is not only necessary but will bring serenity to our striving for maturity. Failures should not produce despair; temporary plateaus need not trigger paraly-sis. The expectation of a flawless journey is counterproductive because it misrepresents the process of developmenta~l growth. It also distorts the truth of what it means to be a human being. A view of the human person which does not acknowledge that sinfulness casts a shadow on every person is unrealistic. Such a notion can also have harmful effects. Our sinful condition renders us radically weak. In an iron'ic way, not to admit to our weakened capacity leads us to a sense of perversity and guilt rather than worthiness and self-acceptance. The refusal "to recognize the persistent ambiguity and the final impotence of our lives tantalizes us with an optimistic promise of self-evolved be-coming," concli~des theologian LeRoy Aden. It also "stands in danger of giving us a sense of failure and despair to the extent that we do not achieve it. ,.,2 Thus, failure to acknowledge the shadow aspect of human personality, diminishes, not enhances, self-esteem. Aden elaborates on the harmful effects of a naively optimistic view of human development in the context of a critique of Carl Rogers, the father of client-centered therapy and a major influence in the field of pas-toral counseling. Aden objects to a basic hypothesis of client-centered therapy: the belief that persons have within themselves the ongoing ca-pacity to reorganize their lives in the direction of maturity and fulfill-ment if the proper psychological climate is present. Concretely,. this hy-pothesis presupposes that if the counselor communicates empathy, warmth, acceptance, and genuineness, a client wil~ naturally begin to manifest behavior that enhances the true self. According to Aden, "Ro- 506 / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 gers' faith in the individual's ability to choose the good is absolute. He entertains no qualifications. He allows no doubts.In fact, therapists who begin to question the hypothesis and who shift to another mode of inter-action only confuse the client and defeat their own purpose."3 Roger~ clung tenaciously to his belief in the individual's absolute ca-pacity for constructive and enhancing behavior. Aden recounts an inci-dent in Rogers' life in which he nearly destroyed his own psychic health by maintaining at all cost this article of faith. Rogers once dealt with a very disturbed woman who continually demanded more of him--more time, more warmth, more realness. Although he began to doubt his own adequacy and to lose the boundaries between himself and the client, Ro-gers was very reluctant to let go. Finally, when he realized that he was on the edge of a personal breakdown,he swiftly referred the client to a psychiatric colleague and left town for an extended period. He eventu-ally sought therapy to overcome feelings of complete inadequacy as a therapist and deep worthlessness as a person. According to Aden, this "event shows that Rogers would doubt him-self as a therapist and as a person before he would question his basic faith in the individual.''4 Rogers had provided his disturbed client ~,ith un-derstanding and acceptance over an extended period of time. Neverthe-less, she got progressively more dependent and sicker, bordering on psy-chosis. Her behavior explicitly challenged the very foundation of his the-ory. Thus, it was easier for him to doubt his own worth as a clinician than to reexamine the linchpin of his therapeutic creed. Belief in the in-dividual's indomitable capacity for ongoing growth and actualization had to be maintained at all cost. Forgiveness: The End Point of Life Carl Rogers has made many contributions to pastoral counseling, but his trust in the absolute ability of individuals to grow continually toward fulfillment is a harmful assumption for Christians. It contradicts Christi-anity's deepest insight into the human person as radically good, yet bur-dened by sinfulness. This sinful condition impedes our struggle for growth in holiness and maturity~ It often leads to imperfect fulfillment. Unlike the contemporary tendency to absolutize fulfillment as the basic truth and the final goal of human existence, Christian faith reiterates the good news proclaimed by Christ: forgiveness is the endpoint of human life. Thus faulty fulfillment and incomplete development need not worry those who trust in the forgiving love of God. In thelend, we will fully enjoy the unconditional acceptance of God, not because we are flawless, Striving for Spiritual Maturity / 507 but in spite of our imperfections. Our merciful God's gift of forgiveness means that we "cannot and need not measure up to any conditions of worth."5 When forgiveness, and not fulfillment, is seen as the endpoint of our lives, we can live with greater acceptance of our weaknesses and with greater hope in God's power to complete what grace has started. No longer will the ambiguity of our fulfillment judge us, nor the impo-tence of our efforts condemn us. With St. Paul, we are "quite certain that the One who began this good work" in us "will see that it is fin-ished when the Day of Christ Jesus comes" (Ph 1:6). As Aden states beau-tifully., the promise of ultimate forgiveness "allows us to be incomplete and yet complete, estranged and yet related, distorted and yet fulfilled." When our journey reaches its termination, we will be wrapped in God's merciful arms, like the prodigal son. Because "you are forgiven" will be the final words we will hear, we are freed from the compulsive need to actualize perfectly our human potential and are released from the guilt that accompanies falling short of that goal. "Success and failure are accidental," writes one spiritual writer. "The'joy of the Christian is never based on . . . success but on the knowledge that (one's) Redeemer lives."6 Thus, the author encour-ages us to learn to li~,e peacefully to the end of our life with a certain imperfecti6n: The Lord will never ask how successful we were in overcoming a par-ticular vice, sin, or imperfection. He will ask us, "Did you humbly and patiently accept this mystery of iniquity in your life? How did you deal with it? Did you learn from it to be patient and humble? Did it teach you to trust not your own ability but my love? Did it enable you to under-stand better the mystery of iniquity in the lives of others?' ,7 Our lack of perfection will never separate us from God because the Lord's forgiveness is always perfect and total. What to Do Until the Messiah Comes Until that day of Christ Jesus, when we will receive "the perfec-tion that comes through faith in Christ and is from God," we are called to strive for the goal without ceasing (Ph 3: 9-10). We are to imitate St. Paul in his deep yearning "to have Christ and be given a place in him" (Ph 3:9). We have not yet won, but are still running, trying to capture the prize for which Jesus captured us. We too must forget the past and strain ahead for what is still to come. We must, in Paul's words, race "for the finish, for the prize to which God calls us upward to receive in Christ Jesus" (Ph 3: 14). Review for Religious, July-August 1989 Paul's expression of the Christian goal is beautifully poetic. We must look to a contemporary spirituality, however, to translate it into real-life terms. As a guide to Christian living, a spirituality' must spell out the prac-tical dimensions of that vision. It should keep the Gospel ideals eve~r be-fore the Christian sojourner. These ideals are meant to help Christians finish the spiritu~.l race and to receive a place in Christ. They can be use-ful in our spiritual odyssey. Like the stars, they may never be reached; but they are useful to steer our lives by. Ideals can hinder us, however, and discourage us from trying when the fear of performing poorly para-lyzes us. The French saying, "The best is the enemy of the good," il-lustrates this attitude of fearfulness. Ideals impede our spiritual progress when we use them as an excuse for mediocrity, thinking to ourselves: "Christian holiness is something for saintly people, not ordinary folks like us. ". Furthermore, ideals are injurious when they lure us into think-ing that we can earn God's approval by doing everything perfectJy. Paul refers to this as seeking a perfection that comes from the Law rather than from faithin Jesus (Ph 3:9). When striving for holine~ ss deceives us int6 thinking that we can stand in pharisaical judgment over others, we have been seduced by pride. Finally, ideals are harmful when they lead to cyni-cism and disillusionment. That no one fully lives up to espoused values should not undermine the importance of having high aspirations. The fail-ure of sincere efforts should not disillusion us, but the apathy of not try-ing should appall us. Dreaming is not the same as doing. Ideals should inspire us to act, not merely to dream. Thoughts of what could be tomorrow should lead us to do what we can today. When lofty aspirations lead to romantic pre-occupation rather than realistic pursuits, they retard our spiritual devel-opment. In a letter to a friend, C. S. Lewis makes this point nicely: We read of spiritual efforts, and our imagination makes us believe that, because we enjoy the idea of doing them, we have done them. I am ap-palled to see how much of the change which I thought I had undergone lately was on!y imaginary. The real workseems still to be done. It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation of the spiritual life with the life itself--to dream that you have waked, washed, and dressed and then to find yourself still in bed.8 No matter how grand our ideals, they can only be achieved through small but steady steps. As the Chinese sage Lao Tze stated centuries ago, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." We must bear this wise saying in mind as we let the star of idealism lead us, as with the magi, incompanionship to the Messiah. Striving for Spiritual Maturity / 509 Activity and Passivity in Spiritual Striving Striving for spiritual maturity is paradoxical. It requires us to be si-multaneously active and passive. We are called to exert our efforts and use our God-given talents to develop ourselves. And, at the same time, we must remember that our efforts alone can never bring us to holiness and wholeness; only God's grace can effect our transformation into Christ. While we ultimately cannot save ourselves, we must neverthe-less cooperate with divine grace. We must dispose ourselves to be re-ceptive to the sanctifying action of God's touch. In our spiritual journey we have to negotiate a delicate passage between the Scylla of presump-tion and the Charybdis of despair. Presumption, according.to St. Tho-mas Aquinas, is "an unwarranted dependence upofi God."9 It is the at-titude that God will do it all and that our efforts are not important. Fos-tering irresponsible inaction, it keeps us from doing our part. Despair, on the other hand, is losing hope in God's saving power. It stems from an exclusive reliance on our efforts, without any trust in God's power to make up for Qur human limitations. It results from thinking that eve-rything depends on us alone. Only ongoing discernment can help us main-tain the right balance in our spirituality between personal effort and trust-ing reliance on God. Both dynamics are encouraged by Scripture. Many New. Testament passages attest to the need to rely on God's power in order to bear spiritual fruit in our lives. A beautiful expression of this is the Johannine image of God as the vinedresser. Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. The Father prunes us so that we might bear fruit (Jn 15: I-2). Spiritual growth is passive in the sense that purification and progress are the direct results of God's action upon us. The evangelist Mark reinforces the centrality of God's action in his parable about the seed growing by itself. This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man throws seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know. Of its own accord the land pro-duces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, he loses no time; he starts to reap because the harvest has come (Mk 4:26-29). Notice that the farmer's work is described with a minimum of words. The emphasis falls on the mysterious process of growth. Just as the earth produces fruit spontaneously, so God's reign comes by divine power alone. Once the seed is planted, the result is as sure, as dependable, and as silent as the forces of nature. Stage by stage--first the green shoot, then the spike of corn, and then the full grain in the ear--the seed of S10 /Review for Religious, July-August 1989 God's reign grows to harvest in a way that the farmer does not under-stand. This parable reminds us that nature (God's creation) contains a power which humans do not make or~direct. Similarly, God's grace will bring about conversion and growth in us in ways we may not understand. In human lives, the Spirit of Jesus is the divine power that brings God's kingdom from seed to harvest. When we remember that God's 'work-ing in us,.can do more than we can ask or imagine' (Ep 3:20), we will be protected from the pride and anxiety that stem from the myth of total self-sufficiency. But Scripture also stresses the importance of human effort. Luke's gospel strongly urges followers of Christ to translate words into action. "Why do you call me Lord, Lord," asks Jesus, "and not do what I say?" (Lk 6:46). Everyone who comes to me and listens to my words and acts on them ¯ . . is like the man who when he built his house dug, and dug deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But the one who listens and does nothing is like the man who built his house on soil, with no foundations: as soon as the river bore down on it, it col-lapsed; and what a ruin that house became! (Lk 6:47-49). Jesus not only challenges us to practice his teachings, but also warns that our very hearing of his word must be done with care. In the parable of the sower and the seed, he describes the fragility ofthe seed of God's word. If it is not received by the right soil, it will not take root and grow. Grains that fall on the edge of the path represent people who have heard the word of God, but have it stolen from their hearts by the forces of evil. Seeds that fall on rock are like people who receive the word in a superfi-cial way, and give up in time of trial. Those that fall in the midst of thorns are Christians who let worries, riches, and pleasures of life choke their growth, preventing it from reaching maturity. Grains that fall in the rich soil signify those of generous hearts who have let the word take deep roots in themselves and have yielded a harvest through their persever-anc. e (Lk 8:11-15). Emphasizing the importance of human effort in dis-posing the soil of the inner self for receiving the word, Jesus concludes with a warning: "So take care how you hear" (Lk 8: 18). While Mark's parable of the seed growing by itself stresses the power of God actively bringing about growth, Luke's parable emphasizes the necessity of en-ergetic human cooperation. Another Lukan parable about a fruitless fig tree highlights the im-portance of personal effort. When its owner realized that his tree had Striving for Spiritual Maturity been barren for three years, he ordered his gardener to remove it. In-stead, the caretaker pleaded, "Sir, leave it one more year and give me time to dig round it and manure it: it may bear fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down" (Lk 13:8-9). We too are called to actively tend the seed of God's word so that it can take deep roots in our souls and can bear fruit for the world. A classical biblical text used to illustrate the need for docility to God's formative action in our lives is Jeremiah's visit to the potter. Watch-ing the artisan working at his wheel, the prophet noticed that he contin-ued to shape and reshape the clay until he created what he was envision-ing. Then the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah as follows: "House of Israel, can I not do to you what this potter does?. Yes, like clay in the potter's hand, so you are in mine, House of Israel" (Jr 18:1-6). While the image of the human person as clay being shaped by the divine Potter testifies beautifully to God's active involvement in our spiritual development, it should not be used to justify excessive passivity or in-fantile irresponsibility. While trying to be malleable to the fashioning in-fluence of God, Christians are called to take adult responsibility for their growth. This means taking active means to deepen one's love for God and neighbor. Activity and passivity must coexist in dynamic tension, if we are to remain.spir!tually healthy. In describing her Jeremiah-like visit to a pot-ter at work in Provincetown, situated at the tip of Cape Cod, a recent writer shed light on the active-passive dimension of spiritual formation. The observer discovered that the artist,, a woman-of more than seventy years, was a wise person as well as a potter. After conveying her belief in the direct relationship between the pliability of the clay and its strength, the artisan added, almost as an aside, "If you can't bend a lit-tle and give some, life will eventually break you. It's just the way it is, you know." ~0 The visitor noticed that the potter worked with both hands: one placed inside, applying pressure on the clay; the other on the out-side of the gradually forming pot,. Too much pressure from the outside would cause the pot to collapse, while too much pressure from the in-side would make the pot bulge outward. The old potter spoke wisely about life: Life, like the pot I am turning, is shaped by two sets of opposing forces ¯ . . Sadness and death and misfortune and the love of friends and all the things that happened to m~ that I didn't even choose. All of that in-fluenced my life. But there are things I believe in about myself, my faith in God, and the love of some friends that worked on the insides of me. ~ 512 / Review for Religious,. July-August 1989 Like Jeremiah, this modern day potter sheds light on the Lord's ways of dealing with us. The Lord who calls us to be holy is also the One who forms us into the image of Jesus, the living icon, of God. This divine Art-ist works on us with two hands: one shaping us from the inside and an-other molding us from the outside. Like the clay pot, we need to be mal- . leable. And, paradoxically, our pliability will give us strength to per-severe ac~tively in the process. Knowing how to bend a little will keep us from breaking. Experience as Manure in the Spiritual Field In the spiritual project of transformation into Christ, effort is what counts, not unremitting success. Acclaiming the value of practice in spiri-tual growth, the Eastern guru Chogyam Trungpa speaks of the "manure of experience and the field of bohdi." ~-~ Bohdi represents the search for enlightenment. If we are skilled and p~tient enough to sift through our experiences and study them thoroughly, we can use them to aid our en-lightenment. Our experiences, 'our mistakes, and even our failures func-tion like fertilizer. According to Trungpa, to deny or cover up our errors is a waste of experience. When we do not scrutinize our failures for the lessons they contain, we miss an opportunity. What appears to be use-less trash contains potential .nutrients for life. But, to convert our defi-ciencies into positive value, we need to pile them on a compost heap, not sweep them behind a bush. Hiding failure is to store it like rubbish. "And if you store it like that," the guru remarks, "you would not have enough manure to raise a crop from the wonderful field of bodhi.''~3 In a parallel way, experience can be said to be manure in the field of Christian development. Like manure, past experiences must be plowed into the ground to enrich the inner soil of the self, making it more re-ceptive to. the see.d of God's word. Then, we will reap an abundant har-vest base~l on our perseverance. Mistakes need not ruin our spiritual jour-ney, if we learn from them. Even saints like Augustine of Hippo and Ig-natius of Loyola learned how not to make mistakes by making many. The Lord who desires our holiness can bring good out of everything, can work in any and all of our experiences to transform us. In our fragmen-tation, we rejoice in the power of God to bring wholeness. If we bring our weakness before the Lord, humbly asking for the help of enabling grace, we can then trust that the Lord will produce an abundant harvest. Spiritual Growth Through Trial and Error The ideals of Christian spirituality cannot be achieved without im-mersing ourselves in the messiness of nitty-gritty experience. Learning Striving for Spiritual Maturity how to love God and others in an integrated way comes only through daily practice. The way of trial and error, not book learning alone, will teach us how to fashion a dynamic and balanced life in which there is room for solitude and community, ministry and leisure, autonomy and intimacy, personal transformation and social reform, prayer and play. Striking the right balance is a highly personal matter. No one can attain it for us; we must discover it ourselves through personal experience. As theologian John Dunne states, "Only one who has tried the extremes can find this personal mean., on the other hand, trying the extremes will not necessarily lead to finding the mean. Only the [person] who perceives the shortcomings of.the extremes will find it. 14 Blessings for the Journey Achieving wholeness and holiness requires traversing the difficult ter-rain of real life with all its challenges and crises. Even at the end of a lifetime of effort, we will still need to be completed by the finishin~g touch of the divine Artist. God will .then bring to completion in us the eternal design of persons destined to love wholeheartedly. While await-ing that unifying touch of divine grace, we pilgrims are called to follow the way of Jesus. And the Lord who walks with us assures that we will always be blessed. The blessings sent our way may not always be enjoy-able, but they will always nudge us forward in our efforts to love as God i'ntended. °~ A rabbi was once asked, "What is a blessing?" He prefaced his an-swer with a riddle involving the creation account in chapter one of Gene-sis. The riddle went this way: After finishing his work on each of the first five days, the Bible states, "God saw that it was good." But God is not reported to have commented on the goodness of what was created on the sixth day when the human person was fashioned. "What conclu-sion can you draw from tha~?" asked the rabbi. Someone volunteered, "We can conclude that the human person ~s not good." "Possibly," the rabbi nodded, "but that's not a likely explanation." He then went on to explain that the Hebrew word translated as "good" in Genesis is the word "tov," which is better translated as "complete." That is why, the rabbi contended, God did not declare the human person to be "toy." Human beings are created incomplete. It is our life's vocation to collabo-rate with our Creator in fulfilling the Christ-potential in each of us. As the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart suggested, Christ longs to be born and developed into fullness in each of us.~5 A blessing is anything that enters into the center of our lives and expands our capacity to be filled with Christ's love. Therefore, a blessing may not always be painless, but Review for Religious, July-August 1989 it will always bring spiritual growth. Being blessed does not mean being perfect, but being completed. To be blessed is not to get out of life what we think we want. Rather, itis the assurance that God's purifying grace is active in us, so that our "hidden self (may) grow strong" and "Christ may live in (our) hearts through faith." In this way, we will with all the saints be "filled with the utter fullness of God" (Ep 3:16-19). NOTES I Sam Keen, "Manifesto for a Dionysian Theology," in New Theology No. 7, eds. Martin E. M~irty and Dean G. Peerman (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 97. 2 LeRoy Aden, "On Carl Rogers" Becoming,"Theology Today XXXVI:4 (Jan. 1980), p. 558. 3 lbid, p. 557. 4 Ibid. 5 lbid, p. 558. 6 Adrian van Kaam, Religion and Personality (Denville, New Jersey: Dimension Books, 1980), p. 15. 7 lbid, p. 15. 8 C.S. Lewis, The3, Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963), ed. Walter Hooper (New York: The Macmillan Co., Inc. 1979), p. 361. 9 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Latin Text and English Translation, Introductions, Notes, Appendices, and GIossaries,~Vol. 33 (Blackfriars, with New York: McGraw-Hill and London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1966), II-II, Q 21, a I, ad 1. ~0 Paula Ripple, Growing Strong at Broken Places (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Ma-ria Press, 1986), p. 68. ~ Ibid, p. 69. ~z Chogyam Trungpa, Meditation in Action (Boston: Shambhala, 1985), p. 26. ~3 Ibid. ~4 John Dunne, The Way of All the Earth (New York: MacMillan Company, 1972), pp. 37-38. ~5 Meister Eckhart once said: "What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hund'r~ed years ago and I do not also give birth to the son of God in my time and in my culture?" As quoted in Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bear & Company, 1983), p. 221. The Shifting Order of Religious Life in our Church Maryanne Stevens, R.S.M. Sister Maryanne Stevens, R.S.M., is currently Assistant Professor of Theology at Creighton University. She had served as formation director for the Sisters of Mercy, Province of Omaha from 1977-1982. Her address is Department of Theology; Creighton University; California at 24th Street; Omaha, Nebraska 68178. The difficulty of thinking thorough questions about religious life today should not be underestimated. Such reflection is often complicated by the fact that those straining to see and articulate what the shifts in relig-ious orders mean for their future in our Church are often themselves mem-bers Of religious congregations. Thus, the efforts to make sense of vowed living can be blindedoby both self-interests and past~ ways of understand-ing. Th6 blindness feels to me like the fuzzy sight of Mark's blind man who could see people "but they look like trees, walking" (Mk 8:24). It was only after the man "looked intently" that he was able to see ev-erything clearly. This ~article is more an attempt to describe the "tree walking" than to asser(any.de~finitive conclusions. Two circumstances in particular have sparked my own reflections on the changing order of religious life. First, we continue to have members "leaving." They do not leave in the dark of night as they did in the 1950s; rather many stand before us in assembly or community saying that their integrity prevents them from +ontinuing to live the vowed life, but they wish always to remain ""sister" or "brother" to us. Many are not immediately interested in a different lifestructure, for example, marriage, personal wealth, and so forth; rather, they are no longer able to connect celibacy, poverty, and obedience to any understanding of their life. Secondly, those within religious communities primarily vested with 515 516 / Review for Religious~ July-August 1989 the role of discerning vocations and incorporating new members are no longer called the "formation-vocation" team. They are now referred to as the "membership team." Some of these new membership teams are made up of non-vowed associates of the community~ as well as vowed members. The job description of these teams is unclear even though it includes the discernment of vocation and the incorporation of new mem-bers because vocation and membership have taken on new meanings. Vo-cation is not necessary to the "vowed" life and membership does not necessitate professing the vows. The new terminology and the alteration in the constitution of the teams are profound symbols of a "changing order." These two realities--members continuing to remain attached to con-gregations even though they "leave" and the development of "mem-bership teams"--can allow for i~ew insight into how, with decreasing numbers,,religious orders will continue the legacy of their foun~lresses or founders, women and men whose gifts have been confirmed as a vivi-fying influence in the Church and the world.2 These gifts or charisms are the animating characteristics for the style of life, witness, and apostolic action within the congregations. Membership within a congregation has meant at its most basic level that a person'believes he or she is called to re-offer the charis~m of the founder to the contemporary world. This offering is buttressed by the belief that the gifts of the founder or foun-dress are not time-bound and will continueto contribute to a further ap-proximation of the reign of God in history. Thus the Sisters of Merc~y (the "order" to which I belong) present the foundation for their exis-tence as the desire to continue the story of a nineteenth-century Irish woman, Catherine McAuley, in theChurch and in the world. This par-ticular goal is expressed by tfieir fourtti vow of gervice and through the wording of their present Constituiions which point to the ideals of their congregation as well as the way they presently understand their congre-gation and words the way they presently understand th6ir mission as a community within the Church. By the vow of service we commit ourselves to exercise the spiritual and corporal works of mercy revealed to us through~ t~,h.e life of Jesus. En-riched by his love, healed by his mercy and0taught by his word we serve the poor, sick, and ignorant. To celebrate our corporate word in a discordant society requires the courage of a deep'faith and interior joy. We believe that God is faithful and that our struggle to follow Christ will extend God's reign of love over human hearts. We rejoice in the continued invitation to seek jus- The Shifting Order of Religious Life tice, to be compassionate, and to reflect mercy to the world.3 The thesis of this article is simply that the clues for how to continue the legacy of a particular founder or foundress will be found by looking intently at how the tradition of the founder or foundress continues to be lived, seeking to confirm all those ~'ho focus their discipleship of Christ through the prism of his or her life and legacy. In order to amplify this thesis, I will discuss eight understandings that result from an attempt to "look intently," and then present several ideas intended to help the "re-ordering" of religious communities. But, first, one caveat is necessary. No matter how blind men and women religious feel as they grope toward an understanding of their .lives, they must trust that they faithfully embody the tradition of the par-ticular foundress.or founder. When I was in formation work in the 1970s, I was fond of telling the newer .members that the Sisters of Mercy were made up of the names in the current directory and the names on the tomb-stones in our cemeteries. This was the most concrete way of describing what they were getting into~companionship with persons who were char-acterized by a variety of shapes, sizes, quirks, personalities, sickness, gifts, skills, weaknesses, ideas, and so forth--but with one thing in com-mon: they all believed they were called to focus their discipleship through the story of Catherine McAuley. It seemed essential that each member act toward the other with the belief that each sister was a part of this tradition and that all were searching for what was necessitated by the call to appropriately renew the story (or tradition) in the light of the sources of Christian life, the original inspiration behind the community and the changed condition of the times.'* At that time I was pointing the novices toward the vowed members of the group, the Sisters. Now the names in our directory include asso-ciate, that is non-vowed, members who have made a contract with us in which we promise our support for their attempts to live the tradition of Catherine McAuley and they promise specific ways in which they will contribute to the offering of Catherine's gifts to the Body of Christ. There-fore, wl~ether we be Sister JaneSmith, R.S.M. or Jane Smith, Associ-ate of the Sisters of Mercy, we must believe in and support one another as we seek to embody the tradition of our foundress. Each of us brings only a part of the story, thus each person who focuses his or her disci-pleship through the same tradition helps focus the present and the future "order" of one's specific congregation. Part I The following are my understandings of religious life today: I ) Men and women in religious orders are disciples of Jesus. We be- 511~ / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 long to a pilgrim people searching for the reign of God. We are blinded by sin and limitation as we seek to discover the ways of our God as re-vealed through Jesus. We learn how to follow Jesus in our times and in our circumstances. The primary mode of ou'r learning is experiential. It is complex and it calls us to struggle with our daily realities to see anew w,hat patterns in 6ur lives need conversion. The greatest threat to our dis-cipleship is to think that we have learned enough or to reduce the reign of God to the glimpses of glory which we see in our own time. Liberation theology is probably the clearest indication to today's Church that it is still on pilgrimage. Begun with Moses' vision of a God who had heard the crying out of the Israelite slaves, reiterated in Han-nah's canticle that praises God as one who will raise up the lowly, and reborn in the 1970s through the efforts of those struggling to see God and understand God's ways from the experience of twentieth-century op-pression, this theology reminds us as a Church that we are still learning not only how, but where to find Jesus.5 2) Members of religious orders are those who are disciples of a par-ticular charismatic leader recognized by our Church. Recognizing that our stories do not belong to the time and culture of the founder or foun-dress, the charisms of these characters and their companions are a way of expressing discipleship in Christ. To be members ofa religious con-gregation~ is to take one way of interpreting discipleship of Jesus, namely the life of a founder or foundress, as a way to focus discipleship. Again, congregational members are disciples of this way of focusing, that is, there is no profession, ministry, office, or role, no direct service or in-stitutionalized ,ministry, that exempts members frorri continually learn-ing what it means to pattern their lives or focus their discipleship of Je-sus through the prism of this great man or woman. All of our lives are mystery, not in the sense that they defy explana-tion, but in Gabriel Marcel's sense that the more we are involved in them, the more inseparable we become from their depth.6 Our Church has confirmed the legacy of some men and women as mysterious, that is, there is within these persons a depth of discipleship that calls and be-comes involving for others. Nano Nagle, Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, Elizabeth Seton, Angela Merici, and Catherine McAuley are some of these people. Their gift to the Church is mysterious to us, and that is why they can properly have disciples. The more their lives, their stories are considered, the more insight we gain into what it might mean to be a disciple of Christ in our time. Thus, many religious congregations acknowledged with Vatican II The Shifting Order of Religious Life that reflection on what it meant to follow Christ and to plead the radical nature of the Gospel through the focus on their particular founder or foun-dress meant that they must be learners of new ways. The call for renewal necessitated a refounding and a reordering of these congregations that con-tinues into the present.7 This challenge reminds many in a very profound way that they are indeed learners. 3) We are co-dikciples. There can be no doubt about this. Baptism incorporates us into a community of disciples. As members of religious communities, we are co-disciples, learners with the other clergy and la-ity. Appropriating Gospel values and finding patterns of life that typify holiness are calls received by all within the Christian community, whether they be married, single, or vowed. The sixth-century understand-ing of Pseudo-Dionysius who envisioned the grace of God as descend-ing through three hierarchical angelic choirs into two earthly hierarchies of clergy and laity respectively was normative until Lumen Gentium's statement that "in the Church, everyone . . . is called to holi-ness . ,,8 No longer do lay folk stand below those ~who profess the evangelical counsels nor do the latter stand below those who are ordained to the priesthood in the Church. Paul VI reiterated the Vatican Council's hierarchy-shattering words when he said that the whole Church received the mission of Jesus--"the community of believers, the community of hope lived and communicated, the community of love. ,,9 The consideration of volunteers, partners, and associates who claim the life and charism of a founder or foundress of a religious order in our Church as their way of focusing discipleship reminds us that we are co-disciples. These new relationships can intimidate as well as inspire and so we must continually remind ourselves of John Paul ll's challenge to the whole Church to embrace mercy. In Dives in Misericordia, he de-fined Christian mercy as "the most perfect incarnation of "equality" between people., love and mercy bring it about that people meet one another in that value which is the human person., thus mercy becomes an indispensable element for shaping mutual relationships between peo-ple, in a spirit of deepest respect for what is human . ,,~0 4) As members of apostolic congregations, ministry is our reason for existence. A common life and the vows have constituted the order of re-ligious life, but the purpose of this order for apostolic communities has always been service. Many founders and foundresses wrote words simi-lar to those of Catherine McAuley, the foundress of the Sisters of Mercy, when describing the qualifications for an aspirant to apostolic groups. Catherine stre'ssed "an ardent desire to be united to God and to serve 520 / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 the poor" and a "particular interest" in helping the sick and dying. ~ The rereading of the history of apostolic orders, which was occasioned by the cali of Vatican II to renew, led many congregational members to realize that "order" or common patterns in the style and structure of the lives of men and women who focused their discipleship through the charism of a particular founder, is negotiable, but the reason for the or-der is not. This should help women and men religious to open themselves and their ownership of the legacy of their founder or foundress to those who do not "order" their lives in the same way. If the purpose of the order is service,or ministry, then should those who do not profess the evangelical counsels be excluded? This can be a very challenging ques-tion, because throughout history the only way to claim concretely many of these charisms or legacies was to order one's life through the evan-gelical counsels of poverty, celibacy, and obedience. But, as Dorothy noted in the Wizard of Oz, "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore." Men and wom'en who do not profess these vows are desiring both to minister after the fashion of these great men and women and to receive the sup-port of congregations dedicated to these legacies without maintaining a common living style or divesting themselves of marriage possibilities or ownership of property. 5) It is not order, but mission that describes our lives. John O'Mal-ley, S.J. claims that the history of apostolic religious orders might more properly belong to the history of ministry than to the history of institu-tionalized asceti~cism. ~2 Groups that banded together for the sake of serv-ice presented a whole new trajectory within our Church, as they were a break from the ascetical tradition. However, the Church in its concern to regulate these groups modeled their "order" on the flight of Anthony into the desert in 275 A.D. Many of the great women foundresses, in par-ticular, found their desire to gather others for the sake of service to a par-ticular need frustrated by an order of enclosure, profession of vows, and obedience to an ecclesiastical superior. ~3 For example, the Sisters of Mercy often reflect on the history of Cath-erine McAuley whose companionship with other women grew around their mutual attention to the poor in early nineteenth-century Dublin. In-dependently wealthy, she commissioned the building of a "House of Mercy'r in which women could gather to devote themselves to the relief of suffering and the instruction of the ignorant. She resisted and ex-pressed discomfort about the "order" of the lives of those in congrega-tions of nuns, to the point of abhorring the thought of spending time in the Presentation novitiate to learn the ways of an established canonical The Shifting Order of Religious Life / 591 institute into the Church. However she submitted to the "ordering" be-cause without it her mission would have failed. ~4 The time in which she lived demanded that women engaged in companionship for the salve of service be organized as vowed religious women. Among many active congregations of religious in the United States, especially congregati.ons of women, the question of whether or not to re5 main canonical has arisen. This question is motivated primarily by the difficulty involved in gaining the Congregation for Religious and Secu-lar Institute's (CRIS) approbation for Constitutions and the reordering of "religious" life so that it more properly aids in fulfilling the particular mission of the group. ~5 The question, however, is not whether religious congregations will choose to remain canonical, that is, of some standard within our Church; the question is how their "order" will be specified within the Church,-that is, how will they organize themselves as women arid men embodying the charisms of great founders or foundresses within the Church. Ignoring for a moment the enormous difficulties of dealing with a bureaucratic power structure that often seems less than open to anything irregular, let us look at the question before us. Can we, as disciples of the great founders and foundresses in our Church, make a distinction be-tween vocation to a particular lifestyle or life structure (that is, marriage vows/the choice of single life/vows of poverty, celibacy, obedience) and the vocation to a particular charism and mission within the Church (a deep identity with the spirit and gifts of a particular person who focuses our discipleship of Jesus)? I think that the movements of associate membership, volunteers, part-nership (all of which imply non-vowed varying degrees of membership in religious "orders"), mighi be a tremendously important break within the history of what have come to be called "active orders" in our Church, but these movements will further our ability as a Church to do ministry as baptized disciples of Jesus. 6) One of the most pressing questions for: religious congregations is what life structure or "order of life"facilitates discipleship of Jesus focused through the mission of their founder or foundress. The current documentation abou( the life structure of those called to follow a foun-der or foundress organizes it around the three vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience. Both the Vatican II document on religious life and the 1983 Essentials of Religious Life promulgated by the Vatican Congrega-tion for Religious and for Secular Institutes present the evangelical coun-sels as not only "essential," but also as the basis for the organization 522/Review for Religious, July-August 1989 of life for those in religious congregations. However, both Sandra Sch-neiders and John Lozano, show effectively in their recent and widely read treatments of religious life that the vows cannot be taken as impor-tant in themselves. 16 The vows, if taken at all, need to be placed in the context'of a statement of desire to,pursue the mission of the community, how we promise to accept the responsibilities of this mission in our lives, and how others dedicated to this mission accept us within their group. Furthermore there is more and more recognition (fueled by the relatively new science of psychology) t.hat intimate, committed relationships to per-sons, ownership, and autonomy do not make one less holy. Along with this, New Testament scholars have shown that these counsels do not flow from the gospels as such, but were constructs of our Church at a later time. And, even without Vatican ll's assertion of.the universal call to holiness, experience tells most of those who are presently members of religious congregations that they are no more holy than thos6 who choose to marry and have children, own property, and center their autonomy dif-ferently. Indeed, if men and women are going to structure their lives by pro-fessing the evangelical coufisels, (thus sacrificing the gifts of sex, own-ership, and autonomy), then these must only be given up for the sake of mission. Johannes Metz is perhaps the most clear and the most chal-lenging on this point. In his Followers o.fChrist: Perspectives on Relig-ious Life, he argues that the vows are both mystical and political. Thus, poverty demands not only a protest against the tyranny of having, pos-sessing, and pure self-assertion; it also impels those practicing it into a practical and situational solidarity with those poor whose poverty is their condition of life and the situation exacted of them by society, rather than a matter of virtue. Celibacy, as a state of being radically seized by a long-ing for the reign of God, impels one toward those unmarried people whose not having anyone is not a virtue but their social destiny, and to-wards those who are shut up in lack of expectation and in resignation. And finally, obedience is the radical and uncalculated surrender to God and it impels one to situate oneself .among those for whom obedience is nota matter of virtue but the sign of oppression and placement in tute-lage.~ 7 It is only in this way that these counsels can ever be real signs of eschatological witness. Metz has called vowed communities "shock therapy instituted by the Holy Spirit for the Church as a whole.''~8 Us-ing Metz's ideas, if I read him right, many more of us might call our-selves "associate members" of religious congregations than already do out of integrity. There may be many who want to focus their discipleship The Shifting Order of Religious Life / 593 of Jesus through the legacy of a great founder or foundress, but their ac-commodations to the culture would indicate not that they are lesser dis-c! ples, but rather that the functions they perform and the gifts they bring to the reign of God are not th6se that necessitate or call them to the vowed life. That is, "association" may be more appropriate for those who draw support from the tradition or story of a great founder or foundress and find the mission of that congregation an animating principle for their dis-cipleship. Whereas formal vowed commitment to one another, relinquish-ing of goods and full authoring over one's choice of service might be re-served for those whose discipleship leads them to more radical under-takings. The question here concerns the life-structure (or "order") that has traditionally been associated with claiming followership of a specific mission in our Church. Are there ways to embody the tradition of minis-try defined, by a great founder or foundress in our Church as one group in which some are vowed to poverty, celibacy, and obedience and oth-ers are not? Those who are vowed in the traditional way choose a life-structure which more clearly binds them to the ~reedom to move around and respond to unmet needs among the poor, alone, and oppressed. 19 Those who do not profess the vows but do center their discipleship on the founding charism might be called to a,life-structure which points to-ward a certain stability within a local Church community. One could as-sert that there must be ways to accommodate this diversity because even using the traditional ordering of religious life, which included the vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience as part of the package, I would sub-mit that there are some within religious congregations who have the free-dom to live the vows as Metz proscribes and others whose lives point toward and demand a different modi~ of discipleship. That is, the vows may not be absolutely constitutive of focusing one's discipleship through the charism of a great founder or foundress.2° 7) There is a need for enabling ministers who are not constrained by local church boundaries. According to O'Malley, one of the most re-markable characteristics of the development of active orders is that it in effect created a "church order (or several church orders) within the great church order and itdid this for the reality to which ~:hurch order primar-ily looks--ministry."z~ That is, pontifically erected religious orders en-joy a warrant and exemption from the bishop of Rome to act publicly on behalf of the Christian community wherever the needs to which their charism responds arise. This has, throughout history, caused some ju-ridical as well as cultural complications. However, despite difficulties, 524 / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 needs have been' attended to that would never have been served if it was necessary to rely only on the personnel within local boundaries. As the order of religious life shifts, this is a very important compo-nent of our history that should not be lost. This "pontifical warrant" for the sake of ministry has allowed for tremendous creativity in meet-ing the needs of the people of God. Glimpses of the reign of God are seen in the histqry Of religious orders who have brought literacy, heal-ing, and economic stability to the uneducated, sick, ahd poor around the world. 8) Finally, men and women in religious orders need to realize the gifts they can sh~are with the Church. The emergence of the laity is very new to our Church, and the long history that religious orders have of do-in~ ministry leaves many' within them unskilled at enabling and serving with others. But vowed men and women need to recognize that one of the gifts they may have is 6ffering those who have taken to heart the mes-sagegf the gospel and the spirit of Vatican II both some encouragement and some means for realizing their call. Many who~desire a more intense following of Christ may find that the sp, iritual, intellectual, and apostolic life in their parishes does not encourage these needs and aspirations. Thus, they only feel frustration in their call to maturity and co-responsibility in the Church. Religious orders ha~,e a wealth of experi-ence in thinking through methods for spiritual development and encour-aging other adults in gro~vth. Many find in religious life rich resources of the heritage of the Church not avail~.ble in local parishes. They find a focus and discipline for spiritual growth, a unifiedvision of the pur-pose of discipleship, .and a structured identity with a family in a living tradition of the Church. The challenge is to share these gifts, without thinking people have to become "mini-religious'"l~o acquire them. An extension of our charisms beyond those in the vowed ranks might mean that many more can become effective ministers in the parish and the Church at large. Part II We should not be surprised that a "new ordering" is difficult for us to think about and may even create controversy, dissention, and fear when we attempt to talk about it with one another. Anything new always brings a death to something within the present. Many of us love our way of ordering our .lives. We have lived the vows and known ourselves and our companions to grow through the experiences they have presented to us. We want to share our-lives, extend them, and see the "ordering" that has facilitated our growth be embraced by others. Yet this "order" The Shifting Order of Religious Life / 525 may have to die so that discipleship focused on the great charismatic lead-ers in our Church might continue. We are challenged to refound our con-gregations. This challenge implies the freedom to consider reordering our lives for the sake of mission. From the above understanding flow the following ideas that may help religious congregations to reorder their membership and to reorder the perception of religious life in the Church. I) We, as those who vowed ourselves to the legacy of great founders and foundresses within the order specified by the Church, must continue to think about what that means. Imitating her tongue-in-cheek, I quote the twentieth-century Jewish philosopher, Hannah Arendt, "what I pro-pose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing." The thinking, although allegedly simple, is.indeed quite com-plex and we of.ten try to escape it, precisely because we did it once be-fore during the 60s and the 70s. Even though new life was born in our midst, many of us remember the struggle and some among us have not quite recovered. Thifiking usually means that we risk conversation of sub-stance. And conversation of substance usually implies the same kind of controversy as that depicted in the Gospel account of Jesus asking Peter a question of substance. "Who do people say .that I am?" is the query of the man who had just multiplied loaves and then cured a blind one. Peter knew who Jesus was. "You are the Christ." But Peter did not like the implications of the insight. "Get behind me, Satan" is the rebuke heard when Peter tried to squirm out of the new order specified not only for Jesus but also for his own discipleship. Insights gleaned from thinking and from conversation of substance can be threatening. But we must remember that even more threatening is the possibility that some valuable offerings to the further approxima-tion of the reign of God will be lost if we are unwilling to gain and ex-press the insights of our experiences. If our experience is that the vows do not make meaning in our lives, but the charism of our founder does, then perhaps we must search for other ways to order our lives so as to offer more fully the charism of our. community to the Church. And, if our experience is that others who are not vowed can claim the legacy of our founders, (and more importantly if their experience confirms this), then they must be allowed to do so in an equal fashion. 2) We must effect reconciliation and a spirit of interdependence within our Church, especially with persons and groups claiming the same charism. As stated earlier, a tradition specifying that God's grace flowed toward the non-vowed and non-ordained last was reinforced in 596 / Review foUr Religious, July-August 1989 popular piety until the Second Vatican Council. This distanced many re-ligious from other laity and created a perception ihat vows or ordination meant that one was more graced and clos+r to God'. Men and women in religious; congregations must actively pursue reconciliation with other la-ity because, intentionally or non-intentionally, some disunity has been effected within .our Church. We can take a cue from Paul, ambassador of reconciliation, who was .furious with his community at Galatia when they entertained the idea ofclassifying and categorizing the early Chris-tians. In Christ, there is neithe~ Jew nor Greek, slave nor free person, male nor female, women religious nor lay women, Dominican from Mercy, associate member from more traditionally ordered mem-bers . Often former members of religious orders continue to claim the charism of the order as a way of focusing their discipleship. We must reach out to these people and ask them if,. even though they found the "order" of our lives restrictive, they still find themselves drawn to the charism asa focus. We need to confirm the existence and continuance of the charism in these people, and perhaps just as importantly, let them confirm the continuance of the charism in us. A more concrete way of symbolizing our reconciliation and interdependence on one another is a very simple, yet awkward thing. We need to re-form our vocabulary so that "sisters" and "brothers" does not refer to a closed group of vowed women or men. Just as many have committed themselves to the use of gender inclusive language, we need to change the language specific to our communities, so that "sisters and brothers" becomes a way to refer to all, vowed and non-vowed, who find themselves bound to the same charism. 3) Within our working places, we must announce what inspires us. We must claim our founder or foundress as inspirations, as stories that aid our belief in and discipleship of the Christ. Many people look for a way to focus and sustain their belief, and there appear to be few heroes of a depth able to sustain followers in our contemporary life. Since many of us have been inspired by and nurtured in the founding spirit of a great man or woman disciple of Christ, we must share the gift. We must let others know what moves us, inspires us, and keeps us going as disciples in a world where the odds against the fullness of God's reign dawning seem to be mounting. Perhaps we need ways to be again inspired and again encouraged in our own focus before we will feel enthusiastic enough to inspire others. In many cases, our associates are formally rethinking and reaffirming The Shifting Order of Religious Life / 527 their commitments each year. They renew their covenant with the leg-acy of the community, and they reconsider and recommit themselves to their association with others who share the same focus. Might we not learn from them something about animating our own commitments by using this model? Let us not merely resurrect the passivity of receiving an appointment card with our job and the provincial's name on it, even though there was important symbolism there. Let us every year rework and represent our covenant with the legacy of our founder or foundress. Let us reconsider and recommit ourselves to the implications of disci-pleship and association with others who share the same mission. These understandings and recommendation are initial forays into a very difficult, yet timely, topic. They are intended to spark further thought and discussion. Although I doubt there is danger of them being considered a "last word," let me close with a few lines from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. They reflect, 1 think, what it means to see trees walking, to be fuzzy in our sight, and what it means to face this period of time as religious men and women in our Church. These are only hints and guesses Hints, followed by guesses, and the rest Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought, and action. The hint half guessed, the gift half understood is Incarnation. Here the impossible union of spheres of existence is actual, Here the past and future Are conquered, and reconciled . -~-~ NOTES ~ An associate member is defined for the purposes of this article as one who wants to share in the life and apostolate of a religious institute and to become a member to a certain extent. "They are members associated and not incorporated by profes-sion. For a discussion of the variety of such groups and their notation in the new code of Canon Law, see Elio Gambari, Religious Life According to Vatican II and the New Code of Canon Law, (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1986), pp. 625-635. Also, David F. O'Connor, "Lay Associate Programs: Some Canonical and Practi-cal Considerations," REview For~ REt.~;~ous 44, 2(March-April, 1985), pp. 256-267. 2 How to continue the legacy of the founder or foundress or how to continue the mis-sion of the congregation is understood to be the underlying concern of those who e.xpress dismay of the declining numbers in religious congregations. 3 Sisters of Mercy of the Union, Constitutions (Silver Spring, Maryland, 1986), nos. 29-30. Most active congregations use wording similar to this to describe their mis-sion. 521~ / Review for Religious, July-August 1989 4 This describes the call to religious men and women from the Second Vatican Coun-cil, See Perfectae Caritatis, the "Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Relig-ious Life," no. 2 in Walter Abbott (ed.), The Documents~ of Vatican !I (The Amer-ica Press, 1966)." " 5 For a concise description of liberation theology by two of its most challenging pro-ponents, see Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, Introducing Liberation Theology (Ma-ryknoll: Orbis Press, 1987). 6 See his Being and Having, (New York: Harper Torchbook edition, 1965), p. I 17, 145. 7 For some initial strategies presented to and used widely in the early 1980s by men and wom,en religious struggling with the call to '~refound," see Lawrence Cada et al, Shaping the Coming Age of Religious Life, (New York: Seabury Press, 1979). s "The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church," in Abbott, no. 39. 9 Evangelii Nuntiandi, "On Evangelization in the Modern World (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1976). no. 15. ~0 "Rich in Mercy," (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Catholic Conference,. 1981), no. 14. ~ 1836 letter to a parish priest in Nass, Ireland, Quoted in Kathleen O'Brien's Jour-neys: A Preamalgamation History of the Sisters of Mercy, Omaha, Province (Omaha, Nebraska: Sisters of Mercy,1987), 6. ~20'Malley conceives of "active orders" as a '~critically important phenomenon in the history of ministry claiming "apostolic" inspiration," rather than as the insti-tutional embodiment of an ascetical tradition traced back to Pachomius. See -Priest-hood, Ministry, and Religious Life: Some Historical and Historiographical Consid-erations," in Theological Studies, 49 (1988), p. 227. ~3 The sweeping 1298 decree of Boniface VIII (repeated by Pius V in 1566) com-manded that "all nuns, collectively and individually, present and to come, of what-soever order of religion, in whatever part of the world they may be, shall henceforth remain in their monasteries in perpetual enclosure." Insight into the unfortunate ef-fect of this decree throughout the centuries following on women's attempts to or-gaoize associations for ministry can be gleaned from reading histories of women foun-dresses, such as Angela Merici, Nano Nagle, Mary Ward, and Louise de Marillac. ~'~ For more information about Catherine McAuley, see Sr. M. lgnatia Neumann, R.S.M., ed., Letters of Catherine McAuley (Baltimore: Helicon Press Inc., 1969) and M. Joanna Regan, R.S.M., Tender Courage: A Reflection on the Life and Spirit of Catherine M~Auley, First Sister of Mert3, (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988). ~5 Note the history of the Glenmary Sisters of Cincinnati or the Los Angeles I.H.M.'s in addition to the more recent stories of Agnes Mary Monsour, Arlene Violet, and Elizabeth Morancy, all Sisters of Mercy unable to continue their ministries as vowed women ifi religious congregations. Consider also the present renewal attempts of the Association of Contemplative Sisters. For brief surveys of these cases, see "Inside- Outsiders" chapter three of Mary Jo Weaver's New Catholic Women: A Contempo-rary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) . ~6 See Sandra M. Schneiders, New Wineskins: Re-imaging Religious Lift, Today (New York: Paulist, 1986) and John M. Lozano, Discipleship: Towards An Understand-ing of Religious Life (Chicago: Claret Center tk)r Spiritual Resources, 1980). Also see O'Malley, "Priesthood," p. 249 tbr the same point from a different perspec- The Shifting Order of Religious Life / 599 tive. ~7 J.B. Metz, Followers of Christ: Perspectives on the Religious Life (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), chapter 3. ~8 lbid, p. 12. 19 Being "bound to freedom" appears at first sight to be an oxymoron, however the phrase is an attempt to reflect the demands made by the vows. ~0 Of interest in this regard is that even though various documentation from our church and the recent writings on religious life avert to the vows as important, if not essential, the Fifth Interamerican Conference on Religious Life, inclusive of leader-ship from men and women religious of North and South America, did not name the vows as essential. In a preparatory paper, the Leadership Conference of Women Re-ligious named mission, community, freedom, ministry, participative government, pub-lic witness, apostolic spirituality, spirituality of the founder, and ecclesial character as characteristics of religious life. None of the descriptions of the above included the vows. See The Role of Apostolic Religious Life in the Context of the Contempo-rary Chu'rch and World: Fifth Interamerican Conference on Religious Life (Ottawa: Canadian Religious Conference, 1986). 2~ O'Malley, p. 236. 22 T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), lines 212-219. Monasticism: A Place of Deeper Unity M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O. Father Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O., well-known for his many publications on prayer and the contemplative life, may be addressed at Assumption Abbey; Route 5; Ava, Missouri 65608. In 1976 for six months I had the privilege of living among the Orthodox monks on Mount Athos, the semi-autonomous monastic republic in north-ern Greece. There the Gospels are the law of the land and day-to-day liv-ing is governed by the writings of the great spiritual fathers of the past, most notably those of Saint Basil, Archbishop of Caesarea, named the Great. I noted the remarkable affinity between the life lived on the Moun-tain and that lived by the monks of Saint Joseph's Abbey in the United States, from whence I came. The one great difference that struck me was the way lay visitors were incorporated into the life and worship of the monks. It was evident that there was no gulf between the life and wor-ship of the monks and that of the ordinary devout member of the Ortho-dox church. Orthodox monasticism is at the heart of the Church and all the rest of Church life is deeply influenced by it. In Western Christianity, monasticism is further removed from the life of the ordinary church member. Yet the historical influence of the monas-tics can not be denied, even among those Christian Churches which have largely disowned monasticism. Catholics generally revere monasticism, especially the more contemplative variety, and hold it in reverence as something vital to the life of the Church. The Second Vatican Council affirmed this strongly. Quite generally Catholics frequent monastic guest houses and retreats and find there something that speaks deeply to them. Protestant Christians from such contacts are beginning to reclaim this part of the common Christian heritage. The Anglican or Episcopal church 530 Monasticism and Unity/531 has been in the forefront in this. But the most notable Protestant monas-tery is one within the reform tradition--the monastery of Taize which is found in a part of France filled with monastic resonances: Citeaux, Cluny, Molesme. Most re~:ently the General Conference of the United Methodist Church has authorized the exploration of the possibility of es-tablishing an ecumenical monastic community in the United States. ,Monasticism is, then, a widespread phenomenon within the Chris-tian community and is becoming ever more present. It would be difficult to exaggerate the role of monasticism within some of the other world religions. Tibet, before the recent Communist take over, could have been called, like Mount Athos, a monastic coun-try, more a theocracy than a republic. In many Buddhist countries it has been the expected thing that every male would spend sometime within a,.monastery as part of his preparation for life. Although secularization is having an increasing effect within the Buddhist world, the monastic influenc

Issue 1.5 of the Review for Religious, 1942. ; RI::::VII:::W FOR RI::LIGIOUS ' VOLUME I ~SEPTEMBER 15, 1942 NUMBER 5 CONTENTS OUR FRIENDS. THE ANGEl~S---Clement Andlauer. S.J . 290 PAMPIa.~.~ET. NOTICES . " . 300 PATR~:-I~:~'~BEDIENCE IN TIME OF WAR John C. Ford, S.J. . 301 BOOKS . ; -,, AL . 305 THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE--G.Augustine Ellard. S.J . 306 SUPPLYIN.G DAYS OF ABSENCE FROM THE NOVITIATEm Adam C. Ellis. S.J . 322 IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS---The Editors . 326 THE "NEW COMMANDMENT" OF LOVEmMatthew Germing, S.J. 3~7 THE APOSTOLATE TOASSIST DYING NON-CATHOLICS-- Gerald Kelly, S.J . 338 COMMUNICATIONS (On Spiritual Direction) . 34 BOOK REVIEWS-- OUR MODELS IN RELIGION. By Brother Jean-Baptiste. F.M.S. 350 THE SOLUTION Is EASY. By the Reverend Mark Schmid. O.S.B. 350 THE DIALOG MASS. By the Reverend Gerald Ellard. S.J. 35 ! . THIS ROSARY. By the Reverend Anthony N. Fuerst . 353 BOOKS RECEIVED . . . 353 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 28. Visting Relatives . 29. Non-acceptance of a dispensation from Vows . " . . . 354 30. Occupation of Novice during Canonical Year . 35.5 31. Scapular Medal worn by Religious . 356 32. Absence from the Postulancy . 356 33. Re-admission of an ex-Religious . 357 34. Local Superior's power to grant Permissions . 357 35. Dismissal of Postulant without giving Reason . " . . ~357 ,THE LETTERS OF SAINT BONIFACE . 358 DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE OF INTEREST TO RELIGIOUS 359 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, September, 1942. Vol. I, No. 5. Published bi-monthly: January, March. May, duly. September. and November, at The College Press. 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, KanSas. by St. Mary's College, St. Matys. Kan-sas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as se~ond class matter January 15, 1942, at the Post Office. "Topeka. Kansas. under the act of March 3. 1879. Editorial Board: Adam C. Ellis. S. J., G. Augustine Ellard, S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J. Copyright. 1942, by Adam C. Ellis. Permission is hereby granted for quotations of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price: 2 dollars a year. Printed in U. S. A. Our Friends, The Angels Clement Andlauer, S.3. A MATERIALISTIC age such as ours is embarrassed when confronted with the attitude of. St. Francis of Assisi toward nature. To hide their discomfort, moderns often accuse him of exaggerated sentimentality ~t0ward creatures. To St. Francis every creature; ~vhether animate or inanimate, was a brother o~ sister. No object was so low that it did not merit his love and p~otection, his reverence and praise. Tide world around him was one huge family of which he wa~s a member, and in that family circle he rejoiced to recognize his kin, no matter how infe-rior or even repulsive they might be in themselves. The thing that made St. Francis feel at home with the world around him was the consciousness of'a common Father in heaven. All things come from God, and in them all is reflected the perfection of~od. Why, then, should anyone be ashamed to acknowledge kinship Gith tbe wdrks of God's hands? How could. St. Francis help calling the' birds and beasts his brothers and sisters? This is not the exaggerated sentimentality which raises an animal to the status of a human being. It is an intensely human applica-tion of principles of cold logic; the principle that God is the first beginning and last end of all things, the principle that the Divine Essence is th~ model of every created thing. And whether or not we apply these principles in our own lives, the conclusion follows that together with the world around us we form one family. Among the members of our great created family are the angels. Despite the great difference beti~'een their nature and ours, they are our brothers in a higher and truer sense ~han the rest of creation. Even though .their splendor is so 290 - great that they havebeen mistaken by men for God Him-self, still they are creatures. St. John tills us in his Apoc-alypse that an angel spoki~ to him,, "And I fell down before his~ feet to adore him, And he said to me: 'See you do it no~. I am thy fellow-servant, i~nd of thy brethren, w.ho have the testimony of 3~sus. Adore God.'. " Here we have it on,~the word of one of the noblest spirits in heaven that he is our brother. Angels come from the same hand that made us: they are patterned after the same Divine Essence: alone of all other creatures they share with us an intellect and will. If this is not enough to/hake them our brothers, there remains the fact that angels and men are the adopted children of God. Supernatural union with God is our common end; God's grace raises us both to a state above our natures, and God is our mutual Father ifi a .very special and .sublime sense of the word. Our Elder Brothers The angels are our, elder brothers, the more illustrious members of our family. Save for the fact that the Son of God paid us the honor of taking to ,Himself a human; not an angelic, nature, these brothers of ours are far superior, to us. In man is reflected .the existence, the life, the activity of G~d; but all'of these perfections are intimately dependent on matter. Only in the angels do we find these attribufes of God mirrored independently of matter,'~, as they are in God, Because angels exist and act. without the slighest neces-sary connection with matter we call them pure spirits. Our souls are indeed spirits; that is, they are stibstances which have no component parts into which they can be ~separated. They can exist aside from matter, and in their highest operations they depend on matter only as a necessary con-dition. But our souls are brought ifto beihg brily on the 291 CLEMENT ,~NDLAUER condition that matter is rightly disposed. BY their vgry nature they are destined to be united to a material body without which they are incomplete. In their intellectual acts, our souls lean so heavily for support on our bodies that if our sense channels are blockaded by disease or acci-. dent, our mental life is nil or at the best extremely meager. Even a departed soul retains an aptitude for the body it once inhabited. It was~ destined for intimate .union with that body for all eternity, and only when the body rejoins the soul at the resurrection will the complete substance.man exist again. But with the angels it is otherwise. They were never intended to be joined tO matter, or to be depend-ent on it in any way for their life and activity: hence we call them pure spirits. Not only do th~ angels surpass us in the more perfect way in which they show forth God's existenc.e~and activity, but they participate in His power more completely than men. What a struggle'Our poor intellects have in acquiring truth. How faulty is our cognition of many things when we do acquir~ some knowledge of them. Unless an object can be reached by our senses we cannot know it directly but only by analogy. But for an angel it is no Struggle, no matter of syllogizing to attain truth. His cognition is not a mere scratching of the surface to find a similarity. His keen intellect goes to the very essence of things at once and sees ramifications that the wisest men miss after the study of a lifetime. For an angel an examination would not be the painful, ordeal it often-is for us, but just another pleas-ant occupation. These spirits also surpass us .in what we ordinarily call power. It would be a great mistake to imagine that because they have no bodies fhey. have no .powe'r over material objects. Man has become adept in imposing his will on the world .around him by the clever use of the laws of nature, 292 OUR FRIElqI~, THE ANGELS but he must always make use of material instrumentssuch as machines or chemicals. An angel do,es not need a crowbar to move a huge;rock. Indeed, he couldn't use one, since he has no hands. But by his deep insight into the physical laws and by the~ power inherent in his nature, an angel could move that rock more quickly, than we could for all our crowbars. A Valuable Relationship So we see that these brothers .of ours are very. wonder-ful creatures. They are relatives whom we need not be ashamed to acknowledge before the most distinguished meh of ~his earth. It is ratl~er flattering to us to have such hon-orable family connections, but most of us desire, something more substantial than the vicarious limelight of important relatives. If our brotherhood with the angels does nothing more than tickle our Vanity, then it is an interesting but not very.useful doctrine. Therefore~ it is natural for us to ask what, if any', i~ the value of such a relationship with the .angels. Things rarely have any value in themselves; their importance usually comes from their relation to other things. Diamonds would not be valuable if all the rocks in the world were diamonds. But when we look at the world as a whole and see the position that~tha~"pecul.i._ar rock, the diamond, has in the mineral world we under-stand why diamonds are worth money while a piece of sandstone of the same size is worthless. If, then, we look at the position of angels and men in tile plan that God has established in this universe', we begin to understand the very practical use of our brotherhood with the angels. We know that God did not create this world without any purpose in mind. 'On the contrary, reason and faith teach us that God engaged in the work 6f creation to share 293 CLEMENT ANDLAUER His own ,divine goodness with other beirigs as far .as that was possible. Intimately connected "with this end' is the happiness of man, a happindss which in the present order means union with God in the Beatific Vision. Now, while we cannot ~frustrate the first purpose of God, since, by our very existence we share in the perfections of God; unfor- ~tunately for us we can, by the wrong use of our free wills, very effectively prevent God's second and conditional inten-tion from being iealized. Indeed, without special, help from God, it would be extremely difficult-for us not to frustrate this end and thus lose our ~eternal happiness. However, it is hardly_ becoming God's dignity and man's liberty that God should constantly step in to keep us on the right path. A wise employer does not try to handle every department of his business himself. He uses foremen~ and intermediaries. He keeps a watchful eye on the work as. a. whole to see that things go as ithey should, but he leaves his men to work together 'to accomplish the task undertaken. This is what God has done. He designs the whole operation and then allows His creatures to work together, the lower helping the higher, and the higher directing, and watching' over the lower. As St. Thomas ~puts it, "G6d directs lower creatures by the higher;, not because of any defect in His power, but out of the abun-dance of His goodness, that He :might:also give tO creatures some of'the dignity He enjoys as the cause of all things~" Ndw we begin to see the value of our connection with ,the angels. Looking at God's providence 'in its complete-ness we should be surprised if He did not use the :angels to assist us in reaching our last end. If God has communi-cated so,~ much of His infinite perfection to our elder brothersl is it no~t'reasonable .that He should also allow them to assist Him as the cause of' all things? Is it not just what we should expec~ of God's goodness that He would 2§4 OUR FRI~IqD~, THE ANGELS arrange for the ,more perfect members of His family to guard and help the less perfect members? fit Consoling Doctrine -If we have any doubt about the matter, we need but examine Scripture and the teaching of the Church. In the Psalms we read, "For He hath given His angels charge over thee: to keep thee in all thy ways." And again, "The angel of the Lord shall encamp, round about them that fea.r Him; and shall deliver them." It was for this reason that Christ warned the Jews not to despise the little children, those seemingly unimportant mites. "See .that you despise not these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven .always see the face of my Father Who is in heaven." Fathers and theologians have so .insisted on the doctrine that every man has a guardian angel that we cannot doubt this fact without the greatest rashness. The Catechism of the Council of Trent also illustrates this truth in a homely way. It reads, "For as parents, if their children have occa-sion to travel a dangerous way, infested by robbers, appoint persons to guard and assist them in case of attack, so does our Heavenly Father place over each of us, in our journey toward our heavenly home, angels to protect us by their aid and v;ratchfulness, that we may escape the snares secretly laid for us by our enemies, repel their ,horrible attacks on us, and proceed on our journey along the road that leads directly to our end. By their guidance we are saved from the devious wanderings into which our treach-erous foe might betray us, to, lead us aside from the way that leads to,Heaven." Could anything be more consoling than this do(trin~ at thosetimes when we feel so keenly our own weakness? It teaches us not only to hope for but to expect help from creatures that are more like to God. than we are. Obviously, 295 (~LEMENT ANDLAUER r~ we should not look for. such visible and extraordinary ix~tervention in our problems as Tobias had. Our angels will not appear as young men in shining armor tol strike down our enemies as did the angel when Heliodorus attempted to rob the temple of Jerusalem of its-treasures. But we can expect the kind of protection that the valiant Judith received. Inspired by God she went with one maid-servant into the camp of the Assyrians who were besieging Bethulia. For four daysshe dwelt there in the midstlof the dangers of camp life until God delivered Holofernes, the leader of the Assyrians, into her hands and she cut ,off his head. On her return to ]3ethulia unharmed and undefiled she told her countrymen, "Bu~ as the Lord liveth, His angel hath been my keeper, both going hence, and abiding there, and returning from thence hither." No matter how dangerous or difficult our duty may be, the Lord's~ahgel is our keeper and we need have no fear. i ~ Every day our guardian angels protect us from physi-cal dangers, but more important still they ward° off spir-itual dangers. We go through life constantly assaiied by. the spirits of evil who lead us .into sin. ' Against the~se evil ¯ spirits, who have lost none of their great intelligence and power,' we poor Weak men have'to struggle. With~God's grace we can put them to flight; but what a relief i~ is to "have a spirit equally~ powerful or even more powerful fighting¯ on our side. What a consolation in. the hour of death, when our faculties are.weakened and the evil spirits redouble their' efforts fo~. a. last desPerate attack, to have one. who will carry- on. the battle for us.~ This.~isth~ time when our ,guardian angels are most needed, and iri .thi~ hour ~heir whole power is devoted to our protection, i Another officeof our angels is that of counselor. It was an angel that advised Joseph in a dream to take M~ary as ¯ his spouse, to take the Child and fly into Egypt, tol bring 296 OUR FRIENEE, THE ANGELS the Child back again. This is not the way the-angels usually speak to us, but they do speak to us just as truly as if we exchanged "words with them. Frequently they suggest good thoughts to us in such a way that we quite naturally take them for our own thoughts. They urge us to do good works, and we do not realize that we are being~ led by the inspiration of. our guardian angels. In our afflictions they are close .to us to teach us patience and resig-nation, to fill us with faith, to .whisper words ofohope in the good with which God wil~l crown our sufferings. In our joys they rejoice with us, they cause in us thoughts of gratitud~ to God and encourage us to serv~ Him more faith-fully~ There is hardly a Catholic who in some perplexing situation has not had recourse to his angel and received from him the advice he sought. It isa frequent experience with all of us, but because our minds are so easily capti-vated by material objects our counselors sometimes meet stiff opposition in their work. Scripture calls our attention to another duty of the angels: the offering .of our prayers to God--increasing the value of our cold petitions by uniting to them their own ardent supplications. The angel Raphael told the older Tobias, "When thou didst p.ray with tears I offered.thy prayers to the Igord.". And in the Apocalypse St. ~lohn tells us that he saw an angel who mingled much incense with the prayers of the saints and offered them to God. Prayer, decently offered, is always listened to b~ God, but praye~ fervently offered is more acceptable. Our angels a.re so closely united to us that our needs become.as it were their needs, and our petitions become their petitions; and who can say how often the ardent and undistracted prayer of our angels has obtained for us an.answer to our prayers? And so it g6es all through life. From our births to our deaths these untiring guardians stand ready to protect and 297 ,guide us. The task that began with our entrance into this ¯ life ends only when our souls depart from our bodies. As we prepare to enter the door of eternity the Church prays, "Come forth to meet him, ye angels of the Lord, receive his soul and preser.ve itin the sight of the Most High." As the body is carried to its last resting ,place it is accompanied the words, "May the angels escort thee to Paradise. At. thy c.oming may the martyrs welcome thee, and conduct thee, to the Holy City ~lerusalem. May a choir of angels receive thee, and with Lazarus, once poor, mayest thou have rest everlasting." After Death ". Strictly speaking, after the last great battle on our behalf against the powers of darkness the mini,~trations of our guardian angels cease. Now we are beyond the power to be helped by them or to be harmed by the evil spirits. Our course, is run, and all that remains is the decision of the ,ludge. But though their work as guardians is. completed. we can hardly imagine that those who have been so close to us for so many years and who have had such an interest in us will cease to .care for us. To the Throne of God they lead th~ souls of their charges. There they step ~side while the ,Iudge pronounces sentence. If the sentence be Purgatory, once more the angels take up the souls and bear them to that sad prison. Here the souls must remain until their debts .are paid; but it is not unlikely that from time to time they are consoled and encouraged by the visits of their angels. When at last the purified" souls come forth, it is to meet their angels who will lead them to .the company of the Queen of angels and her-Divine Son. What 10ve and hap-piness the soul and its angel will experience°in each Other's company is easy to imagine, for they are now doubIy dear to one another, and together through eternity they will look OUR FRIENDS, THE ANGELS upon the Face of God and marvel at His wisdom that ,united them so intimately. Such then is the way that our Father in heaven has ¯ ordained that our illustrious brothers the angels should assist us in our journey through life. Modern critics call it a pious remnant of pagan superstition, but to anyone who understands the teaching of the Church about the angels it is clear that the Catholic doctrine has no connection with¯ the pagan attempt to explain the mysteries of nature by the workings of capricious; invisible beings. Neither is this teaching a fairy story to delight¯children. As we grow older, life loses many of the pleasant aspects that enter-tained us as Children. We get knocked about and learn hard lessons. But no matter how old or how wise we may become, there always remains the beautiful doctrine of the guardian angels that. thrilled us at seven and consoles usat seventy. How about our side of the picture? How are we to. repay these guardians of ours? To speak of repaying our angels would be to insult them, f6r they act solely because of love, and we, don't repay an act of love with baser cur-rency. But we do have obligations of love, gratitude, and reverence that we cannot dismiss. St. Bernard dwelt upon these duties of ours in one of his sermons; and we can do no .better than to leavethis study of the angels.with his words" in our ears: "What respect this do~trine of the guardian angels should arouse in you, what devotion it should pro-duce, what confidence it should inspire. Respect for their presence, devotionto their unselfish love, confidence in their watchfulness. Wherever you may lodge, or in whatever retired place you may be, respect your angel. Will you dare to do in his presence what you would not dare do before me~ Do you doubt that he whom you do not see is present? Then let us be faithful, let us be grateful to such guardians. 299 CLEMENT ANDLAU'ER They never fail us, they are wise, they are powerful; what' shall we fear? And so, brethren, in God let us love His angels affectionately as our co-heirsin the future and as our protectors and teachers, placed over us by our Father, in this life." PAMPHLET NOTICES In Novena to Our L~dd~ of Victor~ , the Reverend Raymond A. Panda has ar-ranged a number of very appropriate prayers and hymns for congregational 'use. The pamphlet bears the Imprimatur of the Archbishop of Milwaukee: is published by Lawrence N. Daleiden and Co., 218 West Madison St., Chicago, I11. NO price given on our review copy. The Ser~,ant of God. Brother Meinrad Euester O.$.B. is the simple story of the lif~ of a Benedictine Lay Brother whose cause for beatification has been inaugu-rated. 32 pages. For further ir~formation, write tothe Grail, St. Meinrad. Indiana. The Militant~ Christian Vir',des by the very Reverend Ignatius Smith. O.P. is a reprint of an article that appeared in the s~:holarly Dominican Quarterly, The Thomist. Father Smith gives~a compact synthesis of the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on the stern Christian virtues, particularly of.vindictive justice, just anger, righteous indignation, and virtuous contempt 0f crime. These things, contends the author, demand~study now and practic~ both now and in'the peace that is to follow this war. The pamphlet contains~,a brief discussion outlin.¢, and a large number of references tothe works of St. Thomas. 32 pages: sells for 5 cents a single copy, 50 copies for $2.25, 100 copies for $4,00, postage extra in each case. Write to the National Catholic Welfare Conference,, 1312 Massachusetts Avenue, N. W., Washington. D. C. 300 Pa :rio :ic Obedience, in Time o1: War John C. Ford, S.J. IN .THE Catholic scheme .of things all lawful authority comes ultimateiy frdm God. The civil rulers of peoples, whether they be kings or premiers of presidents, whether the~, believe in God or not, and whether they keep His law or'not, are nevertheless His ministers when they act within the bound~ of their a~uthority. St. Paul is not speaking of believers, but of the pagan rulers of his day when he exhorts Christians thus: "Let everyone be subject to the higher authority, for there exists no authority except from God, and those who exist have been appointed by God" (Romans 13, 1). And St. Peter likewise: "Be subject to every human creature for God's sake, whether to the king .as supreme, or to governors as sent through him for vengeance on evil-doers and for the praise of the good. For such is the will of God that by doing go6d you should 13ut to silence the ignorance of foolish men. Live as freemen, yet not using your freedom as a cloak of malice but as servants of God. Honor all men; love the brotherhood: fear God; h6nor the king" (I Peter 2, 13-17). And Our Lord Himself upheld the authority of the Scribes and Pharisees even while He rebuked them, saying: '~The Scribes and the Pharisees have sat on the chair of Moses. All things, therefore, that they .1Father Ford originally wrote this article at the request of the editors of the Boston. Traoeler. It first appeare~d in that publication under date of May 26, 1942. It was later reprinted in the Congressional Record, May 28, 1942, page A 2139. We . reprint it here with the permission, of the publishers. We asked permission to reprint it because, though not written specifically for religious, yet its clear statement of the Christian duties of Obedience and Patr,otism will undoubtedly be Of use to our readers whether for personal meditation or in their apostolic miaistriea.~ED. 301 JOHN C. FOP.D command you, 6bserve and do. But do not act according to their works. " (Matthew 23, 2-3). Citizens, especially in a-democracy, have th~ right and the duty to inquire into the government's policy, to criticize it, to make efforts under.the laws and the Constitution to change it if they disapprove ot~ it. But if they want to prac-tice the Christian virtue of civil Obedience they cannot do any of these things in.a rebellious spirit. They cannot be . so disposed that they intend to disobey when they disap-prove. The obedience of a reasonable man is not blind. No virtue can ignore truth. If I know that something is black I cannot say it is white. But obedience does not depend on speculative approval of commands or the poli-cies behind them. Mu~h less does it depend on approval of the tiersonal characters of those in authority. Obedience sees the authority of God in the ruler. It is the first prin-ciple of united action under lawful authority/. During war time united action is absolutely indispen-sable. And it can be h~d only at the price of sacrifices and h~ardships which will increase rather than decrease as the war goes on. The practice of obedience, then, becomes more difficult just when it becomes most imperative. And if dutiful submission to the cold claims of obedience were our only principle we might easily fail to live up to its ¯ requirements. But there ii another virtue which God has placed in our hearts, the virtue of patriotiim. ~A-new book has juit been published in Boston by the Stratford Company: National Patriotism in Papal Teaching, by Father John Wright. It is an intensely interesting and ,timely work. -The moral pronouncements of the modern Popes on the virtue of patriotism have steered a middle course. That. excessive patriotism which degenerates into nationalism or racism ,is condemned. But condemned likewise is~ the 302 PATRIOTIC OBEDIENCE IN TIME OF opposite error, that a preferential love of one's own country is incompatible ~ith international peace. True patriotism is a well-ordered love of one's fatherland. We are bound, says Benedict XV, to love with asp, ecial attachment thosd with whom we share a commonfatherland. Instinct itself tells us to turn to the fatherland as ~the source of those 'rich cuItural blessings which we have received precisdy because " we are Americans and not of any other nation. True patriotism is part of'the virtue of charity and like religion itself, says Leo XIII, is one Of the ~"two duties of the firit order from which no man in this life can exempt himself," --the love of God and the love of c6untry. Cardinal O'Connell echoed this Papal teaching in his~ Easter message this year when he said: "What America offers and gives and maintains for her citizens is a treasure so pr~ious that it is Sacred. The preservation of that heritage is to every American a sacred trust, and with the possession of that trust goes the sacred obligation to pre-serve, defend, and perpetuate it. That is the meaning, of true patriotism. The defense of our altars and our homes is an bblig'ation which rests upon "e3rery citizen." It is not hard°to obey when,we love what is com-manded. When the motive of sincere love of country.~s added to "the motive of obedience, burdens that otherwise would seem unsuppbr~able become easy to bear. Love con-quers all things. It is a duty theref0re~ to foster this true love of our own United States of America, so that the natural instinct that attaches us to her will become a delib-erate reasonable love of preference permeating all our civic obligations and changing cold obedience to deycoted service. Tru~ patriotism does not mean flag waving. It does not include hatred of other' nations, whether enemies or allies. Nor does it necessarily include love of the admin~s- ¯ 303 JOH~ C. FO~ tration. Administrations come and go. The fatherland endures. But patriotism does e~njoin respect for the execu-tives whom we have chosen to ~atch over our native land. Above all patriotism does not go about shouting: My country, right or wrong! Like obedience it is not a blind but a reasonable virtue. It faces whatever facts there are, and admits the unpleasant ones when they are really facts. But when the love of country ' and fellow countrymen is true and deep, it is. strong enough to stand the strain that. may be put upon it .by governmental policies, or what appear to us t.o be official mistakes. And so in time of war especially there should be a mini-mum of captious criticism of officialdom." We are now fighting for our life. The. heritage of America is at stake. Only united action will preserve it. For we are fighting enemies who are powerful and skilled and "who are also the enemies of all international law and .justice'"- (Cardinal O'Connell). I have often heard the objection made that some of our allies are also the enemies of all international law and jus-tice. Russia is meant. This is undoubtedly a fact and an. ¯ unpleasant one. Russia is not fighting in order to preserve the American way of life.She is fighting, naturally enough, to preserve her own, way of life, which at the moment is the way of totalitarian dictatorship. Com-munistic Russia. is anti-democratic, anti-Christian, and anti-God. " Her principles, therefore, are the very opposite of all that we.mean by American democracy. It would be dangerous folly to close our eyes to this truth. But true patriotism does not have to close its eyes. Those who love their country with true devotion will face the facts realisti-cally, and will not love her any the less because of the cruel n~cessity that has forded her to make such an ally. The American who really loves his country will recognize that 3O4 P&TRIOTIC OBEDIENCE IN TIME OF nedessit.y, will work with all his heart for our own Ameri-" can way of life, and guard it ceaselessly against the insidious infiltration of principles that would destroy it. It is obvious that in a nation as great and diversified as ours, and in a war like this one, absolute harmony of views cannot be expected. There are bound to be differences of opinion as to methods and aims. And so our hope of. united action must be based on something higher, stronger, and more universal than our'individual opinions. I find that higher principle in the obligatory character of the Christian virtues of obedience and patriotism: They teach us to recognize the authority of God Himself in our rulerS, and to respond to an.instinct that God has placed in our hearts by loving with a special 10re the land that gave us birth. When motivated by these virtues even war-like efforts. can be directed too.Almighty God. And indeed if we are to master the unhappy fact of war, rather than allow it to -master us; if we are to keep' it from dehumanizing and brutahzmg us,. as it easily could, we must find something spiritual and Christianizing~in it. The practice of patriotic obedience .out of supernatural motives is the Christian answer to the challenge of war. BOOKS ON TRIAL !~oohs or~ Trial is a review of book-reviews, published periodically by The Thomas More Book Shop. 22 West Monroe Street, Chicago, I11. It promises to be an immense; help to librarians who are desirous of getting "clean, wholesome, and meritorious books." Such is the object of the publishers. A genuine Catholic Action project, it deserves cooperation¯ For further information write to the publishers. 305 The SupernaEural Lit:e G. Augustine Ellard, S.3. THE supernatural life may be defined as a participation~ in the intimate life of God and 'eventually in that form of beatitude which is peculiar to the Blessed Trinity. Every Christian knows that. there are communications of life within God. The Father begets the Son intellec-tuallyo and gives Him the whole of the divine life. In turn the Father and the Son produce the Holy Spirit and give Him also the whole'of the divine life. There the communi-cations of the divine life might have ceased. But, most graciously and generously, the Divine Persons decided that they wouldgrant a sl~are in that life to angels and men After Adam and Eve had received it and lost it again for themselves and their posterity, the Incarnation of the Son was devised as the gland means of.restoring it to men. Thus to the Incarnation of God there corresponds a certain deifi-cation or divinization of men. It is this deification of men which we hope to explain somewhat in this article. Life in general may be described as the power of self-motion. The acts that characterize life begin from within. Where no such activity can be discerned, it is concluded that no life is present. Thus, if a man were noticed not to initiate any movement whatsoever, not even a l~eart-.bea~t or a respiration, he would be pronounced dead. Besides beginning from within, vital activity, at least if it be nor-mal, generally produces .an effect within the agent also, and indeed for the better. Every heart-beat or respiration leaves one a little better than one would be without it. Hence, life may also be said to consist in the power of self-perfection. Only living things can make. themselves more perfect. This d~finition is not quite suitable for God. He 306 THE SUPERNATUK~L does not change, nor can He become more perfect. Div.ine life is that excellence in God whereby, in accordance with His nature, He acts, and by this activity is perfect. In everything that lives, we can distinguish the sub-stance or nature, which is fundamental; thevital powers or faculties by which it acts or moves and perfects itself;-and lastly, vital activity itself. To illustrate: when a man is sound asleep the whole of his substance or nature--body plus soul--is there, resting; his power to see, for example, is suspended; when he awakens again, he will actually see. Degrees of Natural Life Of life that is natural, that is, proportionate to the nature of the being in which, it is found, we know of five grades or degrees; They are: vegetative, animal, human: 'angelic, and divine life. All members of the vegetative kingdom show their powers of Self-motion by nourishing themselves, by growing, and by reproducing their kind. 'Besides having these three functions, animals can also move about freely, and especially they have the life of knowledge that comes through the five senses, and the ~corre.~ponding life of the sense:appetites. In the light of that knowledge they. experi-erice various emotions and desires, and regulate their move.- merits. Men have all the vital functions of plants andanimals. and in addition they have the life of reason and of the will. This is their characteristic mark and that which raises them incomparably above mere animals. Thus far the ~radation is clear and neat. In the purely spiritual realm we find two natural forms of life, the angelic anal the divine. Purely spiritual life has only two great functions, intelligence and volition. In contrast to men, who are said to be. rational, because they come to most of G.AUGUSTINE ELLARD their knowledge by reasoning, that is, by proceedii~g from premises to conclusions, the angels have intuition, that is, a - simple, direct, view of things, even of spiritual realities and truths. Whereas,we can have only an indirect knowledge of spirits and spiritual things, the angels see them as easity and immediately as men perceive one another. Immeasurably above angelic life is the fifth and final grade of natural life, that of God Himself. Being purely spiritual, it also consists in understanding and Willing. But whereas that of angels is limited, the intelligence and will of God are irifinite. They must have corresponding and pro-portionate objects which they alone can reach. As a matter of fact, these too are infinite. Thus the divine intellect has an infinite :intuition or view of all truth, infinite and finite. This is followed immediately by a similar infinite love of all goodness, and by a like fruition of all. beaaty. These three great acts, vision; love, and fruition, of the Infinite, and of all that is finite, constitute the inner life and beati-tude of God. If God had chosen not to create a world, they would make we 'learn that the up'the whole life inner life of God Infinite vision of infinite truth in infinite word or mental expression the Son. Infinite love of the infinite of God. By revelation is not quite so simple. the Father begets an of that truth, that is, goodness in the Father and Son produce the Holy Spirit, the term of that love. Thus, in spite 6f the absolute simplicity of God, there is in the one divine nature a trinity of persons, and though God ~s. umque and w,thout equal,, there is a~certain companion-ship in the oneIDeity. What we may call the external life of God consisti in creating a.nd governing the world, and it culminates in sanctifying and beatifying angels and men. These are all the natural forms of life. We might 'sus-pect that none other is possible. But by faith we come to know of asixth form, which, however, is not nataral, but 308 THE SUVERI~ATURKL L11:~_ su15ernatural. It does not come, from within, .but is super- . added from above; it is s uperhuma, n ,an d even superangelic. Supernatural Life Men can, to some .extent and in~, an external way, "elevate" lower forms of life. By skilful cultivation.or by using special artificial means, they can enable plants to bring, forth more beautiful flowers or bettei fruits than those ,plants left to themselves could produce. In this con-nection the processes of grafting are particularly note-worthy; by them new and very excellent kinds of fruit can be obtained. In grafting there is a real composition of diverse forms of life.' Domestic animals are advanced in various ways by human aid. As things are now, milady's little poodle lives in a.warm dry apartment, without effort on his part receives at regular intervals just the right quality and quantity of scientifically manufactured dog-food, and sleeps,in a comfortable little bed of his own; and if he should be injured or fall sick, he would be taken off to the dog-hospital and enjoy the refinements of modern veteri-nary medicine and surgery. In a porely natural state he would have no protection from the elements, he would eat what he could catch, if he could catch it, and, when he could catch.it; and if anything serious happened to him, he w.ould have to linger in his pain until death released him, coming perhaps 'in the form of a stronger animal to devour him: Among men, a king may m~arry a commoner and raise her to royal rank and dignity. A wealthy man may adopt as his son and heir a penniless orphan. The learned can share their learning and intellectual satisfactions with the, unlearned. In all these cases there is a certain, elevation of one's plane of life, and a participation in the life of~those who have been living on a higher plane. What men cannot do to lower forms of life is to elevate them internally, that is, to give them a new. kind of intrinsic'vital power. 309 AUGUSTINE ~-LLARD If a mere.plant could be made, for example, to see, like. a dog, that vision would be supernatural in the plant, though it is natural in a dog. If a dog could be made to reason, like a man, that reasoning would .be supernatural in the dog, as it is natural in a ',man. If a man should be enabled to perceive spirits as angels do, that perception would be supernatural in the man, .as. it would be natural in an angel. Now then, if a man could by some special dispensation be given the power to do-something that is characteristic of the Divine Persons and peculiar to them-- for instance, to have an intuition of the divine essence--that again would be supernatural in the man, as it would. be natural ,in the Trinity. Such an intuition would be supernatural in an angel also. Participation in a vital perfecti~on belonging to a higher creatable nature, for example, for a man to hold converse with an angel, as was granted to St. Francis of Rome, is said to be supernatural in the relative sense. Participation in a perfection belonging only to the. uncreated and ~divine, nature, for example, immediate vision of the Divinity~ is called supernatural in the absolute sense, This is the meaning which we shall attach to '!supernatural" hereafter in this article, Now it should not' be difficult to see what ismeant by the supernatural life. It consists simply in this, that by a peculiar exercise of omnipotence and of divine munificence, God enables men and angels to share in those three great vital functions which are natural only in the~Divine Per-sons. Men are made to participate in that kin.d of life~ and eventually in that kind of beatitude, which are naturally characteristic only of God himself. They are empowered to have a direct view~ of Infinite Truth itself; a corresponding love of the Infinite Goodness, and a similar fruition of the Infinite Beauty,~ Thus they' have a share.in the life and beatitude of the Blessed Trinity. That they :do so, is very. 310 THE SUPEI~NATURAIL LIFE clear at least for the Blessed~iia heaven. They possess the supernatural life in its :full development, in its maturity. Only in the light of this s~age of it; can it be well under-stood. One could more easily judge, of trees from their seeds or animals from their embryos than understand the supernatural life by studying it merely in its first and lowes~ form. Beatitude If we compare the supernatural life in its beatific stage with .God's own life, we Shall note certain likenesses and certain differences. In general, the objects are the same. It is the same Infinite Truth which is seen and contemplated by God and the Blessed. The same Infinite Goodness is loved by God and the Blessed. It is the same.Infinite Beauty that enraptures both God and the Blessed. But in God the vision itself is infinite and comprehensive or exhaustive, whereas in the Blessed their act of vision is finite and not exhaustive. Similarly', in God love and fruition are unlimited, but in the Blessed these acts are limited and pro-portionate to their vision. In the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit there is the plenitude of the divine life and beatitude: in the beatified, a participation of that life ;,rid beatitude. They have the same thing, but not in its fulness. "Their participation may be compared to the share tha~ the First Lady of the Land has in the dignity of the President, or to the part that a son has in the wealth and station of his father, or to the sharing of pupils in their teacher's learning. In God there is the original, so to speak, of the divine life: in those in heaven with Him, a copy, li~teness, or assimila-tion to that original. In God, vision, enjoyment, and love are natural and all substantially identified with the divine essence; in men or angels these acts are graciously super-added to their natures, and they are not substantial. What 311 G, AUGUSTINE ELL/~D ~God has of Himself and by nature, the beatified have by favor and grace. Man becomes an adoptive son of God, but not a natural Son, like the Word. Deiform beatitude is incomparab!y superior to natural angelic beatitude. The angels who are in heaven now do, as a matter of fact, enjoy supernatural bliss. They have it because they were gratuitously raised to the supernatural order, like men, with the .gift of sanctifying grace. If they had not received it and if in their period of probation they had remained good, they would now be in a state of natural angelic beatitude. In that condition their knowledge, love, and enjoyment of the Supreme Tr~th, Goodness, and Beauty would be mediate, that is through a medium (their "own essences); and though it would be an inexpressibly happy state, there would be nothing in it of the imme-diate vision of God which they now have and which makes them immensely more blessed. Of course their love also would be of another kind, and so would their enjoyment of the divine beauty. The greatest angel that God in all His ¯ omnipotence could create, endowed with all possible gifts and privileges except grace, and .given the highest possible measure of the beatitude that would be natural to an angel, would indeed be inconceivably happy, but immeasurably below any creature enjoying the minimum of God's own special kind of bliss and glory. Likewise, if men had not. been elevated to the super-natural order and destiny, and if throughout their proba-tion they had remained morally good, after death they would be admitted to a state of natural human beatitude, that is,¯ happiness proportionate to the capacities and merits of human nature. They would be united to God. through knowledge, love, and fruition. But this knowledge, being in accordance with the nature of the human, spirit, would be rational, abstractive, discursive. They would 312 THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE know the Creator, not', directly and immediately or from Himself, but from His works and effe,cts. Given such~ and such artistry, the Artist who made it all must be as perfect and lovely and admirable, and even more so. And of course their love of God arid their enjoyment of His beauty could not go beyond the limits and character of their knowledge. The relations of man to God would be different from what they are now:~ he would not be a son, nor a~friend, nor a spouse of God. But natural bumanbeatitude would still be beatitude, and it is well to try tO suspect to'some incipient extent what that means. Even-naturally the human mind and soui have certain capacities and needs and longings for the Infinite; that is why no quantity and no quality of cre-ated goods, however great, can satisfy the human heart. any form of beatitude all aspirations and desires would have to be satiated, and completely so. O~ie would kn~w everything that one would like to know--think of how much that would be, and what an intense thrill it would bring! and one would have everything that his heart could desire. Any kind ofbeatitude would involve perfect satisfaction, and that forever. Since in this mad world we can never have anything even remotely like. a beatific experience, the onIy way in which we can attempt to gain some slight inkling of what it would feel like to be enjoying beatitude, is to gather together in thought all the pleasures and joyful experi-ences that we have ever had, to add to them all the possible delights that we can imagine, and then say, "After all, beatitude is something incomparably grehter and grander' and more glorious than all that!" To possess angelic beatitude would be something marvelously greater still! What then must it be to share in the inconceivable divine beatitude of the most Blessed Trin;ty! "What eye hath 313 G, AUGUSTINE ELLARD not ~seen, nor ear bath heard--what hath. not entered into the heart of man--all these things hath God prepared for them that love him" (I.Corinthians 2:9). Grace, the Seed o: Glor'~t The supernatural life, or the process of deification, exists in two stages of evolution. The fully developed or mature stage is found in the Blessed in heaven; the other, still imperfectly, developed and still immature, is found the Just, that is,. in those who are adorned with sanctifying grace in this world. Fundamentally it is the same life that animates both, even though the observable ~differences may lead one to think the contrary. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath given us, that we should be called children-of God; and. such we are . Beloved, now we are ~hildren of God, and it.hath not yet been manifested what we shall be. We know that if he be manifested, we shall be like him, because we shall see him even as he is" (I John 3:1, 2). "Grace is the seed of glory." That one and the same life can present very diverse appearances, is easily shown from biology. Compare, say, an orange seed germinating in the ground and the beautiful blossoming orange tree that it will be in due time; or the ugly caterpillar crawling in the dusl~ and the lovely butter-fly flitting, about later; or the tadpole and the frog; or, the .case that pleased St. Theresa .so much; the repulsive silk-worm and the delightful little white moth. Do little birds that are. just breaking out of their tiny eggs have that kind of life that is characterized by flight? There is sometl~ing analogous in every human life. Is there reason, in a little child or infant? Evidently in some sense there is. Other-wise, he would not be a little rational animal nor possess human dignity .nor have rights nor be the term of obliga-tions on the part of others. One may go further and point out that there is identity of life in a perfect man and in the microscopic little embryo in his mother's womb that once was he. When the child grows up, he will still be the same being, the same person: and, though his life will b~ different enough, it will not, be another life. Reason is there, but it is latent, undeveloped, not yet full-grown. Ttiough he cannot reason now, before long he will; and notice that every normal act by which his development° is p~omoted contributes to bringing about his full-fledged life of intelligence. So a man with sanctifying.grace in this life cannot see God now, but with every act that increases that grace, his power 'to behold and to enjoy God in eternity is enhanced. In the life Of the Blessed in heaven and ~he life of the ~lust on earth, the fundamental principle from which all activity issues is the same, namely, sanctifying grace. The infused virtues, thequasi-faculties by which that activity is exer-cised, are the same, except that ih the case of the Blessed,~ in place of faith and hope, there is the "light of glory." This is the highest and last grace to be received, and upon its rece~ion beatific life at once begins. The "light of glory" is a participation in tlie intellectuality of God, immediately ~enabling one to contemplate the Infinite. It is often com-pared to a telescope or microscope. The activities of the Bleised and of the 3ust are of course different, but inti-mately related. Even here, in faith there is a certain pa~r~ ticipation in the divine knowledge that no creature could attain by any natural effort; acquaintance with the mystery of the Trinity is an instance of it. Corresponding to actual possession of God in heaven there ~is here, in the virtue of hope, a right 'to that possession and a happy anticipatiofi of it: neither of these could be natural in any creature. The same.charity persists'throughout both stages of thd super-natural life. Between the beatific acts of those in heaven 315 G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD and the supernatural acts of the 2ust there is a certain com-munityor propor~tion, an identity in being or, so to speak, in material, invirtue ofwhich every ~ supernatural act per-formed here is a preparation for beatific activity or, an increase of it. Every meritorious act nbw means more of the vision: of God ineternity. It is to establish this com-munity or proportion in super-nature between super, natural acts here and divinely beatific activity there; that supernatural grace is absolutely necessary for every salutary act. "Without me you can do nothing" (John-15:5). Difference between Natural and Supernatural Suppose that ~ man and a horse are looking at the same thing: the physiological processes of vision, in eyes,, nerves, ' and br~iin, will be about the same in both. In the horse there will not be more than the sensation of vision, but the man the vision will be immediately: and naturally fol- Idwed up by a spiritual idea, immensely different in being and'character from the horse's or even the man's phantasm. In some similar way, in the natural man, not elevated by grace, there will not be more than his natural acts, whereas in the supernaturalized man acts which appear to.be the same or nearly the same will be followed up eventually and, , as it were, naturally, by beatific acts like those which con-stitute no l~ss than the beatitude of God. Grace really gives men a new and fourth kind of life, and to the~ angels a sec-ond kind': a deified life. A fervent supernatural man may wonder why, if thus there be divinity in his acts,, why in fact, if he be, so to speak,, full of divinity, he.does not feel conscious of it. If he did, his life of faith would be quite different. He has to take it on faith, like the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, that his supernatural acts are immensely different from his natural acts. All human knowledge',comes through ~the 316 THE SUPERNATURAL! LIFE senses; we have no di'rectapprehension of spiritual realities. Even the spirituality of the human soul is not perceived, but proved by reasoning from thechara~t~r of its acts! It still more impossible to experience spiritual realities that are supernatural~ and just because they are supernatural. Cer-tain mystics, namely those who. are in the state termed technically~'"the mystical marriage," are said to experience habitually the fact that their, supernatural activity is a par-ticipation in the life and activity of God. Unconsciousness of a gift is no sign that'it does not exist or is not present. ~A baby boy born to the Queen of England wofild have royal dignit~r of the first magnitude ~ind immense imperial rights, and at the same time know nothing of them. Some years' ago the Dionne quintuplets possessed an absolutely unique distinction, to say nothing bf much money, and they were the cynosure of world-wide attention. but it all mhde slight, difference in their little consciousnesses. Wherever there is a distinct sort of life, there must also be a differencd of underlying structure. If the activities or functions, that is, the physiology, be different, there must also be an anatomical difference. Elephants and mice can-not have the .same joys and sorrows. Neither can rabbits and eagles, nor alligators and kangaroos. N0~ Can men with rational souls and animal~ without them. -Men with the experiences of the supernatural life and men without them cannot be just the same in structure. Elernents of Supernatural Organism Theologians generally consider that there are fifteen elements in the permanent organism or mechanism of the, supernatural life. Among these sanctifying grace is first and fundamental. Sanctifying grace is best conc~:,ved as a participation in the divine nature, that 'is, in what we dis- 317 G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD tinguisff as the fundamental principle of vital activity~ God. .It is to the supernatural life approximately human nature (body plus soul) is to our naturalhfiman life. It is the Substratum or basis or root, out of which everything in the supernatural life somehow "comes. It often compared to the soul: as the soul is the principle human life, so sanctifying grace is~ the primary internal principle of the supernatural life. One who has it will also have everything else. Every living nature must have vital power~ or facul-, ties also. For example, dogs have the power to see, hear, and so on, even when they are not exercising those powers ¯ because, say, they are asleep. Men have power to think and will, even when they are not using those faculties. The faculties of. the supernatural life are the infused virtues. They give one the permanent power to act supernaturally, in a way that is ¯somehow divine. They are not, like natural virtues, dispositions acquired by practice, to act with readiness and facility. They are really new powers do something quite different and superigr. Commonly seven infused virtues are enumerated, three theological and ~four moral. Activity of the theological virtues unites one directly with God. Faith is the intellectual theological virtue, ,faculty of. knowing supernaturally. It gives one ~ participa-tion in knowledge that is peculiar to God and naturally not accessible. In the light of it, the supernatural life is intel- ,ligently, consciously, and freely lived. Hope makes it pos-sible to desire and to seek the Supreme Good in a way that is supernatural. It gives one a sort of anticipated .possession of God and the beatific life. "Whoso hath this hope on him, halloweth himself, even as he is hallowed" (I John 3:3). Charity enables one to love the Infinite Goodness supern~aturally; and is a participation in God's own mode 318 THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE of loving. Without, it one could still love God, but naturally, not supernaturally. The infused moral vir-tues-- prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude--give one the power to use creatures rightly and in a way that is positively conducive to the beatific vision of God. The gifts of the Holy Spirit~wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, piety, fortitude, and fear of the Lord --are so many more permanent super-faculties. They dis-pose one to follow the i~stinct and motion of the Holy Spirit, as the infused moral virtues dispose one to follow the dictates of reason enlightened and elevated by faith'. The gifts are more passive than.the virtues, and their opera-tion as contrasted with that of the virtues is often likened to that of wind upon the sails of a ship, whereas exercising the virtues would be like rowing. The effect of the gifts, at least when highly developed, may be compared to the incommunicable skill of a genius in music: he can teach the technique---corresponding to the.virtues---~but that super-ior, indefinable, something that comes with genius he can- -not impart tb another. In the more advanced degrees of sanctity and contemplat.ion the gifts are especially active and important. ¯ Actual grace, is the counterl~art to activity in the natural life. It puts a certain divinity into one's activity. Unlike the forms of grace hitherto considered, it is not a habit, not something permanent. Like any particular form of activity, it comes and goes. Hence it cannot be found in a sleeping person, for example, nor in a baptized-infant, nor in the mentally deranged. As sound stimulates one's ears to hear, prevenient actual grace comes, when the oc-casion i~ apt to stimulate one's natural and supernatural faculties into action. !t arouses, or consists in, such ideas in the mind and indeliberate impulses in the will as are conducive to one's spiritual advancement. In this sense G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD actual grace enters into consciousness, whereas none of the other kirids of grace do. Where there is no. thinking or willing that makes for salvation, there is no actual grace at work. If then one respbnd to the stimulation, consent of the will 'and execution of the decision are made with the help of c~oncomitant actual grace. Since consent is from the will, it is vital, free, and human; since it is also from grace, it is divinized. Grace makes one think and will, like God. An example may .help to illustrate the functioning of grace. Suppose that Doctors A and B, while driving in the coun.try, happen to come upon a man who has just been seriously wounded in an accident.and is lying in great dis-tress beside the highway. This is the apt occasion. Dr. A is an agnostic, but a kindly man, whereas Dr. B is a devout Catholic and in the state of grace. It is proper that the doctors should do what they can for the injured man, whether they will be paid for it or not. Such is the fact: so God judges and wills. In this simple case, naturally and without grace, any kind-hearted man could make the same judgment and-feel inclined to give his aid. Dr. A responds to the occasion generously; and his. act is one of natural nobility. It may even be said that he judges and wills as God does. But it is all in the natural order, there is no divine entity in it, and he cannot expect as a result an increase of the beatific vision. Dr. B joinsDr. A in helping the man. Presumably his acts, apparently similar to Dr. A's, will be supernaturalized by grace. If his motive be supernatural, they certainly will. Then grace will enter into the acts of mind and will by which he sees the need of giving aid and feels inclined to give° it, Thus far prevenient grace in some sense will be at work. ~ Then he would &lib-erately decide to help the injured man, and this decision would be made with concomitant grace. The appropriate infused virtues or gifts, in this case at least charity.and pru- 32O THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE dence, would be operative, andthe whole process would be sustained and dignified by sanctifying grace. Dr. B's acts of judgment and will would be like' God's, not only in their character as judgments or volitions, but also in the very entity which constitutes them and places them in the order of being of the beatific vision. The contrast between a super-natural actand a natural act may becompared,to the differ-ence between a consecrated host and one that is not conse-crated. Though there may be little or no observable dif- "ference, the real, interior difference is very great indeed and is known, not ~by experience, but by faith. Conclusion Thus far little or nothing has been said about what we might call the properties of the supernatural life: the dig-. nity that belongs to an adopted child of God, the plane of intimacy with God on which such a ~child is entitled,~to live, membership in the Mystica! Body of Christ, and so forth. Nor have we given a complete idea of the workings.of ac-tual grace. For the adequate portrayal of the supernatfiral life in all its pha~es, a treatment of these subjects v~ould be necessary: but this treatment Would take Us far bey.ond.the limits set for the present article. However, one practical and valuable conclusion may well be mentioned here. Granted that the supernatural life is a real participation in the life and activity proper to God, it is easy to see what its supreme law must be: to imitate G6d, as far as possible; to think and judge ~nd will as He thinks and,judges and wills; and to ~ooperate with Him,in carrying out, as far as depends on us, His most magnificent cosmic plan, for His eternal glory and for the deiform beati-tude of His rational creatures. 321 Supplying Days of Absence I:rorn t:he Novifiat:e Adam C. Ellis, S.2. THE CI-IURCH is very solicitous about the proper training of novices in the religious life. Hence she demands of all religious institutes that they devote at least'one entire year to the spiritual formation of candidates before the profession of vows, and this canonical ~tear of novitiate is a requisite for the validity of the first profession of temporary vows (cf. canons 555 and 572). An absence of more than thirty darts interrupts the canonical year, and the novitiate must ,be started over, even though the novice remained outside the novitiate house with the permission of superiors and for grave reasons (cf. canon 556, § 1). When the days of absence do not exceed thirty it is desirable, and in some cases necessary, that they be supplied before the profession of first, vows. Here is the text of the Code regardihg such da~s of absence: "If the novice, with the permission of superiors or constrained by force, has p~ssed more than fifteen days but not more than thirty days even interruptedly outside the precincts of the house under the obedience of the superior, it is necessary and sufficient for the vdidlty of the novitiate t~at he supp|y the number of days so passed outside; if for a period not exceedincj fifteen days, the supplementing for this period can be pr~escribed by superiors, but it is not necessary for validity."~ How are darts "of absen~ ~ountecl? Canon 32, n. 1 tells us that a day consists of 2"4 hours counting contin.uously from midnight, to .midnight. Hence parts of days are not counted as canonical days. If a novice goes toa hospital on Monday motrting, and returns to the novitiate on Saturday afternoon of the same week, he has been absent for four days'only. Monday and Saturday are not counted since 322 ^~SENC~ FRO~ Novm^~ ¯the absenceon those days did not amount to a period of 24 hours counting from midnight to midnight. When must the days of absence be supplied? When they.exceed fifteen, but are not over thirty. Hence if a novice has been absent 'exactly fifteen days, it is not required for the validity of the subsequent profession, that' these days be supplied. However, it is well to note h~re that. all days of absence, whether continuous or not, must be counted. Every period of absence ~from midriight to mid- ~ night counts as a day of absence, even though these periods of absence be separated by months. How many days of absence must be Supplied? If the novice has been absent more than fifteen days; all the days of absence must be supplied. Thus, if a novite had been absent twenty days, it would not suffice to make up five days. The total number of days of absenceS'must be sup~ plied before the novice can make a valid profession. Are there am.! exceptions? No, there are not. Even though the novice is absent with the permission of his superior or constrained by force, the days of absence must be counted. Thus,' if the novices have a villh in which they spend some days during the~ summei together with the master ot~ novices, these days are counted as days o.f absence, since a villa is not a novitiate house. On the other hand'a distinction must be made between the novitiate house" arid the novitiate proper, or that part of the house which is destined for the exclusive use of the novices. The canon says that days spent outside the novitate house, must be supplied; it does not say that days spent outside th~ pre-cincts of the novitiate must be supplied, if the novice. remains in the house in which the novitiate is located., For, example, if a novice who is seriously ill is transferred from the novitiate quarters to the community infirmary which is located in another part of the house, the days spent in the 323 ADAM C. ELLIS ° ¯ infirmary outside the novitiate quarters would not be counted as days of absence, since he remains in the house in which the novitiate is located. While it is truethat canon 556, § 4 states that the novi-tiate is not interrupted by the transfer of a novice from one novitiate house to another,of the same institute, it is equally true,~ that the days spent on the journey from one novitiate house to another must be counted as days of absence"(cf. Code Commission, July 13, 1930). There. is no contradiction here. It is or~e thing to say that a,novice who has begun his novitiate in one novitiate house of the institute may~ continue that novitiate in another novitiat~ house of the same institute, for instance, in that~ of another province. It is quite a distinct thing to say that.the days spentin traveling from one novitiate house to another mu~st be counted as days of absence from the novitiate. As a matter of fact the novice is,absent from the n6vitiate house while he is making the journey to the second novitiate house,-, hence these days. must be counted, as days of absence. The,, contrary opinion which was held by some authors is no 'longer tenable after the decision of the Code Commission mentioned above. Absence of fifteen days or less. If the numbe~ of days of absence does not exceed fifteen, it is not necessary for the validity of the .subsequent profession~that they be supplied. However, the Code permits the superior to~ prescribe that these days of absence be made up; but not under pain of invalidity of the subsequent profession. The superior not obliged to require the supplying of these days of absence. Thus hemay allow a"novice who has: been absent fourteen days because of illness or for some other just reasoffto take his, vows together with his class a't.the end 6f the canonical year. ¯ " ,' Absence during second ~lear of novitiate. The legisla-,' 324 A~ENCE FROM ~OVITIATJ~ tion of the Code.applies to the first or canbnical year only. It is left to the constitutions of each institute to regulate_' absences.during the second0y(ar of novitiate; The Instruc-tion on the Second Year of Novitiate, issued by the Sacred Congregation of Religious on November 3, ~921, permits the novice to leave the novitiate house-for, training in the wokks of the institute and for the.testing of his capabilities. This permiision is granted, however, only on condition that-the constitutions allow ~the novice to be thus trained and tested in another house of the institute. Furthermore, the Instruction prescribes tha~ the novice must be recalled to the novitiate house at least two months b~fore the day of profession in order that bemay prepare himself properly and strengthen himself in the spirit of his vocation. Conclusion: In this commentary on canon 556, n. 2, wehave stated the requirements of the law regarding the supplying of days of absence~ from the n6.vitiate~ We.,have seen ufider what conditions such~ days of absence must be made up in order that tl~e subsequent profession be valid. In other cases such?days ,,of absence need not be supplied unless superiors so prescribe. Only complete days of 24 bouts, counting from midnight to midnight, are counted as canonical days. V This does not mean that superiors should disregard the spirit of the law which demands that the novices spend the entire ,time of the canonical year in the " novitiate,~. . , ands. undergo the ,strict .tr~aining prescribed in other canons of the Code. To~ allow a novice to spend hours of the day or night outside the novitiate house in the perfbrmance of the works of the institute, or 'in attending classes, is contrary to the' spirit of this legislation, even though these 16eriods of .~absence "do not amount tofull canonical' days, and co~sequdntly are not to be counted i~s days of absence which must be supplied. Such conduct, would be detrimental not qnly to the spiritual wellbeing 325 ¯ ADAMC. ELLIS of the individual novice, but more so to the morale of the institute as a whole0 since the spirit of the institute will be no better than that Of-its individual members. Superiors can promote the welfare of their institute in no better way than by carrying out. the prescriptions' of the Church regarding the novitiate, keeping in mind the spirit of the law, "for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life" (2 Corin-thians 3 : 6). IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS (Even if gou don't ordinaril~/ read "'Important Announcements, please read. these;) Subscription-Renewals Our~ next issue (November 15, 1942) will be the last number of Volume I Of the.REVIEW. For the majority of our readers, that will mean the expiration 6f their.subscriptions. If your subscriptign will expire with that number and you intend to renew it, you can do us an immense service bg renewing now. By renewing now,-instead of waiting, you will "help us to take care of the renewals more efficiently and to make 'more accurate cal-culations for the printing of Volume II. Just send your check or a morley order, together with your name and address. Thank gout¯ Back Numbers We can no longer supply a complete set.of back numbers of the REVIEW. The January. ~nd March numbers are entirely out, and .there are only. a few remaining copies of, the othei numbers. Many of our recent subscribers want the back numbers. Perhaps you can help them. If you do not intend to save or bind your, back numbers, you may be willin.g.to give them to these new ~ubscribers. If you wish to do this, you may send the back numbers to us, and we will transfer, them gratis to the new subscribers who have requested them. THE EDITORS. 326 The "New Commandment:" ot: Love Matthew, Germing, S,J. ~'~'HE gospel written by "the disciple whom Jesu~ loved" i| has been styled a spiritual gospel It was so desig-nated already in the time of Clement of Alexandria (i50-220 A.D.). Several reasons may be assigned for thee design.ation,.but the one that is pertinent to this drticle is the fact that St. dohn tells us so.much of the.loveof God,and t14i~ neighbor, and doits so in the very words of our Savior. "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another: that as I have loved you, you also love one another. By. this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you havelove for one another" (,lohn 13: 34, 35). Out'Lord did not me~n that the precept of loving one another had not existed in th~ Old .Law, but that He was giving His disciples a new standard and a new motive in observing it. They were to love. one another as Hehad loved them, that is, with' the same kind of love, thotigh they would not be able to love in tl4d same degree.~ And 'this lo~e was to be a test of their ~a~herence.and loyalty to k Him. Again, "As the Father has loved md[ I also ha're loved you. Abide in my love. If ygu keep my command-ments you will abide in my love, as I also have kept my Father's commandment and abide in his love " This is my commandment that you love one another as. I have loved y6u. Greater love,than this no one has, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my frieiadsif yoti do the things I command you" (J01~n 15:9, 10,,12-~15). And in his" Epistles the beloved disciple again and again recurs to the subject of 10re love of God and of the breth-ren. "This is the message you have h~ard from the begin-ning, that we sh6uld love one another. He who do~s not 327 MATTHEW GERMING love abides in death. M~r dear children, let us not love in word, neither with the tongue, but in deed and in truth. And this is hi~ commandment, that we. should believe in the name of his Son 'jesus Christ, and love one another, even as 'he gave us commandment. And he who keeps his commandments abides in God, a'nd God in him" (! 'jOhn 3:11, 15, 18, 23, 24). "Beloved, let us love~ofie another, for love is from God . He Who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this is the lo~;e,~not that we have loved God, but that he has fi'rst lovedus and sent his Sdn a propitiation for bur sins. Beloved, if Godhas so ¯ loved us, we alsoought to love one another" (I ,John 4:7, 8,~10. 11). "Special Import t:or Relioibus There is no mistaking the import and force of these words. Love of one an~other is hot a counsel, of per~fe¢- tion: it is a c0mmandmentin the strict sense of she"word, a commandment which our Savior emphasized by frequent r~petition justas a teacher is wont to emphasize an impor-tant point in a lesson. There is, probably, no. gospel pre-. cept which He incul~ated With ~more frequent and loving insistence than the commandmen~ of love.- This alone"qs clear evidence of its j,.~upreme importance, in the Christian life. For persons, consecratedto God, devoted to H~°~pe-cial~ service and leading a common life,, the importanceof mutual love can hardly be exaggerated.~ It may be said without~ hesitation that th~ ~happiness of"a religi0us~'com-mui4ity depends largely on the practice" of.this-virtue. Brotherly_love in a hotis~means that its members think and speak well ~)f 6ne anothei?, are"kinci and cc~ns{derate and patient in tiae[r relations with or/e another, ever ready to Serve and acc6~fiamodate whenever there is ~eed or .occasion. Where-this ~piritreigns, there reigns the ~ace of Christ~ the peace which the angels announced at His birth ahd 328 which He Himself bequeathed ~to his Apostles when He said: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. When the members of a community live in charity, they possess this peace of Chiist and experience the. truth of the saying of Holy~ Scripture: "How good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity" (Ps. 132). Then they do their best work for the cause of Christ, for their own perfection, for one another and. for the common good. ~ :. I do not mean to say~ that peace and charity remove-all the0hard things'from their path in life. They do not. Hard-ships remain, and difficulties may remain. The religious life is not an easy life for the natural man. This we ought to realize from the start. Of its very." nature the life of the vows involves restrictions that are irksome :at times to flesh and blood, that try a person's good will and,. the strength of that will. Duties and observances, some of which are naturally distasteful, do not disappear ~from a community in which charity prevails, but they 'become easier to comply with. Duties are performed with good will and joy of heart; °difficulties are borne ~as part of the day's work for the love of God by re.~son of the charity of Christ that reigns within and all around the individual members of such a community. On the other hand, when there is not charity in a group~ of religious, large or small', then there is aloofness, suspicion, misunderstanding, carping and faultfinding, each looking out for self. Arid selfishness spells the death 0f brotherly love. Highly important and salutary as mutual love is for our home life in our relations with one another, it is equally so in our dealings with, people of the world. Worldly~ interests as such are a matter of indifference to us religious, but there is one big interest to which none of ~us can be indifferent__the interest~ or interests of Christ and His 329 "MATTHEW GERMING Church~ The expression'is comprehensive'and'apparently vague, but there is nothing vague about its real meaning. It means the spread of the knowled~ge and love of Our Lord 2esus Christ in the minds and hearts of all men. It means the endeavor to do men and women some spiritual good, to make them think and provide for their immortal souls. And ~s men are so constituted' that they are unable~to think of their souls v~hile their bodies are ill or starving, it is our duty sometimes to interest ourselves in their bo, dily wel-fare also. These are the things to which the religious of all active orders in the Church have once fo~ all dedicated their lives, their every effort of soul and body. When duty car-ries us into a vast variety of work, much of which of itself is purely secular in character, we must not become confused in our aims and lose our perspective. Our ultimate purpose in all .things is spiritual. ~'This spiritual purpose ought to ¯ be the~very soul of all our external activity. It need not and cannot alw~iys be present in our thoughts, but'it should never be far removed from them. Now charity, in the sense of kindness of speech and manner and whole conduct, is a powerful means of doing spiritual good to people of every class and condition. It is a means that lies within the reachof every religious, even of the infirm members of a community. They can do much by their gentleness and patience in the way of spreading the good odor of Christ. L~irger opportunities fall to those who are in positions of active duty, whether their work brings them in contact with outsiders or is limited to serv-ices within .the cl6ister, where they meet'only their fellow religious. All can be kind and gracious in speech and man-ner, first of all, to their own--and this is of great impor-tancemand then to everyone else. Externs who know little ofreligious but now and then have occasion to' observe their conduct are decidedly edified 330 THE "NEW COMMANDMENT~' and drawn closer to Christ when they find by actual experi-ence that these men and women in strange garb are invari-ably kind and considerate, speak well of-one another and of other peop.l~e, are patient and forbearing even in trying circumstances, never petty or selfish, peevish or irascible. It is well for religious to remember that persons of the world when coming to a convent or other religious house are all eyes and ears. Some of them are on, the alert co catch a glimpse of the manner in which religious treat one another. They make it a point to observe closely, and they comment freely among themselves and others on what they have observed. Favorable impressions received ¯ add to the esteem in which they hold the religious life and are not seldom the cause or occasion of spiritual good in a variety of,~ways which we,never thought of. They clear awayanti-Catholic prejudice, possibly d~evelop a latent voc~ation to the religious life or the priesthood, bring a heft- ~ tating soul into the true fold, or a negligent Catholic back to the sacraments. Good example in th.e matter of kind-ness rarely fails to produce some beneficial sp!ritual result though this result may never' become known. The foufiders of religious orders were not unmindful of this. Everyone Who has read the life of St. Francis knows that he regarded good example as a Silent sermon. St. Igna- , tius went fully as far as the Poverello of Assisi when in the constitutions of his order he reminded his followers that they ought to accomplish even more good by their example than by their preaching. And St. ,John Baptist de la Salle set dowi~ good example as one of the three principal means by which the religious educator was to exercise his zeal in dealing with his pupils. Don Quite extraordinary for the spiritual influence he exerted over others by his kind ways was St. John Bosco, 331 educator, and founder of two religious congregations in the nineteenth century. He often used kindness as a first ,approach ~to boys and young men whom he wanted to draw to better ways of life. One day. the Cardinal Archbishop of Turin, ' interested dn 3oh~ Bosco's educational ~work, asked him about his methodS. The saint's answer was to ~the effect that it-was necessary, first of all, to interest one-self in the boys and~ their doings. One must be good and kind to them, and thus gain their confidence. "'Gain their c~nfidence, °' muse~l the Cardinal. "How do you get near them?" he inquired. The two were riding in the~Cardi-hal's ~arriage through' the city of Turin. "Is there any place in this0neighborhood," asked 3ohn Bosco, "in'which there is a group of boys? . Plenty of them in the Piazza del. popolo," .replied the Cardinal. And with that he directed th~ driver to go to the square mentioned. Yes; there were the boys playing a game. As soon as the ~:ar-riage stopped,-Don° Bosco stepped out, the Cardinal remaining inside to watch proceedings~. o When" they saw Don Bosc~ appr~oaching, the lads scampered a~ay. Their visitor had foreseen tha~t they would do this, but he was able to hail a few loiteiers, spoke kindly to them, and ~heir favorable reaction soon brought back the whole group. Then he distributed little presents to the urchins, put in a few questions about their game, their fathers and mothers, and so forth, and said abrupt!y: "Com~, boys, cohtinue your game, and let me loin in." Tucking up his cassock he played with them some fifteen minutes. As a seminarian he had been at pains to become an expert playe~ at many ghmes for no other reason than to be ready for .just such occasions as the present one. The boys asked him to stay longer, but he must not keep the Cardinal waiting. Before leaving his Youthful compan-ions, cautiously and in his usual agreeable, manner he spoke 332 THE "NEW COMMANDMENT" to .them about going to church' and to confession, saying their prayers, and so forth. As the boys saw him turn to depart, they quickly formed a double line an~d escorted their guest back to the carriage, which soon drove away amid the cheers of these lusty young ItaliansI. Not all men can do what St: 3ohn Bosco did, but all can learn from him the lesson that in.order to benefit young "people in a spiritual way it is necessary to approach them with a sympathetic attitude, interest oneself in them and tfieir innocent pursuits, and in this way build up confi-dence. ~' Love is in the Will In considering our own charity, we should not think of love as a sentiment, in whatever sense wemay under2 stand this word. In reality true love resides essentially in the will. It may exist with-out any sensible emotion; it may also be highly emotional. This is true of both natural and supernatural love. And the emotion, whether super-natural or natural, may by present but not manifest itself in the sense faculties. Love, I said, resides essentially in the soul. It con-sists therefore in cherishing the person loved, appreciating and esteeming him, wishigg him well and consequently thinking and speaking well of him, .doing him good, .as far as lies in one's power. When we do this for a purely nat-ural reason, our love is of the natural type. If, for exampl.e, we love a fellow religious because ofhis or her gifts of mind or disposition--twit and humor, ability of entertaining and amusing others---our love and esteem of such a one is nat-ural. This means, in the first place, that ,it may merit, no heavenly reward. In order that an action may certainly deserve a reward in heaven, the motive itself of the act, even IAuffra~', Blessed John Bosco, c. 14. , 33'3 MATTHEW GERMING one that is naturally good, must be supernatural. The thought contained in our Blessed Lord's words, "As long as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me," furnishes us such a motive. Secondly, in the case of religious living in community, purely natural 10ve may lead to uncharitableness: For if we associate with those only who are most congenial and entertaining, we shall instinctively avoid others who are less congenial and com-panionable, and this is selfish and may. easily be unchari-table. Brotherly love requires that everyone be agreeable to others to the best of his or her ability. Were Christ our Lord in our midst at recreation time, He would seek out the most lonesome soul in the room, and would comfort and encourage such a one. Our Savior regarded the natural motives one may have for loving others quite insu~cient for His followers. In the Sermon on the Mount we read: "I say to you, love your enemies . that you may be the children'of your Father 'in heaven, who makes l~is sun to rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward shall-you have? Do not even the publicans do that?" (Matthew 5:44-46). All men are the children of God, adopted brothers and sisters of our Lord ,lesus Christ, destined for eternal happiness. As St. Paul writes in his first epistle to Timothy (2:4), God "wishes all rne"n to be. saved and tO come to the knowledge of the truth" not only Catholics, but non- Catholics too and non-Christians, pagans and infidels all o~¢er the~world. Not all are in actual possessio.n of sancti-fying grace, or faith, hope and charity, or the Other virtues, arid of the wonderful gifts of the Holy Ghost. But the souls of all of them bear the stamp--so to say---of an immortal and supernatural destiny. We may not exclude them from our love. Nor must we think that 'they are 334 THE"NEW COMMANDMENT" incapable of doing good works, or that the good works they do are worthless, do not bring .upon them grace and blessing from their beneficent Father in heaven. That would be against the teaching and example of our Divine Lord. The story of the good Samaritan illustrates this. admirably. All know the incident as told by Christ Him-self. Com'mentatorson the gospel are of the opinion that it is based on facts. This good Samaritan, who took pity On the man lying by the wayside, wounded and robbed,. was not a Jew, had not th~ Jewish religion. In our man-ner of speaking, he was a heretic and schismatic. But our Savior commended his conduct because of his compassion and charity. There are many good Samaritans at the present day, men and women who, in ,spite of their handicap in not having the true faith, devote time and effort and worldly means to, the relief of the poor and suffering children of men, who are also the children of our Father in heaven: We should not shrug ,our shoulders in depreciation of what they do. Anyone who does that may expect~to hear from Christ the words He spoke to the self-sufficient hwyer: "Go, and do thou also in like manner." We ought rather to praise charitable works no matter who does them, and glove the doers of them credit for a good ,motive. Who knows.that they have not a good in~ention, even a super-natural one? And even if they are acting from purely nat-ural principles, still natural virtue is better than no virtue at all. R~lieving distress is a virtue, at least a,natural one. It is a benefit done to others, and God will reward it in some way. The unselfishness of these charitable people may, dispose their souls for the reception of the. true faith. The Cornmunit~ is a Famitg Every community, of religious is rightly called a reli-gious family. Its members bear to each other a~ relation- 335 MATTHEW GERMING . ship analogous to that which obtains between, the indi-viduals of a family consisting of father, mother, and chil-dr. en. The bond of union between members of the same reli-gious family is a moral and supernatural one. Not 9nly are the.y united~as are all the faithful~by the bond Of divine charity through which they are incorpgrated.in the mysti-cal body of Christ, but they are closely bound together by their common consecration to God and by their~observance of one and the same rule of life. In such a family we expect kindness and charity to abound. And they will abound as,~long as its members are ~true to their-consecration, and are faithful in observing their rules and regulations and the orders of their superiors, all of which have been wisely ordained for their spiritual and temporalwell-being. This in. general. But I will add a point which is definite and particular. Religious must be unselfish, unselfish in their thoughts~ in their words, and in their dealings with one another. One founder of a religious order wants his fol-lowers to be so unselfish as "in all things to yield to others thee better part, esteeming all in their hearts superior to themselves, striving to see in everyone the' image of our Lord 3esus Christ." ¯ ¯ ,, As for the last recommendation, religious will be much helped in this striving if, in their every~'day lives, they make a Serious endeavor to fix their attention not on What "is faulty or less worthy in thdir fellow religious, but on what is commendable and worthy of imitation.:~ This practide of seeing in others what is good and praiseworthy is not only commendable in itself, but is at "the same time an effective means of counteracting the common tendency to think and judge ill' of others. In the Book of Exodus (32:22), Aaron speaking of the 3ews, says to Moses: "Thou know-est this people, that they are prone to evil." If we restrict the meaning of the statement to speaking and judging 336 THE'°~EW COMMANDMENT" adversely of other~, we may say that it is true of well-nigh all men. We find its parallel even in the intellectual order. "The ready belief in ,falsehood, and the slow acceptance of truth, is among the most observed traits of human nature.''z We muit beware of, the propensity,, to think and judge unfavorably of others. We must never ~unnecessaiily and deliberately entertain discreditable thoughts either of our fellow religious or of other persons; most of all, must we never express them in words. This:would be criticism and criticism is. out of place in .a religious community. We must not criticise our equals. Our Lord forbids it. "Do not juc~g, He says; "and you shall, not be judged; do not condemn, and you shall not be condemned" (Luke 6:37). We must not criticise superiors; the reason is the same: Cl~rist forbids it. This is the supernatural reason and is all-su~cient. But there are natural reasons also for.not criticising the decisions or actions and policies of superiors. They have knowledge and information concerning,things to be done which.we have not. Moreover, they take int6 consideration, as they are bound to do, every angle of an event or situation, and the welfare of the whole commun-ity, whereas weare often satisfied to view the case from the particular aspect that affects us. Superiors bear heavy bur-dens for our sakes; we owe them support and cooperation, which we can give them 'by our ready and willing obedi-ence. Let us ~heed.the words of St. Paul:. "I therefore exhort you that you walk worthy of the vocation in Which you are called, with all~ humility and meekness, with patience, 'supporting one another in charity" (Ephesians 4:2)" And these of St. Peter: "Before all things have a constant mutual charity among yourselves; for charity covers a multitude of sins" (I Peter 4:8). ~Frands-'Thompson, Saint 19natius Logola, c.° 12, p. 283. ~ 33~ to Assist Dying Non-Catholics Gerald Kelly, S.J. ACCORDING to the doctors, it was certain that the patient would not l~ave the hospital alive: Accord-ing to the hospital register, it was equally cert~iin that the man was not a Catholic. In fact, as Sister Mary later ~liscovered, he knew little about God, less about religion in general, and-nothing about the Catholic Church. But his disposition, was excellent. In the. subsequent weeks of his lingering illness he showed eagerness and a great capacity foi instruction. He expressed an earnest desire to enter the Catholic Church, was baptized, received Extreme.Unction and.the Holy Euchi~rist, and died a truly pious death. Thus goes the story of the ideal way of providing for dying non-Catholics: to bring them to open profession of the Catholic Faith and to confer upon them the Sacraments that they need and are capable of receiving. It is the ideal; at times it is realizable, often'enough it is impossible. Some people are outside the Church through ill-will; all that we can do for them is pray that they will cooperate with the grace of God. Others are outside the fold through an ignorance which will respond to "treatment"~as in the example alleged above. And many are non-Catholics by reason of an ignorance which cannot be removed: either they are convinced that their own religion is all right, or at least they are convinced that the Catholic Church is all wrong. / People can belong .to this third class witl~out having any real ill-will. They are non-Catholics "in good faith," as, we say. They belong "to the soul of the Church," as some explain it; or, as others say, they are "invisible mere- 338 APOS'~OLATE TO ASSIST DYING NON,CATHOLICS bers of the visible Church." Call it what you will, these people can save their souls, even without explicit profession of the Catholic Faith, lorouided theft fulfill certain mini-mum essentials for saloation. What are these minimum essentials of salvation? Prac-tically speaking,~ they may be summed up in four acts that involve the free cooperation of a human being with the grace of God, namely, acts of Faith, Hope, Charity, and .Contri-tion. They must be supernatural acts, that is, made. with the help of grace, and rooted in a free acceptance of Divine Revelation. Thus, the basic act in this~series is supernatural Faith, not a vague sentimental thing that many people call faith, not the mere Work of human reason, but the accept-ance by man of truths revealed by God and because they are revealed by God. It is not necessary to make an explicit act of faith in all the dogmas of the Catholic Faith, but to be sure of salvation one must believe at least in these four revealed truths: the existence of God, the fact that God re-wards the good and punishes the wicked, the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, the mystery~of the Incarnation. " Anyone with a truly .apostolic spirit will Want to help non-Cath01ics (o make these necessary acts. It cannot be left to chance, because God does not work by chance; He works thrpugh ordinary human instruments. The true apostle, therefore, will try to devise a means of providing the dying non-Catholic with this opportunity. But in this apostolic endeavor he will find himself con-fronted with two serious difficulties; the first being to ob-tain a brief, yet apt formulatidn of the necessary prayers', the second consisting in gaining an approach to the non- Catholic without provoking antagonism. Several years ago, Monsignor Raphael 3. Markham, of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, then professor of Pastoral Theology at Mount St. Mary Seminary, Norwood, Ohio, 339 GERALD KELLY worked ,out- a splendid solution to both.these,, problems. First he compiled a formula of the necessary prayers which is:admirable for its brevity, adequateness, and simple beauty~ Next he had these prayers printed on cards which, though attractive to the .eye, contain no reference to Catholicism that might je0paridze the.good cause in the case of a non- Catholic whom long years of misrepresentation had made suspicious of the Catholic Church. These cards can be p!aced near the bedside, sent through a friend--there are innumerable ways of getting them into the hands of non- Catholics without wakening suspicious prejudice~ ~. Monsignor .Markham's venture was first launched on a very smal! scale. He distributed the cards to his own class and explained the method of using .them. Later, someone drew the attention of Archbishop McNicholas to the novel apostolic plan, and he insisted that it get wider recognition. In the subsequent years, the mo:vement has grown 'im-mensely, and the results have been most gratifying. We presume that all religious, p~rticularly those w15o have o'.casion to minister to the sick and the dying, will.be deeply interested in this trdly apostolic, venture. Anyone who wishes more information can obtain an explanatory brochure an~l a few sample cards by writing to one of the addresses given be!ow. The cards themselves, whether plain or hand-tinted, sell at a very moderate price--merely ehough to cover expenses. At present Monsignor Markham and his associates are particularly interested in distributing a small, convenient card designed espe~cially for the use of men in our armed forces. For brochure and cards write to:., ,(a) Rt: Reu. R. d. Markham, S.T.D., Compton Road, Hartwell, Cincinnati, Ohio. (b) Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis, St. Clare Convent, Harttoell, Cin-cinnati, Ohio. (c) Sister M. Carmelita, R.S.M., Convent of Mercy, 1409 Freeman Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio. 340 -. Commun ca!: ons [EDITOR'S NOTE: In our July number (p. 218) we outlined one practical di~culty concerning the spiritual direction of religious and asked for constructive comment and suggestions. We have received many communications on the subject. ,We cannot publish alldn this number, but we are printing as many as space permits. The remainder will be used in the next number. Further comments, either on the o~iginal editorial ~r ~on the communications printed in the~ present number, will be welcomed. Most of the letters concern the direction of Sisters. Considering their number and the fact that their spiritual direction must be limited almost exclusively to the confessional, this was to be expected. However.' the readers" attention is called to the excellent communication from a Brother Novice Master that appears in this number. More such letters would be ~helpful; we have a large number of Brothers among our subscribers. The editors assume no responsibility for the opinions expressed in these com-munications. ,Judge them on their own merits.] From Priesf~ - Rdverend Fathers: Du~ing ofir semifiary, days we used to" say that allconfessors (like all Gaiil) could be~divided into thre~ classes: confessors who simply " said "For your penance say--"; confessors ~ho said "Tomorrow's feast reminds us that ", and good confessors. Several years'°~experience in hearing confessions may have led us to r~vise that rattier hasty generahzatlon. As secular priests we seldom have the duty of hearing the confessions of religious women at the time Of theft retreat. But upon us as secular priests falls the obligation of being', in most. cases, the ordinary confessors of religious-women. That'0~e has never been assigned to me, but upon various bccasions and for various reason~s sisters have come to confession to me, and from this slight experience together with a great deaf'more thoughl~ I have come to conclusions which may answer, in part at l~st. the. questions ~aised by the editorial Spiritual Direction by the Ordiriar~/Con[essor in the 3uly 15 issue of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. That some sort of spiritual direction should be given by the .ordinary confessor of religious women can, I think, be considered a pr, oved fact. By their vows°and their~eager desire to be faithful in all things to those vows religious are ~laced high in the ranks of the Church. Consequently, they are exposed to, greater satanic attacks and need greater assistance. Weekly spiritual di.rection of some sort is an essential form of tha~ assisfance. But what form shofild i.t take? My simple suggestion is that 34.1 it is not. wise for the ordinary confessor to make a general :rule Of commenting on the faults confessed. Unless there is something out-standing among them riley had' better be passed over in silence; as too much emphasis placed on them may result in scrupulosity. Rather, the ordinary-confessor should giye posit!re direction, centering his words and ideas, on Our Divine Saviour, "especially as His Divine and Human Natures' are manifested to us b~/ the liturgical year. Such direction counteracts the natural tendency of many reli-gious people, perhaps, more especially of religious women, to become self-centered in their spiritual life. The confessor can exemplify and elaborate this simple, advice, but it seems to me that it contains the germ of sound and fruitful dilection which can be given by the ordinary confessor of religious. Signed, etc . Reverend Fathers: I am a religious, ordained more than twenty-five years, during which time I have never been without the charge of one. sometimes two. religious communities, as ordinary and extraordinary confessor, Besides. I have given nearly a hundred retreats,~most of'which have been to religious women. The heart of your editorial is in the sentence, "The ~¢onfessor does not know how to make the approach: the community does not make it for him." o , ~ I think it is the duty of tl~ confessor to make the-approach. Personally I have not given thematter of direction so much attention, but very early in the exercise of the ministry, I realized how impor-tant it is to help religious to receive the Sacramefit of Penance as fruitfully as possible, as an effective means of spiritual progress. 1 ) For many years I made it a point to.give each penitent a few ¯ words of encouragemen~t or advice, based on the season of the y~car, or some pract~ic¢ connected with some approaching feast. (The same for all.) 2) T~ese little talks were later varied dnd aimed at helping the penitent ,correct some fault or no,quire some virtue. This I consider the first step in making the Sacrament of Penance a very fruitful means of advancing. 3) I frequently make it a point to emphasize that they should endeavor to correct themselves of one fault ev~erytime they go to con-fession. Sorrow and the purpose of amendment should be centered 342 COMMUNICATIONS on one f~ult. I frequently ask them what one fault they are going to try to overcome for next' week. 4) I ~fideavor to impress upon them the benefit of investigating the roots of sins and of confessing ~tendencies rather than individual acts, specially never to confess sins for which they are ~ot sorry. If a confessob proves hims~elf zealous, willing to listen, kind, and above all invariably patient and tactful, practically all religious will correspond and the results will be very gratifying. Most reli-gious fear to be, a burden to the confessor by what they may refer to as their petty troubles. If the confessor makes each one feel that he has all the time in the world for them, and that he is interested in each soul's advancement, confidence will be given and a great deal will be " accomplished in directing them. These three books have helped me in solving this problem in past years: The Confessional by Rt. Reverend Aloysius Roeggl, trans-lated from °the German and" adapted by the Reverend Augustine Wirth, O.S.B., published by the translator, at Elizabeth, ,N. 2. (1882.) Sacdrdotal Meditations, by Father Chaignon. Meditations 70 to 75 are'on the.duties and qualifications of a confessor. I make them' dvery year. at least during my retreat. Published by Benziger. Confession as a Means of Spiritual Progrdss, by Scharsch-Marks. Herder, 1935. Signed. etc . [NOTE:~ We mi~gh~ also recommend The Spiritual Direction of Sisters, by Ebl-Kirsch. : Benziger Bros., 1931.ED.] Reverend Fathers: Acting on th'~ assurance in the July REVIEW that you will wel-come constructive comment as to how Father A might be.of greater help to his penitents, may I proffer a suggestion or two? Let the perplexed confessor evince his willingness to give more than mire absolution by some such approach: "Is there any comment I can malie on any of these faults?" or "Can I behelpful to you in any of these problems?" or "Is there anything that is a source of anxiety to you?" etc. etc. Numbers of individuals have found such an invitation to share their burden with a willing counselor all that was needed to open the way to eventual peace of soul. If Father A "heard about twenty confessons in twenty-fi~,e min-utes" could it be that some of his penitents listened in vain for the Dorninus sit in cordo tuo. . . Misereatur . . . lndulgentiam . . . 343 COMMUNICATIONS Passio D. N. d. C . ? When a confessor habitually reduces his administration of the Sacrament of Penance tO the minimum in effort;. it isn't strange that those who kneel before, him follow .suit. I should like to amplify bpth these points and stress still another one or two, but you wisely~suggest brevity. Signed, etc . Reverend Fathers: " The confessor should be thoroughly and personally interested in his charges. If he be so interested, he should find no difficulty in~ formulating a question or two that will bring out their degree of religious'observance or fervor, upon which he can then build a helpful and constructive bit of spiritual guidance. Signed, etc . Reverend Fathers: The experience I am relating here concerns a retreat-director, not an ordinary confessor: but it may prove helpful to the general subject of spiritual direction by the confessor. The experience concerns a prominent priest who in his early retreats was s;iid to give "'marvelous instructions" but was scarcely mediocre as a confessor. He was told of this and set about to over-come his difficulty, which seems to have been about the same as that of Father A in your editorial. To overcome the hesitancy of the sisters, he asked some question such as this: How's the spiritual life? your meditation? your particular examen? .your obedience? In most cases he found that this was iufficient to open the floodgates: the nuns were bursting to say something, btlt they didn't know how. It was a case of 50-50, the penitent as backwardas the confessor. The opening ~lUeStibn was what.might be described as "breaking the ice." Next on the program was to have a brief, practical, attrac-tive remedy for the trouble that might be manifested, e. g. "Mddita-tion is terrible." The priest worked these points out: and he. has found the method very helpful and successful.~ Signed, etc . From Brothers Reverend Fathers: ' The problem raised in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOL~S, Volume I. No. 4, with regard to spiritual dii'ection by the ordinary confessoi, has been 344 COI~UNICATIONS ~our ;'own problem for quite a long time. The solution we have evolved in our house of formation is given as follows: First of all, we are indebted to the understanding heart of our chaplain for a perfect collaboration between him and the Brother Superior of the' community. This is a matter of prime importance. At the beginning each month the Brother Superior proposes to the community the practice of a particular virtue', ~hosen ordinarily ~from among those which are recommended to'us by our Rules, 'or of which a more urgent n~d is .f~lt." He explains this virtue, deriving his inspiration, as concerns practical 'applications, from the Constitu-tions, the Custom Book, and the letters of Major Superiors. Then eachvirtue'is divided so that in four successive weeks it may be prac-ticed with increasing perfecton. Here are three examples: " PO3il~RTY: First Weeh, to avoid superfluities; Second Weeh, avoid attaEhment to what is permitted: Third Weeh, to avoid the useful, the comfortable, the new: Fourth Weeh, t~ deprive oneself at times of necessities, without of course jeopardizing health. HUMILITY: First Weeh, to speak well of the absent:, Sec~ond Weeh, to cultivate an interior contempt of self; Third Weeh~ to take joy in contempt; Fourth Weeh, to attribute to God the credit for our CHARITY: First Weeh, to render services at the cost of one's own convenience; Second Weeh, ro"return good for good: Third Weeh, to return good for nothing; Fourth Weeh, to return good for evil. " The program thus prepared is given over to the chaplain, who, except in rare instances, draws therefrom material for the weekly ~xh6rtation he addresses v t0 l~is penitents. The latter thereupon ~nform the confessor of their fidelity to the ~dvice received at ~the time of the preceding confession. The habit of renderifi'g to the confessor a spontaneous account of one's fidelity in. following advice ~hould be thoroughly inculcated and de~,elope~l :from the.beginning of the novitiate. There is a corre- Sponding ~>l~ligation on the part of the confessor to ,khort'; to en~ourage, to direct ;. and it is for this purpose thak we supply him with matter each' month. It should be evident that our entire undertaking has but one aim: "to-afford the confessor and his charge an opportimit~l for mutual understanding, so as to place the confessor before an open door, so to 345 COMMUNICATIONS speak, or at least a door which is on the point of opening. The rest must be left to the good will of the director and of those who are to be directed, and to the grace of God. At this _stage discretion demands that the Superior withdraw to the background. A former colleague of mine, to whom goes the entire credit for the solution of our problem and its .application in practice, has this to say about it: "The labor of cooperation, based on an understanding between the chaplain and the superior, has been pursued for more than three years at one of our houses and for 24 months at another. It is the characteristic feature of the Eucharistic method (of Abb~ Poppe), ¯ of St. Ignatius and his entireschool. I can attest that it is effective and psychologically sound. The ~theological. and moral virtues, th~ practice of the Rules--all can be subjected to this progressivd and methodic labor. It has the advantage of compellii~g, in a certain manner, the confessor to make himself als0 a director. This solution haso proved satisfactory to our confessor and to those whom he directs: it is conformable, at any rate so. I believe, to the ~pirit of the Church. You can weigh it for yourself. If you find it too flimsy . whoosh! .to the wastebasket. A Novice Master From Sisters Reverend Fathers: Your editorial on Spiritual Direction in the July issue of the REVIEW is most timely and thought-provoking. We have discussed the article in question, and here are some of our The directors chosen are not always the best suited for religious. Some are timid, impatient, have a frigid air. A few hit on a happy phrase and use it week after week: for~ example,~ "Keep up the good work and say three Hail Marys." Many show no zeal for perfection. "We cannot give what we haven't got." The director as Teacher, Father, Judge should tak.e thee initiative. Any question regarding a fault confessed will serve as an opening; ~or "Sister, I am here to help you. Have you ,,any questions to ask?" We would tell Father A of your article: "The next time you have a chance to direct religious, go forth and bea spark among the reeds and set the world on fire with the love of Jesus Christ. The ashe~ of the reeds will beeternally grateful to you." 346 COMMUNICATIONS As to the religious themselves, ther~ is no end of excuses. Lack of courage--what will others say?shyness--fear of the conse-quences-- don't know how o~ where to'beginPnot encouraged to seek direction in confession. Some simply like the shady side of easy street. To both confessor and penitent could be" said, "Ask. seek . . . knock." It will mean more peace, more joy, more of God here and hereafter. A Religious Community Reverend Fathers: Enclosed are some thofights I've had for quite a few years on the subject of direction in the confessions of nuns. I am grateful that this matter has been brought° up and trust the responses you receive will be enlightening and helpful to all of us. SOME REASONS WHY DIRECTION OF NUNS IN CONFESSION FAILS: I. On the part of Communitg: The ever present pressure of work that straifis time. Fifty or sixty nuns, sometirdes more, waiting to go to confession and-- one confessor. If half the fiuns took all the time they wanted, the other half wo'uld of necessity be restless--maybe i~rital~le--waiting. The time dement in consideration of the waiting of others is to my mind a big factor. I saw this solved in one Of our larger communi-ties when the Rector" of a nearby monastery sent three confessors at the same time. It served a three-fold purpose: (a) the nuns had a choice of confessor; (b) none minded how long she stayed because she felt no one had to wait because of'her: (c) the confessors all fin-ished within an hour or so and not one felt overburdened. 2. On the part o~ the indit~idual nun:- (a) Because of long years without direction, she has long ago abandoned the idea of ever having that help, and so her.confessions become mere-recitals of weekly J imperfections-and~ venial sins. (b) Because she has been frightened at sometime or another, or disillusioned to some extent, she is too timid to ask the help she Craves. (c) Because sec~lar priests many times do not seem to under.- stand religious life and the serious obligation a religious has of striving constantly, for perfection, the nun after some futile attempts to get direction regarding her retreat election, her monthly examen. 347 COMMUNICATIONS etC., abandons the ~ttempt seeing the priest embarrasked, or indefinite in his guidance. . ,~ ° (d) Because she needs guidance ~so badly'and doesn't know where to begin, or how td ask, she is silent,~ hoping always the con-fessdr will make an opening. Or she has real problems, but fear, or a natural reticence, or tl~e thought," :'This is too simple to bother a confessor about," hinders her from seeking guidance. ¯ 3. On the part of the confe~or: (a) If~he is a religious ~priest, "he will Usually give a prepared instruction, or will sdlect some sin mentioned and give advice, but unless asked, he will not usually attempt guidance that is consecu-tively followed.~ Why? , (b) If he is .a secular priest, he sometimes belittles°confessions that include "breaking of silence," "time wasted." etc,, saying, as has been done too frequently: "That is silly,;~ tell your.sins,-" or "Sister. you don't have to mention imperfections." (Is a dun supposed to have venial sins all the time to confess?) (c) If the confessor is in a hurry andgiv.es evidence of this by closing the slide before the nuns finish their ac~ of contrition, or by asking, "Sister; are there many nuns to go?" the news soon gets around the community that Father X is al~ways in such a hurry that none wants to hinder his fligh!! (d) If unfortunately he has ever said to even one nun. " I don't like tohear nun£ confessions," it is sufficient to prevent many from seeking him as a director. (e) If the'confessor is indefinite, ciicling generalities, using too philosophical terms, most nuns are more confused and give up. thinking "What's the use?. I~ never do get any. real help when I ask." Solutions: I. In~ large communities two confeisors (or more) coming on the same or on consecutive days, will .solve the problemof time and the fear on the nun's part of keeping large groups waiting. II. The nuns on their part should ask simply for continued guidance stating frankly their desire of acquiring such and such a virtue; .their constant difficulty regarding particular examen; ~their lack of progress in the spiritual life and'the r~asons they thinl~ respon-sible for it: their difficulty with their superiors, or others, and;what in themselves causes it. These cases stated clearly, ,,frankly, humbly, 348 COMMUNICATIONS will at once help the confessor to analyze and guide the soul seeking help. III. The confessor .by evidencing his real interest, his wish to help regardless of the time taken, his "follow up" from a confession, would win confidence an'd would win,o souls starving for spiritual aid. Such questions as: "Sister, are youin the habit of speaking against authority? . Sister, do you ever think how much good you can do by giving the example of perfect silence?" or simply, "Sister, cain I help you in any way ?"--would be the seSami~ of opened and awakened souls. To give one instance: after a confession hurriedly made in. which evdr~rthing ~was generalized, a confessor asked, "Sister, are you accustomed to making confessions like this fre-quently?" This simple question broke down a nun's reserve and resulted in several years of fruitful guidan&. The nun felt the priest really cared. Is this the secret? A Mother S~perior Re~,erend Fathers: I ~m especially grateful for the challenge thrown out in the article on $1~iritual Direction b~/ the Ordinar~l Confessor. I sincerely .hope that the forthcoming communic.ations will do much to stimulate priests in their great responsiblity in guiding souls to a higher perfec-tions. Here are my suggestons: Give the admonition on the confession made. "Poor Pussy" types of admonitlon~are not appreciated: nor are "canned" admoni-tions. Oc~asi0nally ask WHY a certain fault was committed; als0 WHAT is being done to overcome a repeated accusation. Another question that creates¯ thought is, "What is your particular exarfien?" And the added remark, "Report on this each month," gives much material for guidance. Sometimes the question, "What do you mean when you accuse yourself of .thus and s0?" may cause a startling revelation to the confessor. ¯ A varying penanc.e also helps to draw attention to the individual confessio.n, A Mother Superior [Addr¢ss further communications on this subject directly to the' Editors, St. ,Mary's Co11¢g¢. St. Marys, Kansas.] Book Reviews OUR MODELS IN RELIGION. By Brother Jean-Bapfiste, F.M.S. Pp. 520. Marls÷ Brothers, St. Ann's Herm;tacje, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. $1.50. Thd subtitle of this book indicates its contents: "Biographies of some early Marist Brothers who were outstanding by their vir-tues and love for their vocatidn." Written originally in French by Brother 3ean-Baptiste, it was translated intoEnglish on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the foundation of, the Institute. "Fhe purpose of the work was evidently to inspire the Marist Brothers by the virtuous example of their predecessors. Merely as biography, Our Models in Religion wouldoprobably be of interest to Marist Brothers but would hardly merit the attention of others. However, "biography" may be said to be a secondary theme of the work. The biographical sketches are rather pegs on which to hang various bits of good advice and instructio~a. There is much good instruction, much good conference material, in the book. Spiritual directors,of religious can find in it many worthwhile points for conferences, as well as an abundance of material for ~developing the topics. The book was printed by Desclle. Paper, printing, and binding are all of high quality. G. KELLY, S.,J, ".THE SOLUTION IS EASY. By the Reverend Mark Schmid. O.S.B., Ph.D. Pp. xii ÷ 181. Frederick Pustet, Inc., New York, 1942. $2.00. ~This book forms a neat, popular introduction to the Scholastic answers to the fundamental questions of philosophy. It will prove useful especially to those who have not the opportunity of making thorough study of Sct~olasticism but who, nevertheless, would lit::to become acquainted with its broad outlines. The work bears the imprint of one who.has,had many years of experience in teaching science and philosophy: the subject matter is presented in a way that makes it easily grasped and the author is careful to avoid even the appearance of being dogmatic. He does not enter upon ground con-troverted by the scholastics themselves, but confines himself to those points wherein all are agreed. Especially prominent is the frequent 350 BOOK REVIEWS discussion of popular scientific problems that have a close connection with philosophical principles. The book begins With a Jthumb-nail sketch (twe.nty-three pages) of the history of Scholasticism from its earliest period to the twenti-eth century. The second, and chief, part of the book consists of brief chapters setting forth the. Neo-Scholastic view of the major problems of philosophy. The first four chapters pertain to cosmology and discuss the problems of the nature and origin of the physical world. Then come.~ ~sychology with such questions as the origin of life, knowledge, free will', immortality.~ Following this are such metaphysical questions as First Principles, the problem of evil, causality, design or purpose, and the Creator. The problem of social origins forms the concluding chapter of the book. After each chapter is appended a convenient bibliography of readings and references. The author has chosen for this purpose those books which are writ-ten- in English and which should be easily procurable from an ordi-nary Catholic library. Fr. Schmid omits dry discussions from his book, eliminates the formalism of scholastic text-books, and enlivens his work through-out with apt illustrations and homely analogies. The ideas are quite clear, the language is simple and, for the most part, concrete. Tech-nical words are defined and. described. Synonyms, parenthetical expressions, and quotation marks are employed quite frequently, for the benefit of the uninitiated. At the the end of the book there is a glossary making a handy dictionary of terms found in this and other books on.philosophy.--A. J. BENEDETTO, S.J. THE DIALOG MASS. By the Reverend Gerald Elhrd, S.J. Pp. xvl -~ 223. Loncjmans,'Green & Company, New YorE, 1942. $2.75. "It is well within the expectations of probability that another decade will have witnessed the gradual transition to Dialog Mass as the normal form of low Mass worship everywhere in the United States." It is Archbishop Michael J. Curley, speaking, in his preface to Father Ellard's book, Who from his vantage point, as Archbishop of Baltimore and Washington gives us this measured judgment of,the future of Dialog Mass in this country. For all of us this practically means that in the opinion of Archbishop Curley, when attending low Mass ten years from now we shall either have to form a part of 351 Boo~ R~vm~s deliSerately cut ourselves off from fellowship with our fellow, Chris-tians by remaining s~lent. This makes the Dialog Mass and our acceptance or rejection of it a burni.ng ques~tion right now. " The more so is this true, as the Dialog Mass is the resul~ of the efforts of many zealous prelates and priests throughout the world to bring into actuality the active participation of the laity in the most holy mysteries and in the public and solemn prayers of the Church/of which the authoritative voice of Plus X says, "It is the foremost and indispensable font for acquiring the true Christian sp, irit" (Motu P'roprio, On Sacred Music). It will be a surprise to many a one who has been apathetic to the Dialog Mass "because it is an innovation," to find that it is one 'of those innova~tions that are in absolute accord with the old theologi-cal adage, Nil ~'nno{petur nisi quod traditum est (Let there be no inno-vation except such as comes down to us by tradition). The Dialog Mass is not a bringing in of something new that never was. but bringing back of what has been. Father. Ellard, after studying the historical evidence, feels justified in making the statement: "In the sixteenth century the custom still survived at Rome and elsewhere that the congregatioh made the Mass responses with the serv~er. When the custom disappeardd is not known." Father Ellard's book is important because of its studied~y accu-rate presentation of facts regarding the spread of the Dialog Mass and his documented story of the attitude of the Holy See on the subject. At the end of Chapter Five, in which the author shows that the Did-log Mass is encircling the globe, he presents the following' results of a questionnaire-survey among Sodalists throughout the United_ States and of official surveys of the Diocese of LaCrosse and of the Arch-diocese of Chicago: Dioceses in which Dialog Mass is approved. 100: Dioceses in which Dialog Mass is not allowed. 4: Dioceses on which information is not available, 11. Thi~ l~ind of information is of supreme importance for ever~ one of us by reason of another theological adage, Securus judicat orbis terraru~, the sense of w, hich is that the Catholic world judges surely about the Catholicity or ,non-Catholiciy of any religious practice. Teachers will be especially grateful to Father Ellard for his helpful suggestions about Dialog Mass for children.'hnd hhw to corn-~ bine it with music, and thus buil

Issue 39.6 of the Review for Religious, November 1980. ; The Fot~rth Level of Prayer Developmental Stages and the Novice Limits of Adaptability of the Exercises Volume :~9 Number 6 November 1980 REVIEW ~:OR Rrl.J~aOt~S (ISSN 0034-639X). published hi-monthly (every two months), is edited in collaboration with faculty members of the Departmenl of Theology of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room a,28:3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis, MO 63108. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, Missouri, © 1980. By R~v~w FOk RFa.~¢aous. Composed. printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis. Missouri. Single copies: $2.(X). Subscription U.S.A.: $8.1XI a year; $15.00 for two years. Other countries: $9.00 a year. $17.00 fi~r two years. For subscription orders or change of address, write R~v~w I;Ok R~-:~,~;~ot;s: P.O. Box 6070: Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Robert Williams, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor November, 1980 Volume 39 Number 6 Correspondence with the editor and the associate editors, manu~ripts and books for review should be sent to REw~:w ~on R~:~AG~OUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19131. "Out of print" issues and articles not re-issued as repr.ints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 North Zeeb Road; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. The Benedictine Call to Judgment James M. Desche~e, O.S.B. Brother James has written this article especially to celebrate the 1500 anniversary of the Benedic-tines. His last article, "Journey into Christ," appeared in the issue of July, 1980. He resides at Christ-of-the-Hills Monastery; P.O. Box 32849; San Antonio, Texas 78216. Make no mistake about the age we live in; already it !s high time for us to awake out of our sleep., the night is far on its course., day draws near. (Rm 13:11,12). Despite the Lord's command to comfort the afflicted, one cannot help but be struck by the frequency with which the Lordhimself afflicts the comfort-able. Despite our very human tendency to seek peace and security, one cannot easily forget (for the Lord will not permit it) that Christ came "not to send peace, but a sword" (Mt 10:34). When, like ancient Israel, we have come to prefer the security of enslaved lives, the Lord, ever perverse in his grace, calls us out of our comfortable slavery to wander in a desert of freedom, exiled from security and peace. ¯ Wandering.in that terrible place, we long with all our hearts to be back in the dreary mud pits of Egypt, preferring the dry but dependable crusts of slavery to those fierce, unsatisfied hungers we discover within us as we sojourn in the desert of fre~edom.and ~of judgment. Whatever the pain of crises in our lives, we must never forget that the crises themselves are divine gifts. The Greeks, who had a word for everything, gave us the word crisis. But they wisely knew (as we often do not) that the word, while it involved pain, really meant a time of challenge and judgment, an opportunity to-measure and evaluate and change. For the Christian, crises are moments in which God confronts us with truths we had preferred not to see, with realities we have chosen to ignore, with decisions we have refused to make. For the Christian, a crisis is a 801 802 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 moment--albeit painful--of deepest grace. For a Christian who has become settled in a life of slavery to routine and superficial existence, a moment of crisis is a moment of salvation and an opportunity to regain touch with th~ deep roots of being, to be enlivened and energized by a return to life and grace. Just as there are moments of crisis ! of j udgment-- in each human life, so are there moments of crisis in each human generation and in each human society. This is the human condition: to stand--as an individual and as a race--at eve.ry moment in need of judgment and of conversion, in need of redemption and of new life. It is his recognition of this condition--and of Christ's lordship over all our crises--that prompts Saint Paul to call us to judgment: "Make no mistake about the age we live in; already it is high time for us to awake out of sleep." Paul's word, translated here by "high time," is the Greek kairos, with its sense of urgency, of.opportunity, of occasion. The word for Paul usually suggests a critical time (a time of judgment), a God-filled moment of salvation, an end and a beginning. Fifteen hundred years ago was born a man whose wisdom in crisis was to have an incalculable influence on the history and life of our. western world. Benedict, born around the year 480 in the small Umbrian town of Nursia in the Apennines, found himself thrust into a world in crisis. The old Roman Empire and its social fabric were f~lling into ruin around this young man. Rome itself narrowly escaped attack by Attila the Hun in~452 only to be sacked a few years later by the Vandals. Nor was the Church im-mune from crisis. In 451, churchmen struggling over the doctrinal issue of the two natures in Christ met in council at Chalcedon. The results were a victory for dogma but a defeat for Christian unity, giving rise to the two schisms of the NestOrians and the Monophysites, and planting the seeds of the great disunity between east and west that were to bloom prodigiously in the later Middle Ages. In brief, it was an age not unlike our own. Into the crisis of his age entered this man Benedict who wisely allowed the larger crises of his time to become one with his own personal moment of crisis, of judgment and of salvation. In the person of Benedict, in fact, a judgment is passed upon the age itself: "Even while still living in the world, free to enjoy all it had to offer, he saw how empty it was and turned from it without regret" (St. Gregory the Great: Dialogues, H, Preface). It is the genius of Saint Benedict, and the special mark of his,holiness, that this judgment, while never compromising itself, always avoids the taint of the puritan harshness we of later generations have come to expect in those who renounce the world. Instead, as we discover in the Prologue to his Rule, Benedict's judgment is filled with goodness and grace, with charis as the ancients knew it, sounding clear notes of kindliness; graciousness and mercy. Benedict calls his advice that of a "loving father" and finds only joy in the~call to judgment: "What can be sweeter to us, dear brothers, than this voice of the Lord inviting us? Behold, in his loving kindness the Lord shows us the way of The Benedictine Call to Judgment / 803 life" (Rule, Prologue). As the monk confronts the crisis of his own life, any hardness results from the very hardness and smallness of his own heart. But in crisis, the Lord stands ready to give the monk a neff heart and with this growth comes an ineffable joy: "For as we advance in the religious life and in faith, our hearts expand, and we run the way of God's commandments with unspeakable sweetness of love" (Rule, Prologue). In its essence, the monastic or religious life as Benedict understands it is a call to judgment, a call to be ever open to the voice of the Lord, a vocation to enter into each and every moment of crisis with the faith tha, t God is present in that moment to recreate and renew our hearts and our lives. The great enemy to this vocation is hardening the heart: "Today if you hear his voice, harden not your hearts." And Benedict's remedy for this is sounded in the opening of his Rule: "Listen, my son, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of'your heart." For Benedict this is no poetic fancy. To listen, to incline the ear of the heart, is exactly what is meant by obedience. "By the labor of obedience you may return to him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience" (Rule, Prologue). Obedience, to the Latin ear ofSaint Benedict, always carried a message we easily miss in the English word. Obedience (from ob +audire) has to do with listening, with hearing, with attending to. It involves an openness and a sensitivity to the voice and,the, will of the Lord speaking to each person in each situation. To obey is tobe wholly open and submissive to the Lord in crisis; it is to be ever willing to enter into crisis because that is .where the Lord will be found at that moment. It is a willingness to allow the Lord tobe our judge, to have his way with us. It isa willingness to let one's,heart be broken, if that is the Lord's will. It is to. hold back no part of one's life,ands'being from the Lord of all life and being. To obey is to be wholly the Lord's creature, Benedict clearly indicates that it is in obedience that the monk finds a deep stability when he quotes from the Gospel the words: "Whoever listens to these w~ords of mine and acts upon them, I will liken him to a wise man who has built his house on rock. The floods came, the winds blew and beat against that house, and it did not fall, because it was founded on rock" (Rule, Prologue). When we are in crisis, security and stability appear to lie in avoiding the critical issue. When .the Lord calls.us out of slavery into the desert, slavery doesn't look so bad. Only the0deepest faith and the deepest trust in the Father's love can teach us to face the crisis, to enter into judgment, to listen to and obey the voice that calls us into seeming desert and chaos and.ruin. For Benedict this faith and trust are reflected in the words: "In his loving kindness the Lord shows us the way of life." What appears to be a way of death is really the way of life. One of the.practical ways Benedict provides to his monks for learning this deep trust in the Father's unfailing love is the office of the abbot; the abba who incarnates among the monks the Father himself. It is by his obedience to the abbot that the monk learns obedience to the Father. Indeed, it isin his obe- 804 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 dience to the abbot that the monk is obedient to the Father. Yet Benedict is careful to remind the monk that obedience-- in its radical sense of openness to crisis and the will of God expressed in concrete situations--is not limited to the relationship between a monk and his abbot. The monk is to recall that he must be obedient to all his brothers. "Not only is the boon of obedience to be shown by all to the Abbot, but the brothers are also to obey one another, knowing that by the road of obedience they are going to God" (Rule, Chapter 71). The call to crisis involves every member of the community. No one is to be denied our obedience--our listening, our sensitivity, our responsiveness. Every crisis between Christians, whether they be monks or not, is a God-filled kairos, a time of salvation. In light of the foregoing, it may be objected by some that this appears to be a diminution of the force of the vow of obedience. I have avoided all the juridical and legal aspects of the vow. Yet I have done this purposely, and for two reasons. First, the vision I find in Benedict of obedience is deeper, stronger and more demanding than. any purely juridical concept. Indeed, it is possible (perhaps even common) to find juridically conceived obedience an effective means of escaping real crisis, real judgment and encounter between the monk and the Lord. Secondly, a purely juridical view limits our considera-tion to those who are juridically bound by a vow. Yet Benedict's view of obe-dience is no less applicable to every Christian man and woman than to monks. All are called to crisis, to judgment. No Christian is exempt from this demand nor from the demand of obedience to each of his fellow Christians. Nor is any Christian exempt from the demand Benedict makes by the vow of conversatio morum, usually translated as "conversion of manners" or "reformation of life." For in its most profound sense, this vow is essentially a radical call to crisis, to judgment. It requires that at every moment we respond to the voice of the Lord calling us to newness of life. Today's response may have to be relinquished to tomorrow's response. Our hearts must be continu-ally open to each new judgme.nt and call from the Lord. We are not to settle down, not to set camp in the desert, but to be continually on the move. There is no standing still in the service of the Lord. Endless conversion, perpetual metanoia, are the marks of a truly living Christian. To guarantee that the monk will not be tempted to escape this demand of endless reformation and endless conforming to the living will of God as revealed in crisis and discovered by obedience, Benedict adds the third vow of stability. By this the monk renounces his right to escape God's demands in the present moment and circumstances by moving into other circumstances. Run-ning away is not permitted the monk and so there is nothing for him to do but to submit to the divine crisis and know it is God's will that he submit. From the day of his profession, the monk is assured by God's promise that it is here, among these particular persons,, that God will confront him in crisis. To flee from these brothers, then, is to flee from God and his call. (I do not wish here to enter into the problematical issues of canonical transfer of stability or of The Benedictine Call to Judgment / 805 departure from the monastic life, though these deserve fuller treatment in light of what has been said here.) One of the last points to consider in Benedict's vision of the Christian life authentically lived is the place of humility. A close examination of his chapters on hi~mility reveals that humility has a great deal to do with truthfulness. It has to do with facing the truth about ones.elf. It has to do with seeing oneself for what one is. It is a virtue of utter and radical realism. Above all, its end is tosee oneself as God sees one. It involves looking at fearful truths intently and steadily, refusing to turn away from them, until by grace and work, all fear is transformed into love and "the monk will presently come to that perfect love of God which casts out fear" (Rule, Chapter 7). Humility is thus related to crisis; it helps us to face crisis, to endure judg-ment, to bear the truth. It also enables the monk to be of assistance to his brothers in their need to face crisis. The monk serves his brother by being perfectly truthful, by obscuring nothing of his own weakness or sin and nothing of his brother's weakness and sin. Humble monks do not support one another in self-deception. Equally importantly, the monk is alway.s ready, in humility, to take from the moment of crisis the truth of his own goodness and to affirm the same in his brothers:.Humility is the readiness to admit the truth as it is revealed at every moment. This is particularly seen in the requirement that the monk hold back nothing about himself from his spiritual father. Every selfish thought, every petty jealousy, every twinge of hatred--all must be laid without hesitation before the spiritual father. In this way, spiritual direction for the monk becomes in the truest sense a crisis and a moment of salvation. Nothing of Benedict's vision is without relevance to the life and growth of every Christian. In this fifteen-hundredth year of Saint Benedict's gift to Christianity, it must be seen that his gift is a gift to all men and women who seek the Lord. The gift of his monks is to be bearers of crisis. The monk must live in such a way that the world may never forget that Christ is Lord. The monk must live in such a way that the values of the world, insofar as they are opposed to the values of Christ, are absurd and empty. Benedict's sons and daughters must see that their lives bring a continual judgment on the lives of all men and women; that their lives are lived in a way that proclaims the power of truthfulness, of humility, of obedience. The monk must live his life in such a way that it would make no sense if there" were not a loving Father guiding and ruling all things. It is this "senselessness" that can bring the world into crisis, into facing the truth of its own empty values, its own abandonment of God, This is the Benedictine crisis, this call to judge the world not by condemn-ing or rejecting it, and certainly not by fleeing it; but by living every moment in such a way that the world must face the question of God's rule and the reality of his kingdom. Our criticism must lie, like Benedict's, not in speaking against the world (though this too has its place), but by the positive and grace-filled 806 / Review for Religious~ Volume 39, 1980/6 living of our lives in truth, in love, in brotherhood, in simplicity, in peace: In our time, perhaps more than ever, this is the task to which Benedict's monks and nuns are called, For all of us it is a time of crisis, of asking whether weare really doing what Saint Benedict interided. To answer this question, we do not 'need to examine our effectiveness. For our effectiveness lies entirely in our observance of the Rule and spirit of Saint Benedict. It is by being witnesses to God's kingdom that we shall have our effect, and this witness lies in our fidelity to the principles we have briefly looked at~here: obedience, continual reformation, stability, humility. For fifteen hundred years the presence in the world of Benedictine monks has been a sign and a challenge, a judgment and a question .--a crisis. So long as~we do not ourselves abandon the elements of our life which keep us ever open and sensitive to the workings of the Spirit, so long as we have the faith and the courage to examine ourselves for fidelity to the authentic Benedictine tradition and to step into the future with faith and trust and submissive-ness- so long as these things are present,,the Benedictine family and mission will be .needed, will be in crisis, will be genuinely alive, ~ We attest to a frightened world that the'sword of Christ.is but a prelude to the peace of Christ, that death through olSedience leads to the fullest life, and that the ruins of our lives in the crises we meet are the foundations of Resur-rection. The world's fear must be cast out by the perfection of our love.For it is love that is the greatest judgment and crisis in all of human history. Benedict, in his school of the Lord's service, shows us the way to the crisis of love. The Fourth Level of Prayer: Mystery David J. Hassel, .S.J. Father:Hassel is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyol~i University in Chicago. His last arti-cle, "'Prayer of Personal Reminiscence: Sharing Oners Memories with Christ," was printed in the issue of March, 1977 and is still available in reprint form. He currently resides at 6525 North Sheridan Road; Chicago, IL 60626. Ironically, the terms most frequently used to describe our present-day spirituality can cause us the most c6nfusion: peace, consolation and desola-tion, dryness in prayer, contemplation in action, discernment. Since these terms.point to.mySterious processes within our experience, even a book-length analysis of them would be hardly adequate. But perhaps an article can achieve some clarity if it attempts simply to locate the happenings described by these terms~ In other words, if we were to ~st~rvey the various level~ of human awareness--e~en with some crudity--we might better understand the events occurring at these levels.' But before doing tlais survey, could we first describe the problems to be touched hire? For ~xample, people can feel disturbed about the peace they experience in their decisions and their prayer. Is this peace simply the euphoria of having finally made a decision after hours or days of sweaty deliberations? Is peace in prayer mainly exuberant physical ~nd mental health? The f6~ty'- year old priest has decided that God no longer wants him to practice° his priesthood but now wishes him to marry the woman who has helped him so ' I am deeply indebted to the retreatants whose honesty and trust have furr~ished me with the data out of which this article rises, i am particularly indebted to the following persons who have attempted to save me the usual number of unhealthy exaggerations inevitable in such an article as this: Mary Ann Hoope, B.V.M., Robert Harvanek, S.J., Paul Clifford, S.J., John Schuett, S.J., Richard Smith, S.J., Robert Murphy, S.J, :Mary Jane Linn, C.S.J., Frank Houdek, S.J., Jules Toner, S.J., Mrs. Mary Ellen Hayes. 807 808 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 much in his ministry and in his discovery of manhood. He feels peace in this decision; but is this "peade" simply the relief from heavy parish obligations and the glad anticipation of married life? Will "peace" remain when his new life begins to place renewed obligations on his shoulders? Again, a person can experience what seems to be a split in his personality. He finds himself half-miserable, half-happy. He asks himself: "How can I, at one and the same time, experience the depressing defeat of losing my job and yet, in my depths, feel confident? Are there two of me? Is this the play of con-solation and desolation within my life? Or are the pressures of life splitting my consciousness into two?" A third problem is Christ's command: "Pray always." Such a request seems psychologically impossible when a mother is raising four children between the ages of two years and twelves years or when an engineer is testing a heavily traveled city bridge for stress-breaks and wondering what will hap-pen in the business community and-at city hall if he condemns the bridge, or when the advertising executive is sizing up a prospective customer, estimating the product to be advertised, and puzzling over the morality of a slick sales-pitch which has just come to mind. But if Christ is asking the psychologically impossible, is he not providing the conditions for skepticism about his whole message? A fourth problem arises when we focus upon discernment process the three puzzling cases just mentioned. What does it mean to discern God's will in a decision, if I am unsure about peac~, consolation-desolati0n, and ongoing prayer in my life? Such discernment is often termed the concrete call of Christ to the individual Christian or to his community. But does God call only through external circumstances and other people, or does he not also" make his desires known within the experience of the individual Christian? Does such an interior experience occur in the imagination or in the mind or in the heart of the person? Or in all three at the same time? Or somewhere else? Some clarity, it is contended here, can be attained in these problems if one distinguishes four levels of awareness in the praying Christian: the superficial, physical, psychic, and mysterious. Could we, therefore, describe these levels then indicate a way of uncovering the fourth level, next show the type of partial solution which the appreciation of this fourth level offers to our prob-lems, subsequently explain how the fourth level would seem to affect the upper thre~ levels of awareness, and finally offer some cautions about the use of this fourth-level explanation? These five steps would be the strategy of this presentation. Four Levels of Awareness2 First Level: the Sensuous-Superficial. This first level is the skin-surface of experience: sensuous awareness. It is a tissue of minor irritations and pleasures. For example, I am displeased by the cold draft playing on my neck during the auditorium talk, or by the raspy.voice of the woman describing her The Fourth Level of Prayer: Mystery / 809 Florida vacation or by the first gnawings of hunger at 4:30 p.m., or by the slight rash on the back of my hand. At this same level, I experience satisfac-tion at a favorite meal of ham and sweet potatoes, at the sweet smell of spring grass just cut, at the relaxation of a hardy laugh, at the caressing of the family cat. Such minor irritations and pleasures ordinarily do not demand much at-tention and are taken for granted as the normal flow of life. Though I am often barely conscious of them, they do give life its continuous texture. Second Level: the Physical-Vital. Underneath the first level of awareness, there are other happenings which demand attention because they last longer and are more intense tfian events of the first level. Here are the pains and joys which go deeper than minor ir.ritations and pleasantries~ Anyone who has experienced the steady throb of neuralgia or the constant harassment of ulcer pains or the brain-deadening effect of insomnia will vouch for the e~xistence of this second level of awareness. Here are also pleasurable joys which exceed the simple pleasures described in the first level. There is, for example, the exuber-ance of glowing health, the feeling that "all the world is beautiful and owned by me'~-experiences which the carbonated-drink advertisements exploit. At this level the fifth symphony of Beethoven can stir a person to his depths with its elegant majesty, can make him feel noble beyond his dreams. Or this level contains the sustained sat!sfaction of slowly mastering one's tennis or golf. Here, too, the ecstasy of sexual pleasure .occurs with its deep drum-beat of powerful delight. The very power of the pains and pleasures of this second level demand our attention and make us aware of how superficial the first- . level irritations and pleasures are. Yet these second-level happenings do com-penetrate and influence the first-level, sensuous awareness. One's enjoyment of a favorite dinner is enhanced by the feel of good health or diminished by in-somnia. Third Level: the Psychological-Psychic. Although the second level of awareness contains happenings of insistent strength, still the third level of awareness is capable of riveting a person~.s attention and so possessing him or her that, for a time, he or she is seemingly unaware of second- or first-level happenings. The deep sorrows and the pure joys of this level totally permeate a person's being and consciousness. For example, the young woman, working at her first secretarial job, may be hypnotized by fear of failure so that her voice creaks, her fingers clog the typewriter keyboard, her memory fails and she feels no hunger throughout the first day of work. The paranoid person 2 In their article "Phenomenology, Psychiatry, and Ignatian Discernment," (The Way, Supple-ment #6, May, 1968, 27-34) Felix Letemendia and George Crofts'peak of four levels of experience: the sensorial, the vital, the psychic and the spiritual, which somewhat resemble the levels described here. They have borrowed their descriptions from Max Scheler, the philosopher, and from Kurt Schneider, the psychiatrist. Of course, there are many levels of experience, if one wishes to be very specific. But perhaps this more simplifiedlsketch of four levels better serves our present purpose. 810 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 may be so concentrating on the "derogatory actions" of others that he walks through a glass door without knowing that he is bleeding from cuts. At this third level a woman may experience haunting doubts about her ability to love another adeq~uately and thus may begin to feel like a dull, unattractive child u~na.ble to evoke love from another. A father's mental pain at watching his daughter waste away in unrelievable cancer is matched on this level only by the suffering of a wife undergoing systematic and.continuous belittlement from her husband while the children look on bewildered. But at this third level, the depth of the pure joys~equal such sorrows. Here an6ther mother experiences the warm security of being loved by an admired husband and of being respected by admiring children: Here, too, is where the older brother ~njoys the four-touchdown afterri0on of his younger brother whom h~had 6oached on all the moves of a tigl~t end during four years. It is at this third lev61 that the novelist reads over the'laudatory reviews of his book and experiences lasting gratitude to the elderly journalism teacher who had taught him his craft. Here, too, the woman social worker sits late at her desk, savoring the bone-tiredness but deep satisfaction of a day well spent in patiently binding together fragmenting families, persons, and situations. This third level, then; encompasses the top two levels'and, in so doing, can render them almost routine. For the top two-levels, distracting as they may be to this thir~l level of awareness, are integrated into a fuller meaning at the°third level. The tired social worker does feel the pangs of hunger at the ~irs~t level, and at the second level does anticipate the pleasure of relaxing at home with her husband over a leisurely dinner, but all this is occurring in the wider and deeper context 'of fulfillment in her work at the third level of awareness. Fourth Level: the Underground River of God. ~ The fourth level is like a great underground river which, underlying the upper three levels, quietly nourishes them, sustains them in their storms and blisses, acts as the continuity (the stay-in~ power) underneath~their sometimes rapid fluctuations of irritation-pleasantry, pain-pleasure, sorrow-joy. Compared to theupper three levels, this fourth level is a quiet beneath turbulance, a constancy amid flux, a seem-in~ Passivity under great activity. Consequently, the fourth level is never explicitly conscious in itself (as are the top three levels) but only by way of cont~ast with the top levels. It is not simply experiential, but implicitly experiential,' as we note in the following two cases. Discovery of the Fourth LevEl A remarkable case-history, whose details rife changed to disguise the ~ Being ignorant of C. G. Jung, the author would not wish the combined images of underground river and of ever deeper experiential levels to be interpreted as intentionally Jungian. ' John F.~ Dedek in his Experimental Knowledge of the Indwelling Trinity: an Historica/Study of the Doctrine of St. Thomas (St. Mary of the Lake Seminary Mundelein, Illinois, 1958, pp. 125r142) calls attention to Aquinas' doctrine that.the Christian's knowledge of the Trintiy is quasi The Fourth Level of Prayer: Mystery / 811 person, illustrates how this fourth level can be discovered. A woman novice in a religious order located onthe west coast came to a midwest Jesuit University to begin her collegiate studies. Her novice mistress had taken a dislil(e to her, told her that her lack of intelligence would keep her from ever being a useful member of the congregation, succeeded in turning the other novices against her and yet had capriciously admitted her into vows. When ! met this woman, her skin was blotched with anxiety, the doctor had diagnosed stomach ulcers, she herself felt isolated and :depressed~ But she also was convinced that, despite all the sufferings, God wanted her to be a nun. As three years went by, she discovered that she was a straight "A" student, that she had special talents for political science, that she was being accepted by her fellow students and by the nuns with whom she lived, that she could pray. In other words, she found that she had a future, that deep happiness could occur in religious life. As these discoveries slowly permeated her life, the skin-blotches .disap-peared, the ulcers became healed, the sense of alienation was replaced with the warm feeling of being accepted by her religious community. The steady accomplishment felt at the top three levels of her experience now allowed her to experience by contrast a constant uneasiness or lack of peace at her deepest level, the fourth level. During the period of her novitiate experience, she could not be clearly aware of the uneasiness at the fourth level, because it was clouded by all the disturbances at the upper three levels. Only the growing brightness at the top three levels of-her experience during her collegiate days enabled her to appreciate the bl~i9k uneasiness at the deepest level of her being. After a year or so of disc_e~;nment at-this fourth level, she gradually came to acknowledge that the Lord was asking her to leave the religious community and was calling her to another way .of life. She resisted this leave-taking because she had found so much pleasure, joy, fulfillment in her religious com-munity and in her study-work. Finally she accepted God's will and, leaving the congregation, secured a job in Washington as research assistant to a member of Congress who bullied every member of his staff consistently and impartial-ly. The former novice's skin again took on the anxiety blotches, again she was consulting a doctor about stomach pains, again :she felt herself sinking into a dark and angry depression. But to her surprise, at. t.he fourth level of awareness now opened to her by her previous and present experience, she found a constant serenity never before experienced, The Lord was apparently experimentalis, i.e., "knowledge that is joined to charity" (p. 146). But he is unable to determine whether for Aquinas "this knowledge is merely discursive cognition based on signs or rather some kind of immediate or supra-discursive perception of the divine persons." Such knowledge is cer-tainly at the deepest l~vel of man's experience and, according to.the above analysis, is inferential, that is, the person becomes aware by contrasting the top three levels with the fourth level. The cen-tral texts noted in Aquinas by Fr, Dedek are in I Sent., D. 14, q. 2a., and 3; D. 15, Expositio Secundae Patris Textus. Also Sum. Theol. I, q. 43, a.5, ad 2. 812 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 approving her new way of life. At a great price and with subtle indirectness she had discovered the fourth level of awareness where the Lord calls to her and speaks in her discernment. Among other factors for diagnosing God's will for her, the crucial factor was the continuous uneasiness or the steady Peace at this fourth level. A second quick example illustrates these same points in a less extra-ordinary way. One day in a community corridor I met a fellow Jesuit who had just returned from home. He said to me, "You know my younger sister just died, I discovered two weeks ago that my doctoral thesis of a year's slaving has already been written by a South American, I'm wondering whether I can handle the theology courses scheduled for next year, and I haven't slept more than four hours a night during the last two weeks. But do you know? I must be crazy. Down deep I'm at peace, God loves me and will help me work out these things, I worry at one level of me; but at a deeper level I feel at peace." Could it be that this man is discovering with new clafity 'and enjoying with fuller appreciation the fourth level within his experience--precisely because of the striking contrast between the top three levels of suffering-sorrow and this fourth level of serenity-security? But what is this fourth level so poetically described as the underground river of God within us? First of all, its peace ap-pears to be a sense of God's approval, almost a companioning of the person by God, On the other hand, its uneasiness seems to express God's disapproval which produces an emptiness and loneliness. Secbndly the experience of peace or uneasiness is implicit to the top three levels; that is, it is recognizable by contrast with these levels yet is hidden under and within them. Thirdly, because of its depth and implicitness, this fourth level is difficult to describe directly. Instead, one offers experiential case-histories with the hope that the latter can point within the hearer'sexperience to his or her fourth level. For this reason, too, metaphor ("underlying river of God," "the ocean floor of life-experience" and "the background music of our activity at the top three levels") is employed rather than neat definitions composed of essential char, acteristics or criteria. Fourthly, the peace of the fourth level is marked by a passive alertness to.the top three levels of activity, an intent listening at the fourth level, a sense of not being along, a wi!lingness simply to be and to let be, an expectant openness to all future events. Yet at the same time, this peace permeates, patiently strengthens and lends finer quality to all the activities at the top three levels? What Is Happening at the Fourth Level? Peace. One event of vital importance seems to be happening at the fourth level: peace, a perduring serenity even amid storms at the top three levels. ~ Prayer experience at the fourth level bears a number of resemblances to what Karl Rahner describes as transcendental experience in his Foundations of Christian Faith (Seabury, New York, 1978), pp. 20, 21, 54, 58. The Fourth Level of Prayer: Mystery / 813~ Once the four levels are distinguished, it becomes clear that the word peace can refer to at least four different states in a person's awareness. At the first level, peace would mean enjoyment of life's little pleasures without its normal irritations. Confer television's beer and cosmetic advertisements for further clarification of this bodily peace. At the second level, peace could well mean a combination of good health, unworried mind and settled emotions. The fisherman, safe from the office telephones and watching the sun rise over water dimpled by surface-fee~ding trout, may well be the symbol of tl~is peace of mind. At the third level, peace may be euphoria, the neatly balanced inner life of felt achievement, of skilled competence, of fully satisfying family life, of pleasant prospect. For examples, look at the All-American father or mother in the Geritol or insurance-annuity advertisements; or, .better, look to the disciplined people who are willing to suffer much for the good of others. This could be called peace of heart. As we have mentioned, the top three level~ of peace, when disturbed, can reveal by contrast the fourth level of peace. Evidently, when one is recollecting himself or sinking into himself to discover his center of being so that he can pray better, he is actually dropping down through the three upper levels of awareness so that he can reach the fourth level where life flows most richly, quietly, serenely. He will note how the peace of this fourth level tends to render peaceful the upper three levels and he will understand better the restlessness of those who appear to have everything but lack peace of being or person. So, h'~ will discover that fourth-level peace is not just the concern of the wise, the religiously inclined~ the fortuna~tely educated; it is the goal and hope of every living person. Indeed, this is precisely what the Taoist, the Buddh.ist, and the transcendental meditator seeks. Yet not all seem to recognize the fourth level cli~arly for what it is: the felt presence of God. And quite a few seem unwilling to pay the price of such .recognition. For the price i~ double: (1) a sometimes painful discerning of ~what factors are operating within the fourth level and (2) for the Christian, the consequent willingness to accept the call of Christ (n6w heard more clearly,) and to respond to it more generously. Let us attempt some exploration of thesetwo points. Discernment. A spate of articles and floods of conversation about discern-ment make it one of the "in" terms. As luck would have'it, the mystery of discernment is not lessened by all this attention. Nor will this article do anything more than try to show where discernment takes place~ To put it starkly, discernment occurs radically at the fourth level.6 What 6 In using the term radical discernment to point to God's approving (peace) or disapproving (uneasiness) movemeni within the fourth level, I do not intend to discount the other convergent factors which go into the full discernment process, e.g., the weighing of reasons pro and con, obe-dience to lawful authority, spiritual direction, the testing of the decision in the actual living of it, use of Scripture, the calibrating of patterns of past behavior and accomplishments (the direction 814/Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 this:statement means become clearer only after one defines the events (or states) of desolation, consolation, depression, and elation. For it would seem that these four states occur only at the upper three levels. In other words, although desolation and consolation are used to read the spirits influencing a person to good or to evil, and although they may well appear to intrude upon the fourth level, still they are quite distinct from a perons's peace or lack of peace at this lowest level. Nor do depression and elation enter the fourth level of man's awareness even though they can obscure the peace or uneasiness of this level. Consolation-Desolation, Elation-Depression. It is necessary to define these four terms experientially in order to understand and to test in one's own awareness the truth of the above statements. First of all, though desolation can cause depression and intermingle with the latter almost inextricably, still desolation is not the psych.ological state of depression. For desolation is induced by the evil spirit, not by the psychological dy~.namisms causing depres-sion such as extreme fatigue, poor self-image, seemihgly depreciatory actions by admired people, neurotic or psychotic impulses, and so on. In addition, desolation has spiritual effects, i.e., those based on faith experience. Thus the person undergoing desolation feels that God igat a cold distance or does not exist at all. This person finds himself convinced that he has no future b~cause he can do no good for. anyone, least of all for the kingdom of Godl He feels totally unloving and unlovable for God and his people. On the other hand, depression is not concerned with faith-o.bjects such as these, but is involved with natural goals and hopes which, however, can be easily entwined with faith objects, e.g., when th~ nun-teacher estimateg that her attempt to write a biology book is being thwarted (depression) by her own lack of competence or (paranoia) by the devious enyy-tactics bf the department chairman so that as a result she cannot Contribute to God's glory and his kingdom. To put all this succinctly, depression paralyzes or weakens the human as human; while desolation freezes or enerx~ates the Christian as Christian. Thus it almost goes without saying that consolation is not elation since of one's life), and so on. But I am saying that in the midst of complex decisions, peace or uneasiness at the fourth lex;el is the predominant factor to be considered. For often enough the reasons pro and con cancel each other out; authority often gives such broad directives that numerous alternatives are left open; spiritual direction can only help the directee discover for himself or herself the peace or uneasiness; testing of the decision in practice can be somewhat ambivalent; use of scriptural prayer is itself tested in terms of consolation and desolation which, in turn, are discerned in terms of peace or uneasiness; patterns of past behavior do not fully account for new demands of life, new turns on the road of life. For more on discernment, confer Karl Rahner's The Dynamic Element in the Church, (Herder and Herder, New York, 1964) Part 111: "'The Logic of Concrete Individual Knowledge in Ignatius Loyola." Thomas M. Gan. non and George W. Traub's The Desert and the City (Macmillan, Toronto, 1969) Chapter VIII: "The Logic of Christian Discernment" says much clearly in short compass. The Fourth Level of Prayer: Mystery / 815 strengthening consolation ~(as distinct from Satan's eventually debilitating elation) is caused by God, not by such psychological dynamisms as the sense of worked achievement, the feel of competence in skilled activity, the reassurance of someone's deep affection, the hope of career-success, the discovery of one's deepest self. Fo~ consolation, unlike the elation which it can cause and enter, is concerned with faith-effects. That is, God consoles me with the inner faith-vision that he pervades the whole world, with the hope that I can do much for him and his people, with the certainty that I amcapable of deep devotion to the triune God and his people, Briefly, consolation is the state of feeling cl.ose to self, God, and others; just as desolation is the state of feeling isolated from God,. others, and even one s self, Consolation ~s a deep sense of the commu'nion'~of saints because of the felt presence of faith, hope, and charity; while desolation is experience of the utter loneliness of hell. Only God can cause consolatio.n; just as Satan is the sole cause of desolation, a deliberate attack on the three God-given virtues of faith, hope and charity. And both pheno~aeha occuronly at the top three levels of a person's experience- .Dryness in Prayer. Obviously, when consolation and desolation are swinging back and .forth (along with elation and depression) in one's experience, one feels no "dryness in prayer." For this dryness is the state of normalcy, the middle balancing state between the swings of consolation and desolation, of elation and desolation. Indeed, it is the state of~everyday living. Thus, dryness in prayer is not necessarily a sign of God's displeasure. For one cannot undergo the alternations of desolation-consolation or of depression-elation over.long periods of time without becoming exhausted'physically as well as spiritually. There must be periods of so-cailed~dryness if only so that the con-solations and desolations may be felt with refreshed sensitivity. It should be noted here that there is a dryness induced by ungrateful or disloyal actions, by petty selfishness, by clever screening out of spiritual insights which might disturb Complacency. This is when God declines to speak to Us with Consolation lest he seem.to approve our.state, and when Satan does not want to disturb our foolish self-satisfa'ction with desolation. But this dryness of complacency is not the normal dryhess in prayer even though both types of dryness occur within the same top three levels and can intermingle or at least succeed each other This intermingling makes it necessary to enter the fourth level of e~xperi-ence to explain~what normal dryness in prayer is. For underlying this dryness of the top three levels, can be a perduring sense of being right with God, of not being alone, and even of companioning God--despite all one's mistakes, shortcomings, and sin~fulness. This fourth-level, implicit sense of God is itself a prayer of quiet calmness which gives endurance, balance, and centering to all our spiritual living.~ This prayer of trusting expectancy would seem to be the somewhat experiential divine presence of which Aquinas speaks. Here the 816 ./ReviewforReligious, Volume 39, 1980/6 person is, in the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar, "a sustained utterance of prayer.''8 For this reason, such prayer can go on underneath one's fatigue, distractions, deadness of feeling, fitful sexual urges, tightening tensions, twitches and quirks. The quiet, hidden (not explicitly conscious) presence of God is supporting all the events at the tbp three levels of experience as one studies educational theory, works crossword puzzles, sells toothpaste, kisses children goodnight, and argues with one's spouse; This is why the :fourth level of experience can be described as a great underground river which quiets, stabilizes, nourishes, and guides the praying person. It is that which enable us literally to pray always. For, to change the figure, peace of the fourth level is like the quiet background music to all our endeavors on 'the upper levels. Again, this peace is the sense of carrying within oneself the Center of the World and of having nothing to fear (See Rm 8:35-39; I Co 3:21-23). Seeming Dereliction. For these reasons, even a partial obscuring of the fourth level can be a confusing, even an initially frightening, experience. When one'~ sense of the indwelling presence of God seems clouded in some way within the fourth level itself and not merely by desolation or depression at th~ top three levels, one experiences a certain dereliction. One.feels cut adrift, terribly alone, like a solitary canoeist drifting on a great body of night water. For the fourth level contains the center of one's universe, the hope of one's total future, the sourse of one's strength to love when not loved back. Of course, the fourth level of experience is never completely obscured; God is never far away. In fact, our very vulnerability and helplessness prob-ably make us, like the waif, even more appealing to him. Yet because this feel-ing of atheism at the fourth level is often accompanied by a convergence of outside calamities affecting the top three levels (confer the example of the Jesuit mentioned earlier), the suffering is acute. In fact, the sufferer needs the reassurance of spiritual direction as much as the storm-engulfed navigator needs clear sighting on the North Star. Still, in this seemingly total absence of consolation, to say nothing of elation, there perdures the subtle peace of God's presence never doubted even though ba~ely felt. Indeed, after the tem-porary dereliction, one feels more sensitive to peace', more alert to G.od's movements within the fourth l~vel.9 ' A wise and experie~ntial description of prayer amid dryness is Leonard Boase's Prayer of Faith (B. Herder, St. Louis, 1962), especially Chapters IV and V. (Paperback reissue: Our Sunday Visitor Press, Noll Piazza, Huntington, Indiana, 1976, a somewhat rearranged edition). ~ Hans Urs yon Balthasar, Prayer(Paulist Press, New York, 1961), translated byA. V. Littledale, p. 36. (Though not easy reading, this book gives deep understanding of prayer. One of its surpris-ing insights is that "even the dark night of the soul, the total absence of consolation, is a form of consolation" (p. 239). The paradox would seem to be that the ve~:y endurance of desolation with trust and love is itself a type of consolation. , * In his When the Well Runs Dry (Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, 1979), Thomas H. Green, S.J., has provided an encouraging synthesis of Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Leonard Boasei and The Fourth Level of Prayer: Mystery / 817 Levels of Prayer. Consequently, as one sinks down past the first or sensuous level where vocal prayer finds expression, past the second and third levels where meditative and affective prayer predominate, and into the fourth level where prayer of.simplicity (simple being) occurs, the praying person hears more and more clearly the call of Christ within. Here one listens with a deeply passive alertness underneath the swirl of activities on the top three levels.'° Here the God-hunger is never sated; here in faith one feels heard, faced, touched by the Other. From here one responds with a surprising strength and tenderness. For, from here an all-embracing hope reaches up through the top three levels to say: "There will always be someone to serve and to love wherever I go, whomever I meet, whatever be the conditions of myself and others," From here love explodes up through the top three levels in strong generosity: "How can I give joy to my friends, coworkers, people I serve? How can I help each discover his or her deepest value and find this in each other and in Christ?" Thus, at the fourth level one seems to discover the peaceful river of God's mysterious presence, the radical source of discernment underlying consola-tion and desolation, the prayer of quiet calmness underneath the normal dryness of routinized life, the sometime feeling of dereliction when God is Closest, and the source of exuberantly hopeful generosity at the call of Christ. Influence of the Fourth Level on the Top Three Levels Despite its many levels, human experience is a unified focusing on the world, God, and self. So, it is not surprising that the peace of the fourth level percolates up through the upper three levels--with varying results. For example, in flooding up into the top three levels, this peace may make a face radiant, give added physical strength, direct strong emotions into creative activity, lend stable purpose .to one's thinking, imagining, feeling, deciding. Under these conditions even the ordinarily dour person will occasionally appear to be cheerful and rather outgoing. Because joy and lightness of heart are not infrequently a result of this pe~ace, people may rashly judge that a per-son undergoing deep sorrow at the third level is strange because of "his being unmoved, his quiet smile." On the other hand, uneasiness felt at the fourth level can move up and disturb. A person may be fe~eling euphoric at the top three levels and yet expe-the Cloud of Unknowing, within his own experience of prayer and of giving spiritual direction. ¯ Especially helpful are Chapters IV, V, and VI where he imaginatively and succinctly describes the Dark Night of the Senses and the Dark Night of the Soul. ~o M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O., works with brilliant clarity at this fourth level in his two articles "Centering Prayer--Prayer of Quiet" (REwEw FOR RELIGIOUS, Vol. 35, 1976/5, pp. 651-662) and "Progress in Centering Pr~iyer" (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOOS, VOI. 38, 1979/6, pp. 833-838). These are complemented by Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O., with his "Cultivating the Centering Prayer" (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, Vol. 37, 1978/1, pp. 10-15). 818 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 rience a vague restlessness; 'amid continuing success, the man who has everything may feel a sense of incompleteness; within a totally secure situation ("I simply can't lose") a sense of impending chaos sends up ripples of fear from the fourth level. When this happens, people will sometimes~seek to distract themselves from this basic uneasiness. They will overwork., start an unending process of job-jumping, try multiplemarria.ges, haunt psychiatrists, exhaust themselves .on attractive trifles like stamp collecting, golfing, crocheting and televiewing. St. Augustine's description of his ownfascinatio nugacitatis is a case history of one man's twenty-year struggle with constant uneasiness at the fourth level. But if peace from the fourth level is arising within a person's euphoria at the top three levels, it acts as a stabilizing ballast to the ballooning emotions and exuberant activities. For its very perdurance at the depth of one's being gives a sharp sense of the temporariness of success. Indeed, the .implicit awareness of God at the fourth level helps us to feel, as well as to understand, how relative are all events and things compared to the absolute faithfulness of the Lord. In this way, contemplation is permeating not only the top three levels of experience but entering into all the activities issuing from these levels of experience. The duality of contemplation and action is becoming more and more unified as the active person becomes more and more aware of the fourth level of experience. For the prayer of simplicity at the fourth level, in penetrating the top levels of experience, gives a new alertness to God's presence in others, a renewed hope in people's future fidelity, a deeper con-fidence in God's providence. Lastly, it should be mentioned here that the neurotic or psychotic person, if put in touch with the fourth level,, may find a new source of hope. Underneath all the disturbances at the top three levels where the psychiatrist competently works to free his client from constricting fears, is the fourth level where the spiritual director competently tries to help a person interpret God's call. Because these four levels intermingle, both the psychiatrist and the spiritual director must know something of the other's area of competence, must learn to respect each other's discoveries, and must cooperate to help their client accept and live within his limitations. In this way, the neurotic or the psychotic can slowly learn that God will be daily with him, that he can hope against hope without this being just another contradiction, that he is lovable and capable of loving, that, like Theresa of Lisieux, he can become a saint. '~ Four Dimensions of Prayer Experience. Once we have indicated, how the fourth level of awareness intermingles with and influences the other levels, we " In his Storm of Glory (Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1955, Image) John Beevers indicates that Theresa of Lisieux struggled with personality imbalance of a serious nature from her mother's death (Aug. 28, 1877) until her miraculous cure by the Blessed Virgin (May 13, 1883). See pp. 34, 41-43. The Fourth Level of Prayer: Mystery / 819 are in a position to change the metaphor of "levels" to that of "dimensions" of experience. For human experience is marvelously unified and thus all the levels of awareness do permeate and mutually modify each other in forming a single human consciousness. For example, the fourth level contains the deep root of every prayer. Yet this prayer flowers differently, e.g., into prayer of the feelings and imagination at the third level, into reflective-meditative prayer at'the second level and into vocal prayer (action-prayer) at the first level. This is why these forms of prayer can be equally profound, can succeed each other quickly during a fifteen-minute period of prayer, can support and challenge each other, and can vary in intensity as does conversation between two human beings. This interchange between levels of prayer experience is also the reason why discernment, though founded radically at the fourth level in basic peace or uneasiness, nevertheless also occurs at the third level in the shapes of consola-tion, desolation, obedience, friendship; at the second level in terms of Scrip-ture, historical memories, and reasons pro and con; and even at the first level in the setting of such conditions for discernment as fasting, silence, and mortification. Obviously, then, the presence of God, so intimately and per-duringly active at the fourth level, is not limited to that level of awareness. Consequently, to change the model of explanation from "levels" to "dimensions" is not to deny the distinctions among the four levels and to homogenize their diverse influences on each other. Rather, it is to assert con-comitantly the remarkable unity of a praying person's consciousness. This is to say that all four levels, while remaining distinct, nevertheless are como penetrating and mutually influencing each other like distinct eddies in the single stream of human consciousnesL ,Some Cautions About the Fourth Level Because the above description of the location and the dynamics of the fourth level is rather crude, one must carefully assess one's own experience to see if it somewhat fits this description. One should not be unduly surprised if things are not totally clear. Then, too, one's spiritual director should be con-sulted for the necessary qualifications of the many flat statements made above. At the heart of each person is the deepest mystery and this article can hold only a fitful candle-flame to it. It is hoped that the shifting shadows accompanying such a flame will not obscure the basic contours outlined. For there are many, many layers of experience, and consequently, many, many interpretations of them to be considered. Still, no matter how many levels of experience, there is always the last and deepest level of man's being where union with God is radical.'2 ,2 Would it be outrageous to predict that growing sensitivity to the fourth level of experience will occur through steady practice of the examen of consciousness? 1120 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 Further, though God may be most present and most clearly speaking at the so-called fourth level, still he is also present in all the levels above. As a result, it takes some reflective living to distinguish these levels and to calibrate their functions. So I have been warned: "Only veterans of the spiritual life will really understand what you are saying; others will be mystified or will mistakenly think that they understand--with consequent bad results." In response to this, I can only say that the Lord protects those trying to find him and that no one can escape the facing of mystery deep within himself. It seems to me that we are never "safe" with any mystery, never in control, never ade-quately understanding, always searching and groping, always trusting amid our fears. If we must take chances in order to grow, then here would be the best place of all to gamble. Now Available As A Reprint Prayer of Personal Reminiscence: Sharing One's Memories With Christ by David J. Hassel, S.J. Price: $.60 per copy, plus postage Address R~view for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 Journey into Journey--A Reflection Rita Bernard Walton, S.S.J. Sister Rita's last article, "Nomadic Memories," appeared in the January issue, 1978. She resides at St. Charles Seminary; Overbrook; Philadelphia, PA 19151. i was tired, as though at the end of a long journey. Long it had been, for I had journeyed into the human condition and had come to the doorway of under-standing that the human condition was so fragile, so delicately beautiful and so unique. I had journeyed and had come to the crossroads of another journey. It was there that I met Jesus in a new and startlingly beautiful way. For many days I had concentrated on the road itself, the dust, the rocks, the potholes, the many trials of faith and trust, the deaths along the way. It was easy to lose sight of the sunshine, even when it was directly overhead, when my mind grappled with the why of human events of suffering and death, events that seemed to crash in, like hurricane winds. Jesus had been my companion on the whole of my'journey, but for awhile I lost full sightoof him as I became enveloped in the dust-cloud of self pity and independence. It was only when I fell, or when I cried out in hurt or pain that my vision cleared enough to allQw me to see that others were just as fragile and beautiful as I, and I saw him in them. Friends tended to my wounds, making his,compassion so real. I continued on my journey, renewed in tasting the empathy that had been portioned out to me. It was when I came to what seemed like the end of my journey, at the crossroads, that my vision cleared in grace and I saw Jesus again. He was standing there right in front of me as though in a line at the bus depot. He was as dusty and worn down at the heels as I was. He had been journeying in the human condition, too. We looked deeply into each other's eyes, feeling recognition flood within as our eyes drank in the sight of the human condition. "I have come to do the will of him who sent me" (see Jn 6:35-40) we both said together, laughing and hugging 821 822./Review for Religious, ~'olume 39, 1980/6 each other as old friends do. Calvary lingered in my bones and memory. We had tasted each other's experience in dialogue often along the way before this. The look in our eyes now spoke more eloquently than words as we recalled our meetings on The Hill. I saw myself reflected in his eyes and came to understand how much he loved so many other fragile creatures like me--enough to die upon that Hill. Suddenly, I saw an endless procession of fragile creatures reflected in his eyes as once again I heard him say: "I have come to do the will of him who sent me. come follow me" (ibid.; Jn 1:43). All through my life I had worked to achieve something and here I was wrapped in the total surprise of being given unconditional love and the knowledge of its depth of meaning, of its desire for response. I felt rooted in time, yet weightless, as my mind and heart saw and felt the others who had responded to his call. I saw Jesus before me gesturing like a white-faced clown who beckons a crowd to come forward. He skipped around gleefully to show the.adventure with him that lay ahead. I felt life and death penetrate me, both at the same time. Self came to life and self died as I stepped forth, lifted by the urgency ofthat leap. I found myself transformed, a new clown among clowns, called to love the human condition. The clowns remind us, with a tear and a smile, that we share the same human weakness. Thus, it is not surprising that, in the:clown, we have a powerful image to help us under-stand the role of, the minister in contemporary society.' I had laughed and cried so often along the way, feeling the human condi-tion fired in my bones, but it was only my own condition that I had felt. I had seen others and so often moved on without feeling. In this leap away from myself I experienced the desire to share in, and feast in the human condition of my brother an~d sister clowns, the soon-to-be Clowns as well as the never-to-be clowns. Jesus had touched my fire-brighted stillness and unharnessed me. I no longer marched in my own parade~ My mind whirled in thoughtful excitement and new comprehension as I" found myself thinking of my Old Testament favorites, friends whose life stories had~ encouraged me to persevere along the way. I laughed when I thought of Abraham. In my own way I understood how he felt having been stirred by Yahweh (Gn 12:1). When Abraham was seventy-five years oid he had an experience 0f God that created a disturbance in the order of his life. Yahweh took possession of him as friend and placed within him the seed for upsetting the known order of the time. Abraham was headed toward a new foundation caused by the deliberate intervention of God into the course of human history. In response, Abraham abandoned his natural roots and "went" (Gn 12:14). Abraham was called to bring life to celebration in know-ing God's affirmation, and he allowed God to alter the course of his life ' Nouwen, Henri J. M., Clowning in Rome, New York, 1979, p. 2-3. Journey into Journey--A Reflection dramatically. His response brought biblical religion to birth. God moved across the existing culture, purified the existing religion and showed himself to be a personal, saving God. Abraham's story is a story of the trials and con-solations he experienced in his need to have faith in the God who called and stirred him. I think Abraham would have made a good clown. His faith touched me as I reflected on his journey into a new land. I, too, was journeying in a new land and realized that love had placed within me, also, the seed for upsetting my known order of time. Jesus had intervened in the course of my human history and created a disturbance in the order of my life with his call to follow him. He walked on my sand and seeded the field of me. He called me friend, beloved; and I felt his warmth. I was unbirthed, in labor to be born, wrapped in silent wonder, wrapped in warmth, encased, ensacked in womb-like nurturing, waiting to become more of who I am. I was born and aging, greying, daily dying, stepping slower, encased, ensacked in tomb-like mystery, waiting to become more ofwho I am. I was spiraling unborn to birth, spiraling birthed to dying, going both ways--to life, to death-- like the seed, dying to be alive. Quantum leap, broken shell, o rising beauty from out of clay, reaching upwards to the Son; I felt the warmth of him who enters and transforms in utter silence and mystery. His warmth pulled my roots down into the numerous sands of time. His warmth pulled my beauty up into the spiraling newness of his life. Ah, the wonder of it all. I was 894 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 nurturing the mystery of God in me, waiting for the moment to be more of who I am. I had journeyed into the human condition and found the footprints of those who had been there before me. I had cried out from my own slavery that held me deep within my selfishness. I had longed for a new freedom. My Lord, I ask you' to lure me once more and lead me out into the wilderness and speak to my heart. Give me back the vineyards of your love and make my troubled valley a gateway of hope. Show me how to respond to you as I did when I was young, as I did when I came out of the Egypt of sin and into the land of freedom in your love. When that day comes, teach me again how to call you "my husband" and no longer let me call you "distant Lord." Take the names of sin off my lips; let them never be uttered again. When that day comes make a treaty for me with all that is wild in me. Break up the battle in me and make my sleep secure. Betroth me to yourself forever, betroth me with integrity and justice, betroth me with tenderness and love. Betroth me to you with faithfulness so I may come to know you. (see Ho 2:16-22) The Lord put Moses before me for reflection. He marks a turning point in salvation history and is a promise, an expectation for the future (Dt 18:15). Moses' journey with God took him to.the edge of fulfillment. He was deprived of the joy of entering the Promised Land in this life. His glance across the Promised Land accepted ownership of it for his people and it climaxed his ministry to them. His glance thrust us forward as a people of God. Glances along my journey, glimpses of future freedoms thrust me forward, too, and helped form me along the way. My living-dying-living is an exodus event that I continue to celebrate in my covenant with God in grace. I had to learn, as did Moses and the Israelites, to live with confidence in God. God wished me, too, to be content with him. Though he provided much manna, he continued to call to a deeper surrender, to total reliance (Dt 8:2-3). Exodus became a present :reality in the celebration of Eucharist. My "daily bread experience" called me to come out of my self-will slavery into the freedom of surrendering my needs to my Provider. I began to learn to live Journey into Journey--A Reflection / ~125 without the securities and comforts that had been baals along the way. He gave to me in "miraculous measure" (see Ex 16:14-31, 17:6) to increase my faith in order to conquer temptations and survive the desert trials. I began to realize that my whole life was dependent upon his sovereign grace and prom-ise. I felt the trust formed within me asI came to a new life, became a truer person, nourished and brought into covenant. My gratitude and trust found expression in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the ways I began to live with others. His all-the-time presence which had cut into my life, became a deeper experience of presence. This "peak:' experience left its mark on me and continues to call me into wonder and celebration and into deeper exami-nation of the heart of my being. I found that I was interacting with the extra-ordinary love of God. Justice, equity and charity e.ntered a new depth within me. "The wages of a day laborer are to be paid before the day is over, before sundown of the day itself, since he is poor and looks forward to them" (Dt 24:15). This thought brought affirmation alive in me. To pay my brothers and sisters their due ,wages before the sun goes down, to affirm them for who they are, for what they do, was to help me to live in sacred truce with my God and with each one of them. Affirmation makes me lovable. God affirmed me by my creation, by my calling to be more along the journey. Affirmation enriched community liv-ing and spilled out over into liturgy where the heart of affirmation comes to a depth of appreciation around the table of the Lord. I had journeyed into the human condition and learned affirmation from God's presence to Abraham, to Moses in the desert, and with me in the desert night into which he had invited me. I realized that finally My self-will cocoon had worn thin. It had cracked. The long hours of darkness and death-like sleep were at an end. A new awaking had flashed through my being, and I felt the pulsation of new life in the deep recesses of my unknown self. I felt my weakness, fragileness, and the limited space this life permits; but I had come to know the unbounded space of time that my Creator has. I felt a flutter in my new wings, faith sustained and overcame the fear of being lifted by the gentle breeze that warmed my wings and lifted them to the sun and sky. There ffere flashes of color and shapes of hope I had never seen before. They surrounded me and formed a world of trust that enhanced the colors I, too, had been gifted with. Wings and color, 826 / Review for fleligious, Volume 39, 1980/6 warmth and sun, gentle .breeze and cracked cocoon, --a new world, a new pulsation of life, and surrender, amen, your will be done. . and I was born, and borne aloft to him on the wings of love. Silence, burst of sound. Darkness, flash of light. " Once entombed, now unwombed, made real. Made real and set free, set free in the desert castle of life, sparked by the Flame of Love, enveloped by the Cloud of the Spirit, held only by the Song of Mortalness and the time to sing it in joy. I was made real, with what was real gone. I no longer fit into the crevices of the past nor in the ways of yesterday. I couldn't speak to yesterday as once I did. I tried and laughter faded, while puzzles formed and pain stood up. Yesterday and I were no longer one, and I had to trust that wings and colors would speak for themselves, that pains would be salved by the Son for I could not fold my wings to return to the cocoon of yesterday. A new form of life was presented io me in my quantum leap; for it to remain effective I knew I had to relate to and affect the world where I lived. I had to examine what would guide and support, my internal strength during my period of adjustment~ I was. on journey with a definite purpose, to keep cove-nant with my beloved God. I knew my quantum leap was a "peak" moment to recall and bring to celebration. I knew that I had to celebrate.by living fully alive, deeply in tune and in harmony with the life that surrounded me. God had funneled me down through many generations of people and I had to live as an important part of the whole production of life. I realized that Jesus held the promise of life. He set me free from sin and death through the sorrow and joy of the cross. Faith and trust had to stay alive in me and come to external expression in the celebration of life. Jesus had drawn me close and changed the structure of my existence. I became aware of his wanting my total dependence, a dependence of love, a life of daily living- " dying-living in the internal martyrdom of the consuming fire of love. I felt like bread dough that had become leavened and I was rising to the proportion that Journey into Journey--A Reflection / 827 he had measured out for me. He asked only for love. His was the action which created laughter within me, a love that reflected itself in a deeper sense of peace and joy. I was given a new identity in living a deeper form of covenant love. I was being built and structured into a new expression of love that gentles, purifies and strengthens as it sets the soul aflame with the desire to serve and love in total unity of mind, heart, and will. Nothing seemed dif-ferent, yet everything was different, is different. There is a new beauty in the air, in the pulsation of life and in silence which is an alive silence filled with wonder. In the silence of wonder I found and. still find my attitudes under reform. My wildness is being consumed further. The cry of the poor wants to be heard; and Jesus asks for a compassionate friend to respond to the cry of pain, of loneliness, of suffering that is crying out from members of his bruised body. In my meeting with Jesus at the crossroads of my journey, in the quan-tum leap of faith, in exodus from self, Jesus had blessed me--blessed me as poor. He brought me to the beautiful awareness of the fragileness of the human condition we all share. In union with him in the blessed poverty of dependence I am learning to share his love-gift. His living word gives me courage and encouragement. I hear him say: You are poor, and I have need of your povertyr your dependence on Me, Blessed are ihe poor in spirit; the kingdom o'f heaven is theirs (Mr 5:3). Your Father, who sees all that is done in secret, will reward you (Mt 6:6). You are poor, and I have need of your poverty to fill the hungry with good things and to give dessert to the poorest poor who are filled even with the crumbs of things, and the little that the poor can share. You are poor. Come! I know the plans .I have in mind for you. Plans for you to seek me with all your heart (Jr 29:11-14), for you are poor with need to find me, with need to listen so to listen to the poor and the poorer-- with a heart's care. 828 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 You are poor. The Plan I have for you is poor, a foolish plan, a prophet's plan. ¯ Console my people, console them (Is 40:1). Go now to those to whom I send you. and say whatever I command you (Jr 1:7). Do not be afraid, for I am with you (Is 43:5). I have called you- pool', I will be with you--poor, passing through the sea.--poor, walking through fire~ poor, you are precious in my eyes--poor, you are honored--poor, and I love you--poor. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. You are poor, and I have need of your poverty for the poor are blessed in spirit, heaven is the kingdom that is theirs. It is the Father's given reward. You are poor . Come! I lead you with reins of kindness, With leading strings of love (Ho 11:4), for you are poor with need to be fed, with need to be led-- so to, lead, for it is only the led who become those who lead. You are poor, and I have need of your poverty; for the poor are blessed in spirit, heaven is the kingdom that is theirs. It is the Father's given rewhrd You are poor, and I have need of your poverty. Come! I shall feed you in good pasturage. Journey into Journey--A Reflection / 829 You will rest in good grazing ground. I will show you where to rest (Ezk 35:14-16) Come! Come to feed the rich who fatten on the spoils of greed. Come! Come to look with me for the lost one, the stray one, the wounded one. Come! Be a true shepherd to them. You are poor, and I have need of your poverty, for the poor spirit is blessed. Heaven is the kingdom, a reward given by the Father who sees. Who sees that you are poor. You are poor, and I have need of your poverty. I have need for your spirit to be poor, poor enough to be sustained only on manna, on quail, on water, from rock (Ex 16), poor enough to be sustained on providence, the sustenance of the poor. You are poor, and I have need of your poverty. Come! Show the anawim the manna for thb seventh day so they may gather and share what few omers they need (Ex 16:23). Bring forward the people tha~t is blind, yet has eyes, that is deaf and yet has ears (Is 43:~). They are poor and in need of your poverty. Your poverty-- my song, piped through a bruised reed of foolish clay. Come! Sing a new hymn! Let praise resound from the ends of the earth, Let the sea sing praise, 830 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 Let the deserts and the cities raise voice! (Is 42:10-11). Your poverty--my song, piped through a bruised reed of foolish clay. Come! Come to the water, thirsty as you are; and though you have no money, come! I make no charge for corn, for wine, for milk. I make no charge for satisfying bread (Is 55:1-3). Come! Give your attention, listen! I know theplans I have in mindforyou (Jr 29:1 l). Come! Come to covenant (Is 55:4). you are poor. Your poverty--my song. My words do not return to me empty. They water the earth. They give growth and seed (Is 55). --seed for the poor. Your poverty--my song. You are poor, and I have need of your poverty, for the poor spirit is blessed. Heaven is the kingdom, a reward given by the Father, who sees . . and he took pity on them. (Mk 6:34). He took the five loaves and the two fish. (v. 41). They all ate., and (v. 42) They collected the scraps remaining, twelve baskets full (Mt 14:20). Come! You are poor, and I have need of your poverty. In grace and love I respond: Let what you have said be done to me (Lk 1:38). I am poor, ° and I have need of your song. Journey into Journey--A Reflection / 831 It took many years to form Israel as a people:. It takes us years to be formed as his beloved. We each experience our own Exodus, Covenant, Tran-sition, and Celebration through many times of stepping but of chronolo.gical time into kyriological moments. So, come! I was tired, as though ~at the end of a long journey. Long it had been, for 1 had journeyed into the human condition to find that the next stage of the journey was just beginning. I have joyfully met you along the way. Come! O God, in mercy bless us; let your face beam with joy as you look down on us. Send us around the world with the news of your saving power and your eternal plan for all people. How everyone throughout the earth will praise you! (Ps 67:1-3, adapted The Way). An Apostolic Spirituality for the Ministry of Social Justice by Max Oliva, S.J. Price: $.50 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 Developmental Stages and the Contemporary Male Novice Jonathan Foster, O.F.M. Father Jonathan is Director of Continuing Education for the Chicago-St. Louis Province of Franciscans. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Adult Education and Develop-ment. His present address is Office of Continuing Education; 3400 St. Paschal Drive; Oak Brook, IL 60521. Writing an article such as this is a precarious business. The study of adult development stages is of fairly recent origin in the empirical sciences. There is some very interesting theory (Erikson, 1963, 1964; Kohlberg, 1968; Levinson, 1978; Fowler, 1978; Vaiilant, 1977), but not an abundance of evidence. Moreover, what theory and evidence exist leave us with no clearcut delimita-tion of such stages. One prominent developmentalist (Neugarten) has in fact stated that all we know is that there is some development in adults. Its precise staging is by no means widely accepted. An article such as this is also precarious because of the subject of interest: novices. They comprise no one adult developmental stage. In recent years in my own community, the age range has run from twenty-two to fifty. To treat them all as "young adults" is obviously to allow some of them to fall through the cracks, or, if you will, off the end. Nevertheless, I will attempt to make some sense out of the evidence we have to date, and apply this to a reasonable estimate of what a novice is. I take the age of a typical novice from our Vocation Center's projection of the next few classes currently in pre-novitiate programs for our province. According to this projection, the age of most novices in the immediate future will fall between twenty-two and twenty-eight. There will certainly be a few older than this. But it is not likely, in view. of current policies, that there will be any younger. The observations I will make here will concern the generality of 832 Developmental Stages / 883 young American adults, from whose company we can assume most novices come. According to Levinson (1978), the essential task of the young adult is to separate himself .from emotional dependence on his family and the social structure from which he comes-- not thesame, it should be noted, as destroy-ing his roots. He does this by exploring different possibilities for making his life and creating a stable life structure in which to live out whatever this separation has led him to. Both elements, exploration and stabilization, need equal attention during this period. In one way or another, ehch of the stages we shall look at attempt to deal with this dynamic. The Developmental Task: Identity and Dream Formation I am treating these two stages as one because of their intimate connection with each other. By identity I mean the ability of the individual to see himself as essentially the same person as he passes through the many, even profound, changes of his life. The first great change in a person's life is the traumatic passage from adolescence to adulthood with all the separation and newness it brings with it. The achievement of identity is not so much the search for something new and frustratingly elusive as it is the maintenance and building of a "unique and reasonably coherent whole".(Erikson, 1968), something that holds together and remains ultimately the same despite the shock of change, and the addition of the new. In other words, "identity" is not exclu-sively drawn from within. It is built on a given reality growing out of the experience of community, persons, the historical times, and especially at this age, out of ideology. Ideology is a vision according to which the individual wants to live. Identity in this ideological sense moves into dream formation, a concep-tion of life that the individual picks oi~t as most suitable to his personality. Identity is thus not a mere summation of all experiences a young man has. It is the process by which he tries to integrate what he already knows about himself with elements of experience that seem to promise him a vision and purpose by which he can live and give meaning to life. In this process he must perceive himself as at core unchanged. The question he must answer at this stage of life is simply, "Do I fit with this dream?" Several elements go into the achieving of this identity. One of the principal catalysts is the attraction of a strong ideological system, such as, for example, the Franciscan way of life. This is the "dream." It may stem from a purely ideological contact with St. Francis. But it does not become a real and viable dream until it is experienced in a vital institutional reality, and in attractive personalities living it out. In accepting and trying out the "lived dream," it is especially important that there be at least one special person who embodies that dream, and inter-prets it to the new aspirant in a way that has personal significance to him. This 834 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 is the mentor so often spoken of today. He is not typically a hcro at a distance--though this is possible--but, in our context, a committed religious who shares the younger religious' visionandwho pays special attention to the latter's apprenticeship in that vision. The first reality is probab!y of more significance to older communities with well-known and charismatic founders. We find it particularly so in the Franciscan order, whose founder is one of the most popular and attractive men in history. The problem is this, that today, to a far greater extent than in earlier years, young men are attracted to the Franciscan order precisely by the dream, with relatively less experience of those who profess to embody it. Up to fifteen years ago, most aspirants came to the order out 6f heavily Franciscan contexts, attracted, not by the historical vision of St. Francis--of which they had but a dim view--but by the actual way in which Franciscan priests and brothers lived their own vision of religious life, or by a traditional piety which was, upon close examination, barely distinguishable from that of any other religious order. The dream that attracts candidates today, however, is more often.in touch with the historical view. Candidates thus are more likely to be confused and puzzled by their encounter with many friars who entered the order out of con-tact with Franciscans, not St. Francis, and who may seem, therefore, to the candidate to have rationalized the historical "dream" away. It creates in him, moreover, great insecurities that perhaps his vision is not a real one, or that "those who count" may not view his "dream" as an acceptable version of the Franciscan vision. It is for this reason, once more, that the mentor is extremely important to the young religious, to reassure him--perhaps even to play the advocate before "those who count." In this connection, it seems desirable that the place where novices live should not feature a uniform view of the particular order's "dream." Both staff and community should display some diversity in interpretation of that "dream." Thus both mentor and community can at once challenge and support the candidate's perception of the "dream." Another identity-related problem with this age-group is the prolongation of the moratorium (Erikson, 1963). This is a period of life, usually beginning with adolescence and lasting an indeterminate period (often well into the mid-twenties), in which an individual, committed to nothing, explores and plays with a variety of possibilities or dreams. This is an entirely legitimate develop-ment, perhaps one that many of us never fully undertook. Ideally, it ought to be completed by the time of entry into novitiate, but in today's society, which increasingly delays adulthood, it is not at all unlikely that a candidate will try novitiate with the same degree of uncommittedness as he might hax~e tried being a cowboy in the nineteenth century. Novitiate, it seems, implies some degree of commitment to the dream, and"should not be 'viewed as a moratorium experience. A third problem is that young adults at the "identity-dream formation" Developmental Stages / 835 stage are given to caricaturization. In an attempt to make the dream fit, and fit so securely as to cover all aspects of the aspirant's reality, he tends to see it in terms of black and white. Consequently, he tends to portray his chosen dream somewhat unrealistically, and even to be intolerant of other dreams. The attraction of young people to an oversimplified view of life and reality is well known, and applies just as much to novices in religious orders. Kohibert (1968) and Fowler (1978) have both pointed out that people at this stage of development make moral and religious judgments primarily in terms of their commitment to a particular group of people or an institution which they see as embodying their dream. This is distinct from making judgments in terms of abstract principles applicable to one~'.s own group as well as others. Such a development is perhaps natural and necessary. However, the activity of an overzealous or overly charismatic director--or indeed mentor--can play directly into this .,caricaturizing tendency and allow it to sharpen into a dangerously unrealistic view of life. A further problem is that powerful religious conversions sometimes occur at this stage. Individuals allow themselves to be so overwhelmed by a vision or dream .that they cease to see continuity between what they were before the conversion and what they see themselves to have become because of the conversion. Indeed often they do not want to see the continuity. Such conver-sions, apart from rare cases, are obviously disruptive to the developmental process of identity formation. Of some interest to directors of a novitiate, which, ambng other things, is a time of an intense and unremitting daily round of organized prayer, is the attitude of young adults towards organized religiosity. It is in the latter phases of identity formation that participation in formal religious practice is typically at its very lowest ebb. This usually reflects the individual's attempt to separate himself from dependence on his family and culture, including the religious structure bound up with that. The fact is that it is precisely in the novitiate year that aspiring religious are subjected to the most intense exposure to formal religiosity they will perhaps ever know, and this may rub a bit excessively against the developmental grain. Some caution must be urged, too, concerning the possibilities of contem-plation at this stage. True religious contemplation--by means of which the individual, while retaining his identity, is drawn out of himself into union with God--is objectively oriented. It assumes some stable sense of identity. It is for this reason that religious contemplation is not normally found in young adults and most often flourishes in the more contented self-acceptance of mature adulthood. What passes for contemplation among the young is more typically a preoccupation with the achieving of identity than the handing over of this identity into union with God. The young adult is by developmental necessity more self-centered, indeed self-absorbed, than other-centered. Novitiate directors need to keep this in mind when inculcating habits of prayer and contemplation. To speak of the novitiate as a "year of contemplation" 8:36 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 can be misleading, and even, in terms of what both novices and their directors expect to happen, damaging. The Developmental Task: Intimacy Intimacy is basically the task of learning to establish close relationships with others, to respect human beings as ends, not mere means, of learning to communicate. It is a form of love, and it is the love that characterizes persons at this age. Erikson (1964) distinguishes this love of Relationship from the love of Care that is characteristic of the more mature adult. The task of intimacy may be described as one of the major tests of a person's identity. If this identity is'securely in hand, then one is capable of risking it in relationship, and indeed must do so. If the identity is not secure, intimacy is more difficult to achieve and is often avoided or at least sim~ated. Most young people, however, make serious forays into intimate or quasi-intimate relationships at this stage. Intimacy is indeed the task that marriage at this age seeks to accomplish. The relationship is not, however, exclusively heterosexual, although this is the typical form it takes. Erikson (1964), in a phrase reminiscent of St. Francis of Assisi who urged his brothers to exercise a mother's love for their confreres, wrote that intimacy also happens when "young adults become sons of each other." The failure to achieve intimacy results to some degree or other in isolation, the inability to relate deeply. A number of structures will be important in a novitiate to enable the process of intimacy achievement to go forward. Obviously, there must be opportunities for the development of friendships, including friendships with women. Some friendship will be available within the community, but since friendship-making is highly selective, this may not always be the case. With the smaller novitiate classes prevalent today, making intimate friendships has become more difficult. Larger classes make such relationships more possible. Smaller numbers limit the possibility. Given these smaller numbers, the importance of locating the novitiate in a community which includes a substan: tial number of other religious seems important. For this reason, close friend-ships outside the novitiate community cannot be excluded either. Hence the advisability of allowing, indeed encouraging, other forms of maintaining friendship contact: visits, correspondence, telephones. The mentor is very important to this task. The mentor-relationship is an intimate one when it is exercised in spiritual direction, confession, or simple friendship. There is indeed a case to be made (Levinson, 1978) for the "Special Woman" as mentor to the young male adult. In this relationship, intimacy expands easily into a heterosexuality which is less threatening to the celibacy aspect of the dream. A lived brotherhood is important for the young adult. Not only does it increase the likelihood of selective friendship, but failing this, still allows for a considerable amount of sharing at a deeper level. In this respect, the current emphasis in most orders on brotherhood or community is an especially attrac- Developmental Stages / 837 tive aspect of/he dream for young men. The achievement of intimacy in an all-male structure presents special problems. Women, in such situations, tend to get caricaturized. They may be over-romanticized as indispensable partners in the life-journey. They may be feared as a threat to the dream. Or they may be ridiculed as a result of a cultural residue of male chauvinism, a position unfortunately supported by a large segment of the male ecclesiastical establishment. Hence, it is important that novices have an on-going encounter with women their own age, such as for example the inter-novitiate program in the Chicago area where novices from several different communities of men and women meet weekly for study, prayer and informal interaction. However, it is also interesting to note that, even in the larger world, many men get so caught up in their dream, or their career, that women do not romantically interest them at this stage. This may very well describe the situa-tion of the modern novice, as we shall note when we discuss career consolida-tion below. What frequently happens, however, is that once they reach the thirties, some of that pressure lifts, and the quest for intimacy with women starts anew, including a deep interest in marriage. Homosexuality is a form of intimacy, and is, of course, always a problem in the all-male society. This is more true today when there has been some social legitimation of the homosexual friendship. There is simply no way of avoiding this possibility, and directors should understand that an occasional homosexual encounter neither automatically implies homosexuality nor is necessarily grounds for expulsion. Finally, the concern for intimacy explains in part the young religious' preference for one-to-one ministries over the ministries involving administra-tion, leadership and social change. It is the need for people in his life. Developmental Stage: Career Consolidation Vaillant (1977) points out that an intermediary stage occurs between Erikson's stages of Intimacy and Generativity, one that Erikson did not fully consider. This is the stage at which the young adult becomes preoccupied with establishing work skills and climbing the career ladder. It begins in the twen-ties, and lasts usually throughout most of the thirties. What is important about this period is the mastery of a craft, the seeking of approval for one's work and achievements, the thrust of ambition, the excitement of developing a career, the sheer pleasure of work and success. It is a time when the vividness of the dream recedes, and the individual focuses rather on the work associated with the dream. The role of the mentor also declines. Thus, what guides the young adult at this stage is neither parent, mentor, nor even dream. It is the satisfaction of the work itself. What happens at this stage may very well be the triumph of the larger society's "Dream" in the individual, the American Dream of Success and Achievement. Certain it is that American society strongly rewards work, achievement and success. It is not surprising that the 838 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 career-consolidation stage is accompanied to a large extent by the decline of the intense inner life that characterized the stages of Dream Formation and Intimacy. Given the increasing number of older candidates entering religious life, especially those already committed to or having just finished intensive preparation for professional careers, it is important that directors be aware of this dynamism. To the extent that this development stage is at work, the novice must have opportunities to exercise his competence, not, perhaps, in his chosen career, but at least in some area of novitiate life. This means that he shall have to be given some area of responsibility that is more than sweeping a corridor~ He must, moreover, be constantly able to exercise at least the basic tools of all work-competence: the hands, the mind, the imagination," and judgment-making that has consequences. The larger question may be to what extent this professional training and competence already acquired may have on the novitiate experience. Such training and competence may have achieved apart from the dream formation which the novitiate agenda is all about. It may even be somewhat separate from-- even in conflict with -- that dream. Yet it usual-ly has brought continued rewards and satisfaction so necessary at this stage of life. It is not clear to me how a novitiate experience handles such a conflict. But for a novitiate director to simply ignore this previous experience does not seem to me to constitute a reasonable response. These, then, are the stages of development likely to be encountered in a given novitiate class. Because of their fluidity and because of the individuality with which each person passes through them, they are perhaps useful more as mind-sets by the director than as the basis for actual guidelines. Three recom-mendations emerge strongly from their consideration, however. The first is the necessity to view a novitiate as a highly individualized experience. Not a solitary experience, but one which a group of young men move through together, each following to whatever extent necessary his own individual track. Obviously, Group Spiritual Direction is no substitute for individual attention. Which leads to the second recommendation, the need for mentors. Whether this role is carried out by the director, his associate, a chosen spiritual director, or another member of the religious community, its impor-tance is critical. Finally, given the social context of Identity/Dream Forma-tion and Intimacy, it seems important that the novitiate be not a sequestered experience. A director and his novices should not go off to the woods by themselves for a year. They should live in an extensive friar community and they should be in regular, on-going contact with the community-dream-- manifested certainly in its documents, but even more so by regular in-depth contact with the people who incarnate that dream in their lives. Yes Peter G. van Breemen, S.J. Father van Breemen is a staff member of the newly erected Dutch Center of Spirituality Om Vuur; Twelloseweg 5; 7419 BJ Deventer, The Netherlands. This article is a chapter from his forthcoming book, Certain as the Dawn, scheduled for publication by Dimension Books (Denville, N J) in the fall of 1980. doration always implies surrender, a fiat. In fact adoration is a surrender of our whole being, a dedication of all our affection, a gift of every minute of our time. Adoration has to be lived; it commands a life-style. Since adoration is the ultimate, it includes everythir~g. Adoration is a Yes, expressed with or without words during prayer, but then lived every single moment of the day and of the night. Being the ultimate, adoration also provides perspective to all that precedes; the total Yes injects meaning into everything that is encom-passed by it. Three concise lines which Dag HammarskjOld wrote in his diary in March 1956, some five years before his tragic death, offer a framework for a meditafibn on Yes. You dare your Yes--and experience a meaning. You repeat your Yes--and all things acquire a meaning. When everything has a meaning, how can you live anything but a Yes!~ You Dare Your Yesmand Experience a Meaning "Yes" is a daring word: it implies arisk and requires courage. It means a leaving behind in order to move ahead. We leave behind what is certain and we ventureinto the unknown. We give up what has become dear and proceed as a ' Dag HammarskjOld, Markings, transl, by Leif SjOberg and W. H. Auden (London, Faber & Faber), p. 110. 839 840 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 free person without looking back. "None of you can be my disciple if he does not renounce all his possessions (Lk 14:33). "Whoever puts his hand to the plow but keeps looking back is unfit for the reign of God" (Lk 9:62). It can be very hard to really say good-bye. A famous French proverb claims it is mourir un peu, a little, dying. It means farewell to people and to things to which we are far more attached than we realized. We give to the people with whom we live and we take from them. Somehow we are more aware of the sacrificing during the actual process, while the receiving becomes more manifest after it has stopped. It is like the various organs of the body which we easily take for granted as long as they function well, whereas we learn to appre.ciate them most when ill. It is only in the concrete leaving that we find out how dependent we are on the things we have collected during the years, how we have become entangled in the small world of our hands, our minds, our hearts. We have developed our own ways of enjoying and asserting ourselves in that small world, even to the point of imposing it on others. We have learned to manage in it. To leave means to cut the ego. That is one reason why we shrink from giving up the past. Being human is essentially living in an exodus-situation. Leaving is part of life. We have to ready ourselves in many .minor rehearsals for the final farewell which is the only absolute certainty of everybody's life. Apart from God, everything in life is transitory: everything biological, social, political, intellectual, etc. The refusal to accept this passing quality of life causes stunted growth, induration, and in extreme cases, neurosis. The early Chris-tians sometimes called their faith "The Way." God is always greater; he keeps us continually on the move. "Here we have no lasting city; we are seeking one which is to come" (Heb 13:14). Jesus stressed that the kingdom of God re-quires the Gift of self: "Whoever would save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Mt 16:25). The giving up of oneself in this life is not done once and for all; it is an ever-growing gift of self and demands an increasing willingness to sacrifice. To leave people and things behind does not mark the end; rather it opens up a new beginning in a wider context. The severing of the umbilical cord introduces the baby into the family; the leaving of the family's security challenges the adolescent to venture into a big world; the renouncing which Jesus demands leads us into the kingdom of God. The pruning is for increas-ing the yield. The Father is glorified in our bearing much fruit. It is not the stripped, stifled, petty life that honors him, but the life which surges to the full. Jesus leads the way. This man-for-others appeals. The reflection of his intimacy with his Father intrigues and invites us. He calls us to follow. We do not know where his way will lead us, but we do have an intuition that it will transform us for the better. If our hearts are cluttered with houses or land, relatives or friends, job or hobby, he is going to set us free so that we can go forward. All that remains will be love--serving God and serving people. The Yes is particularly scary because it is so personal. It affects the deepest 841 in me, where I am most myself. There exists no mold for it. It is my yes, such as no one before me has ever said and in which no one can really accompany me. The Yes condenses my whole self. I have 'to descend into the depths of my self in order to perform the act of my life. The person who wants always to be upheld by others could never go that far. Yet in saying Yes, there is a solidarity with others which gives strength and inspiration. The community of all those who spoke their Yes gives us support. Outstanding is the help of Mary who is an immaculate Yes, a simple fiat. Above all, her Son in his absolutely unambiguous and unrestricted Yes, enables us to dare our Yes: "Jesus Christ. was not alternately 'yes' and 'no'; he was never anything but 'yes.' Whatever promises God had made have been fulfilled in him; therefore it is through him that we address our Amen to God." (2 Co 1:19-20). Nevertheless it remains an adventure to follow Jesus in his Yes. It entails giving up tangible security and the felt affirmation by others. It is an act of faith. "Yes" is a word of freedom; to be authentic it can never be forced. Ultimately it can be said only to a person, not to a thing or an institution. The German author Giinther Grass once wrote an enigmatic little "poem" to which he gave the title "Yes." This house has two exits; I use the third one. Between Anne and Anne, I choose for Anne. The interpretation is said2 to be that both exits of the house lead into meaning-lessness which G~nther Grass rejects. The third exit is not something but someone: Anne. Between Anne the saint and Anne the sinner, between Anne the beautiful and Anne the unattractive, the poet chooses the actual Anne, and through her finds life meaningful. His yes to the real Anne saves him from the existentialist void. Grass' poetic riddle rhymes well with HammarskjOld's clear entry: "You dare your Yes--and experience a meaning." Meaning implies more than an intellectual conviction; it comprehends the whole of life. True meaning is beyond success or failure. The Way leads to the wisdom of the cross; this is a disaster which is a triumph, and a victory which is a catastrophe. The paschal mystery unites the horror of the crucifixion and the glory of the resurrection. The folly of the cross reveals the ultimate mean-ing. The following of Jesus leads beyond the antithesis of humiliation and elevation. The Way leads into a new realm of life where old values acquire a new perspective and where what used to be considered meaningless shows an unexpected significance. Therefore it provides a tremendous strength for making sacrifices. As long as we count the cost, seek our own comfort, fight for our position or strive for recognition we have not yet said a whole-hearted gsef Sudbrack, S.J., in Geist und Leben 48, October 1974, pp. 346-347. 842 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/6 Yes nor experienced the true meaning of life. You Repeat~Your Yes--and All Things Acquire a Meaning It is not enough to say Yes just once, It has to,be repeated over and over again. We have to set out on a way and we have to carry on step by step. Our Yes is a growing reality; the further we go, the deeper and richer its content. The resistance, of course, is always there. We do not want to reiterate it in ever new circumstances. We find ourselves, like Jacob, resisting the angel of Yahweh (Gn 32:23~33). During the night Jacob crosses the ford of the Jabbok and untildaybreak he wrestles with aman whom he does not know is a divine messenger. At the end of his fight he asks for the stranger's blessing. He then receives a new name, Israel, meaning "you contehded with divine beings." In his struggle against God he becomes injured and keeps on limping. It is a strange, but .typical story. How difficult to recognize God in his numerous disguises. How easy to consider him a threat to be fought. How often is our encounter with God, before it becomes a bow to receive his blessing, first a long, dark ~resistance. How much harm do we inflict on ourselves in that opposition. Every refusal to repeat our Yes does harm to our personality; it stifles our growth, eats out our joy and reduces the meaningfulness of our life. What follows are self-concern, grudges, resentment, compensations, addic-tions of all kinds, polarization which we stretch too far, fencing in against other people. The half-hearted Yes creates impaired persons, very much unlike the kind God wants us to be. "I know your deeds; I know you are neither hot nor cold. How I wish you were one or the other--hot or cold! But because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth!" (Rv 3:15-16). The Yes has to be repeated so often that it includes everything in the past, in the present and in the future. As long as there is something in my past which I reject, there is still a screen in me that pr~events my being transparent. That which I repress or resent splits my inner self, or becomes a heavy chain I drag along behind me. It may take time to really accept the suffering or the failure that came to me, maybe long ago, but it is vital that I do accept it. The Yes can create a meaning where first there was none. The repeated Yes will become more mature, more profound, more silent, and eventually it will extract light from the dark, radiance from, the cross. "We know that God makes all things work together for the good of those who have been called according to his decree" (Rm 8:28). To say Yes is to accept the present. It means to acknowledge gratefully the talents and the possibilities I have without thinking that all of them have to be realized. It means to accept my limitations in health, education, character, etc., while at thesame time trying to overcome them. It means to transform gently weaknesses into strength, innate temptations into grace, given potential into a ripe harvest. It means to say Yes to the lives of others and to give them the room and the sympathy they need. It means to accept the situation I am in, Yes / 843 and myself in that situation. To repeat my Yes will lead to self-acceptance which in turn, will make everything else meaningful. It is obvious of course, that the Yes is not identical with a limp settling for anything, neglecting all attempts to improve things. The opposite is true: it is only by accepting them that things can be improved. No effort born of anger, impatience or resentment will bear fruit. An example may illustrate this point. Suppose the parents of a stuttering boy have great difficulty in accepting /he child's handicap. Whenever he stammers, they harshly make him repeat his words. One evening the parents discuss the situation. They both had noticed that the stuttering was becoming worse and they begin to see that the pressure they put on the boy may have something to do with it. So they decid~ to make no more remarks when the child stammers. Both father and mother manage to live up to their resolution, and yet they find that the speech handi-cap is becoming still worse. After some time, they talk things over once more and discover that, in their first discussion, they had changed only their policy, their external approach, but not their interior attitude. They had stopped scolding all right, but they still resented the stuttering. The boy was no longer being reprimanded, but he still felt the pressure of disappointing his parents. At this :pOint the parents break through to a new mentality and accept the boy as he is, with his stuttering. The paradox is that from now onward, the child can slowly improve in his speech because he no longer has to. This is a real paradox: as long as the parents resentfully demanded it, progress was blocked; after thedefect is accepted in peace, it begins to improve. In some cases we are simultaneously both the parents and the boy! The Yes to the future is a stark act of faith since we do not know what ~ve are saying Yes to. It is only the confidence in a person that enables us to say Yes for better or for worse. In the wedding it is the trust in the spouse, together ¯ with our faith in God that allows us to engage in a common future and to accept whatever it has in store. In ordination and in religious profession it is--over and above the reliance on the community--the belief in the living God that constitutes the basis for commitment. Without a strong spirit of faith, it would be utter foolishness to promise solemnly and forever poverty, chastity, and obedience. In fact the beauty and the testimony of the vows con-sists precisely in their being so explicitly an act of faith. When Everything Has a Meaning, How Can You Live Anything But a Yes! The faithful repetition of our Yes eventually leads us to the watershed where life starts flowing in another direction. The uphill climb pays off in a panoramic perspective and gracious ease to live the Yes continuously. The pilgrim has become single-hearted and now sees God everywhere. The purity of his eye penetrates to the deepest Ground of everything and discerns all as grace-filled and meaningful. This in turn reinforces the Yes. Life has become whole and holy. Meaninglessness implies that the various life-experiences are disconnected 844 / Review for Religious, l/olume 39, 1980/6 and therefore disconcerting. It just does not make sense! They present a void which creates feelings of despair. They paralyze all efforts to do something about it because they suggest that it is all useless anyway. Suicide becomes an alluring temptation. In the realm beyond the watershed the isolated pieces fall into place and show a pattern never perceived before. Perhaps it is more accu-rate to say that the change takes place not so much in the objective reality as in our view of it. We have finally reached the vantage point where we have the right perspective. The total Yes has rendered all reality transparent and coherent. We feel like Jacob awakening from his dream at Bethel: "Truly, the Lord is in this spot, although I did not know it!" (Gn 28:16). A deep joy a~ccompanies this experience. It is like coming home after a long, hopeless meander. That home is really the presence of God. We now recognize him everywhere, even where previously we had discerned nothing whatsoever of him. He is the bond that connects all. It is the old concept of divine providence which we rediscover in shining newness. Meaningfulness then, is not some-thing, but someone. God has nothing since he is the creator of all. He does not produce something which he then delivers. He remains the living center of all that is; without him, it could not be. In everything he gives, he gives himself as well; therefore he can be found in everything. It is ohly in recognizing God this way that reality acquires its full meaning, is allowed to be all that it is meant to be. The basic trust which is so vital for human well-being now extends to all of reality. "Nothing can separate us from the love of God." (Rm 8:39). The surrender can now be complete. How can we live anything but a Yes? We can join in with Charles de Foucauld in his prayer of abandonment: Father. I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, 1 thank you: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures-- I wish no more than this, 0 Lord. Into your hands l commend my soul; I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for ! love you Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands, without reserve, and with boundless confidence, for you are my father. Others, to art.iculate their gift of self, may prefer the older prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola at the end of his Spiritual Exercises: Take, Lord, all my liberty. Receive my memory, my understanding, my whole will, Yes / 845 all that I have and possess. You have given all to me; I return it all to you. Do with me as you will; Give me only your love and your grace. with these I am rich enough and ! desire nothing more. In Luke's Gospel we find an expression of total abandonment that is still much older and took only one word:fiat. With it Mary chooses obedience as the pattern of her life, "Let it be done to me as you say" (Lk 1:38); through it she surrenders her body to God, and all her possessions are also included in this one act of abandonment. Said in a moment, it is spelled out in a lifetime. As a sheaf is bound in the middle and fans out towards the ends, so the life of Mary, in all its bounty, is held together by this little word. All her years before this moment flow into it and all the rest of her life flows from it. God's grace enables her to say it, and in saying it, she enables God's grace to work in her. It directs her whole beirig towards God and away from selfishness and self-concern. It makes her completely transparent so that through her the Light in its fullness can come into the world. It creates the room God needs to become man. Jesus is the embodiment of. Mary's Yes, the fruit of her fiat; greater fruitfulness is inconceivable. Her fiat in no way stymies her personality; in fact, it brings her utter fulfillment and is the prototype of all Christian fruit-fulness. We come to you, Mother of our Lord and Mother of us all, to thank you for your Yes that gave us the incarnation of God's own Yes and brought life to its fullness. We ask you, teach us to follow you in saying our Yes with faith and courage. You know the cost of living the Yes; protect ours in integrity and joy. Ask your divine Son for the grace always to repeat our Yes with an ever-growing surrender and to experience how this increases the meaningfulness of our life. Under your inspiration may we help to build the kingdom of God today and every day, for ever and ever. Amen. The Social Context of Personal Prayer in Seminaries Stephen Happel Father Happel is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Meinrad Seminary; St. Meinrad, IN 47577. This article is based on an earlier paper originally published in Learning to Pray Alone (Abbey Press), pp. 34-43. Private prayer is never accomplished without a social, communal context. Individual prayer has not only social conditions and social ramifications, but also social ingredients which quaiify and constitute its very nature. Our private languages are learned in the public forum. We speak to ourselves because others have spoken to us and because we have learned to speak to them. So too with God. Both the personal vocabulary and private grammar of our speech with God are primarily social-ecclesial in their initial stages (whether learned from parents or teachers), in their performance from day to day, and in their various results (ministering to others, praying with others, allowing the kingdom to be formed). If one combines this sense of the social dimension, indeed social constitu-tion, of prayer with its fundamental component, dialogue with the Other, then that Other will almost necessarily have the characteristics of the "social other" experienced at any given point in human development. So, for exam-ple, in one's earlier years, speaking with God is accomplished in the horizon of the discipline and "otherness" of one's parents. Religious psychologists maintain that it is possible atany given point in an individual's life to indicate the creative synthesis of parental figures which qualifies the notion of God.' Thus, I will maintain in the following that "the other" in the seminary context ' See A. Vergote, Psychologie religieuse (Brussels: Dessart, 1966), esp. pp. 294-299, 307. The Social Context of Personal Prayer / 847 will radically qualify the ability or inability of individuals to pray alone. How is "the other" experienced in the seminary environment? Needless to say, the reflections offered here should not be taken so much as judgment, but as description. It may be true that the achievement of human freedom in relation to God is the goal of seminary education programs; but what sort of inter-active freedom does seminary structure actt~ally provide? The typological description of institutional structure which follows is not so much an analysis of any particular seminary as it is the affective grid of the institution-known-as- seminary. I offer it as an hypothesis about the problem, and suggest that facing it constructively may assist in achieving a solution to the problem of praying privately.2 The Perfect Society: A Unity of Transcendentals The seminary, whatever its historical origins, seems to think of itself as an autonomous, indeed "perfect society." In an updated version of this ideal, it would be described as a place in which all would be brothers and sisters; in which power would intelligently persuade and invite to participation rather than willfully force; in which external forms of .religious expression would always mirror interior dispositions; and in which each person's relation to sur-rounding Nature would be in terms of appreciating and creating Beauty, rather than exploiting it. Affect and reason would be coincident; and the Good would necessarily flow from and be the origin of both. The truth would always be told; the good would always be practiced; and the beautiful would be in evidence everywhere. Institutional structure would incarnate and measure this integration; individuals would readily learn to assume the responsibility of living these goal,s; and, as St. Paul says, God would be "all in all." This enlightened reincarnation of Christian society, however, contains two major oversights of fact: namely, the overwhelmingly transient character of a seminary's student population, and what has been gracefully entitled by a colleague of mine "human sloth." These may be described in more classical terms as "the finite character of the human condition," and "original sin." Now the inclusion of these two facts of human experience into our descrip-tion of societal mix does not justify removing the human odcasion for achiev-ing freedom. I do not subscribe to the simplification which would suggest: "Mistakes will be made; therefore remove the possibility of mistakes." But their inclusion does allow us to see what happens when it is assumed that an institution can easily incarnate the human good without reference to the criticism required by the acknowledgement of finitude and guilt. The first consequence of these two facts is that power will inevitably fall to 2 1 am also convinced that some of the problems discussed and the solutions proposed, if utilized, would go a long way in aiding contemporary Catholic seminaries in their task of acculturating the older students who are entering seminary at present. 848 / Review for Religious, l/olume 39, 1980/6 those who remain the longest in the situation, in this case to the faculty and administration. The second is that this power will be concretized in a bureaucracy which is supposed to "run the system" irrespective of the iden-tities of the participants. Students, faculty, staff, and administration will all feel victims of "the other" who is the system (confer the,response to ques-tions: "That's the way it's done around here," noting especially the neuter passive construction). But because students are the primary mobile popula-tion, they will feel the alienation of power

Issue 2.3 of the Review for Religious, 1943. ; A.-M. D. G. for Religious MAY 15, 1943 Paternal Governm~eh÷ . . . ; . . J~hn C.~Ford The Mother of God . - . . AIoydus C. Kemper Cell'Technlque of Catholic Act,on . '."Albert S. Foley Thb Seal of Confession , = Edwin F. Healy Summary on Spiri÷u&l Direc'÷ion . The Edffo.rs; Book Revlew~, Ques÷io. ns Answered Decisions of the Holy See RIEVI.I::W FOR RI::LIGIOUS ¯ VOLUME II MAY 15, 1943 NUMBER 3 CONTENT.S PATERNAL GO~rERNMENT AND FILIAL CONFIDENCE °IN SUPERIORSmJohn C. Ford, S.J. 146 THE MOTHER OF GOD~A. loysius C. Kemper, S.J . 15'; THE CELL TECHNIQUE OF SPECIALIZED CATHOLIC ACTION-- Albert S. Foley, S.3 . 164 DIVINE' PROVIDENCE AND RELIGIOUS INSTITUTES . 175 THE SEAL OF CONFESSION-~Edwin F. Healy, S.'J . 176 -THE DISCUSSION ON SPIRITUAL DIRECTION: Concluding Survey-- The Editors . 187 DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE . 202 BOOK REVIEWS (Edited by Clement DeMuth, S.J.)-- Moral Guidance; The Path of Humility; St. Charles Borromeo; The °King's Advocate; 3esus and I; The Larks of Umbria; The Better Life: For Heaven's Sake; We Wish to See 'jesus; The Following of Christ; His Father's Business; National Liturgical Week, 1942; Shinihg in Darkness . °2 . . 203 BOOKS RECEIVED . 211 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 17. Retreat Master as Exrtaordinary Confessor . 212 18. Reason for Removing Local Superior . 212 19. Postulant M.D. Prescribing for Community . 212 20. Public and Private Recitation of Litanies . 213 21. Providing for Sister Who Leaves Community . 214 22. Taxing for Support of Motherhouse . . " . 214 23. Pension for Work Done before Entering Religion . 216 24. Little Office with Blessed Sacrament Exposed . . . . . . 216 -25. Mistress of Novices Subject to Local Superior . 216 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, May, 1943. Vol. II, No. 3. Published bi-monthly: 3~anuary, March, May,-,July, September, and November at" the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter 3anuary 15, 1942, at the Post Office, Tgpeka, Kansas~ under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Adam C, Ellis, S.3., G. Augustine Ellatd, S.,J., Gerald Kelly, S.J. Copyrlght~ 1943, by Adam C. Ellis. Permission is hereby granted for quotations of reasonable length, provided due credit be given ,this review and the author. Subscription price: 2 dollars a year. Printed it~.U.S.A. Pa!:ernal overnment: .\, and Filial ConFidence in Superiors John C. For.d, S.J. IT IS SAID that soldiers are notorlo s gnpers. The February (1943) issue of the Infantr'g'dournal, in an article called ':Leadership," offers us a selected batch of confidentially treated opinions on officers, expressed by a number of soldiers early in the war. These are quoted .word for Word. "This army can't be driven; it must be led." "Break up the old army non-corn clique and put advancement on a merit basis." "Officers ibluff too much.". ~"Let non=coms be chosen for what they know, not .whom they know." "Our first lieutenant is dominated by the first sergeant." "No reward for good work; old soldiers learn never to .volunteer for anything." "They treat us like children." "When an officer tell~ his men he doesn't like'the army any more than we do, he's not the one I look to. ". instead of'changing his mind every few minutes." ". should take a little interest in what we eat." ". give us some idea of what's going on in maneu-vers. "We come from just as good or better families . say a good word now and then . call a man by his name . show a man they know their stuff." ".shames us in front of other batteries." I am not goin.g to ask the readers whether they have ~ever heard any complaints like these made about religious 146 PATERNAL ~OVERNMENT superiors. And I am notgbing toask them to make a com-parison between, the faults of army leaders and the faults of religious superiors. -That would be too easy. Everyone knows that superiors, being human, have faults. And .besides, anyone °with sense knows, that when people com-plain, whether about superiors or about others, the real rea-sons for the complaints are often not expressed at all. The complaint is merely a symptom of some deeper discontent. , But I am going to ask the readers to meditate on the above rdmarksone at a time. And I suggest that they ask themselves this question: I~ you were a religious superior what would be youf correspbnding complaint about sub-jects? --- or your answer to subjects' complaints on these headings? For instance, "This army can't be driven: it must be led." If you were a superior would you be t~mpted to say, perhaps, "This particular religious can't be led; he has to be pushed'i? Go through all the complaihts that way. I need not do it-for you. It will be instructive for you to make the trial yourself. It is alw~iys instructive to put oneself in .someone else's shoes, and try to get his point of view. And in this par-ticular instance I think most of my readers will find that it is rather difficult (unless they are or have been superiors) to "look at things from that other point of view. They may have to force themselves to look carefully at the reverse.side of the picture. La~'k ot: Contider~ce a Fact " ' And that brings me to my main p0inti, the unfortunate ~fact that superiors and subjects so often seem to have a dif-~ ferent "point of view." It is to be expected, of course, even' in the most ideal state of affairs, that between the governing and the governed there must necessarily be dii~erences of attitude. But in a religious congregation these differences 147 JOHN C, FORD should be at a minimum. All the members of the religious family are presumably aiming at the same target. Whether. they are superiors or subjects the general goal is the same. /kll are looking primarily, to a sfipernatural end andS under the rules of the particular organization, work from the same. s.upernatural motives for its attainment. The pursuit of perfection in work or in prayer, according to' the spirit of the institute, and finally the perfect love of our Lord are the common aim of all who live in religion. A religious congregation is called a "family" tradi-tionally, and in canon law, because it is supposed to have those characteristics of loving unity which a well-ordered family exhibits. When it is said (for instance in canon 530) that it is good for subjects to go to their .superiors with "filial .confidence," the words really mean what they say. The Code is calling attention toone of the basic reali-ties of religious life. The order or congregation is a family." Superiors should be as fathers to their subjects, and subjects should have corresponding filial confidence in them. (Of course, the word '~'filial" has a wide range of meaning, and the attitude of an eighty-year old veteran to his forty-year old superior is not going to be filial in the same way as that of a young religious.) But it is not too much to say that this confidence is fre-quently lacking. Is it not a fact that superiors and subjects, instead of regarding one another in this paternal or filial vcay, actually, at times, think of one another as being on opposite sides? Is not the "point of view" so different that,. forgetful for the time being of the unity of their general supernatural aims, they regard each other almost as oppon-ents? The little exercise suggested above was meant to bring out (if it needs to-be brought out) the fact that this attitude of opposition sometimes exists. If it does not exist in your mind (whether you are a superior or a subject), so 148 PATERNAL GOVERNMENT much the better. But .I think it exists in only too many minds. - The supposition of the present article, therefoie (and perhaps others along the same lines will follow it), is that there is a deplorable lack of filial confidence in superiors ¯ amongst many religious. My object is to indicate what [ Considerto be some of the,causes of this undesirable state of affairs. Some of the causes are inevitable, and are insepa-rable~ as hinted ahoy.e, from tl~e very idea of distinguishing between governing and go-~erned. But others are due to false or distorted ideas about religious government, and these can be corrected. These false or distorted ideas .are enter-tained at tim~s both by superiors and by. subjects. My purpose is to point them out, with the hope that a correc-tion of them will help to restore that filial.confidence which .ought to be part of religious life. The Forgotten "'Paternal For:urn'" The first point on which there seems to be widespread ignorance, or at least many false ideas, is the very .real dis-tinction which exists between the paternal and j~dicial forum in retigio~s government. (What I say here applies equally to the ."maternal" forum where religious women are concerned, and when ~I speak of the "judicial" forum [ do not mean judicial in the strict canonical sense--with a view to formal accusation and a trial, and so forth but in a broader sense, as will appear,) In one sense all re.ligious government should be pater-nal. Paternal in this sense means spi'rituai, Christian, reli-gious government,, as opposed to worldly,, or domineering, or military, or political .government. Whether superi.ors are acting for the direction of individuals, or with a view to correcting their faults, or'punishing, or with a view to the common good of the. congregation;'their government is 149 ¯ JOHN C. FORD, always supposed, to be paternal in this general .sense. But in a more particular sense a superior is said to act paternally, or in the paternal forum, to distinguish his office as a father from his office as a judge. This distinction is of special importance when the superior acts to correct the faults or delinquencies of his subjects. For, in the correction and punishment of delinquencies, the superior may proceed either paternally or judicially. To illustrate the difference in the two procedures per-haps the following examples will help. Suppose the supe-rior has it brought~ to his attention tl~at some of the younger religious, who are not allowed to smoke, are occasionally smoking without permission. He calls in these religious, tells them what he has heard, and, without making any particu-lar accfisations, reminds them of the regulation which for-bids smoking, or forbids smoking without permission. Suppose that afterwards he asks one of these young reli-gious: "Were you one of the offenders?"--and the answer is "Yes." Thereupon, he urges the offender to be faithful in his observance of the rules and imposes some private pen-ance upon him in order to impress on his mind the impor: tance of regular observance. It seems to me that in this sort ofcase the superior is obviously acting as a father and not as a judge. The matter is being handled in the paternal forum. But suppose the' superior calls in another Leligious who has previously been warned about a faul,t or delinquency of a still more serious kind. And let us suppose that he has been previously warned that future lapses will involve seriofis punishment--postpo~nement of final vows, post-ponement of ordination, or even dismissal from the con-gregation. And to make the case a perfectly clear one, sup-pose that the delinquency involves an external matter which may. give scandal to the faithful or threaten the good" 150 ¯ PATERNAL GOVERNMENT of the institute itselfmfor i.ns.tance, excessive drinking, or familiarity with the opposite sex, or a professed attempt to undermine the authority of.the institute: The superior Says to this religious, "You have been accused again of iuch and such a delinquency. Before proceeding further with this matter I should like to hear what defense you ha~ce to make." Is there any. doubt.that in such a case the superior is acting as a°judge rather than as a father? We say com~ monly that he is acting "in the external forum." For that reason he deals with the subject at arm's le.ngth, as the law-yers say, and he does not expect fromhim the same degree of candor which he could claim if he were acting in the pater, hal forum. ~ It would.be a failure to rate'the facts and implications in such a case if we were to say that the superior is not pro-ceeding judicially merely because he is not.following thd formalities of the canonical judicial.process. For .when a superior sets out to gather, evidence with a view to i.nflicting serious punishment, especially if it be public, and most of all if it be expulsion from the. orgafiizaf!on; it.wouldbe.an abuse, of l~inguage to call the procedure paternal. Hence,. I t~ink no one Will doubt that, even when there is no question of a rea~l trial in the canonical sense, there is a quasi-judicial procedure which differs substantially from the merely paternal. " Classic Authors on the Paternal Forum The distinction between these two functions of the superior, that of father and that of judge, is a fundamenthl one; and it is particularly.important that it be kept in mind, when.a superiok questions his subjects with.'a-view to the correction of faults. It is not a new distinction.~, The classic authors on the religious life (Suarez, de Lugo, and others) make much of it in explaining the duty of frateri~al 151 JOHN C~ FORD " " or evangelical denunciation ~ith reference to r~ligious. " Neverthelem, even under ideal conditions and in cases where this fundamental distinction between paternal and judicial procedure is well understood, it is sometimes hard ¯ to tell whether.a superior who questions a subject is acting in a paternal or a judidial capacity. Some cases are on the border and it is hard to draw the line. From' reading the authors who have treated these matters, especially Suarez, it seems to me that the only satisfactory general criterion whether the superior is acting paternally or judicially is the purpoge of his proceedings. If he is acting principatlg for the good of the delinquent, in order to have him amend his fault, then he is acting as a father, even though as a means to this end some penance is imposed (or: a private nature), or some remedy is used which is repugnant to the subject, for example, a change of appointment. But if he acts principallg forthe good of the congregation, the common good, and seeks to inflict punishment as a vindication of ~religious disci151ine which has been violated, especially if the punishment is public, or if the idea i's to make an example of someone, and most of all if the punishment in question is expulsion in such cases he is acting as a judge. A Cause of Mutual Distrust Am I wrong in s~ying that both superiorsand subjects often lose sight of this fundamental principle of religious government? And am I wrong in the opinion that one of the fundamental causes for lack of filial confidence in supe-riors is the neglect of this distinction? Subjects expect superiors to act in a fatherly way when their duty as guardians of the public good requires that they proceed judicially. Or subjects feel that they have not been treated paternally when, without detriment to their reputation, the superior has changed their work or their 152 PATERNAL GOVERNMENT place-of work for °their own good but in a way that is displeasing'to them. They forget that it is part of a father's duty to administer medicine evenif it has ~ bad taste. Superiors sometimes forget that information received in the paternal forum, whether from the subject concerned or from another, cannot ordinari1~ be used judicially, and never to the detriment of the public standing of the subject within the community. If the superior does act judicially on knowledge which he has received paternally, the confi-dence of his subjects Will be utterly destroyed. For when dealing with him they will .never know for sure whether they are speaking to him as a father to whom as religious children they owe special filial candor, and whom they carl trust to keep their revelations in the paternal forfim, or whether they are speaking to him .in his more public capac-ity as guardian of the cQmmon good, so that whatever they say can, as it were, be used against them. The distinction between the paternal and judicial forum, as far as self-revelation and the correction of faults is concerned, has its roots in the natural law itself. A child who is asked by his mother Whether he stole the jam is bound to tell the truth even if he foresees a spanking. But the man who is asked by a judge whether he is guilty or.not guilty is not bound to betray himself. Religious generally agree, on entering religion, that those who notice their faults may reveal them to the superior as to a father, ,but they do not give up their right to reputation as far as others (whatever' their position) are concerned. They do not agree that fraternal, manifestations or their own self-revelations be made the basis of public repiehension. Human nature being what it is, the axiom, "No one is bound to betray himself" (that is, in a judicial proceeding), appeals very strongly to everyone who gets into trouble. If the result of self-revelation is going to be postponement of 153" JOHN C. FOP, D ordination or of vows, or.a defamatory public reprehension, all but the heroes will be convinced (and rightly) that they are under no obligation to speak. (I exclude here, of course, ~efects so serious that they. impose upon an indi- .vidual the obligation of not going on to the.priestho9d~.) BUt the heroes do not get into trouble. As for the others, there is no doubt that if the private fault of a religiou~,- whether venialiy sinful or not, is known to the superior only as a father, and to a few others, he has no right to pub-lish the matter. A public announcement of it by way of punishment can easily involve a serious violation of the natural law of reputation. A superior's position, then, is a very difficult and very burdensome one. TO play the double role, of father and of judge, prudently, calls for wisdom and:'selflessness in a high degree. It.is quite apparent that the Code has done much to eliminate the confusion between the forum of con~ science and the forum of external government by forbidding superi.ors to be the regular confessors of their subjects, or to hear their manifestations of conscience as a ~atter of rule. But the Code has certainly not abolished the time-honored, essential distinction between the office of father and the office of judge. The present article is meant to recall to mind that dis-tinction, as a means of restoring filial confidence. Naturally speaking, the attempt" can never be completely successful. .Only education to it from the earliest days of religious life can makeit moderately successful, perhaps a future article or two will dwell on some,practical applications of the doc-trine as connected with the obligation of fraternal denuncia-tion, and the custom, where it exists, of manifesting the con-science to a greater or-less degree to the superior. Cofifi~ dences received in these circumstances call for more than ordinary virtue and restraint on the part of superiors, if' 154 they wish to keep their,subjects from distrusting them. And ~ubje'cts will not undertake these onerous duties or practices unless the~, are led by a truly religious desire for their own perfection. In fact, the whole matter is not worth the trouble of discussion excelbt in the case of.religious, both subjects and superiors, who seriously seek the things of God, and who deeply yearn to giv~e themselves entirely to Himmas a man gives himself to the one woman he loves. They must be prepared to spurn worldly principles in order to follow in the footsteps of the humble and humiliated Christ. He was not touchy about His rights. "Mine and thine, those frigid words" (St. Chrysostom), were not a part of His vocabu-lary. [EDITORS' NOTE: Father Ford is interested in the further develop-ment of the subject of filial confidence in superiors, if time permits it. ~With a view to makin_g tentative future articles as helpful as possible, he would welcome communications, even anonymous ones, on the subje~t. Needless to say, the communications would be treated con-fidentially. Our readers, both superiors and subjects, who are inter-ested in this matter, are invited to send their suggestions directly to: The Reverend 3ohn C. Ford, S.J., Weston College, Weston, Mass.] CHANGES OF ADDRESS If you change your address, either temporarily for the summer, or permariently because of a new assignment, you can assure yourself of the prompt and safe delivery ' of the Ju_ly number (and subsequent numbers) by sending us a postcard with answers to these three questions: 1. What is ~our present address? 2. What is your new address? 3. Is the change to be merely for the summer or permanent? Please send the card as soon as possible. The Mot:her of: ,od Aloysius C.Kemper, S.J. DURING the month of May our Blessed Mother is daily proclaimed the Mother of God by millions of voices, ¯ old and young. Over the face of the whole earth, whene*er the Hail Mary is said, and in numerous other prayers and canticles, in public service and private devotion, that glorious title, "Mother of God," rings out in her praise. It is a title we have all learnt to love and to use instinctively from our earliest years. Times without number it rises to our lips, often perhaps without due appre~ciation of its pro-found meaning, but never with the shadow of a doubt that we actually mean what we say when we style the Virgin, "Mother of God." Despite the familiarity of this beloved title, it is amazing, sometimes amusing, to note the puzzled air that steals over the countenance of the average instructed Cath-olic when he is confronte.d with the question, uttered as a challenge: "Do you really mean exactly what you say when you call Mary the Mother of God? Think of it: the eternal, uncreated God, having a mother who brought -Him into the world on a definite historical date, not so many centuries ago! Does it not seem highly preposter-ous if you take it in its strict sense? You cannot possibly mean it .just that way. It must be merely an honorary title you are giving to the Blessed Virgin; for, of course, God could not reatlg have a mother." A test question of this sort is apt completely to baffle the examinee who. appreciates the difficulty and searches desperately for a justification of a title as familiar to him as his own name, while he keeps muttering to himself the disconcerting. refrain, "Of course, God could not reall~ have a mother." THE "MOTHER OF GOD Let us not imagine that such searching inquiry into: the. implications of Mary's most familiar, title, is .merely"a pleasant diversion employed to test the average catecheti-cal. mind. Tb~ challenge was seriously throv~n out by master thinkers in the early Christian centuries who were tampering with the full significance of the Incarnation, and who-persistently denied that God could have.a mother. that bore Him. Thus, in the early fifth century Theodore of Mopsuestia proposed the following argu-ment concerni.ng the divine maternity: "When you ask me whether Mary is man-bearing or God-bearing, I must in .truth reply that she is both; she is the bearer of man a~cording to nature, for it was a man who existed in her womb and was brought forth by Mary; she is likewise the bearer of God, because in the man engendered by her God dwelt, not as though circumsc~:ibed by that human nature, but as present in it according to the decree and affection of His will." Drawing the blunt conclusion from Such premises, he added: "It is absurd to say that the Word consubstantial with the Father is born of the Vir-gin Mary. The one who is born of the Virgin is the indi-vidual who was formed from her substance, . not the Word who is God. He who is consubstantial with the Father has no mother at all." Nestorius, the most notorious heresiarch of the same period, promptly tried to popularize this. false teaching by employing the more telling weapon of ridicule. In his cathedral at Constantinople he ordered a sermon preached by one of the clergy in which the divine maternity of Mary was denied. When a tumult arose in the church at this audacious assault'on the honor of God's Mother, Nesto-rius himself arose to reply and calm the exaspe'rated con-gregation: "The question is frequently put to us," he slyly remarked, "whether Mary should be called Mother 157 ~LOYSIUS C. KEMP~R of God or Mother of a man. Tell me, I pray you, has God a mother? If so, then we may well excuse the pagans for.claiming mothers for their gods. No, no, my dear people, Mary did not bear God." This seems~ to have been the first public profession of the Nestorian heresy: to deny the divine maternity of Mary was an implicit denial of the mystery of the Incarnation itself. " At first sight the objection contained in the Nestorian position may appear serious. But it is a valid objection only on the assumption that in the Incarnation God did not become man, but that there were two distinct persons after the union--God, the Word, Son of the Father, and the man born of the Virgin Mary. Pointing to the Child Jesus, Nestorius would say: "This one is the offspring of Mary, a man like ourselves, truly her Son and Child. The other one, the Word of God, who dwells in this man as in His special temple, was not born of Mary but from eternity pioceeded from the Father by divine generation." He could never be prevailed on to admit and to believe with the whole Church that the Infant born in Bethlehem is truly God made man, and that consequently there can be no possible distinction between "this one" and "that one," as between two persons. His doctrine was condemned by the Church as an execrable heresy. The common people themselves, with a correct sense of the truth, raised an out-cry against the blasphemy that Mary is not the M6ther ~f God; and later when the decree of the Council of Ephesus solemnly proclaimed the divine maternity of Mary their joy and exultationknew no bounds. The title of "Mother of God," applied to the Blessed Virgin, is justified by the following simple reasoning, plain to any child: "Mary is the Mother of Jesus. But ~lesus is truly God. Therefore Mary is the Mother of God." The syllogism thus enunciated contains one asset- .158 tion requiring :further proof or explanation. That Mary .is the Mother.of 2esus no one no.wadays would be inclined to call in question. The modern mind is quite at ease in admitting the historical evidence which vouches for the mother of this man ~lesus, who was born, li(red and died, whose story is,known from the Gospels. However, after tl"Je appearance of the Nestorian i pet-version, of Christ's identity, the second premise of the syl-logism that 3esus is truly God has been doubted or denied by countless bearers of the Christian name. On the. undi-luted truth of this second proposition depends the veracity of Mary's divine motherhood.Unless the Child ~he bor~ is truly and unequivocally God .then quite, i~at,urally neither is she the Mother of God. . . We need not prove the divinity of 3esus .here .but may take it over from the faith of the Church as a dogma ,so fundamental that the very name and substance of our religion would disappear if it were denied. As the Nicene Creed declares:. '.'I believe . . . in one Lord 3esus Christ, the only begotten Son of God', born'of the' Father before all ages., true God of true God. c?nsubstantial with the Father . who for us. men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate .by the Holy Ghost of the VirginMary; and was made man.'-.'. . : These words, of the Creed make it clear.that Christ had two natures, one the divine Which He received, from all et.ernity from the Father, so, that He was "born of the Father". and~ of the same substance with Him. Neverthe-less. this same Son was also born of His~ earthly, Mother from whom He received a human nature, a second nature. added to. the one already His from all eternity. It follows then that God ~he Son was twice born, the natural Son of His heavenly Father, the natural .Son of ,His earthly Mother: in either case the same one, the same individual~ 159 'ALOY$1US C. KEMPER the same divine Person. Could anything be more pl~iinly stated in our creed, or more lucid!y dear from the Gospel narrative than the fact that the whole story, from divine, eternal birth to temporal death and resurrection, is the story of one and the same Person, whether you .designate Him by His divine or His human names, God, Son of God, the Word; Christ, 3esus, or even simply "this man"? It will aid in unravelling subtle difficulties and objec-tions that lurk in many a mind in regard to this doctrine to enumerate in catechetical fashion, what we do not say about the Blessed Mother, and what we do say, regarding her divine maternity. 1. We do not say that the Son of God whom Mary bore did not exist before His earthly birth. This latter is His s.econd birth. By generation from the Father He existed from all eternity. It would be plainly absurd to assert that a woman brought God into His first existence, as though she had made God to be, and there would be no God without her maternal activity. Nestorius wa~ not ashamed to hurl the'accusation at his hearers: "You have Mary make God by calling her the Mother of God." Mary did not make God to be, bu~ she did make God to be man. That He is man is due to her maternal activity, aided by . the over-shadowing of the Holy Spirit. 2. We do not claim that she brought forth God tri-une, but only God the Son, the second Person of ~he Trin-ity. Sometimes when we employ the word "God" we mean the three divine Persons, as when we state that God created the world. Creation belongs equally to all three divine Persons. At other times the word is taken to indi-cate a definite Person, as in the phrase, God became man. It is quite correct to use the word "God" in both connota-tions. But one may object, "Why do we not always state the whole truth, by declaring at once that Mary is the 160 THE MOTHER'OI~ GoD Mother of God the .Son, and not Simply the Mother of God?" The reason is quite" simple. The insidious claim that Mary bore a mere man into the world could in no more effective way b~ laid low at one stroke than by desig-nating her in one. word,- "theotokos," that is "God-bearing," Or in our familiar phraseology-"Mother of uGnodde.r" tTheh eim wphaoclte o ffa tbhriisc s oinf ghleerse tthicuanld fearblsoelth.ood crashes 3. Finally we-do not iay that Mary is the mother of "the human nature of the Son of God. Some in their anxiety to remove misunderstanding suggest that we ,reduce our claim for Mary to a motherhood of human nature, since in this case the mother did no more than clothe an already existing Person with the nature that made Him man. No, this simplification "is in no wise admissible, involving as it does a false notion of the term "mother" and of the implied idea of generation. A mother is properly said t6 bear a son, not his nature. Though her immediate function cbncerns directly only the material ele-ment of his being, the soul being created directly by. God, she is never styled the mother of his body, or the mother of his human nature. She invariably giv.es birth to a child, a man, a person, .an individual; call him what you will, but note that it is .always "he" that is born, not "it." "Mother" and "son''~ are correlative, never "mother" and "nature." The stupen.dous fact in the'present case, known only through revelation, is that the Person in question is the Son of GodHimself. We must, then, observe the same propriety of language: Mary bore "Him," "this Person," "this child"; she is His mother, not the mother of His human nature. Coming now to our Positive doctrine, what"do we claim in regard to the divine maternity? The points may \ I61 "ALOY$1US C. KEMPER be very briefly stated, being already largely covered by the preceding explanation. 1. Mary cooperated in the birth of her divine Son exactly ~s any other mother, as far as her maternal func-tion was concerned. What she could not furnish as belonging to the paternal activity was in this case sup-plied by the power of the Holy Spirit. 2. The ordinary laws of human development were operative as usual. For nine whole months the Blessed Virgin was inexpressibly more than a mere temple of God, for the flesh of her divine offspring and her own were united in a°truly~physical unity as the sacred fruit of her womb advanced to maturity. 3. The birth of Christ was a ~irgin birth, strictly miraculous--a truth defined by the Church from the earliest ages. andexpressed in the Creed by the words "born of the Virgin Mary." This was the second nativ-ity of the Son of God, who through it became one 6f our race without ceasing to be Son of God. 4.' Ther~ is however only one Son under considera-tion, not two. As soon as one would wish to introduce a second son the hypostatic union would be sacrificed, and we should find ourselves in the Nestorian two-person camp. We should then be constrained to refer to "this one" as the Son of the Father, and to the "other one" as the Son of the Mother, and the latter, would not be God, nor would Mary be the Mother of God. The truth is the other way. We point to the Infant ,Jesus in the crib, or to the dying Savior on the cross and ciy out, enlight-ened by supernatural faith, "truly this is the Son of God "and of Mary." 5. The actions belonging to the body,the soul and ¯ the human nature of "this man" may be, and indeed must 162 MOTHER 01~ GOD be, attributed to the second person of the Trinity, Thus it is God Himself that dwelt amongst us, God Himself that was born, was nurtured at Nazareth, "ate, slept. walked ~he streets, preached, prayed, sweat blood, suffered, died, and was.buried. Some of these expressions occur in the Creed, in the recitation of which we often fail to remark that the greater part of it concerns the terrestrial human life of the eternal Son of God. made flesh and dwelling amongst us. ,. His dwelling amongst us depende.d upon His first having been "born of the Virgin Mary," which is but another way of saying that the Virgin is truly and properly the Mother of God. A cold and schematic analysis such as the foregoing may appear an unworthy appraisal ofone of the most con-soling truths of our faith, and of the most sublime of all .of Mary's priceless prerogatives, her divine maternity, the very rbot and foundation of all her magnificent adorn-ments. Yet cold, theological analysis is a necessary approach to'a fuller realization of the rich treasure of our holy faith. It wiil serve in the present case, it is hoped, to focus a clearer, steadier light on the Madonna with the divine Child, by clearing a.way any lingering haze of misY understanding that may attach to her maternal dignity, so that the truth and beauty of this sweetest of all images may stand forth in new brilliancy in our minds, and cap-tivate our hearts in a more undying love of the Mother and the Son. 163 The Cell Technique ot: Specialized Ca!:holic Action Albert S. Foley, S.2. 44CTRONGER and greater than any othe~will no doubt ~ be the aid afforded to Catholic Action by the numerous religious families of both sexes who have already rendered signal .services to the Church for the good of souls in your'nation. They w.ill give this aid not only by their incessant prayers but still more by generously devoting .their 'efforts to it, even if they do not, properly speaking, have charge of souls; they will give it more par- .ticularly by preparing for Catholic Action, even from the most tender age, the boys and girls whom they teach in their work, and especially in schools and colleges, both for men and women, placed in great part under the direction of reli-gious Institutes; ~nd above all in developing inthem the sense of the apostolate, and in directing them finally toward the Catholic Action organizations or in receiving these into their own associations and institutions.''1 In accordance with these wishes and directives of our .late Holy Father, great Work has been done by many out-standing religious youth directors in English-speaking countries. These religious, by their literary and organiza-" tional work, by their agitation and their achievements, have contributed mightily to the cause of general Catholic " Action. There is hovcever one phase of the movement that has no~ yet received sufficient attention in the United States. That is the preparation of leaders for the apostolate of 1pius X[ to Cardinal Leme da Silveira Cintra and tl~e Brazilian Hierarchy, October 27, 1935. AAS 28 (1936) 163. 164 THE CELL TECHNIQUI~ specialized Catholic Action by means of the cell technique. Lacking leaders so trained, the development of total Cath-olic Action in our country is lagging slightly behind some parts of the Catholic World. Butwe can be sure that this state of things will not last .long. Many religious through-out the country have become convinced of the value of this new technique. They have become the biodynes of this new .cell movement, have begun to stimulate cell grow~th and multiplication in all kinds of milieus, and even in manor existing Catholic Action organizations. If these pioneers are joined by large numbers of our capable, enthusiastic religious, American Catholic Action will soon become-the vital Christianizing influence it should be. Catholic Action is undeniably destined to be a force for the restoration of a11 things and all men in Christ. Plus XI defined it as the "participation of the laity in the apostolate of the hierarchy." He moreover insisted that this participa-tion should not be merely g~neral and sporadic as in the past, but should be organized and specialized according to environment, to facilitate an apostolate of like by like--~ the worker becoming an apostle for workers, the profes-sional man for professional men, the student for Other stu-dents. To meet the extra demands .of this personal aposto-late, the cell technique was devised, and the Pope, after seein~g it in action, praised it as the "genuine, authentic, per~ fected forrii of Catholic Action." What precisely is this cell technique? The cell notion and terminology is of course derived by analogy from the physiological unit of the living organism. A Catholic Action cell is a small, specialized unit of the Mystical Body, having, as every cell has, two dements: 1.) an active share in the life of the whole Body in order to achieve its particu-lar function; and 2) a certain inner composition fitted and adapted to carry out that function. We shall consider in 165 ALBERT S. FOLE~ this article both the apostolic spirit energizing the cell, and theinner composition and w6rkings of its organization. ¯ First, as to the apostoli~ spirit. In the letter quoted at the head of this article, Pius XI stresse~l the importance of "developing in them the sense Of the apostolate." It is not enough for them to know, the Pope pointed out, that the laity are, by their membership in the Mystical Body, privi-leged and entitled to share in the hierarchy's apostolic work. Nor is it ~uflicient to hammer home their duty to their fel-low men in this respect., They must be imbued with so ardent and personal a love for Christ that the apostolic spirit will automatically, inflame them.' No blue-nosed zealotry, no fanatical reforming mania, no hypocr.itical, h01ier-than-thou attitude can pose .as apostolic in cell work. Rather, the soundest basis, for lasting achievement through the technique is this keen personal attachment the Leader. That, by the way, is the method our Lord Himself used to draw His first followers. By His personal magnetism He won toHimself Andrew and John. Andrew, enthusi-astic in his new-found love, brought Simon Peter to Christ. John no doubt brought, his brother James. Then when Philip was called, his first apostolic conquest was Nathaniel. Soon the group, the first cell, was formed. Christ won their hearts utterly to Himself. Only then were they ready for their apostolic mission. This personal devotion to Christ is all the more neces-sary because of the apostolic methods, used in celt work. The re-Christifying of the immediate milieu is to be car-ried on not only through the general methods of propa-ganda and influence, but especially by .the apostolate of personal contact, of man-to-man conquest of consciences and souls through service, winning influence, individual attention and indoctrination. 166 THE. CELl. \ The present-day, possibilities and functionings of tNs System were symbolized vividly during one of-the Cath-olic Action .Congresses in Europe before the war. At a n[gh~ service ina giant stadium. some 80,000 were assembled. Suddenl~ all the lights went out, except candles burning on the altar. From one of these, signifi-cantly, the leader lighted his candle, carried the flame down to his neighbors, and transmitted it to them by personal contact. These two lighted in turn the two nearest to them. The light at first spread slowly along the fbont rows as candle after candle caught fire. But soon it gained momentum. It became a racing flame, sweeping through. the whole center of the stadium and up into the stands in geometrically progressive leaps and bounds until all were ignited. That is a true symbol of the movement. A flame, a fire passed on by :personal contact in the immediate milieu can spread and catch all, where methods of mass a~itaton .of large, unwieldy units, fired by an outside enthusiast, will at most perhaps light up a temporary, borrowed glow. Using this personal contact technique, a small group of Catholic Actionists won back to the Church and:the Sacraments 85 pergent of the student bod~ in a godless state University in France within three y~a~s:. Another group of ~lerks at the Paris Stock Exchange conquered for Christ 300 of the 500 clerks there. The remainder were brought into conformity with Christian business ethics. Result: the Exchange was reformed more effectively by this technique than Wall Street by the. SEC. It is noteworthy. too that the Jocists in Europe have, by this method, triple~ their membership to well over a million since the tragic summer of 1940, despite the handicaps of the occupation. S~ilar results are being obtained, in Canada. In our own country a few such.instances as these are on record. One 167 .~LBEKT ~. FOLEY Manchester youth won back to the Church twenty-four out of twenty-seven of his companions who had fallen away. A Notre Dame freshman, after a few months of training in the technique, ~vent back to his home town and inspired forty of his former high school friend~ with the idea. Together he and they spent their summer getting Catholic children to go to Catholic schools. They thus increased the enrollment of Catholic grammar and high schools more than twenty percent. It is therefore rather incorrectto maintain that none of our youth in school or out of it is capable of being inflamed with this conquering spirit. The plain fact is that many are already burning with a fiery desire to do something for Christ, and that many others can easily be so enkindled. Under the pressure, of the war, or perhaps despite it, .the more intelligent and wide-awake among them are authen-tically responding to the Church's spiritual program. Mass is being better .attended, more intelligently shared-in, more fruitfully lived. Retreats, holy hours, visits, and other spiritual activities send them back to religion classes eager to learn more of Christ. They willingly undertake myriads of zealous activities for Him, and for His Mysti-cal Body, a consciousness of which latter is not.wanting . tin them, now that their frequent Communions and their innate goodness and ~harity are bearing fruit. Hitherto, perhaps too often, these early indications of piety have been taken as signs of an incipient religious vocation, not of a summons to Catholic Action. Spirited youths have sometimes shied away from the religious .life when it and it alone was presented to them as the only logical conclusion of a keen,-active love for Christ. To avoid'tha~ special vocation for which they felt no attrac-tion, they have too often built up .resistance to the call of Christ, become impervious to the influence of the Sacra- 168 THE CELL TECHNIQUE mentsand of retreats, and allowed the flame of their love for Christ to be smothered in other pursuits. If they were given training and instruction in .the c~ll t~echniqu¢ of Catholic Action specialized to their student-or youth surroundings, this fire would be saved. They would then be prepared for a zealous lay Catholic life in their future environment, and for the religious life as Well, should theyfinally choose it. One difficulty-immediately presents itself. Will the grooming of youth for lay apostolic work seriously cut down the number of religious vocations? If 'the best youngsters become enthusiastically interested in and trained for the vast field of zealous achievements for Christ in their Own milieu, will they devote their lives to that field rather than enter the religious life? Will first-hand acquaintance with the dynamic, up-to-the~minute, effi-cient techniques of specialized Catholic Action so absorb all their interest as to leave no room for ambi~oning the apostolic work open to religious? It is hot easy to answer.these queries in advance. But it can be noted that in those countries where religious have generously devoted their efforts to training youth for specialized Catholic Action, religious vocations have increased. In Italy, just one year after the reorganization of Catholic Action, the feminine ~ection alon(~ furnished 2,500 vocations. In France, Belgium, and Holland, they were on the upsurge.These Catholic Action groups con- ' sidered it a sign of a successful federation if it produced ~eligious vocations among the leaders or among the ~ank and file. Where none were forthcoming, those in charge sensed that s~mething was.awry. Already in~ the United States, where specialized cells are in the experimental stage in Chicago, Toledo, Dayton, and New York, in Manchester and other cities in the New England States, at 169 .~LBERT S. FOLEY l~otre Dame, Marquette, John Carroll and Dayton Uni-versities and a. dozen other colleges, as well as in scattered groups t~roughout the rest of the country, many religious vocations have_ resulted. Moreover these new recruits will be all the more excellent religious for having served their apprenticeship in the cell movement. This becomes evident from an examination of the inner structure and the other elements of this cell tech-nique. Given a group of six or eight intelligent, sincere leaders-to-be (not politicians, publicity seekers, pious racketeers, or "pushy" religious climbers), the technique first prescribes that they be formed into a cell, a living unit of the.Mystical. Body, under the personal direction of a priest or a religious. The cell is organized under a leader, usually the oldest with ~he best personality, and through this leader and by means of private conferences with him, the director outlines plans and procedures for the cell meeting of about two hours every week without fail. It is in the cell meeting that the fire of personal zeal is fanned into flame, and the techniques of spreading that fire to others are studied, applied to their own lives and to the concrete problems of their surroundings. ~ The formula for the meeting comprises the follow-ing: 1) CorporateVocal Prayer before and after the meeting; 2) Corporate Mental Prayer or Gospel Study; 3) The Checkup; 4) The Social Inquiry; 5) Liturgy .Appreciation. A brief word on each of these) 2More detailed analysis is impossible in so short a compass as an article. Consult for further information, the following works: Fitzsimons and McGuire, Restorin9 All Tt~ings, A Guide to Catl~olic Action, (Sheed ~ Ward, 1938) 198-236; McGuire.-Paul, Handbook of Group AOencla, (K. of C., New Haven, 1940): Geissler. E. Trainin9 of Lay Leaders, (Univ.~ of Notre Dame. 1941): William Boyd, "Militants of Christ" Orate Fratres, xvi (Jufie 14. 1942) 338-347. In regard to the program of subjects for Inquiries. we may mention that this has been worked out in exact detail by youth groups in other countries---Canada, for instance, having a full seven-year cycle of subjects. These, of course, have to be adapted to the American scene by individual and collective work of the cells, but cellists can no doubt learn much from their experience, as is the case with those already experi-menting with it here. - '170 1) Corporate'Vocal Prayer. Led by one of the them= bets, who may or. may not be permanently chosen, the group recites what vocal prayers they choose for the start and the end of the meeting. It may seem strange at first that the priest or religious present should pray along with them instead of praying in place of them. But the reason is apparent. For united, organized action the group must not only work together, play together, study and plan together, but must also pray together. Active, dynamic praying can never be developed by passively hearing others pray. They must do it themselves, and thus develop that sense of togetherness in the Mystical Body, that union of all with Christ as His own. They or the director may suggest prayers, either of the ordinary devotional type, or, as their acquaintance with it increases, from the liturgy. 2) Corporate Mental Prager or Gospel Studg. One of the main means to fan the fire of love for Christ has been found to be the direct, prayerful study, of the inspired word for about fifteen minutes at the start of the me.eting. It is perhaps difficult for religious to realize the stirring impact of the Gospels on one who prays over them for the first time. True, most youngsters are half-way acquainted with the parables and the general outline of our Lord's ¯ life. But the absorbing and compelling magnetism of His life. is a new thing to them. By personal, prayerful reading and application to their lives of scenes' like the Annuncia-tion, the call of the Apostles, the full Sermon on the Mount, the discourses inSt. John, the sermons in the Acts, the~, are as a group drawn together to the Master, meet Him as never before, feel their hearts burning within them" anew. This should be linked up with and pointed toward the Social Inquiry, to furnish motivation,, inspiration, guid-ance, or principles for it. And no one, surely, is apt to be 171 ~LB~T S. FOLEY better prepared for doing this than the religious who has for years 'drunk deeply at this source of light and warmth. It is not long before the cell realizes, as Archbishop Good-. ier maintains, that "nothing can take the place of constant, repeated reading of the Gospels." '3) The Checkup. This is out of place here in a logi- .cal explanation of the technique, but it is definitely in place in the technique itself, especially after the first meeting. The checkup consists in this, that the ceil members examir~e their social consciences. They report on the fulfilment of the definite resolutions taken in their Gospel study. Each one tells of his work in carrying out the plans decided on in the Social Inquiry. Mutual stimulation, interchange of ideas and metl~ods, discussion of successful techniques of approach, conquest, influence,, and service spontaneously result. Nor should the psychological value of the checkup be overlooked. It plays as important a role in fostering the social apostolate as would a public examen of con-science in the endeavor to attain to .personal perfection in a rel~gi6us community. 4) The Social. Ir~quirtj. This is the most important and most essential section of the cell meeting, the heart' of the whole cell ,technique. Many religious are acquainted ~with it as the Jocist method of attacking social problems in any given milieu, always with the aim, of course, to rec,hristianize or conquer more completely for Christ the persons contacted. The three phases of the method are observation, judg-ment, and action. These constitute what amounts to a group meditation, conducted l~y the discussion method, with the .three phases roughly corresponding to the exer-cise of the memory, the understanding, and the will. To be sure, just as in formal meditation, it is more a question of stress than of air-tight division into these compartments. 172 THI~ CI~LL TECHR'IQUI~ BU~ while forming one unit,, one human act, the phases are distinct ~ind have definite purposes. In the Observation phase the leader and the cellists put their heads together.to analyse the elements of the problem at hand, .the available data they can recall. It is a fact- .finding, fact-gathering process.to set the stage fo~ discus-sion, thought, and comparison witl~ Christian ideals. These too they mus~ recall (or learn if they do not know them) either from their Gospel, study, or from religion classes, or from other instruction in Catholic social prin-ciples and moral-standards, ethical practice and even com-mon sense. All the facets of this one environmental prob-lem are thus examined until the cell" discovers what is wrong or less good when placed side by side with Chris-tian standards. To,aid this .process, the leader prepares in advance with the director's aid, a series, of stimulating questions that suggest avenues of approach and investigation,, or revive faint memories hidden away in the recesses of the mind. Once this is done, they are ready for the second phase. The Judgment to be passed, it must be remarked, is not a juridical one. It is certainly not to be a Pharisaic one. Nor is it to remain theoretical. It is rather a reso-lute, imperiofis decision reached by all simultaneously,, or better still,, a practical judgment by the group that some-thing is to be done and done by them as a group, in the, solution of this problem. By uniting the data of their. observation with the motivation furnished by their zeal and-with the urgent need for their action, they concretize this zeal and channel their ~efforts into this one present prob-lem. Their convictions thus became principles of action, and it is this action that they discuss in the third and cli-mactic phase of the method.- 173 ALBERT S. FOLEY Everything is pointed toward this Action phase. But it is the most difficult and critical Of all. Here the group discusses what sp.ecific, definite, immediate steps are to be taken by each member, what precise lin~s of conquest to be ~ followed before their next meriting. Concrete resolutions are takeh. These are recorded to be checked up on next week., The prime psychological value of this group medita-tion is plain. In religious organizations and in religion classes, in retreats, sermons, missions and lectures, we have tried every method of force-feeding known to pedagogical science. We wonder at the sluggish,spiritual appetites of the students, even the more capable ones. This method fosters their self-activity. It lets them eat. They rise up from this spiritual board and go out to expend their ener-gies in action and exercise, and come back athirst and hun-gering for more. They find that it is not what is given them but what they get by their own efforts that.really satisfies and stimulates. The Observe, Judge, Act system may not produce .doctorate theses, but it is their own, their very own, not some~ pre-fabricated or pre-digested menu impersonally served them by outsiders. 5) The Liturgy1. The final few minutes of the mi~et-ing are devoted to an" appreciation of the currentliturgy. As a stimulus to their grou15 praying nothing helps more than active participation in Massas a cell. For this,, an understanding of the Church's.seasons and of the weekYs feasts is an indispensable aid. This should be linked up too withthe carrying out of their practical resolutions for specialized Catholic Action. What, therefore, should a religious do who wishes to make use of this technique in training a group of leaders-to-be? The Pope's program in regard to general Catholic Action applies with particular, force to this specialized 174 THE CELL TECHNIQUE form: Prayer, Study, Experimentation. Without prayer, the prime requisite, the other, two are doomed from the start. In lieu of special courses, such .as those urged by Plus XI and Cardinal Pacelli in a letter written by the pres-ent Holy Father to superiors of religious orders (March 12, 1936), religious may study the movement by making acquaintance with the books and groups referred to in this article and by following the leads they will give if con.- sulted. Finally, experimentation with groups °even in existing organizations (as is being done in the Sodalities in many places) can be carried on with no more friction than that caused by the retreat movement. Both. retreat and cell movements are for the training of an elite, both are indis-pensable to th~ future ,work of these lymphocytes, these cells for the restoration and upbuilding of the Mystica! Body.' Divine Providence and Religious Institutes In an article entitled ."Introduction to Franciscan Spirituality," published in Franciscan Studies for December, 1942, Fr. Philibert Ramstetter, O.F.M., rightly insists that the Church must be the special object of God's loving Providence, and that in particular the Religious Orders and Congregations com~ under this Provi-dence. "Nor should the multitude and diversity of Religious communities mak~ us pausg," adds Fr. Ramstetter. "The all-wise God has.a particular and exactly-defined task for every single one of them. Moreover, history makes it clear that each such Order and Congregation, at least partly because of its special work, has its own mor~ or less specialized way of sanctifying the men and women who come under its influence, In other words, by the Providence of God each,approved Order or Con-gregation becomes a distinct school of spiritualityby itself or finds it proper place within one already established, each school having its particularized ideal~ of the supernatural life given to the world by ~lesus Christ. "The variety of schools within God's Church does no~ imply that the essence or principles of Christian living ever chang~they are as constant as the mind of God. But it does mean that the Christian concept of religion is wide enough to embrace not only varying degrees of personal perfection but also different artirude~ towards the Christian life and, as a result, different ways of living it." 175 The Seal ot: Confession Edwin F. Healy, S.J. WHEN a Catholic goes to confession and tells the priest ~all the secret sins and defects of his life, he realizes that the knowledge of the faults which he is impart-ing to his confessor will remain jUStoaS hidden from others as though he had spoken to God alone. Many theologians used to assert that the knowledge of the sins confessed is possessed by the confessor only as God. As man, he knows nothing of them. Though many other theologians dis-agreed with this way of stating the case, all donceded that, since the confessor has received this knowledge as the repre-sentative of God, it is now beyond the scope of human rela-tions. The priest possesses it as incommunicable, knowl-edge which must be buried forever in the secret ~iaults of his memory. Since the earliest days of the Church all theologians have taught that the confessor must suffer anything, even the most horrible type of death, rather than violate his obli-gation of keeping secret all sacramental knowledge. The seal of confession binds in every imaginable set of circum.- ¯ ¯ ~stances. Even though a priest, by violating the seal, could prevent the outbreak of a prolonged, devastating, world-wide war, he would, nevertheless, still be bound to absolute secrecy. In other words, a confessor is never permitted to reveal knowledge guarded by the seal, no matter how great the good which such a revelation would effect. There are no exceptions to this 'rule. If even one exception were allowed, the faithful would not approach the Sacrament of Penance with the same freedom and confidence. Penitents in general, and especially hardened sinners, would entertain the fear that their sins might one day be revealed. By pre- 176 THE SI~,~L 01~ CONFESSION venting, such evil effects, .the excluding of any and every exception works to the common spiritual good of all Chris-ians arid greatly outweighs any accidental beneficial results which might follow in this or that particular case from the restelation of a sacramental confession. The seal of confession, then, is the obligation 9f abstaining fromall use of sacramental knowledge, if the use Of that knowledge would either betray the penitent or render him Suspect. Hence, the confessor is obliged to main-tain the strictest silence concerning all that he learns in the Sacrament of Penance, when the discussion of such matter would even remotely risk disclosing the .penitent .and his sin. The obligation of the seal requires even more than this. The priest must refrain from making use of anything learned in confession, if the use of such knowledge would in any .way whatsoever tend to the detriment of the Sacra-ment. The subject-matter of the seal consists, in general, of all sins, defects and everything else of a confidential nature manifested in a sacramental confessiofi.It includes all that the penitent rightly or wrongly confesses as s{n. All mor-tal sins,, then, even though they be notorious, and all venial sins, even the slightest, are matter of the-seal. But more than this. The subject-matter of the seal embraces all remarks and explanations made by the penitent with the intention of perfecting the ~self-accusation, whether or not the points mentioned are necessary or useful or wholly superfluous for the proper understanding of the case. If, then, the penitent reveals to the priest temptations which he has experienced or evil tendencies against which he must struggle, the confessor is obliged to keep this knowledge strictly to himself. The same is true with regard to the description of the circumstances in which the s~ns occurred. If; for example, a penitent mentions that the murder which 177 EI~W!N'F. HEALY he has committed took place at a certain gasoline station, or if he discloses the manner in which the murder was per-petrated, these bits of information also would be safe-guarded by the Seal. What is to be said of the physical or mental defects which, in one way or another, come to the attention of the confessor during the course of the confession? Natural deficiencies must be considered matter of the seal either if they are manifested in order to explain some sin or if they are secret defects. Even though these latter are not men-tioned by the penitent but are accidentally learned by the confessor, the priest must maintain sacramental secrecy in their regard. It is dear, then, that such traits as a tendency to avarice or anger or other secret moral, weaknesses are sub-ject- matter of the seal. Though th~ subject-matter of the seal is very extensive, there is, nevertheless, ' certain knowledge acquired in sacra-mental confession which does not fall under the seal. In this category belong Statements made clearly by way of digres-sion, which in no way per.tain tO the sins submitted to the Power of the Keys. An example of this is the remark:. ',Father, my new home is finished now. Will you bless it when you have time?" The knowledge thus imparted'is given extra-sacramentally. That one come~ to confession is of itself a public fact to which the confessor is a witness. Hence, it is not matter of theseal. The same is true regard-ing the !ength of time which a penitent remains in the con-fessional. If, however, a man approaches a priest in secret to go to confession, his coming to the Sacrament is not pub-licbut secret. Since knowledge of tl~is secret fact could easily give rise to suspicion of serious sin, it becomes matter of the seal. Also, if a man were to spend an unusually long time in the confessional, prudence would prompt the priest not to reveal this, for fear that it might lead others to sus- 178 THE S~L pect that this penitent had a large nUmberof sins to tell. Let~us suppose that a thief were to kneel at the feet 6f a priest and recount various sins, but with no in~entiofi of receiving the Sacrament ofPenance. He has placed himself in. these circumstances merely to have a .better opportunity for picking the pockets of this pious priest. In this case the confessor would in no wise be bound to sacramental secrecy, because the obligation 6f the seal arises only from a confes-sion which.is sincerely made with a view to receiving abso-lution. (Whe(her or' not the absolution is actual!y imparted makes no difference with regard to the obligation of the seal.) As long asthere is the intention, then, to . receive the Sacrament of. Penance, the obligation of the sea! ¯ is present in spite of the fact that ~he .penitent lacks~ the proper dispositions or the priest lacks faculties for hearing confessions. A sacramental confessi.on, therefore; and only a sacramental confession imposes the obligation of the seal. But, one may ask, what if a man were to go to a priest Who is vesting for Mass, and, in order to put an end to his wbrrying, explain certain severe tem. ptations which he has just experienced? Is this to be deemed sacramental confes-sion? It is sacrament~il on on:e condition:¯ namely, that the man desires the priest to give him absolution, in case he judges it necessary or advisable. If, on the other hand, a.per-son confesses his sins by letter to a priest who is in another town,the~re would be no sacramental secrecy involved. Why is this? The confession, in order to be sacramental, must be made to a priest who is actually present. What if one approached a priest and, with no intention at all of going to confession,, revealed some secret, prefacing his disclosure with the words: "Father, I am telling you this under the seal of. confession"? Would tiiis priest then be bound by the seal? No, he would not. But let us suppose thathe readily agreed to receive the communication under the 179 EDWIN F.' HEALY secrecy of confession. Even in this case he would not be held by the seal. The reason is dear. Since no sacramental confession is made, not even an incipient one, this secret can-not be protected by the seal of the Sacrament. x~rhat is required to constitute a transgression against the obligation of the seal? Obviously the seal is violated. when one reveals matter protected~ by sacramental secrecy and at the same time in some why designates the. penitentm supposing, of cours~e, that the latter has granted no explicit permission to disclose this knowledge. Such illicit revela-tion may b~ either direct or indirect. For direct violation there must be a clear manifestation both of matter of the seal and of the identity of the penitent concerned. If, for example, a priest were to make known the fact that John Jones committed a murder (and he is aware .of this.only from Jones' confession), he would undoubtedly.be guilty of a direct violation of the seal. But what if.that priest did not mention Jones by name, but simpler declared that the wealthiest man in this town (and Jones is known as such) ,committed a murder? This also would go directly counter to the seal. Or again, if that priest were to state that the first man who came to him to confession today confessed the crime of murder, and if his hearers knew., that Jones was ~.-that first pegitent, the seal would be violated directly. Not only revealing mortal sins but divulging even venial sins can constitute a direct violation of the seal. If, forexample, the confessor asserts that' James" Brown con-fessed a sin of lying or that he is guilty of serious sins or of m~nq venial sins, he is directly transgressing against the sacrdd 'obligation to secrecy. The sins need not be named specifically. . Up to this point we have treated only of the direct vio-lation of the seal. A violation is said to be indirect when causes the danger of manifesting the penitent and his sins or 180 THE SEAL OF (:ONFESSION at least of exciting suspicion in his regard. This danger may be created by what the confessor says or does or even by what he omits to do. A confessor would indirectly violate the seal, if he made known the penance which he imposed on a certain penitent, unless of course the penance were very light, for example, two Hail Marys. Provided that his way of acting could be observed by others, a confessor would sin against the obligation of the seal if, after confes-sion, he were to give the penitent a severe look or if he failed to treat him in as friendly a manner as he did before.- More.- over, a confessor violates the seal indirectly, if during the ' confession he argues with the penitent in a somewhat loud. voice, or if he repeats the sins confessed in a tone that risks revealing.the faults to others. In passing we may remark that eavesdroppers who try to hear what the penitent is saying in confession or those who kneel very close to the confessional in order to learn wha~ is going on sin against, the seal, even though they reveal to others nothing of what they manage to overhear. One thus listening to a-penitent's confession is causing the revelation of the penitent and of his sins to one who has no right to this knowledge, that is, to himself. This is a direct viola-tion of the seal. However, if one happens to be standing some distance from the confessional, he is not obliged to move away or to stop his ears, though he may accidentally overhear one who is confessing too loudly. (Nevertheless, whatever is thus overheard mustbe guarded under the seal. ) Let us now consider the seal in its wider interpretation. The seal, taken in this meaning, is violated indirectly when, on the one hand, there is no danger of either disclosing or exciting suspicion about the penitent and his sin, but, on the other hand, harm or displeasure to the penitent arises from the use of sacramental knowledge. In instituting the Sacra- 1'81 EDWIN F, HEALY ¯ ment of Penance~. Christ imposed the obligation of the seal on all. those who share in confessional kr~owledge. ¯ He did :.this in order to preclude the aversion towards the Sacrament which the lack of such security would occasibn in the hearts of the faithful. Christ desired that no Use be made ofcon-fessional knowledge which would cause injury to the Sacraz ment. In order to safeguard the observance of the seal in the strict sense, the Church forbids the confessor to employ sac- . ramental knowledge in a way that w.ould displease the peni-tent. Such :;n action of the priest, even though there were no danger of betraying tl~e penitent, would, nevertheless, violate the seal as it is understood in its .w, ider meaning. We mentioned above that the seal, in its broader inter-pretation, is violated ~hen "harm or displeasure to the peni-ten[ arises from the use of sacramental knowledge." What do we meanby, the words "harm or displeasure" ? We mean injury either in body, in soul, or in extern~l possessions. We mean whatever would redound to the dishonor or discredit of the penitent; whatever would inconvenience him or annoy, shame, or sadden him. We mean, in a word, what-ever would make the penitent even slightly regret his con-fession. Hence, the use of confessional knowledge which would cause any of these effects must be counted illicit.If such use were permissible, penitents would find the Sacra-ment of Penance less desirable and less easy to approach. ~:'hus they would be deterred, at least to some extent, from going to confession. They would not find in this Sacrament ~he freedom and the consolation which they may righ~tly ¯ expect. Would.not the use of sacramental knowledge which we brand as illicit become lawful if the penitent himself were unaware of the fact that he was being injured o~ legislated against because of what is known only through the Sacra-ment? Let us imagine, for example, that a particular peni- 182 tent isdeprived of some o~ce or that he is denied some privi-lege because through confession he is known tO be unworthy ~ of these. Is such use permissible, provided the penitent does not know and wili never learn that what he told'his confes-sor is thus being employed to his disadvantage? No, such use is never allowed. The penitent's ignorance of the fact that his confessor is thus using sacramental knowledge would in no way r~nder Such use licit. It is not necessary that the penitent hnow that knowledge ~btained in a sa~ra-mental confession is being employed to injure him. If a cer-tain use of sacramental knowledge would be displeasing to the penitent if it .were known, such use must be placed in the category of forbidden~actions. Let us suppose, for instance, tha~ a priest after confession, when alone with his penitent, shows, himself less congenial or notably more brusque towards the penitent. Though the penitent does notadvert to the fact that the confessor is acting thus because of what he heard in_confession, the priest sins agains~ the seal, taken in the wide sense. ~ The confessor must give no sigfi that he is conscious of what was mentioned in the Sacramentof Penance. He is: moreoyer, forbidden to speak to his penitent outside confes-sion of any ~in which the latter confessed. In this case, it is true, the reve~lation, of no secret would be involved, but such a way of acting would ordinaril~r be displeasing'to the faith-ful. Once the penitent has retired from the confessional, the sacramental judgment is at an end, and the priest in now' speaking to the penitent 'of what transpired during that judgment, is acting against the reverence and the liberty due the. Sacrament. One may readily see, then, that the sacra-mental seal binds more strictly than any other ty.pe of secret. Other secrets, unlike the sacramental seal, would not be vio-lated, if those who had the hidden knowledge in common were to discuss it a ~mong themselves. 183 At times, pe~nitents ~ppr0ach their confessor Outside con-fi~ ssion and ask him about the penance which he imposed on them, or about sbme bit Of advice which he gave, or about the gr~ivity of a certain sin which they confessed. Does the sealprevent the confessor .from answering these questions~? No, it does not, because by thd very fact that the penitent begins speaking of these matters he grants permission to the priest to talk about them with him. Ordinarily, however, his permission is limited to a discussion of the matter which the penitent has broached and may not be extended to all the sins confessed. Incidentally we may mention that it is possible for a penitent to sin by revealing, without a good reason, the advice, the penance, and so forth, given by the confessor, if such a revelation woul~l redound to the priest's discredit. Those who hear the penitent's comments do not know the reasons Which prompted the confessor to impart such advice or to impose so severe a penance, and the priest is powerless to speak in his own defense. The penitent, more-over, should be on his guard against revealing anything 6f what transpires during the confession, if that would lower the Sacrament in the esteem of others. May the confesson without the penitent's leave, men-tion to him during the course of a confession sins confessed on previous occasions? Yes, this may be done, provided there is a sufficient reason for calling these past sins to .the attention of the penitent. The priest may deem it advisable to refer to some sin of the past, ih order to become better acquainted with the state of this penitent's ~oul and so be able to direct him more effectively. Far from objecting to this, the penitent should be happy that his confessor is so solicitous about his advancement in the. spiritual life. More-over, even.when a penitent leaves the confessional but returns immediately, the confessor may discuss with him 184 both the sins just confessed and the sins of previous confes-sions. Some priests give a few words of advice after having imparted the absolution. This is permissible, bedause, though the Sacrament is completed, the sacramental judg-ment, morally speaking; still continues. The penitent may, of course, give the confessor leave to speak outside confession about certain sins submitted to the Power of the Keys, and if this is done, the confessor may freely discuss those sins. It is important to note that this permission, in order to be valid, must be granted by the penitent n. ot only'expressly but also with entire freedom. If the permission were to be extorted by threats or fear or importunate pleadings, it would be worthless, and the con-fessor who acted upon it would violate the seal. The same ¯ is true with regard to permission that is merely presumed or interpretative. In this matter such a permission must be counted as no permission at all. When there is question of any use of confessional knowl-edge which would render the Sacrament more difficult or irksome, that knowledge must be kept just as secretly as though it did not exist. However, besides the case in which ¯ the penite.nt's permission has been freely and unmistakably granted, there is another perfectly licit use of sacramental knowledge. In general, that use is licit which would in no wise deter the faithful from frequenting the Sacrament, even though such use were publicly announced as lawful. When would this~ requirement be verified? This condition would be fulfilled, if a certain use of sacramental knowl-edge were to involve neither the direct nor indirect viola-tion of the seal nor the slightest ~trace of displeasure to peni-tents in general. We may summarize in the following" way the scope of use which is lawful. The use of confessional knowledge is permissible: (1) within the limits of matters which belong 185 EDWIN F. HEALY exclusively to one's own conscience; (2) outside these lim-its, in external a~tions, provided it is certain that there is no danger at all of .revealing the penitent and his sin or Of displeasing him or of making the Sacrament in general less approachable. A confessor, therefore, is allowed to pray for a particular penitent who is known from confession to be gravely tempted. A priest may meditate on his penitents and their faults, in order to be able to advise them more per-fectly. Moreover, a confessor, who has learned through confessions which he has heard thaf certain games have fre-quently ~aused spiritual or temporal ruin, may allow him-self tO be guided by this knowledge in 'avoiding these forms of amusement. A priest may show greater kindness and consideration for a penitent who he knows from confession is severely afflicted, pro.vided of course the confessor's way of acting would not engender suspicion in the minds of observers. Finally, it is well to remember that, if a priest knows about a certain person's recent sins be~:ore he hea~:s his Confession, that individual's act of confessing those sins to this priest ~does not place the confessor's previous-knowledge under the seal. The previous knowledge was and still remains extra-sacramental. The confessor, how-ever, mu~t exercise great prudence in the use of such infor-mati6n. This, then, is the common teaching of theologians regarding the obligation of the seal of confession. ~lust as our divine Lord, "by the pardon of His loving mercy, entirely wipes away and quite forgets the sins which through human weakness we have committed," so the minister of the Sacrament of Penance ieverently guards, e~ven to the shedding of his blood, everything that is mani-fested to him in the secrecy of the confessional. 186 The Discussion on Spiritual Direction The Editors ~oLMOST a year "ago (July, 1942) we published an '~'~ editorial entitle~l Spiritual Direction b~/ the Ordinary Confessor. Our purpose was to stimulate construc-tive discussion of the important topic of spiritual direction. To aid in the discussion, we subsequently published articles On The Need of Direction, Cooperation with Direct(on, Manifestation of Conscience, and The Prudent Use of Con-fession Privileges. During the course of the discussion we received many communications, most of which were pub-lished, at least in digest form. We were unable to publish some letters, and from those published we had to tempora-rily omit certain 13oints. It is now time to make a survey .of the entire discussion. This survey will include not merely the published ma.terial, but the unpublished sugges-tions as well. The reading of the survey will not .entirely supplant the reading of the original articles and communications. The articles developed certain points thoroughly, whereas we can merely touch on them here. The communications cofitained such a variety of suggestions that it seemed impos-sibleto weave them all into one readable article; conse-quently we had to select what appeared to be the most .important. The communications also revealed certain pro-nounced differences of opinion. As we did not wish our survey to be a mere catalogue of such differences, we felt that we had to "take sides," at least to the extent of trying to give a balanced judgment. 187 THE EDITORS ~. Those who have followed the discussion on spiritual direction have no doubt noticed that it gravitated almost dfitirelyto the guidhnce of Sisters. One Brother master of novices sent an excelldnt communication; all the other let-ters were fr6m Sisters or from priests who appeared to be thinking almost exclusively in terms of the direction of Sis-ters. I,n preparing the survey we had to decide on our point of View: should we speak exclusively of the direction of Sisters, or should we keep the matter sufficie~ntly general to include everyone? .We decided to give the survey with Sis-ters principallyin mind; but .we think that religious men who are interested in the matter will find that almost every-thing said here is equally applicable to them. Meaning of Spiritual. Direction In our introductory editorial, We were thinking of spir-itual direction in terms of the definition given by Father Zimmermann in his Aszetil~ (p. 230): "Instruction and encouragemer~t~of individuals (italics ours) on the way of perfection." This definition brings out one element~of spiritual direction that ascetical theologians usually stress: namely, it is individual. This individual, or personal, quality of spiritual direc- ~t-ion excludes such. things as the Commandments of God; the precepts, counsels, and example of- our Lord; the laws of the Church; the constitutions .and rules of a religious institute. All these things may be called spiritual direction in the sense that their give us the plan of a perfect life; but they are .not direction in the technical sense or even in the" ord'.mary popular sense. For the same reason, spiritual reading books and community conferences, even though they help much to clarify our ideas of perfection and stimu-late us to desire progress, cannot be called spiritual direC-tion. 188 SURVEY ON SPIRITUAL DIRECTION In their communi~ati0ns many zealous priests have spoken of certain types of "planned instruction" in the confessional. In so far as these instructions are general and the same for all they do not substantially differ from com-munity exhortations. They lack the individual element of spiritual direction. This does not mean that they do not serve a good purpose. Some priests can use them and accomplish much good by them. They do give the peni-tents some generally helpful thoughts; they do remind the penitents that the priest's time is theirs; and they are often the means of breaking down a barrier of reserve and pre-paring ~he way for personal direction. Moreover, such general adm~,nitions; given by a confessor of a religious community, are frequently very helpful in that they enable. theindividual religious to get a good start (for example, in keeping silence better), because all have been urged to do the same thing. All this is negative. It may be summed up by saying that spiritual direction is not general, but" particular, indi-vidual, personal. Its purpose is to help an individual to attain to the degree of perfection to which God is calling him. It supposes, therefore, a knowledge .of.~ the individu-al's own problems and aspirations, of his external cir-cumstances and l'iis tal.ents,~ and of the way the Holy Spirit operates in his soul. In what does direction actually consist? Father Zim-mermann sums it up in two words, "instruction and encouragement." In themselves, tl'iese words are.not ade-quate to express all the functions, of the spiritual director, but they do indicate the two principal ways in which, according to circumstances, he is to exert his influence on his spiritual charge: namely, on the intellect (by instruction), and on the wilt and the emotions (by encouragement). As for his influence on the'intellect, the director's work 189 THE EDITORS may vary from the very active function of telling the indi-vidual what to do and how to do it to the almost passive function of simply approving or disapproving the plans made by the individual. He gives pointed moral and asceti-cal advice, he answers questions, and he corrects erroneous notions. In regard to the will and the emotions, the direc-tor not only encourages, but he consoles in time of sorrow, strengthens in time of weakness, tra.nquillizes in time of dis-tress, and restrains in time of imprudent ardor. In all .these functions, the director must have regard for what he judges to be the designs of God on the soul of the individual com-mitted to his care. ¯ Need ot: Direction Rather pr'onoun'ced differences of opinion wereexpressed in our articles and communications con'cerning the need of direction for religious. In fact, there seems to have been a ¯ great deal of confusion in the discussion of this .topic. Per-haps we can avoid this confusion by referring the subject as definitely as possible to our actual conditions. ~In actual life, most of us are ordinary earnest religious,. not mystics. Hence, we consider here the need of direction for the avera~ge religious. Again, in actual 'life fe~w of us are privileged to have directors with the rare supernatural insight of a St. Francis de Sales. It- would be idle specula-tion for us to consider the need of direction, having in mind a director to whom access would be almost, impossible. Hence, we consider here direction that is normally obtain-able. With the question thus brought within the scope of our ordinary lives, we think it reasonable to uphold this propo-sition: some direction is a practical necessity for the aver: age religious to make safe and constant progress in perfec-tion. This general rule admits of exceptions. God can 190 SURVEY ON SPIRITUAL DIRECTION accomplish wonders in the soul without the aid of a direc, tor, but normally God uses.the human means of direction. Also, the general rule applies in different ways to various individuals; the degree and l~ind of help needed, as well as the frequency with which it is needed, will vary greatly. Perhaps the relativity of the need of direction can be seen more dearly by referring back to the functions of the director. " Young religious, particularly novices, are likely to need a great deal of intellectual help. They are unac-custome. d to self-study, to making appropriate resolutions; to choosing useful subjects for the particular examen; and they need guidance in these :matters, lest they waste much time and effort. Ascetical, principles are still merely the: oretical principles to them, and they often need help to see how they apply practically to their own lives. But the dependence on a director for intellectual help should certainly decrease with .the years. Religious who have finished their training and have taken their final vows should be able to plan for themselves; and .their need of the spiritual director, in so far as intellectual help is concerned, should be mainly .for friendly criticism. In other words, these religious plan their own lives, submit their plans to a director for approval or disapproval, and then occasionally make a report on the success or failure of the plan. Natu-ally, we make allowance here, even in the case of mature religious, for occasions when they face new problems or undergo special difficulties. They may need very detailed guidance on .such occasions; In regard to the need of the director's help for the will and the emotions, it is perhaps impossible to give a general rule. True, to a great extent progress in the religious life should develop emotional stability. Nevertheless, the prob-lem is largely an individual one, and quite unpredictable'. Age. does not fr~e us from such trials as discouragement, THE EDITORS loneliness, and. worr, y; indeed, age often accentuates Such trials. At various periods in our lives, most of us need sympathetic help or paternal correction lest we lose heart or' descend to low ideals. Where to Get Direction Granted the need of some direction, a question that pre-sents itself quite naturally is, "Where are we to get this direc-tion?" This question has already been answered, in so far as we can answer it, in previous issues of the REVIEW. What we have said can be capsuled into these three rules: (1) Get what you can from your superiors. (2) Among confes-sors, it isnormally preferable to get direction from the ordi-nary confessor, (3) If the ordinary confessor proves inade-quate, take advanta.ge of one or other privilege accorded by canon law. We suggest these three rules with deference to the special regulations or customs of particular institutes. Some insti-tutes provide a specially appointed spir.itual father; and the institute itself will indicate whether it is desirable that the spiritual father act as confessor or simply give extra-confessional direction. ¯ We have repeatedly mentioned the superior as a possible .source of spiritual direction, as did many of the published communications. -We think that this point calls for special emphasis, because it seems that one of the reactions to the Church's severe condemnation of obligatory manifestation of conscience has. been a swing to th~ opposite extreme, namely, that superiors are too rarely consulted even in mat-ters in which they are both qualified and willing to give advice. Either extreme is an eVil. The present ecclesiastical legislation safeguards what is of prime importance, the per-fect liberty of' the individual. Granted this liberty, much good can come to the superior, the subject, and to the family 192 SURVEY ON SPIRITUAL DIRECTION spirit of a community, from voluntary manifestation of conscience. A number of objections have been raised against insistent preference for the Ordinary confessor. Some¯ Sis-ters have pointed out that they have had almost as many ordina.ry confessors as they have lived years in religion; others have said that the ordinary is not interested, does not come on time, does not come regularly,, does not understand their life, and so forth. These are certainly practical diffi-cult. ies. They indicate cases in which a complaint might well 'be lodged with a competent authority, or in which. ifidividuals might profitably and justifiably avail them-selves of one or other of the confessional privileges given by canon law. But the dif[iculties do not detract from the wis-dom of the general rule. Many questions have be,en sent us concerning the advisability of direction by correspondence. ~Fhe general rule given by ascetical masters and, we think, confirmed by many distressing experiences, is that such direction should be either entirely discouraged or reduced to an absolute minimum. It is true that some priests have accomplished great things in this way, and that for some souls it is the only possible way of obtaining genuinely needed help. But it can hardly be approved as a normal practice. It tends t6 consume immense amounts of time, it seldom has the assur-ance of the strict privacy that intimate direction calls for, and of its very nature it is open to grave dangers of mis-understanding, both on the part of the director and on the part of~the directed. Only in rare instances is it a genuine apostolate. How to Get Direction The next logical question is: "How is one to get direc-tion?" This question has been asked often in the course Qf 193 THE EDITORS our discussion; and many bits of helpful advice have been scattered through the communications. The subject is too vast for complete development here. At best we can give only an outline, trying to incorporate the suggestions in some ready and readable form. It may be well to note that the outline will concern only confessidnal direction. ~ .We begin with three p.reliminary negatives. Don't maize "'direction" the principal purpose of gout confession. It is often said --- in fact, so often and by such reliable persons that there 'must be some truth in, it--that many religious do not know how to make a fruitful con-fession. Confession is a Sacrament. It produces its sacra-mental graces in,~ accordance witl~ the ~lisposition of the recipient. Essentially, this disposition is one of true con- .trit.ion; and perhaps the clearest sign of this cdntrition is a sincere purpose of amendment. All people, who confess ¯ frequently and have only small things to tell have p~actical difficulties on this score; there is always the danger that~ their confessions will be routine in the evil sense of this word: that is, they ~onfess with a very vague and indefinite purpose of amendment, with the:result that Penance plays a veiy slight part in .the efficacious bettering of their lives. Yet this is the principal purpose of frequent confession and it can be accomplished, even though the confessor "never gives advice. We have said that this is the first purpose of confession and in itself independent of the "spiritual direc'tion': aspect. We might add, however, that the two can be admirably combined. For instance, if the peniten~t were to tell the confessor: "Father, I want to make my confessions more fruitful, and I'd like your help in going-about it,'"this might be the beginning of the simplest yet sanest program Of spiritual direction possible for most religious. A second "don't" concerns prejudices: Don't be influ- 194 SURVEY ON SPIRITUAL DIRECTION enced b~i a prejudice against an~l '~onfessor. " TheSe preju-dices are manifold. For.instance ~ome religious think that the only one who can direct them is another religious; some think that all the good confessors belong to one religious o~der; some, on the contrary, believe that the most sy.mp~- thetic and h~lpful confessors are diocesan priests. We have l~eard/~11 opinions expressed, particularly those concerning confessors from religious orders. An honest judgment must label such opinions as prejudice. The actual facts are that good confessors can be found in fair proportions both among the religious and among the diocesan priests. Other prejudices concern individuals and arise from hearsay. This has been mentioned so frequently in the ~ommunications that it must be somewhat common, par, ticularly among Sisters. No ~onfessor should be judged by gossip; and as for the gossip itself, we feel that we could recommend many more profitable subjects of conversation. Even an unpleasant personal experience with a confes, sor should not be too readily interpreted in a derogatory fashion. One of the most difficult of all priestly works is the hearing of confessions.¯ The technique of doing it--if we may use such an expression--admits of constant improvement. The judgment concerning ask, the tone of voice see the penitent, he is whether the penitent confessor has to exercise exquisite such things as the precise question to to use, the advice to give. He cannot often unhble to judge from the voice is young or old; and at times he gets very little help from the penitent in the way of~clear and unequivocal statement. When troubles concerning other persons are mentioned, he knows that there is another side to the question, and he must give an answer that is fair to both sides. In view of such difficulties, it should not be surprising that a corifessor might occasionally make an unpleasant impression or even seem to misunderstand 195 THE EDITORS one's case. He is the minister of God; he is not God. A-final negative preparation for obtaining direction is this: .Don't expect too r~ucb froma confessor. In the com-munica. tions sent to the REVIEW, many priests expressed their opinion that the confessor should take the initiative and this in a very active way, such as, for example, asking definite questions: "Is there anything you wish to ask me?" "Can I help y.ou in any way?" and so forth. On the other hand, some priests have indicated that they do not approve of this method or at least they could not uie it. We feel justified in concluding that religious-would be unwise to expect such active initiative. Many may want it and feel that they could do better if the confessor would.make some such advance; but if they wait for. this they may never get spiritual direction. They have a right to expect the con= fessor to give help if they ask for it; also that the confessor will even give help spontaneously when something in the confession seems to call for it. These are the minimum essentials 'for all good confessqrs; but beyond these mini-mum essentials, there is a great diversity of practice. ~ ~ On the p6sitive side, the first, requisite for obtaining direction is to u~ant it. This implies a Sincere desire of progress and a willingness to do the hard work necessary for ~progress. One reason why" some confessors do not take the " initiative in this matter is that they know that many peni-ents would resent direction especially if it concerned the correction of certain inordinate attachments or humiliating faults. A second positive preparation for obtaining direction is to know what ~tou want. In other words, one should try to know oneself--one's ideals, talknts, temptations, faults, and so forth. Self-activity is necessary not merely for cooperation with direction but also as a preparation for it. In making the immediate preparation for confession, it 196 SURVEY ON SPIRITUAL DIRECTION helps much to say a prayer to the Holy Spirit, both foi one-self and for the confessor. This .is supernatural work or it is nothing. The whole purpose of it is to further the plans of God for individual souls; and, as we know, in God'~ ordinary prdvidence, He wants us to pray even for the things He is delighted to give us. The actual work of "breakifig the ice," especially with a new confessor or with one from whdm they have not pre-viously received spiritual guidance, is a serious problem for many religious. It really need not be a dread formality. Many helpful suggestions have been made in ohr various communications. One suggested ope.ning was: "Father, I should like to use my confessions as a means of making spiritual progress and of getting spiritual direction. Do you mind helping me?" Such an opening puts the priest "on the spot." If he doesn't wish to help, he must say so; and that means that he assumes the responsibility before God. He should not be hearing the confessions of religious. On the other hand, if he is willing to help, the initial difficulty of approach has been solved. Other suggested approaches were: "Father, will you please help me with my spiritual life? I have such and such ups and downs."--"I have trouble in the line of. "--"I j~ust fed the need of talking myself out."--"I know I need help, but I don't know Where to begin." The foregoing, or similar approaches, should be suffi- ¯ cient for any sympathetic priest. However, the mere fact that this initial contact has been made does not solve the entire problem. It may take some time for definite results to be produced; despite the willingness of both penitent and confessor. That is'one, reason why it is good, when pos-sible, for the penitent to have some definite plan to submit to the confessor. This plan need not be very ~omprehensive. Itmight begin with the simple attempt to make confession 197 THE EDITORS itself more fruitful; and from that it could grow out into the entire spiritual, life. Once a. begin.ning.has been made, the me~hod of carrying on the spiritual direction will have to be worked out by the confessor and penitent. In large communities the time element presents a real obstacle. How-ever, it is not insuperable. Very few penitents need direc-tion every week; a brief monthly consultation is generally sufficient. No one should resent it if the confessor were to suggest some method of spacing these monthly consulta-tions so that they would not all fall on the same day. Also, if both penit~ent and confessor understand that there is to be no beating about the bush, and if neither is offended by a certain directness of speech, much time can be saved. In his article on Cooperation with the Director, Father Coogan called attention to certain qualities that should characterize one who sincerely seeks direction. The first of these qualities, is humble candor. It is vain to ask for direc-tion if one does not wish t6 be honest, if one wishes .the director to know only One side of one's life. Along the same line, many correspondents have ~uggested that in con-fessing it is a good thing, even in regard to small faults, to give the confessor a more accurate picture of what has happened by indicating the circumstances and by confessing motives. Evidently such practices are not necessary for the corifession, but they are very helpful from the point of view of direction. It seems thai one obstacle to candor, particularly among Sisters, is an erroneous notion of charity and community loyalty. Many are under the .impression that the manifes-tation of certain difficulties regarding charity and obedience would be an unjustifiable reflection on the members of the community. This would be true if such things were recounted uselessly or if there were danger that the confessor would violate his obligation of secrecy. The danger on the 198 SURVEY (~N SPIRITUAL DIRECTION part of the confessor-is rarely preserit; hence, in ordinary circumstan, ces, the penitent may manifest everything that pertains to his own trials and faults. (Cf. Volume II, p. 141.) Father .Coogan also insisted strongly on docility. And rightly so; for it seems absurd to consult a spiritual director if one does not intend to follow his advice. However, ~this. spirit of docility does not necessarily involve blind obedi-ence, except in cases of severe trial, such as scruples, when one's own judgment is unbalanced. Normally, if one does not understand the meaning of the advice given, one should ask for further explanation rather tl~an try to follow.it irrationally. And if one ha's good reason to think that cer-tain advice would piove harmful or would not produce the desired results, one should mention this to the confessor. Such reasonable cooperation with direction is in perfect accord With humble docility. A. very practical aspect of confessional direction is the follow-up. Usually it is. better that the penitent take the ifiitiative in this. The confessor may be hesitant about referring to the past, lest he be talking to the wrong persbn. Some confessors have no di~culty in this respect, but others find it quite perplexing, even after they have heard the peni-tent's confession a number of times~ To avoid all risk,.the penitent should have a definite understanding .with the con-fessor. No one can give progressive direction without at least recognizing the case. Does it make for better cohfessional'direction if the con-fessor knows his penitents personally? Our communica-tions indicate that religibus are just like seculars in this mat-ter; some prefer to be recognized, others wish to remain unknown. In practice, this rule should .be observed: ant./ penitent who wishes the confessor to recognize him and to use his extra-confessional knowledge of him in giving direr- 199 THE EDITORS tion should make this quite clear and explicit to the cont:es: sot. Unless the penitent does this, the confessor is not likely to show any sign of recognition or take into account any of his personal extra-confessional knowledge of the penitent. , A final problem, especially practical among religioui in our country, concerns the changing of confessors. It often happens that one is just getting a good start or is going along quite nicely with one confessor,, when the religious himself is transferred or a new confessor is appointed. What is to be done? TWO extremes are to be avoided. One ~extreme is to think it necessary to give each new confessor a complete account of one's whole life history. This is surely going too far. Only in rare cases are these lengthy mani-festations really necessary for the confessor, and they are seldom helpful tc~ the penitent. On the other hand, it is not prudent to withhold all ¯ reference to the past from the confessor~ This is the other extreme. The new c6nfessor should be given a brief, but accurate, picture of thd penitent's main tendencies, and should be acquainted with the way in which, the former confessor was directing him. Without this minimum of information there is apt to be needless repetition and no real -progress. Concluding Remarks No doubt, much. remains, to be said about spiritual direction; but we think it best to close our discussion, at least fo'r .the present. Some readers may be under the impression that it is just like .many other discussions: much has been said, yet few definite conclusions have been drawn. Very likely such an impression is not v~thout foundation. Nevertheless, certainly some definite good has been accom~ plis~ed if interest has been stimulated and if some of the 200 SURVEY ON SPIRITUAL DIRECTION causes of misunderstanding and prejudice have been removed. Masters and mistresses of novices, can help to make this discussion fruitful if they see to it that their novices know hox¢ to get and cooperate with direction. Some may fihd the plan suggested by the Brbther master of novices (cf. I, p. 344) or some similar plan very useful. Superiors can ¯ help by seeing that the legitimate complaints of their sub-jects are lodged with the proper authorities and by .making it possible for their subjects to use the special privileges approved by the Church when this isnece.ssary. Some correspondents have told us that no real good can come from this discussion unless we can gdt the message to priests. This is a real difficulty, as we do not have a large number of priest subscribers. However, we know that the priest subscribers we have are interested in this project and that many of them have excellent opportunities to influence their fellow priests and seminarians. We feel sure that" they will help in preserving and propagating the useful points brought out in this discussion. PRAYERS FOR TIME OF WAR Father James Kleist, S.J. of St. Louis University, has composed a little booklet entitled The Great Prayer Noto--in time o[ War. The booklet contains a transla-tion of the Ordinary of the Mass, and translations of the proper parts of the Mass for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, the Mass in Time of War, and the Mass. for Peace. To these, Father Kleist has added some special Collects relating to Divine Providence, and some ~.'ery appropriate comments and reflections. The translation of the Collects is that by Sister M. Gonzaga Haessly, O.S.U., in her Rhetoric in the Sunda~t Collects o~ the Roman Missal (Ursuline College, Cleveland, Ohio: 1938). All thd translations in the booklet are very readable and seem to us to be especially meaningful. The booklet is published by The Queen's Work, 3742 West Pine Blvd., St.Louis, Mo. Price: ten cents a copy. 201 Decisions I-Ioly . ee April .9, 1943: The Sacred Penitentiary issued a decree by which His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, grants a partial indulgence of 300 days, and a plenary indulgence to be gained once a month under the.usual conditions, for the recitation of the following prayer: :'Most Holy Trinity we adore Thee and through Mary offer Thee our petition. Grant to all unity in the faith and ,courage to profess it unwaveringly." April 9, 1943: The Sacred Congregation of Rites reintroduced the cause of ~anonization of Blessed Rose-Philippine Duchesne, of the Society of the Sacred Heart, who was beatified in 1940. This means that new favors considered true miracles have been obtained through her intercession since hei beatification, and have ~been submitted to.the Sacred Congregation of Rites. March 29, 1943: His Holiness, Pope Pius XII wrote a letter to tl~e ¯ president of the A'ssociation of Italian Youth to mark the seventieth anniversary of this Association. !n this letter His Holiness recom-mended reciprocal social concord between all rfiembers of the.associa-tion "to whateeer class or condition 6.f life they may belong; whether they ~e manual laborers or in intellectual employment, whether they be of humble families or of illustrious families and wealthy, let them love one another with Christian love as brothers." While recommending love of country, Pope Pius XII emphasized" the duty of Christians "to embrace the universal human family in the divine love of 2esus Christ, whhtever be their descent or race." tually," His Holiness stated, "love of fatherIand does not exclude or nullify the fraternal community of all peopleL nor does the mutual bond between ~11 men lessen.the love due to one's native land." December 19, 1942: The Sacred Penitentiary issued a decree in ~vhi~h'!t made. known that His Holiness,. Pope Pius XII, has granted a.plenary indulgence to persons in any city or in any other place in time of air raids, who, being contrite of heart, make a true act of love of .God, . and, being sorry for their sins, recite in any language "'2esu miserere mei" ("Jesus, have mercy on me"). The ordinary condi-tion of Confession and Communion is dispensed with; perfect con-trition is necessary and Sufficient. The indulgence may be gainedonly in time of an actual air rhid. 202 Book/ ev ews MORAL GUIDANCE. By the Reverend Edwin F. Healy, S.J.: .S.T.D., Mag. Agg. Pp. xli nL- 351. (Teacher's Manual supplied.) Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1942; $2.00. Father Healy's book c~ontains the essentials of what is ordinarily termed "the first section of Moral Theology." Two preliminary chapters explain the more important general principles of ethics and Christian morality. Subseque~at chapters treat of each of -The Ten Commandments; the Laws of Fast and Abstinence; Forbidden Books; the Duties of 3udges, Lawyers, .Doctors, Nurses, Business-men, and Public Officers. Each chapter contains topics for discussion, practical cases to be solved, and a bibliography. The Teacher's Man-ual offers the teacher plenty of material for the discussions (which generally go beyond' the text) and sound solutions to the cases. The experienced teacher could probably improve on the bibliography. Moral Guidance is primarily a.text for college students who have had general and special ethics. The author's purpose is to make the student more conscious of Christian standards of morality and to enable him to solve the practical moral problems 9f everyday life. In this reviewer's opinion, the book could be taught profitably even to those who.have not had ethics. It would also make a good study club text. Finally, and most important in so far as our readers are con-cerned, it would be a real blessing if a course like this, supplemented by an explanation of the moral obligations pertaining to the Sacraments," were made a standard part of the training of all non-clerical religious, ~ men and women. May God speed the day!~G. KELLY, S.,J. THE PATH OF HUMILITY. By the author of "Spiritual Progress, etc. Pp. 292. The Newman Book Shop, Westminster, Md., 1942. $2.00. This is an anonymous reprint of a widely appreciated treatise on humility by the great French spiritual director, Canon Beaudenom." who died in 19~ 6. Although the book takes the form of a series of meditations, grouped into five weeks, it lends itself, at least, in parts, to straight spiiitual reading, mainly on account of its crisp, li~,ely style. However," allowances must be made for some Gallic exuber-ance, particularly in the prayers. The author presents a rather thor-ough treatment of the virtue of humility, from both the natural and 203 BOOK REVIEWS supernatural points of view. He expresses sdund doctrine, displays a good deal of psychological insight, but could improve considerably in orderliness of presentation. He does not remain merely ifi the abst~ract, but shows how-humility was practised by our Lord, His Blessed Mother, and the saints. He also tells in a practical way how to make humility the basis of one's spiritua~l life and how to focus the ge:neral and particular examens of conscience upon it. All in a11, it is one of the best treatises on humility in English. The Newman Book Shop is doing priests and religious a real servic~ by reprinting this classic ~nd others out of print for some time. To have reedi~ed and modernized them would have been still more ~c.ceptable.--,A. KL^AS, S.3. ST"CHARLES BORROMEO. By the Most Reverend Ceser, Orsenlgo. Trenslated by 'the Reverend Rudolph Kraus, Ph.D., S.T.D. Pp. 340. ¯ B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis, 194:~. $4.00. The literature on St. Charles is extensive. The present work, however is not just "another biography." Seldom are a book's "credentials of such worth. Though presented to English readers (the translation is excellent) in 1943 for the first time, it has been valued as a classic in European countries for many years. Father Agostino Ge-melli, O.F.M.; in the pieface, tells us that "this biography . . . was first published~between 1908 and 1910, appearing at regular times in a.monthly review . . . Monsignor Achille Ratti was the director of this review for twer~ty-six months when he was~Prefect of the Am-brosian Library. One of his chief collaborators in the monthly in-stallments'of this biography was Father Cesare Orsenigo, then engaged in the care of souls in one of the ~most. distinguished city parishes. Monsignor Ratti became Pope Plus XI. Father Orsenigo became Apostolic Nuncio to Germany." That such collaboration on the part of Milanese ecclesiastics, scholars working just where Borromean documents abounded, and giving evidence in their subsequent lives of the profound manner in which they had been influenced and i.nspired by their familiarity with St. Charles--that such collaboration should result in a work of special value, we could confidently expect. That such h~s, in fact, been the result, the serious reader will admit. The book does not make easy reading. The author has ~acrificed whatever would serve only to capture the reader's attention: the -"human interest" tduches that¯ season the usual popular biography 204 BOOK' REVIEWS are not to ArchbishopOrsenigo's taste un'le~s they definitely h;ive more thah entertainment value. The life of the saint is presented, for'the most part, not in chronological order of events, but~as a regrouping of "the rich biographical material topically, into,cl~apters that are dis-tin'ct and complete p!ctures." Each chapter is a study rather than a narrative, and demands attentiv~ reading. Of course, St. Charles led a highly dramatic life, especially from the time of his elevation to the position of Cardinal Secretary of State at the age of twenty-two until his death as the saintly Archbishop of Milan twenty-four years later. But Orsenigo's concern is chiefly with wha~ that life meant for the Church and for the reformation of Christian life. The saint's example is set forth for all Christians, but especially for bishdps and priests-- and it is to this" group of readers that the book. is .specially recom-mended. Religious will find it full of inspiration, and many chapters of particular interest to religiods are admirably suited to community reading. A cover-to-dover reading of the book, however, is hardly advisable as a community project.--C. DEMUTH, S.,I. THE KING;S ADVOCATE. By Simone de Noaillat-Ponvert. Translated from the French by Mary Golden Donnelly. Pp. 260. The Bruce Pub-lishing Company, Milwaukee, 1942. $2.7S. The Feast of Christ the King takes on a new meaning when.one reads the life story of the remarkable Martha de Noaillat, who, as Cardinal Laurenti writes, "worked more than all others" to make t!~at feast a reality. Little was known outside France of her zealous. apostol!c Work until Simone de Noaillat, her sister-in-law, gave the world an intimate picture of this heroic and dauntless woman who overcame all obstacles to achieve her dream. Possessed of'keen intelligence, striking personality, and intense supernatural energy, Mine. de Noaillat early in life underwent, a severe trial in h~r repeated failure to sustain her health in the religious life. When iorced to return home, she found solace in a vigorous lay apostolate of charitieS, teaching, and lectures. During the persecution of the religious orders she assumed a leading r'ole in'a patriotic league of French women whose purpose was to arouse Cath-o! ics to defend their cause. But she discovered her true life work in the "Society of the Reign," which she made vibrate with life when she saw in it the possibility of promoting the establis~hmeni of a feast in honor of Christ the King. In company w~th her husband,'George 205 BOOK REVIEWS de Noaillat, Martha pleaded with bishops, cardinals, and popes until she persuaded them of the urgency of the cause she was championing. Once success had crowned her work, her joy was complete. She did not long survive the first dehbration of the Feast of Christ the King, which she attended in Rome. The biogr.apher has given many details~of Martha's life that reveal her thoroughly human side as well as her spiritual stature: her family concerns, her travels, her notes, her work during the War. There is a little stiffness.or formality in the account of Martha's life up to the time when her sister-in-law came to know her pdrsonally. Then, too, her sanctity is given such an "ivory tower" cast that one is scarcely prepared for her marriage when it comes. But once the biographer knows her as a member of her own family, the. narrative is excellent. The translator succeeds rather well for the most part in turning the original French into smooth, natural English. This book should prove especially interesting as reading in the refectory. --FRANKLIN MURRAY, S.J. JESUS AND I. Revlseci Leaflet Edition. By the Reverend Aloyslus J. Heeg, S.J. Pp. 216. The Queen's Work, SI'. Louis, 1942. I set-- $.50: 3--$1.00: 25--~-' $7.50: 100---$25.00; 1000--$200.00. The main feature of this new leaflet edition is the ificorporation of the First Communion Catechism prepared from The Revised Edi-tion- of The Baltimore Catechism. The entire text of the latter is given and is used in conjunction with Father Heeg's text, with questions and games throughout. Each lesson contains essential features of Father Heeg's well-recognized system: l) an outline picture to be colored and which is used as a focal point for teaching a particular lesson: 2) the game of "What is left out?" consisting of the very psychological method of questioning called "fill.ins"; and 3) a set of further questions which again review the child's knowledge of Father Heeg's text and the" Revised Baltimore, Use.of this booklet has "already giyen many teachers of children convincing evidence and confidence that the author is a master child-psychologist and a teacher of teachers. The text mhy be used as a correspondence course (its original pur-pose), for homework, workbooks, tests, or as a guide to the" proper method of teaching the essentials of the catechism, the meaning of the prayers and the life of Christ.---A. LEVET, S.J. 206 BOOK REVIEWS THE LARKS OF UMBRIA. By Alber~ Paul Sch|mberg. Pp. 237. The Bruce Publishing Company, Miwaukee, i942. $2.75. ~With a-storyteller'.s approach, the author sets forth a vivid nar-rative that is meant to catch the reader's attention by its freshness and dramatic effect. In this way, the tale of the little poor man ,is told again, and we see Francis of Assisi and his first companions brought' to life as. they live and a3reach the things of the Gospel, new and old. Like the larks of Umbria, Francis's much admired friends, the mir~ores sing of God and God's creation, a spectacle to men and angels in their flight to God. Thus, unlike pedantic and laborious studies which have cast .introspective gloom over the story of the earl~r Franciscans,. .this book is an ad hoc attempt to interpret in the spirit of the Fioretti, the. single-mindedness of a man who startled the contemporary world by the way he saw eye to eye with God. Many of the old legends are repealed, but there is no mistaking them for historical fact, and the author is to be highly commended for his clever animation of the dead bones of history by the infusion of .simple and lifelike tales that breathe the spirit of the Poverello. In keeping with an idyllic love story, the author has set himself to a much higher task than a repetition of well-known facts, and those who want to see the sunshine of God in their saints should find satis-faction in this artistic portrayal. Readers of this book will find the illustrations in a class of their own, and will be able to choose further reading on the subject from the appended English bibliography. --F. 3". MALECEK, S.,J. THE BETTER LIFE.The True Meaning of Terfiar;sm. By the Reverend Kil;an J. Hennrlch, O.F.M.Cap. Pp. x-~-326. Joseph F. Wagner, Inc., NewYork, 1942. $2.50. The whole inner splendor, the. excellence of Tertiarism must b~ derived from its purpose. All Third Orders Secular aim at one thing: to assist seculars, non-religious, in keeping inviolate their Baptismal promises. Tertiarism, therefore, appears as more excellent, as more appealing when seen, not in its historical or juridical aspects, but in its theology. Since Tertiarism was devised to insure the fruitfulness of B~p-tism, it is intimately connected with all the means of grace. Its the-ology, then, must be enunciated in the function of the Sacraments. Such, briefly, is the outlook taken by the author of The Better Life, 207 Book REVIEW~ His development takes the following fo~m: a section of the book is devoted to the task of showing how the Tertiary Rule is related to each Sacrament. Baptism, for example, is compared to the Third Order ritual for investment. Baptism initiates a soul into the Church: investment introduces one into an Order of penance. Promises to love God and shun the works of Satan are exacted in both rituals. Perti-nent quotations from the Tertiary Rule show h6w minute obliga-tions assumed, by Third Order member~ are really means of avoiding the effects of the capital sins. All the Sacraments are treated in this way. In addition to these sections, which constitute the body of book, there are two additional chapters and two appendices: "Making Tertiarism Known," "A Postscript to Religious," "Tertiarism in General," "Tertiarism and Catholic Action." The book will appeal most to Tertiary directors and those' already familiar with Third Orderqife. Too much previous knowl-edge of Tertiarism is presumed by the author to warrant the judgment that the general reader would find the book helpful. ~T. C. DONOHUE, S.J., FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE. By the Reverend Gerald T. Brennan. Pp. 126. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1942. $1.75. Children from six to sixty love a story. Story telling is admit-tedly the most ancient of-arts and it was going on before the time of Homer. All great literature is but story telling. The Divine Teacher, 2esus Christ, in His infinite wisdom deemed it His most potent weapon in His teaching. His' stories remain unsurpassed masterpieces. In For Heaven's Sake, Father Brennan again wafts us to Angel City and spins tales of irresistible vividness and appeal; he tells true stories, outlandish stories, fairy stories, legendary stories, old stories, new stories and any other kind you can think of with an unerring instinct forthe right details.-He uses familiar names like Father Duffy, Knute Rock~ae, Aberdeen Angus, and unearths ear-catching ones, like Peewee the Frpg, Smir the Devil, and White Cloud, which of themselves will enthrall the youngster. But this book is more than stories. It contains 35.effective ser-monettes, "Little Talks for Little Folks." Each story is a point of departure for.Father Brennan's inimitable treatment df topics for mod-ern children; he solves their problems, and indicates their duties by 208 BOOK REVIEWS imiking them ~ee, l~ear, and feel the cl~ara~te~ of :his ~ stories. He stresses the Heaven of For Heaoen's Sake. A conveniefit index list~ the wide range of topics. 'This little book will be found practical and delightful by priests, Sisters, parents, children and anybody. ~A. LEVET, S.J. WE WISH TO SEE JESUS. By Paul L. Blakely,~ S.J. Pp. xi -1- 144. The America Press, New York, 1942. $2.00. "The hour will come when the last sands of our life are running out. Happy shall we be if we have spent those moments we call life with our eyes fixed., on God. In that hour we shall see Him." Since concluding his reflections on the last'Sunday after Pentecost ~with these wor

Issue 20.2 of the Review for Religious, 1961. ; JOHN B. WAIN, M.D. Psychological Problems in Religious Life In the religious press it is becoming more common to find articles on the psychological problems of the dedi-cated life, but itis unusual to read any contributions from doctors. As one who has been privileged to associate closely with religious and to care for them over many years, this writer feels that his observations may be of some use to the great army of admirable, holy, an_.d well balanced priests, brothers, and sisters when they have to help the small but important group of priests and religious who suffer from nervous disorders. The layman gains the im-pression that psychological difficulties are some of the greatest problems which religious have to face; indeed, unspoken misgivings about this matter may be partly re-sponsible for the shortage of vocations. This may operate in two ways. Parents are willing to let their children face martyrdom at the hands of the pagans, but they have their reservations about the unnecessary crosses to be taken up daily in the community or in the rectory, Children who have suffered injustice from a neurotic teacher will eschew the risk of joining that order or congregat.ion when they grow up. The price of retaining one such maladjusted person in the community without giving him the proper care and attention might be the loss of twenty vocations from among successive classes of pupils and the estrange-ment of an equal number of tentative converts. As a starting point for discussion on the matter, two broad generalisations will be offered. First, there is too much neurosis among religious. Second, much of it is avoidable or preventible. These are merely clinical im-pressions. It is impossible to assess accurately the incidence of nervous disease in any group or nationality; neverthe-less, confirmation of the above two ideas can be easily found in conversations with Catholic doctors and'religious nurses. All such persons agree about the existence of neu-÷ ÷ John B. Wain, M.D., is a ph},sician with man.}, years of experience m treating men and women religious. VOLUME 20~ 1961 8! 4. 4. 4. John B. Wain, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 82 rosis among religious men and women. One doctor who visits a man's religious institution of thirty members states that in the weekly sick parade there, there are always at least ten with inconsequential complaints. It is a fair observation to say that every community, however small, has at least one neurotic problem to deal with. This situation is most unsatisfactory. The energies of the supe-rior are dissipated in managing the misfit, and the unity of the community is endangered. The saddest task for the doctor is to institute .psychiatric treatment for one who has suffered a nervous breakdown in Christ's service. Sometimes these patients are nursed along for years for fear that their state may reflect badly on the order's way of life. This may be so, but it is a disastrous policy to delay seeking psychiatric help in the hope that the dis-order will remit spontaneously. Sister M. William Kelley1 in a unique article has given the incidence of hospitalized mental illness among re-ligious sisters in the United States. Her paper was notable for its courage in facing up to the problem and for the fact that the main religious mental hospitals refused to cooperate with her in the investigation. This unwilling-ness to submit the problem to discussion is not uncommon, even though such discussion would be productive of great good. The truth cannot harm us. Sister William found that, when compared with women in secular life, religious suffered from a higher incidence of psychotic (particularly schizophrenic) and psychoneurotic disorders, even though because of prior selection they have less mental deficiency, and chronic brain syndromes. She concluded that pre-psychotic personalities may be attracted to the religious life on the basis of what they think it will do for their un-satisfied desires and that the increase of mental disorder among active religious may be due to factors of stress such as overcrowded classes and understaffed hospitals. Two suggestions are made by the present writer for the prophylaxis of this state of affairs. More~importance should be given to p~ychological matters in the selection of seminarians, postulants, and novices; and there could be a systematic reduction in factors causing nervous stress in the lives of professed religious. A common impression is that many of these psychiatric patients enter religion without adequate psychological assessment, Often the family history of mental disease is ignored, or the personal history of previous nervous br2akdown is not taken seri-ously enough. These should be serious contraindications to acceptance, although it must be admitted that Blot ¯ Sister M. William Kelley, I.H,M., "The Incidence of Hospitalized, Mental Illness among Religious Sisters in. the United States," The American Journal of Psychiatry, 115 (i958-1959), 72-75. and Galimard2 give the impression that such unsuitable candidates may sgm_etimes-be,considered for religioys life. - . - It should n~t l~e too difficult to introduce some f~)rm of " psychological testing for all applicants to seminaries.and to religious life. The Califoi'nia ~'~gt of "Mental' ~V~ity;_ the DifferentialApti.tude Test, or the He.nmqn-Nelson test. could be used to gauge general intelligence, while.,~ per~" son~ality profile of the applican.ts.c, ou_ld be achieved by,:~he use of the Edwards PersOnal. Prgference Schedule,~ the Guilford-Zimmerman Temp.eram~enL Survey, _or t,he Mid-_ nesota.Per.sonality Scale. These tests can be .proctored by" persons.with no special tra_i~nin~g alth,0ugh the~,i~erpreta; tion of them should be en~.tr, u~ted to.some0ne with training in, psychology. When" these tests mncover a, Oos's'ib~, sig-nificant_ area Qf defect in the appl!cant, he can be refer.red, to a competent psycho~logis~.fo.r further examination be-fore he is accepted by the seminary or rellgaous lnsutute. Masters and mistre.sse, s of novices should have some specialized tr~fining in psychologiEal work so that they. can recognize early the sy.mptoms, of maladjustment and dismiss such subjects from the community b~'fore they disturb its peace and b'~lance. O~n~ common type. w~ may be mistakenly admitted-is ~the girl ~ho stays on at the convent boardin~school until.the age of nineteen or twenty, unable to make up her-mihd ab6ut°the. future.i This is a serious form of. immaturity,.wh~ose progn6sis, in religign, is poor. The admission~ of youths and girls the age of" sixteen also involves the°risk bf, ac~eptii~g vo-cations which, are_ based.on~,immature co~ncep, ts, while late entrants tend to.be too.,, independent to acce.pt.religi~ous,. obedience. -. ,~,o , - - Much could be done.to reduce the psych,olo.gical stresses which are not an integral par, t. of religious life, the .m. o~,t potent weapon being the fosterin~ of a warm pa#~nta,.1 love between superiors and subjects. Accepting poverty,'chas-~ tity, obedience, and the in'es~apable difficulties d~ common~ life involves sufficient.sacrifice without creating ar'fificial' burdens. In. Oiscu~.s!ng~ .~eligi0tis vows, even-in a st~irit of humility, the doctor ,strays outside his specialty; ~bu~ the mtenuon here ~slto point out thexr medxcal repercus: sion~ in mentally disturbed p~ople. Pov~r~y,, ig iiaainly spirit/aM "concept of defachm~nt° from ear~h'l~ ~hxuri~ but not- the denial of the basic necessftids of-life. Religious. should lead a life-of.lfrugal' omfort,~not one 6f.pehur, y, hunger, and.,privati~;n i~aless~h~ seek these as%specifiC, penances.St. Therese of Lisieuxost.ated that h~r mare cross in the convent was bearing the cold, an indictment of.'tl~e insufficient heating. She died Of t(~berculosis at the ~geof. twent~-foui', when the hot, salt blood welled u'p i~i'to i;i"e~ ~ Ren~ Blot. M.D. and Pierre G~limard, M.D., Medicid Guide to Vocations (Westminister: Newman, 1955). 4. Psychological Problems " VOLUME 20, 196~. John B. Wain, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 84 mouth~"she was happy to think how soon she would be in heaven. For her it was a saintly death; for her superior it was a comment" on the neglect of the community's health. St. Berhadette also suffered hardships in the convent and died of the same disease at thirty-five. Even now tuber-culosis is a risk for all young people in religion. Is it pos-sible that the vow of poverty has been misapplied? Chastity is the glory of the religious life and nothing can be done to make its acceptance any easier, but efforts should be made to eliminate false standards of purity which degenerate into prudery and unreasonable con-cepts of modesty. Gynecological complaints are often suffered'.for years before medical advice is sought, and maligfl~ant tumors are not reported until they are in-operable. The fact that some religious are not permitted to attend the reception of the sacrament of matrimony is a relic of Jansenism which may give offence to lay people and connotes false apprehensions about the nature of religious chastity. The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and only the violent can bear it away. Those who do violence to their own natures by taking religious vows must expect some repercussions, but these lose some of their force if they are discussed with frankness, tact, and objectivity. The deprivation of the consolations of married love and of childbearing mugt affect sisters particularly; as a result of this inner conflict between natural instincts and the ideals of the religious life, some may unwittingly suffer a suc-cession of functional, as distinct from organic, illnesses. Atypical ~ase will find that she is becoming irritable and depressed; she finds her daily work an intolerable bur- ° den and her sisters' foibles which she previously ignored b~cbme opl~ressive to her. She loses her appetite, becomes thin, sleeps badly, and has palpitations and chest pains suggestive of heart disease. She may have to accept stronger temptations against purity. This is reminiscent of the yceriasriss o wf mhiacrhri emd alinfey, ams ahrarsi abgeeens peoxipn~etr_ie~ndc~ eo uatf tbeyr Labecoluetr ctqe.n8 At this stage in life the first long struggle is over, the couple have rea~he~l financial stability, and' the difficult years of having several babies in tie house have passed. Both partners see the first ~vidences of age, and, realizing that degenerative diseases will start"~within another decade, some will desperately seek the excitement of youth. They must face temptations to ihfidelity, pride, and avarice. In religion some experience a similar crisis. After ten years they reach a stage of achievement and the gecurity that comes from seniority, but they find that youth has im- 8Jacques Leclercq, Marriage a Great Sacrament (Fresno: ~,cademy Library Guild, 1953). perceptibly~ slipped ~away and' they ask themselves if their vocation is really the right way of life. If they can hold on bravely with the assistance of prayer and the syinph-thetic undergtanding of an enlightened superior, they will pass through the storm ~nto the calm and contentment of a well integrated religious life. The menopause brings the game stresses as it does for lay women, and sisters should be advised to expect~ hot flushes, headaches, irritability, and depressions. Many of 'these symptoms can be helped by treatment. Younger sisters can be reassur.ed about the problems of dysmenor-rhoea, and premenstrual, tension. It is probably not uncommon for religious and lay people to experiencd sexual feelings at the quiet_ times of recollecuon anffat commumon. Thxs was referred to'w~th characteristic delica.cy., by St. Te,resa. of Avila when asked for advice on the matter' by hdr brother Rodrigo who was making his first steps~'in the mystical lif$. She implied that she also. had experienced t6~sefe~lings but that th~y disappeared when they were ignqred. "In God's design the happiness of the married life must be a pale shadow of the ecstas~ of the mystical Union~oand similar physiologi~M reactions accompany each. If these factg are uriderstood, there will be less distress for gqddlbeople who liave th~se otherwise d.is.turbing e~pe~iences. Obedience presents so many problems that the only unfailing guides are the'vi'rt~es of prudence and ~ha~ity. It is a necessary vow l~c~use only an austere':discipllne can lead to the full development of the strong personality which will accept sacrifices and will persevere in the re-ligiou~ vocatidn. It is falsely applied, however, if it de: stroys a sense of personal responsibility and initiative and if the command seems'to be an insult to the human dignity Of the subj~.kt. The essence of obedience is the surrender of the will; it is impgssible to surrender the intellect. It is unfortunate that an ekample of Obedience commonly quoted is that of St. Francis of Assisi who planted cabbages upside down. The saint is to be admired but not necessarily emulated. A young novice saw his master of novices scattering his carefully swept rubbish about the yard. When taked with untidiness, his acciden-tally acquired knowledge enabled him to accept the rebuke with apparent humility. If he had protested, his future in religion might have been prejudiced. It should be pos-sible to test virtue without having recourse to methods involving injustice, untruth; or deviations from the rule of charity. The end result of imposing an unre'asonable obedience is the fostering of immaturity in subjects and the formation of a type of religious who is almost inca-pable of making simple decision's or arranging anything outside the narrow cgmpass of his daily life. This is what 4, PPsryocbhloel~ongsical VOLUME 20, 1961 85 ÷ ÷ ÷ John B. Wain, M.D. REVIEW FOR REI.IGIOU$ 86 irreverent clerics refei: to as "holy helplessness." The re-ligious life should ensourage the flowering of the com-plete personality in imitation of Christ and our Lady; it s ould produce'cultured.men and women, full of grace, strength, and inner peace. In this connection it is often stated that in religion men find their personalities while women lose theirs. Why should there be this difference? Many avoidable burdens arise from an undue rigidity of ttfe rule. A certain flexibility is desirable to adapt European customs to hfe ~n~ other geographical areas and-to make allowance for the changes of circumstances that" characterize the twentieth century. A sister I kno~ was unable to read the Confessions of St. Augustine be-cause the rule forbade taking books'from the public li-brary. This typ.e of r~striction exposes religious life t6 ridi-cule. Neither would the dignity of sisters suffer if they were to eat in public and to travel alone. There are certain physiological norms which the average "i~erson must bbey; accordingly, it should be the rule for mgst religious to have a minimum of seven hours sleep and not to work for more than twelve hours a d.ay ~(including in this the time necessary for the proper fulfilment of the prescribed religious and spiritual exer'cises of each da~). ~When recreation is tak.en, some relaxation of the artifi- 'ciality which has obtained in the past would do much good and would not harm the spirit of the 6rder or congrega-tion. Particular friendships ha,~e tr~ditionaliy been pro-scribed, bht this should not exclude those i~atural affinities which are felt by compatible personalities. These if fos-tered are a great consolation" to the parties and would not destroy the unity of the group, nor would they develop into a sinister relationship. Our Lord Himself encouraged a close friendship with St. John. , With the exception of enclosed 9rd~ers, ~ome reasonable access of parents to children "c'ould.~ well be encouraged, especially in times of illness oOr death. A regulation whereby a religious may not go to his~own parent's fun.eral, but may go to anyone else's, could well be rescinded. A1- "though the habit is only a small a~pect of cbnventual life, -somre lessons can;be drawn fro~a.]t. While possessing a certain antique charm, it is indicht~ive. ,of an orientation towards the past; and to those outside thd Ch~:~rch it sug-gests that the wearers do n_ot face up to and take part in modern life. The other n0t_able f~& is tha( the request of Pope Plus XII for modernisation of the habit fell to a grea{ extent upon deaf ears. Apart from some minor ad-justments which are obvious only to the initiate, the dress is unchanged. This is largely because of the innate con; servatism of women and the fakul.{y of fiabituat]o~n;o eact one thinks that members o,f every o.ther community a.nd the Salvation Army~look absurd. The times call for re-jection of the whole concept of what a religious habit should be and the deyelopment of a new dress. Just as clerics have rightly abandoned tonsure, so the cutting of the hair of religious~r~men could be restricted to a token or symbolical gesture, find the headdress discarded. Some nursing sisters with covered' ears are almost unable, to take blood pressure r.eadings Or t'6" i]]te~ to the fetal "l~eart. "Dur-ing the recent war priests in the armed services did not suffer loss of dignity fr6m adopting officer's dress; on the other hand, the pri,est workers"went too far in their adap-tation. In the stress of mc~dern living regular alternation of activity and rest is necessary; therefore annual holidays should be provided for. Only very wooden personalities can go bn for years withoiat variation in their routine of life. Much of the stress of the religious life results from at-tenipting to do too much, working too long, and being sent out on active duties with insufficient training. The Sister Formation Conferences"aim to correct this latter undesir-able trend. Al-though it may cause a temporary shortage of persorinE1, it mustpay dividends in the long run. The laborers have been too few since Christ first uttered th~se words, butrushing r~ligious through their training will not solve the eternal problem. The Church has tradi- (ionally been a bad employer, and the worst sufferers have been religious themselves. Their services are so valuable that they should have better welfare services than other employers progide. In this corine'ction it is both amusing and instructive to recall St. Teresa's chiding 6ur Lord for her misfortunes: "Is it any Wonder, Lord, that You have so few friends when people see h6w badly you treat ~tour chosen ones!" The beneficent influence of good art, even on unsophis-ticated rrlinds, is rarely ~u~ilized; it is common to see a poor standard of iriterior decoration, and pictorial art in convents and rectories, even though church architecture has advanced to a gratifying degree. A reasonable access to secular literfiture would not be harmful if it broadens the experience of religious and gives them some wider a~- preciation of the problems their pupils must face when they leave school. Those assigned to menial tasks should have some e'asily attainable goals arranged for them so that their spirits will not be crushed by monotony and by the lack of any evidence of achievement. ~uperiors have :the additional, worry of finance, ad-ministratiofi, and personnel management, for which they have Usually received no training. With only native common serise as a guide, they must learn with a trial and error method. One way to lift this secular burden would be to provide experienced lay advisers so" that the superior, could concentrate on his apostolate; this would, o~ course, involve som~ surrender of autonomy. A common error is to attribute fieurotic behavior to ÷ ÷ ÷ Psychological Problems VOLUME 20, 1961 '4. '4. ,4. John B. Wain, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 88 a poor spiritual life~ and by that same token to expect that a more intense spiritual life'wilL cure a neurosis. A teaching brother was seen to change from a happy, agree-able person to one who was morose, withdrawn, and sus-picious. He went 'to the sacraments only infrequently and was given to outbursts of anger with his pupils. He was advised oto pray more, but this was expecting a miracle from grace. His main need was for .psychiatric treatment, which disclosed that his father had died in circumstances which he had always suspected were suicidal. He found himself having strange compulsive feelings when he looked out 'of high windows, and then he became scrupulous about matters of purity which he would normally have ignored. In the dark night of his soul, he felt abandoned by God and his community. With proper psychotherapy he recovered. Is this problem worth making a fuss about? Some would say that the status quo should be preserved; that the trials of religious life are the crosses which God in-tends for these souls; that He chooses the weak and foolish things of this world to confound the wise; that, according to Thurston,4 many of the saints and stigmatics were neurotics; that the command of the superior is God's will for the subject; and that in his handling of the prob-lems of his community the superior is given the grace of st.ate.All these arguments imply that infallibility is a widely diffused gift instead of a very limited one. In ac-cepting everything as God's will, people rarely draw,the distinction between His direct will and His permissive will, and therefore they do not admit that there can be mistakes or blunders in religious decisions. Is it impertinent for the layman to speak when he has no firsthand knowledge of religious life? In the spiritual health of the Mystical Body the layman is vitally con-cerned; moreover he is looking ahead to the welfare of his own children if and when they perceive a calling to enter religion. An investigation into the religious psy chological environment on a diocesan basis would produce fruitful results, but it would have to be undertaken a~ a cathartic exercise. The best religious, whose opinions, would be of the greatest value, are the very ones who l would count it a virtue to remain silent and unco.mplain-~ ing. How to integrate democratic processes into an author-I itarian governing structure is a difficult problem. C0nsid-I eration of all these factors influencing mental stabilityI renews our admiration for the great numbers of altruistici men and women who gaily sacrifice so many of the goodl things of life to make the total gift of themselves to God.I ~Herbert Thurston, s.J., The Physical Phenomena o! Mysticism (Chicago: Regnery, 1952). HENRY WILLMERING, SiJ. Charles Felix Van Q ickenborne "Father Charles van Quickenborne," writes Father Peter de Smet, "was the first Jesuit priest who appeared in the valley of the Misissippi after the reestablishment of the Society of Jesus. He was a.man full of zeal.for the salva-tion of souls. The conversion of the Indians w~as, impar-ticular; 'the object of his predilection and of his prayers. Long will his name be held in benediction, and his mem-ory celebrated in the places which h;id the happiness of receiving the fruits of his numerous labors,, and of his truly apostolic virtues." This commendation is from the pen of one of the seven novices who accompanied Father van Quickenborne to Missouri in 1823 to establish the nucleus of the Society of Jesus in the Middle West. Two years before, Peterde Smet and six Companions left their' native Belgium secretly to becomemissionaries to the Indians in North America. For this purpose they entered the Society in October, 1821, at Whitemarsh, Maryland, where shortly before Father van Quickenborne had been appointed master of novices. Unforeseen circumstances brought the group to the Indian country before their period of.probation was completed. The Right Reverend Louis Dubourg, bishop of' New Orleans and Upper Louisiana, had many'Indian tribes residing in his vast diocese, and he was anxiously seeking for missionaries to convert them. The success of the Jesuits in this work before the suppression of the Society prompted him to appeal to the Father General of the Society for ;help. He made a like appeal to the Superior of the Maryland mission and offered as an inducement the gift of a large, productive farm not far from the growing city of St. Louis. With the scanty number of available priests at their disposal, it seemed impossible to promise the bishop any help in the near future. Then Divine Providence intervened. In 1823 the finan, cial difficulties of every house" in the Maryland mission ÷ ÷ The Reverend Henry Willmering, Associate Editor of the REVIEW is stationed at St. Mary'S College, St. Marys~ Kansas. ~ VOLUME 20, 1961 89 REVIEWFORRELIGIOUS became so acute that the superior and his consultors seriously considered clo~ing the Whitemarsh novitiate and dismissing the novices. When told of this decision, Father van Quickenborne reminded the superior of Bishop Du-bourg's offer and of the readiness of himself and his novices to go to the Indian territory and work for the conversion of the natives. Accordingly, a concordat was entered into between the Bishop of New Orleans and Father Charles Neale, Supe_rior of the Maryland Province, to establish a novitiate of the Society at Florissant, Missouri, on condi-tion that, after the no,~i~es finished their spiritual and theological training, they would devote themselves to the apostolate of the Indians. The exodus from Whitemarsh was in the spring of 1823. The party consisted of two priests, seven novices, three lay-brothers, and three families of negro slaves. Two wagons carried the baggage across, the mountains to Wheeling on the. Ohio River. The young mi_ssionaries made the journey on foot across the Alleghenies. In Wheel- Ang they procured two flat boats; on one of them they placed the negroes and baggage, while the other served them as their 'floating.monastery.' They-drifted down the river day and night, stopping only to procure provisions. Religious exercises were. continued during the voyage as circumstances allowed. At Louisville, Kentucky, they landed their baggage, and a local pilot directed their craft over the falls of the river. At the foot of the falls they re-embarked and continued their river trip as far as, Shawnee-town, Illinois, Thence the missionaries made the last 150 miles through swamp land on foot, while a river,s_teamer carried ~their baggage, upstream to St. Louis, where they arrived on the last day of May. The entire trip lasted ,fifty days. " o The-homestead, which they were to inhabit on the, out- ,skirts of the village of Florissant, was a wretched log cabin, with a single room, measuring sixteen by eighteen feet, arid surmounted by a gable roof, so low that one could' not stand erect in,the attic beneath it. At a short distance from the house were ~two sheds, one had served as a pig pen/the other as a tool shed. The newcomers ~ere a bit disap-pointed, to find such primitive quarters, and the hardships encountered during the first few months"proved to,, be too great.for one novice andoaqay-brother~ who left during the summer of 1823. The others adapted themselves to the situation in a truly religious and missionary spirit.,The six noyices and two lay-brothers slept on the floor of the attic, while the single, room below was divided by a cur-tain, ,one side .being reserved as. the domestic chapel, the other as the living room for the priests. The.first shed was by turns study hall, classroom and r~fectory; the second served as kitchen and domicile for the negroes. ,, Much greater~ would .have been~the discomfort of.the Jesuit ,~communit'y had not Divine Providence assisted them through the generosity of~,Blessed Philippine Du-chesne and:her community. °The Religious of the Sacred ,Heart had moved to'Flonssant tliree years earher?~where they condudted a small boarding schbol.Often they de; prived themselves of what little they had to send it to:their neighbors. Furnithre, bedding, cooking utensils~.and~pro-visions were generously offered to the' Fathers and novices during the~,first~evere wifiter. ' "~ To relieve the acfite housing problem, the Jesuits ~be-gan work.immediately by collectin~building'ma_terials. Stone wag procured from a nearby quai-ry, timber,was cut and shaped, and when Ml,was ready a.,second.story, and spacious annex were added to the house. Ttiese hard~,and continuous .activities h~ever interrupted the ~spirituab ex-ercisEs. of the novitiate; but the.cold weather.and frequent snow storms put. a stop~to,~the labor till spring. Tl~e new additions were completed in June, and~ after thednterior ~had been remodelled, life became more bearable. . . -'Th( leader and guiding spirit of~this enterprise was a man,thirty-five years of age. Charles Felix_van Quicken-borne was,born in the village of Peteghem,'twelve miles w~st'of Ghent, on January 21;, 1788. His first studieswere made in Deynze; "then he attended the academy in Ghent, and finally entered the diocesan seminary in thatl city. From the first h.i~ talents and application~merited high praise. He was ordainedto the priesthood in 1812, and was appointed to teach the classics in the preparatory semi-nary of Roeselare: When, shortly after, Napoleon,,closed allthe seminaries in:F.tafiders and drhfted the stu'dents of military age, Father .Charles Was appointed vicar of the large ~Zalloon parish',of St. Denijs near Coutrais. Being guided by the wise counsels of the sain~tly dean, Frans Corselis, whose virtues he often-ext011ed, to'his novices,in later.years, Father Charles, administered the parish .@ith great success, and,the peopl~e were sorry to, see him resign his charge in.order-to enter the newly opened. Jesuit novitiate at Rumbeke. He arrived there on April 14, 1815. A hostile Dutch govei'nment drove the novice~from "this quiet retreat shortly after, but they were" given shelter by'the highly esteemed Bishop of Ghent, Maurice de Broglie, who placed his episcopal.residence at DistOlber-gen, on the outskitts of Ghent, at their disposal; and there Father Charles finished his two years 6f probation.:~He pronounced his first .vows as a Jesuit in April, A817 . ' Having read the account of .the Reductions of Paraguay, the'young Jesuit~ was eager to go to North America and de-vote his life to the conversion of- the Indians/Even as a novice he begged Father General, Thaddaeus';Brz0zoW-ski, for this~mission. Instead he was assigned~to teach othe Henry W il imering, $.~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 92 classics in th~ academy~of Roesalare, which appointment he received with resignation to the divine will. Then, un-expectedly, he was given permission to go to America. He. lost no time in making his preparations, and during the last week of October, 1817, he set sail for the United States and arrived, in. Baltimore towards the end of December. His first year in America was spent learning English at Georgetown College. Then came the appointment as master of novices. We can imagine with what trepidation he assumed this responsible office, he who but two years before had completed his own novitiate. He realized.fully his inexperience and knew that he was better fitted to do missionary work. But once again he resigned himself to God's will and trusted that help from above would not be wanting to him. In November, 1819, the novices were moved from Georgetown to Whitemarsh, Maryland. There, in addition to being novice master, Father Charles was the superior of the community, manager of a large plantation and of the negroes who worked it, missionary to the surrounding communities, carpenter, mason and builder. He erected a handsome stone church on the no-vitiate grounds and built a brick church at Annap01is, At the latter place, he said Mass every fortnight. He was known to visit regularly the sick and poor of the vicinity and devoted considerable time to the instruction of the negroes. For a while he attended to these multiple duties alone, but later he received a faithful helper in the person of Father~ Peter Timmermans, also a Belgian, and a most amiable and humble priest. He came to America with Father Charles Nerinckx in 1817, and entered the Society of, J~sus that same year. Father Peter took charge of the novices whenever Father Charles went on. one of his many missionary expeditions. In 1821, Father Nerinckx re-turned after a second trip to Eurbpe with another group of Belgian students, seven of whom entered the Society at Whitemarsh, and were the group who migrated to Floris-sant, where they pronounced their first vows on October 10, 1823. On finishihg the novitiate, they immediately began the study of.philosophy. One of their number, Peter Ver-haegen, had nearly completed all his seminary studies at Mechlin before coming to America. Accordingly he was appointed to assist Father van Quickenborne as instructor. Due to a lack of textbooks, the course in philosophy was rather superficial and was brought to a close with a public disputation in August, 1824. Two months earlier, on Mgy 31, Father Peter Timmer-marts died. This left Father Charles as the only priest at the Florissant mission. The multiple duties he had taken upon himself at Whitemarsh were again thrust upon him. Here, ~too, he was superior of the.community, chaplain and confessor for the,Religious of the Sacred0Heart, pastor of foti~ parishes, those of Florissant, St. Charles, Dardenne and Portage des Sioux, instructor of philosophy, manager of a large farm, and buildSr:"N0 wonder that~ h~ was prostrated by repeated spells of sickness. 'Yet he never spared himself, and when duty called, he went out, no matter how bad he felt. Many urgent calls for help were sent to Rome and Maryland; yet it was only after a year and five months, when the superior was near death,~ that help came in the .person of Father Theodore de Theux. In October, 1824, the scholastics began the study, of theology. The superior .had no choice but to appoint~ Peter Verhaegen instructor of dogma, and John Elet in-, structor of Sacred Scripture, while he reserved for himself, the courses in moral and pastoral theology. Needless to say, this arrangement was very :unsatisfactory to all con-cerned. After the arrival of Father de ~heux, matters im-proved a little since he took over the courses.in dogma and scripture. The first to be ordained, early-in 1826, were John Baptist Smedts and Peter Verhaegen. The following year the superior of Maryland visited the mission, where he held a comprehensive examination of all the candidates in theology, after which the remaining four were ordained just before the Christmas: holid_ays, in 1827, by Bishop Joseph Rosati, in the church at Florissant. The last period of a Jesuit's training, the third year of probation, wa_s made by all during the first half of 1828. On the eighth.of January they began the thirty day retreat under the direction of Father van Quickenborne who, in the peculiar circumstances, was~both tertian and tertian master. The retreat closed on February 7, and a few days later each tertian was assigned to give ,a retreat, a mis-sion, or take charge of a parish for one month. On their return .to Florissant, Father, Charles explained the Con-stitutions of.the Society, commented on the decrees of gen-eral congregations, and pointed out the approved methods of giving the Spiritual Exercises. One of the tertians praised very highly the quality and practical nature of these instructions. The tertianship ended on July.31, feast of St. Ignatius Loyola. Meanwhile, their purpose in coming to the West was by no means forgotten. True, the promise to send mission-armies to the Indian country within two years could not be kept, due partially at least to the untimely death of Father Timmermans, and more particularly to the fact that no additional priests came from Europe or Ma.ryland. A be-ginning, however, was made-when in 1824 Father Charles opened a school for Indian boys and Mother Duchesne started one for Indian girls. These two schools continued for a period of nearly seven years, and the progress made Fan O.uidumborne VOLUME 20, 1'961 ÷ ÷ ÷ Henry Wilimering, SJ. R~:VIEW FOR RELIGIOUS by the pupils~in Jearning :and piety merited favorable comments from visitors and also from :the Indiafi agents. But when' the pupils ,returned.to their tr.ibes; the.y wer~e deprived of all 'spiritual help and were' exposed to the superstitions and immorality' of (heir, people, and thus~ much of the ti'ainingo received at school was lost, To forestall this~'danger, Father Charles formulated a~ plan, patterned on the famous Reductions'of. Paraguay, of establishing Catholic Indian villages. Congress would be asked to appropriate a sum that would buy six thousand acres of land on the. outskirts of an Indian' settlement. Boys who graduated from 'the Jesuit school should' marry girls trained by the nuns. These couples would be given house and farm in the proposed village. The Indian agent should furnish the agricultural implements. One or two missionaries would live in the viIlage,' and care for the spiritual needs but al'so supervise the work done. The plan was approved by the president, but not by' Congress; so it was never realized b~ Father van Quickenborne. . .The failure of the Indian schools discouraged a number of the community, but not Father van Quickenborne, nor Father de Smet, Father Charles made two exploratory visits to the Indian country, the first in 1827; the second in the following year. On these journeys he addressed a num-ber of Osage and Iowa chiefs, baptized many infants, and made inquiries about starting missions among their peo-ple. When he ~found them favorable to his plans, he promised to send them. priests in the near future. He was eager to undertake the establishment of the~first mission himself, but another event intervehed whith thr'eatehed to delay the ope_ning of a.permanent Indihn mission for several years to come. -'o. Bishop Dubourg had opened a college in St. Louis 'in 1818, which had: a~ver~ precarious existence. No sooner had the Jesuits arrived in Missouri than an offer was made to'them to staff"the college; yet, until the six schoiastics were 6rdairied, this.was out of the question: In 1826 this college held its last session. At this point Bishop gosati; who had befriended the community gt Fl'orissant' from the start, again" urged that a new college be built and managed by the Jesuits, for which purpose' he offered ~a suitable plot of ~round just outside the city;' which had been donated to the bishop by Jeremiah Connors. As soon" as Father van Quiekenborne obtained permission from Rome,~ he started :building; and even before the structure was completed,' classes opened .on' November '2, 1829~ Father Verhae~e'n was appointed the first president, who with ~two other Fathers and afew externs (aughtten~ boarders .and thirty day scholars; but~within a few weeks' gime, the boarders increased "to thirty a~id the day scholars to 6ne hundred and twenty; During th6 first two years, the courses offered were those of a grammar school: In 1830,~.a course in Latin was added, and in 1832,.one in Greek. Father van Quickenborne _taught the Latin clas.s, Father de Theux, the Greek. When,the faculty was re-inforced by several priests and sc~holastics from :.Maryland, the school _quickly reached college lev~el, and in 1832, Father Verhaegen obtained,°by special act of the.Missouri legislature, a~ charter for the school un.der the title of 'St. Louis University,' with all the rights and prerogatives of a university. According to the terms of the concordat,of 1823, the Jesuits of Florissant were entrusted with the spiritual care of all Catholic families living in ce.ntral and northeastern Missouri. In 1828, Father Verreydt °was assign~ed, to. this work, which he carried.out witti~exemplary zeal. But.~n 1.830, Father van Quickenborne was~succeeded as superior of. the Missouri mission by Father de Theux; and' for the first time Father Charles seemed free to~ carry out his favorite project, to start a permanent mission among the Indians. Instead, he was told to take over Father Verreydt's missionary work. The reason for this is given by Father Garraghan, in The Jesuits o[ the Middle West: "The truth is that ~good Father van Quickenborne,' as his .Jesuit associat_es were fond of characterizing him, was a difficult_ person with whom towork. His zeal was boundless, with much about it of the heroic; his devotion to the cause of the In_dians, unflagging; , his personal piety, obvious to all;,but along with his in certain respects surpassing equipment as a missionary went limitations of temperament that unfitted him in,many ways to work successfully by the side of others. In° the social virtues he was often d%ficient. Silent, secretive, depressed and often gloomy in countenance, with a tendency to melancholy, despising personal com-forts an.d refusing them to others, difficult and exacting in business relations, not inviting confidence and, seldom winning it, he stood in many ways isolated from his fellow workers, a somewhat lonelyfigure in tl~e little Jesuit world in which he moved.''1 So great was his desire for living with. the Indians, and so persistent his'requests to his superiors, that finally in 1836:he was permitted to open a mission among the Kicka-poo. The previous summer he had made an :exploratory~ visit to the ~various tribes living nearest~the western bor-o ders of Missouriand0had come to the conclusion that the Kickapoo were the most eager., to embrace Christianity. In the fall,.he journeyed to Washington and contacted the 3ecretary of War, Lewis Cass, who authorized himto start 1 Gilbert J~ Garr~aghan, S.J., The Jesuit~ "of the Middle Unite~l $tates (New York: Anierica Press, 1938), Vol. I, p. 384. Van ~/~,o~ VOLUME 20, 1961 95 ÷ ÷ ÷ Henry Willmering, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 96 a~school among the Kickapoo and promised a subsidy of $500 a year to maintain it. After making a begging tour the 'East, which netted about $1500, Father Charles was ready to open a mission a few miles above Fort Leaven-worth. He was assisted in this project by Father Christian Hoecken, and three lay-brothers, Andrew Mazella, Ed-mund Barry, and George Miles. The missionaries met with a cordial reception from the chiefs and people. A French trader, who lived with the tribe, put his house at their disposal, until they should build their own. Hardly had they settled down in their new quarters, when both priests were stricken with ill-ness. Father Charles had to stay in bed for a month. Worse yet, the Indian agent, Richard Cummings, would not permit' the Jesuits to build in the Kickapoo village. Not until General Clark sent word from St. Louis that permission had been given by Secretary Lewis Cass build ~a school among the Kickapoo, could the Jesuits erect a school, chapel, and residence. The head chief of the tribe, Pashishi, professed great eagerness to have the missionaries instruct the children and work for the conversion of his people. His influence, however; was considerably less than that of a notorious 'prophet,' named Kennekuk, who claimed to have received authority from the Great Spirit tostart a religion of own. For a while he manifested some interest in the teach-ings of Christianity but soon roused his followers to un-friendly demonstrations. He had so firm a hold on the minds of his people that once he took a hostile attitude toward the Jesuit missionaries, all hope of converting the tribe vanished. Two years of unremitting toil made very little impression on the Kickapoo, and neighboring tribes were so eager to have the missionaries teach their children that the former mission was abandoned and new one opened among the Pottawatomi, which proved eminently successful. But Father van Quickenborne was destined to have no part in it. His failing health and rigid disposition caused his superior to recall him in July, 1837. After a brief stay at St. Louis University, he went to Florissant to make his annual retreat. Next he proceeded to St. Charles and thence to Portage des Sioux, a village situated a few miles, north of St. Charles and near the junction of the Missouri~ and Mississippi rivers. Here he exchanged places with Father Verreydt, who went to the Indian country, while Father Charles became pastoy of this small parish. He had been only a few days in Portage when a bilious fever seized him. The last sacraments were administered to him, and on August 17, 1837, he breathed his last. His body, ac-companied by many parishioners, was interred in the cemetery in St. Charles but was later removed to the novitiate cemetery in Florissant. Father van Quickenborne was in a true sense a pioneer missionary, who labored zealously during fourteen years for the spiritual interests of both whites and Indians. Those who knew him intimately comment on his clear and orderly mind, his fluency in several languages, his accurate knowledge of theology, his eloquent discourses. He never spared himself in his efforts to assist others, and despite the rigorous attitude he at times assumed towards others, he was loved and admired by all who knew him. Since he trained the first members of the Missouri mission all by himself, he can justly be called the founder of the Jesuit establishments in the Midwest. The mission which he started became a vice-province in 1840, a province in 1863, which was divided into two provinces in 1928, and both: were again subdivided in 1955. These four provinces today have a total membership of more than 2500. They administer seven universities, ten colleges, twelve high schools, and eight retreat houses, and there are more than three hundred members in foreign mission work. John Gilmary Shea, the great historian of the North American missions, says: "To Father van Quickenborne, as founder of the vice-province of Missouri and its Indian missions, too little honor has been paid. His name is al-most unknown, ~yet few have contributed more to the edification of the white and the civilization of the red man, to the sanctification of all.''~ ~John Gilmary Shea, History o] the Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes o] the United States, 1529-1854 (New York: Edward -Dunigan and Brother, 1855), p. 466. + + + ~'an Qugckenbome VOLUME 20, 1961 97 JOHN E. BECKER,S. J. We Have Seen His Glory: The Prologue to St. John ÷ ÷ .÷ John E. Becker, S.J., St. Mary's Colleg.e, St. Marys, Kansas, ~s an assistant editor of the REVtEW. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 98 In the beginning God created, heaven and earth In the beginning was the Word God's immense knowledge includes within itself His own infinite nature and all of the reality which He has given us and with which He surrounds us. Yet it is but one eternal and unchanging truth in God's mind. And when-ever He speaks, He speaks that one truth, Himself. But it is impossible for God to speak this immense truth, in the simple way He understands it, to our poor time-bound minds. We cannot grasp things in simplicity. We need more than to hear a truth. We need to be taught it, to have our minds brought up to it, educated to it. This is true of each of us individually. Over and over, we must be told the truths about God. We must be taught them at each point in our growth. Finally they begin to dawn for us in our minds as our own secure convictions. But the education that we as individuals go through depends upon another education which is just as impor-tant, and without which we ourselves would never have learned ab6ut God. This bther education is the education of our race, the race of men. We have learned many things about nature, but we have learned them together, the giants of the past teaching the giants of today, and they in their turn handing on their knowledge to tomorrow's giants. Our knowledge is passed on in ever-increasing rich-ness from generation to generation. Simply the mere pass-ing it on occupies many thousands of men and women for whole lifetimes as teachers, and the learning of it fills all the years of our lives, in school and out. This need man has to be educated through centuries of time is a part of him that he cannot escape. The great- est genius can only teach men what their minds have been prepared to grasp. And God, who made us this way, ~must speak to us, too, and teach us in tl~e gradual way that He has made necessary to us. So His divine revelation is a progressing and developing education of the human race. It bridges over the immense gap .between our time-bound and intricate minds and God's timeless simplicity. By His own choice He speaks eternal and immense thoughts to us in fragments communicated throughout time and space. It is a lesson in God's fatherly care for us to know that He has done it with such infinite and careful patience. How has He done it? Among a chosen people at the beginning of the story of our salvation, He planted,a seed of a thought: "In the beginning.God created heaven and earth." The thought is the thought of the one God who made all things. And these people fought and died, sub fered, rejected the truth, and repented through centuries: of history to pres.erve that seed and foster its growth. And through centuries God builds on this tiny germ of truth, constantly stretching the faith of His people by new reve-lations, always prep~aring them to accept the full flowering. of .that seed in~ the great, final revelation of Himself that will take place in the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then, when the fullness of revelation had come down to the earth and walked it, a~s a Divine Person, God inspired St. John to begin the record of this marvelous event with a magnificent poetic vision showiiag us how God had~been patient all these years, patiently teaching, correcting; educating, stretching faith to accept this cli-mactic revelation of the immense truth about God. By beginning his gospel with the ancient words of the book of Genesis, St. John shows us that through all these cen-turies of revelation God has spoken but one sentence. And though his gospel is to be a record of new and ultimate revelations.made by Christ our Lord, still how careful St; John is to show us that each new truth that appears is really nothing new or changed about God. Rather, it is a new insight and a richer knowledge of that immense and inexhaustible reality which is the one God who begins His Sacred Scripture and who brings it to an end. In the beginning was the Wor, d And the Word was with God And He was God, this Word He was at the beginning with God How did God go about this marvelous education of the Jews? How did He prepare them, and what was it He pre- ~a~ed them to accept? We have alw~iys known that throtig~ those long years of threats and tender promises God nurs~ed in them the knowledge that He was One, the God ÷ ÷ ÷ Prologue to St. lohn VOLUME 20, 1961 99 + + ÷ gohn E. Becket, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]oo of all nations, the God that had no rival gods. But there: was more to His teaching about Himself than this. We had to know more than His oneness, or we could never ap-preciate the redemption by which He was to save us. We had to be able to accept the reality of Another, alsoGod, the same God, in order to recognize the infinite love that God would show in coming to be one of us. Even in the Old Testament God was preparing us to accept the su-preme mystery of the most Blessed Trinity. Over centuries of time God prepared mankind, with hints and mysterious intimations, to accept this other per-son. First, He taught His people the Law. But He taught it in such a way that it became for them, under the guid-ance of their inspired teachers, more than just a rule of life. They thought more and more of the Law as another being, ordering and governing the whole universe, some-how existing in its own right. God's inspired writers spoke too of Wisdom; and again His people, receiving with faith the guidance which God gave them through their teachers, began to think of this divine Wisdom as something distinct from God, sent by Him upon the earth: "The Lord possessed me. in the beginning of his ways. I was set up from eternity., the depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived. Wisdom is with thee, which knoweth thy works. All wisdom is from the Lord God, and hath been always with him. I came out of the mouth of the most High. From the beginning and before the world, was I created . " In two texts of Scrip-tures especially we can see how God led His inspired writ-ers toward the culminating simplicity of St. John's revela-tion of the Word: "While all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, thy almighty Word leapt down from heaven from thy royal throne, as a fierce conqueror into the midst of the land of destruc-tion. With a sharp sword carrying thy unfeigned com-mandment, and he stood and filled all things with death, and standing on the earth reached even to heaven"(Wis 18:14-16). And even closer to the full clarity of St. John was this from Isaiah: "As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return no more thither, but soak the earth, ~tnd water it and make it to spring., so shall my Word be, which shall go forth from my mouth: it shall not return to me void, but it shall do whatsoever I please, and shall prosper in the things for which I sent it" (55:10). Our Lord's life on earth took place during an age of intense religious uncertainty and desperate religious quest. But it is strangely enough true that almost every groping philosophy of the time centered around a principle called the Word. It was almosta magic formula. To the Stoic it meant the mind of God whose strong sunlight was divided into little sparks which were the minds of individual men. To Philo, a Jewish gentile philosopher, it was a person who pervaded all God's activity, and all the creatures of God's activity. To all the philosophers it was the one principle of order in the chaQs o~f. the world.~ Of, course, the Jews knew that God had made all creation by His mere word. God's ~word had always been an infinitely powerful thing in their minds. Now when St. John calls Christ our Lord the Word, he proves the validity of God's long and careful education of the human race toward faith,in the Word of God. It is a sad and fr_ightening realization for all of us that so maony of God's,chosen race failed to respond with the faith God had so carefully prepared" them for. In a probing vision of faith, St. John realized that the pagans with their philosophies Of the Word meant, if they could but see it, Christ;. that the Jews with their devotion to the Law, to Wisdom, to God's almighty word, had been educated to know the eternal Word. Because of this deep insight of supernatural faith, the abstract, eternal, and unchanging i'eality demanded by the minds of the pagan philosophers and the concrete, changing, and temporal reality forced upon their senses were reconciled into one truth. St. John's gospel stands alone for seeing the eternity, the infinity,, the timeless immensity of God walking in the finite flesh of our Lord. The single human actions of His life are put into a story in which we can also see that these are eternal ac.tions, of eternal worth, universal and eternal in mean- .ing. All history becomes in this vision not so much a thing of time but a phase of eternity. We see through the lens of an inspired faith that human life takes place in more than material dimensions. Christ's daily life is the eternal God teaching by action the eternal truths in the tiny dimen-sions of time. Our life becomes, in spite of its abrupt be-ginning and abrupt end, an eternally rewarded effort to learn and put into practice these eternal truths. Through the lens of this vision we see that the impor-tant beginning of this history of salvation was not in time, was not on a hillside of Nazareth, Bethlehem, or Calvary. The real beginning of the life story of Christ our Lord and of the life of man in God was not His.virginal conception, nor His birth in a cave, nor His baptism at the Jordan, but eternity with God: He was in the beginning with God. Everything was made by Him, And without Him was made nothing. Even when we recognize that the beginning of our sal-vation is back in the far reaches of divine eternity, in the Word who was with God, and even when we see that God has been preparing us for centuries to accept this fact, we 4. + + Prologue to St. John VOLUME 20, 1961 10] John E. Becket, $.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS have yet to appreciate how intimate a part this divine Word has played in the very creation of our world, and even in the divine education which wehave received. God fixed His eye on the eternal Word as He spoke the words of creation. All God's creatures were ordered according the Word's divine ordination: All the laws of their were made on the pattern of the Word. This is much the case that when we study the divine order creation, the laws of molecular structure, of the develop-ment of phyla, its supremely rich but ordered abundance, we are studying the natural phrases and sentences of God's eternal Word. Without Him was made nothing; nothing escapes His ordering power not even the man who sins. We would think that the sinner, having deliberately stepped outside this divine order, would have lost the privilege of participating in the guidance of God. though we may sin, we cannot step aside from God. The original sin of Adam and all that sequel of human which ratifies that original disorder sewn in our nature Adam, furnishes but the occasion for the Word of God be spoken ag~iin. Through Him all 'things were made. Now, on account of sin, He is spoken in a new way that binds Him even more intimately to his now sinful crea-tion, for: That.which was made in Him was li[e, And the life was the light of men, And the light, in the shadows, shown, And the shadows did not put it out. As once all things were created by the Word, now a new thing is created in Him: That which was made in Him life. Man has sinned, and so the Word becomes the source of a new life for him: and the life was the light of men. The Word is not renewed. The old is not revived. But the Word is respoken in a new creation that more fully ex-presses it. Men find in Him now, not only the pattern their existence and their perfection, but the source of new life, a life which always existed for God, which was once given to them and lost, but which now exists again a reality for them. And the light, in the shadows, shown, and the shadows did not put it out. This new life which a light for men wins the Victory over man's darkness. We can follow th~se-threads of life, light, and darkness throughout the gospel of St. John. They are dominant colors in his message. God has'outdone His first gift us, natural created life, made by His Word, with a super-natural creation, with .a supernatural life also produced, but in His Word.~Adam's sin,made our human life shadowy life of undirected uncertainty and groping. Think of the vague yearnings of the Jewish people, and they were under the educating guidance of God; even' more, think of the pathetic religious foolishness of the pa.gan world whose nature religions could never free themselves from the orgiastic worship of the sex power. But our world, lost in the shadows of sin, is not lost to God. Rather than destroy,.it and' produce ~a n.ew, un-shadowed, sinless world through His Word, God builds a new life for us within the lost world. We live now in the Word. We find only one meaning of lile in St. John; the life of God communicated to men. Christ our Lord com-municated God's life to us by becoming one of us and remaining God. That is the story of St. John's gospel, of all the gospels. Christ assumed humanity to be able to suffer for our redemption, to be able to produce a new life for men. The flow of Divine Life which He injects into us is also, because of His teaching about God, a stream of light within us, who would otherwise be' groping in darkness toward an unknown deity. He has shown us clearly who the God is whom we must seek. And so the shadows on our uncertain consciences are dispelled, and we find ourselves on a clear road towards God, filled with confidence. Our human nature has been taken into the divinity, and God has produced for us there within Himself the new life which saves us from darkness and sin. There is no poem in English with such compleie sim-plicity of expression. Yet in these five verses we have dis-covered the whole history of God's dealings with us. They present us with an immense, vision which extends from the first moment of creation, through the Incarnation, to the end of time when men living in Christ will be gathered to Christ in the fullness of life. The whole history of our race is involved, yet we see it all from the vantage point of God'.soeternity and catch sight of what it means to call God's knowledge infinitely simple. It is all one eternal speaking of the Word by God: It first bears fruit in the creation of our material world; then in a new act of union with this world a new life is produced in it; this new life of supernatural union with God is finally to conduct us all to our final union with God in heaven for et.ernity. In this vision of faith, all history is a moment of eternity, a moment containing creation, divine union with man, and man's final reunion with God in eternity. There appeared a man sent [rom God: his name was John. He came [or a witness, to witness concerning the Light, so that all might believe through Him. He was not, this man, the Light, but [or a witness con-cerning the Light. Christ's precursor is but a man, rooted in the obvious dimensions of human time. He "is not near the stature of Christ. He happens, he appears; Christ is. He is not ÷ ÷ ÷ Prologue to St. ]oh.n VOLUME 20, 1961, 103 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]04 the light but only its witness. This brief, blunt, and prosaic interposition of a man within' our vision of eternity is an admonition to us, and a sign to us of the way St. John views reality. This simple prose in the midst of the poetry of eternity reminds us that we are never to let the human reality and the divine reality become separated in our minds. The life of Christ has fused the two for all eternity, and St. John is writing the story of that life. The simple historical surroundings and activities of Christ's life are making history, yet they go beyond history. The time-bound precursor of Christ is, by the decree of God, an eternally necessary, eternally important actor in God's redemptive drama. He is a sign to us that we too are eternally important, because we live with the life of the eternal Word. He was the true Light, Who enlightens every man Coming into the world. First there was God and the Word; then it is clear to us that the Word is God. The two are one. After all things are made through the Word, then supernatural Life is made in the Word, and this life is Light for men. Now again we reflect and realize that all these truths are drawn together into one truth in God. Life and Light, that which is produced in the Word, is really the Word; and the Word is God Himself, the source and goal of all our human life, natural and supernatural, the source and full enlightenment of all our knowledge, natural and su-pernatural. How does God, the Word, who is Life and Light in Himself become life and light for us? By coming into the world. We are fused with divinity when Christ takes human flesh so that the inaccessible light of eternity speaks in human words to Jews on the hillsides of Pales-tine and to all of us in the gospels; and the inaccessible life of eternity gives life to human tissues nourished from the body of Mary. And this divine-human talking and living is not over with. That once-and-for-all coming of the true Light into the world was the beginning of an unlimited number of comings. He comes now to each of us who will accept Him. He gives light, the teachings of His Church; and life, the sacramental life force which comes from His body through the ordained priesthood that He left behind Him. Light and life are in the Word because He is God; but light and life are given to man because that same Word has become man, made Himself available to man, placed Himself before us so that we may choose to unite ourselves to Him. There is no answering the question Why. We can only point to the strength of God's love. But if we ask why, we are uncovering, perhaps, false thoughts in our- selves. Have we ever realized how fully the Word had already involved Himself in the history and materiality of the world before He took this final step that brings Him visibly into the world? Why should we ask why to this last step? We should ask why'~t0 everything, not just to the Incarnation. God's eternal love has joined Himself to every moment of the world's existence. The Incarnation was simply the climax: In the world He was, And the world was made by Him And the world did not recognize Him Into His own He came And His own did not receive Him In the world He was from the first moment giving that moment and every succeeding moment its reality. The steady and balanced revolution of spinning worlds, and the quiet and inexorable change of seasons from death to life 'and.back to death and another life are His work and His teaching. He is the concurrent force, giving foufida-tion to the thoughts of the earliest'men and effectiveness to all their desires, holy or perverse. But the forceful message of all this rich physical reality is not heard. Though anything, simply because it exists, speaks of, the presence of God the creator, the fa~t Of creation failed to penetrate the darkness of immorality and sin that kept men "from recognizing the world as the words of God's eternal Word. God's Word speaks in a new way, trying by a new means to attract man's wayward attention. He chooses a man, Abraham, and tells the man he will beget a people. The Jewish race is born, and becomes God's own: I will be your God and you will be my people. And as this people grows through crisis, sin, and exile, the Word of God con-tinues to speak to them, residing in their Holy .of Holies, dictating their Law, guiding their history, inspiring the poetry of their kings and prophets. But all of it leads over and over again to relapses into idolatry and paganism, into infidelity and' hardness of heart, and finally into the degenerate Pharisaism that will not accept Him no matter what means He takes to speak to them: Into His own He came and His own did not receive Him. But all those who received Him He gave them power to become children o[ God, To those who believe in His name He who neither oI blood, nor (o[ a desire) o] the l~esh, (nor ot a desire ot man), But of God was generated. Not all o~ His own rejected Him, and between those who did and those who did not, a new dividing line is ÷ ÷ ÷ Prologue to VOLUME 20, 1961 105 gohn E. Becket, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS drawn. Once "it had been drawn by God between the Jew and" the idolatrous gentile. Gradually it shifted, so that it divided the Jews themselves. Only a faithful remnant was loyal to God and would receive the benefits of the Mes-sianic kingdom; the rest were Jews in blood and name only, This division started to break up the Jewish world even before the actual coining of Christ in human form. But this breakdown of Jewish unity was turned to,our good by God. it was the way God purged His revelation of Jewish nationalism, and it became the foundation for a new way of thinking among .those.Jews who accepted Christ. God's careful, educating hand was still at work, showing them that no longer was it important to be a Jew. Now all that is important is to accept Christ. For all who receive Him are God's people; Jews and gentiles become one people when they become Christians. Everyone who bears the human nature tbat Christ assumed~may now re-ceive life from Him. And receiving our life from God means becoming God's children. There is a difference, though, in our being tbe children of God and the children of h.uman parents. We received the life of our parents all unconscious of the gift. Christians, .even though they receive Baptism as infants, must eventually assent to their divine childhood consciously and willingly by ac-cepting the W~rd, Christ our Lord. It is one more proof of God's infinite wisdom that He need not interfere here with the nature He has created in us when He gives us new life. Rather tban rebuild our nature so that they l.ive automatically with divine life, He stands by His own primeval decision to leave us free. We may live a hum;in life that is dead to God. Or we may accept God's~offer; we may choose to receive Christ and become the .cbildren of God. Still, though He, has not remolded nature, Hhat He ¯ has dgne is miracle enough. To be God's child means to live with the life of God, just as to,be a h~uman child means to live with the human life of our parents. When We choose to accept Christ, by that very fact we make oui'- selves one with Him. One with Him, grafted on to Him, we live with His life. His life is the life of a Son; and so we, united to Him and living His life, live the life of sons, the life which, the only-begotten Son has received from His Father. Christ is so perfectly God's Son as to be God: I am in the Father and the Father is in me. United to the Son of God in a real oneness of life, we too are made sons. Our divine childhood is not a childhood of the flesh, be-cause Christ's sonship is not a sonship of the flesh. He who gives us power to become the children of God is He,who, neither of blood, nor o~ a desire of the flesh, nor of a de-sire of man, but of God is generated. Our own fathers, in a single moment, by the act of married love which gen-erates us, are only at that moment acting upon us with a real activity which is properly fatherhood. The action is over in a moment. ~But Christ, the. Son of God, is being eternally generated of God'. Our mothers beai" us in their bodies for nine months during which their bodies are ceaselessly active nourishing and protecting our growth. Btit even in that time of intimate and complete depend-ence we are separated from them. Physically our mother surrounds,fis. But she is not us. And her physical mother- ~hood is soon over. But Christ, the Son Of God, is so inti-mately one with God that together they are but one God; and the action of giving and receiving divine life between the Father and the Son never ceases to be a dynamic and intense activity. Christ is always the Son of the Father, not because the Father once launched Him forth into sep-arated existence, but because He is always being gen-erated by the Father and never is separated from Him. All fatherhood on earth is named fatherhood after this eternal fathering forth o~ the Son by His divine Father. Earthly fatherhood, momentary and fleeting, is its weak reflection. And just as Christ the Son of God is the eternal recipient of divine life, we, because we are grafted onto His life, are eternal recipients of divine life. By a ceaseless activity that never leaves us to separate and independent existence we are God's sons--unless we break the bond that seals us to Christ. But in knowing all this we know only the beginning. There is greater depth to the divine sonship still. Christ is the Word of God, as well as His Son. To find out what this implies about His sonship, we submit ourselves to the careful teaching of God again, through His inspired representative, St. John, who named Christ the"Word. A word is the product of a mind. And the mind is spirit. We must free our idea of fatherhood, then, from the fleshly concepts that could obscure it when we apply it to God. God's eternal wisdom is in the, Father as in an eternal mind. But it is in the Son as a thought contained in a word. But, like human fatherhood, human words are momentary, vibrations of sound or mental flashes.of un-derstanding. Christ, however, is not a momentary flash of God's knowledge. He is the eternal container of the thought of God, the eternal expression of the mind of the Father. And so eternal generation is more like the eternal production of an eternal word which contains all the divine and infinite nature of God. Christ's sonship is a spiritual sonship like that which exists between a word that perfectly expresses a mind and that needs no flesh to be real. It is no wonder, then, that Christ's sonship of the Blessed Virgin Mary~ though it is a sonship by which He derives His flesh fro,n her Prologue to St. John VOkUME 20, 1961 107 ./ohn E. Be~/~, SJ. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]08 body, should be a virginal sonship, free of the desires the flesh. Christ's infinite spiritual generation in heaven expressed in his virginal generation on earth. We are once more witnesses to the imprint of eternity on the events of time which characterizes the plan of our salvation. This second vision of faith, which St. John has projected in verses six to thirteen, has carried us again into the depths of eternity. This time it shows us that before we received the s0nship of the Word as our own life, we had been prepared by the very presence of this Word in the Law and the poetry of the Old Testament. Even before these things there was the presence of the Word in creation itself, though men failed to see Him there. Finally, before all the activity of the Son in the creation of the world and its redemption, was His eternal conception in the mind the Father as an eternal Word who contains all the divinity of the Father. And all that has happened in time, from the creation to the present moment, are but different ways in which God speaks His eternal Word to us, ways which develop and move forward with the growth of our power to appreciate God in ever clearer and more explicit realiza-tions until the ultimate climax when God no longer con-fines Himself to forming the universe through His Word, but clothes His Word in the very material of the uni-verse: And so the Word became [tesh And He made His home among us And we have seen His Glory Glory belonging to the only Son (coming) from the Father, .Full o[ grace and truth. God, in this last speaking of His Word has destroyed the distances between us. There is more, now, than com-munication between us. There is intimacy. The infinitely self-contained and perfect divinity projected the world and mingled with it to preserve its being. He intruded into world history to choose a people. With the Jews God took up His residence. He pitched His tent among them, as they delight to say over and over in their songs of praise to Him. His unseen glory was present in the ark. This was part of the covenant He made with them after He guided them by day and night from Egypt to the promised land in a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. At the dedication of their great Temple, God's glory filled the Holy Holies. But now this eternal ,Word, who sought out Abra-ham and made His promises to him, who spoke in the Law and the Prophets, in poets, historians, and storytellers of the Old Testament, is no longer satisfied to speak through others. He speaks in His own Person. All the di-vinity of the Word which had manifested itself in these ways through centuries, now resides in this human flesh, not as a mere inhabitant, but as one person with it. The body of Christ is God's new home among men. That unspeakable glory of God which filled the Holy of Holies fills now the flesh of a man and makes it the flesh of. the Son of God. And the invisible glory of the only-begotten Son, when it comes from the Father into human flesh, is no longer invisible, but seen, Men have seen His glory. We might expect glory to be a word connected with the miracle of the transfiguration which took place before St.John's eyes on Mount Tabor. But whenever we find St. John using this word, we find the passion and death of our Lord: "The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified" (12:~3). When Judas leaves the supper to betray our Lord, He says, "Now the Son of Man has been glori-fied, and God has been glorified, through him, and God will through himself glorify him; he will glorify him immediately" (13:31-32). And in His last discourse to His disciples our Lord says: "Father, glorify your son that your son may glori.~y you (17:2). I have glorified you here on earth, by completing the work which you gave me to do. Now, Father, glorify me in your presence as I had done me there before the world existed (17:5). I have given them the glory that you gave me, so that they may be one just as we are, I in union with them and you with me, so that they may be perfectly unified, and the world may recognize that you sent me and that you love them just as 'you loved me. Father, I wish to have those whom you have given me with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me, for you loved me before the cre-ation of the world" (17:22-2'1). The glory that is His Fa-ther's love for Him becomes the glory of the love of the Father and the Son for us when Christ suffers for us to make us God's sons. Passion and death are things that would have been impossible to God unless He had taken upon Himself a human nature. But when it is done, we see a new and startling vision of the glory of God, a new vision which is a paradox; the invisible'and awesome glory that filled the Holy of Holies is brightened to a climax at the time of God's suffering and at the moment of His death. If there is paradox here, there must also be meaning. Paradox is a challenge to our deeper thought. If passion and death are the climax of God's glory, its fullest ex-pression, what can God's glory be or mean? There is cre-ation. When we think of its immensity, the hugeness of the forces unleashed in the exploding universe, we catch our breath and lose track of our mathematical securities. But this is not a full picture of God's glory. It is only a first, rough sketch. When we think of the delicacy of craftmanship that enabled a tiny planet to nurture life, Prologue to St. John VOLUME 20, 1961 109 ÷ ÷ ÷ $ohn E. Becke~, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 1]0 we may melt at the tenderness that reigns in a theatre of such violent forces, but we know again that it is not the full expression of God's glory. There is the Old Law when this all-powerful and tender God chooses to interfere in our pitiful history, chooses a nomad tribe and guides its destiny through hundreds of years of war and infidelity so that a few men at least will know that He is the God who is, in spite of their stubbornness and disinterest. This infinite humility of the omnipotent God, who cares that man's blindness be cured, speaks more clearly of God's glory but still falls, short of it. What is amazing is that none of this turns out to be any hint a.t all of what the full revelation of God's glory will be. How could we have guessed that the full burst of it would be a criminal execution on a Judean hill? Yet just this fiaeek submission to suffering and this most shameful of all deaths is the climax and full unveiling of the glory of God. God's glory is supremely expressed in His choice to suffer and die, to do those things which are the deepest badge of our sinful and fallen nature. The glory which Christ, the eternal Word, had before all ,time in the bosom of His Father is that extremity of love which leads Him to take up the nature of His sinful creature, suffer for him, and lay, down that life which, because it is the perfect ex-pression of the union of God with us, is the supreme gift which He can give to redeem us. And this glory of God, God's passion, is not for our contemplation alone, or for our deepest meditation. "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself." It is magnetic force, :a force for union. We are drawn to Him, and all of us become one in. Him as the Father in Him and He in the Father. To a certain extent we are here meditating on poetry. In the context of our lives, however, it is more. It is an appeal to us to recognize the unity that exists now between time and eternity, space and divine im-mensity, and especially b.etween Christian and Christian. Little children love one another. We read here truth after truth, and they are many truths. But each separate truth, as it is presented to us, is set back into a mysterious and all embracing unity in God: The Word appears, but He is with God;° He is God. Creation emei'ges, through the Word; but then begins its long and relentless motion back towards God. Why this great return? Because the Word, who is one with God, has come forth from God and joined creation to Himself, pervading it by creative activ-ity, coming unto His own in word' and then in person, producing within Himself a new life for the created world to live in Him, making men God's sons and drawing them all and the creation that is theirs back to the bosom of His Father with whom He is but one. We, of course, must put ourselves back into this marvelous current o,f the life of God which is flowing back to Him. It cannot be ours unless we receive Him, and we can refuse Him. But if we are drawn to Him in the glory'of His Cross as it is renewed every morning at Mass, we will accept Him into our bodies in t~e sacrament of the Eucharist. We become, ourselves the dwelling place of the glory of God;. for we are the dwelling place of the flesh of Christ. All of us, marching back through time to happiness in eternity, become one in this divine life which nourishes us all. The glory of God walks about on the streets. It is in us and about us, We are His holy people united to Him and to each other in the reception of His body, all making up with Him but one body. Our temporal actions, walking the asphalt streets of our own moment of history, are eternal actions; our limited circle of friends and acquaintances is stretched to include all men, and they are all the focal point in time of our eternal love for Christ, because He is in them all. We se~ ii ~veryday in all meri, the glory o[ the onl~-b,e~g'ot~en Son of God, full of grace and truth. Prologue to $L loh~ VOLUME 20, 1961 111 COLUMBAN BROWNING, C.P. Martyrdom and the Religious Life The Reverend Colum-ban Browning, a fre~ quent contributor to the l~viEw, is sta-tioned at Saint Gabriel Monastery, 1100 63rd St., Des Moines 11, Iowa. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 112 Our twentieth century world prides itself on being mod-ern. And to the residents of our twentieth century, mod-ern implies everything that reflects the progress of this century. Efficiency, freshness of ideas, technological ad-vance- such things as these come to mind when we think of the word modern. Even twentieth century religious pride themselves as being modern in the best sense of the word. Since Pius XII inaugurated the movement toward adaptation to the needs of the times, the religious of today cannot avoid being modern unless he wishes to be branded with the stigma of retrogression. The response to the plea of Plus XII al-ready realized gives sufficient proof of the importance of making full use of all that is good in the progress of our age for the glory of God. But we religious can become so absorbed in our mod-ernity that we may forget that the motivation for the re-ligious life must always be the same and that it comes from the time of Christ Himself. This is why Plus always stressed renovation along with adaptation. While the approach may vary with the changing times, the mo-tivation is unchangeable. And for this motivation we must return repeatedly to the very sources of Christianity. The sources of Christianity are found primarily in the life and teaching of our Lord, a teaching enshrined in the Church that He founded. But also in the application of Christ's teaching in the early Church is found a very real source at which to learn the spirit of Christ in action. In those early days when the spirit of Christ was in the fresh-ness of its youth, we can find ideas to help us in our day to be better followers of Christ. One such idea that can be especially fruitful to this end is found in the historical fact that the religious life evolved in the Church as a sub-stitute for martyrdom. 1. Martyrdom and Christian Per[ection Martyrdom became a practical necessity in the early days of the Church. The infant Church soon came face to face with the persecution for~t,o, ld by Christ. Espec!ally in the Roman world did this 15ersec'u~ion reach the' pitch of fury. Beginning with the Emperor Nero in the first century and continuing for two and a half centuries, it was con-sidered unlawful to be a Christian. One who professed the faith of Christ, if detected, was given the alternatives" of apostasy or death. The story of the heroic courage with which so many thousands stood firm in the face of death is too familiar to retell. The resemblance of the death of the martyrs to that of Christ was evident to the early Christians. Just as Christ died a violent death in testimony to the truth, so also did the martyr. It is but natural, then, that martyrdom was seen as a dying with Christ. Just as logically, the martyr was considered the perfect imitator of Christ or the per-fect exemplificatibn of' Christian perfection. It is not sur-prising, therefor-e, that'we find the pastor~ and writers of those times exhorting the Christians to martyrdom as the means to perfect union with Christ. One need only study the example and the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch to see how firmly rooted this thought was in the early Christian mind. During the reign of Trajan, this great Bishop was sentenced to death and sent to Rome to be thrown to the beasts. During his journey to Rome as a prisoner he wrote seven letter~ to the churches of the territories through which he passed. These letters reflect the burning desire of his soul to be perfectly united to Christ by martyrdom. His sentiments are most forcefully expressed in his letter to the Romans in which he writes as follows~ I am writing to all the Churches and state emphatically to all that I die willingly for God, provided you do not interfere. I beg you, do not show me unreasonable kindness. Suffer me to be the food of wild beasts, which are the means of making my way to God. God's wheat I am, and by the teeth of wild beasts I am to be ground that I may prove Christ's bread. Better still, coax the wild beasts to become my tomb and leave no part of my person behind;once I have fallen asleep I do not wish to be a burden to anyone. Then only shall I be a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ when the world will not even see my body . Forgive me, brethren; do not obstruct my coming to life-- do not wish me to die; do not make a gift to the world of one who wants to be God's. Beware of seducing me with matter; suffer me to receive pure light. Once arrived there, I shall be.a man. Permit me to be an imitator of my suffering God. Since martyrdom and perfect union with Christ meant one and the same thing, life itself was looked upon as a preparation for martyrdom. All asceticism was considered from this point of view. It was by dying to one's passions ÷ ÷ ÷ Martyrdom and Religious Li]e VOLUME 20, 1961 llS ,4, ÷ ÷ Columban Browning, C.I'. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 114 that one most resembled the martyrs and best prepared oneself for the supreme challenge. Origen expressed this in these words: "Those who have prepared themselves for martyrdom can even already be called martyrs, even though they may never undergo it." Time came when the pcrsecutions diminished and fi-nally ceased wi~h the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. With tffe ,essation of persecntion actual martyrdom was no longer a possibility, but the ideal of martyrdom remained alive in the minds of the faithful. Since martyrdom by blood was no longer possible, a new emphasis was placed on asceti-cism which was looked upon as a martyrdom without blood. Martyrdom was still considered the ideal of per-fection; and those who most reSembled the martyrs by death to self, or ascesis, were considered the most perfect. II. Martyrdom and Virginity Among the practices of asceticism, that of ~irginit'y was held in an especial high esteem. The practice of virginity had been a high ideal and ~vas actually practiced from the beginning in imitation of our Lord and His Blessed Mother. But when persecution ceased, virginity received a new status as one of the foremost means of dying a .rnartyr's death without the shedding of blood. The virgin was con-sidered as wedded to Christ by a mystical marriage through grace. By complete death to the urgings of the body, the virgin, like the martyr, achieved a complete surrender to Christ, died with Him and became a perfect imitator of Him. St. Jerome expressing this thought said: "Virginity is a holocaust to God. Complete chastity is a victim to Christ." Thus, the white martyrdom of virginity, by a process of evolution conditioned by history, succeeded to martyrdom by blood as the equivalent of Christian per-fection. Living a virginal life in the midst of a wo}ld that still contained much of the pagan spirit obviously had its difficulties. As something of a moral necessity, therefore, those consecrated to God by the vow of virginity began to, band.together for mutual support. ~They often lived in common, prayed together and by mutual encouragement helped each other to their common g0al of perfect union with Christ. In this practice we have a foreshadowing and a natural preparation for the religious life. III. Martyrdom, Virginity and the R.eligious Lile The ground had been prepared for the birth of monaS-ticism, or organized religious life. Toward the end of the third century whefi the persecutions were beginning to lose some of their force, the practice of the eremitical life began in Egypt. In the year 320 (only seven years after the Edict of Milan), St. Pachomius founded the first monastery of the common,life, Some forty years later S.t.,Basil estab-lished the same form of life in the Eastern Church. With the virginal spirit already so high in honor and with so. many in fact already living the~eremitical life, it is not surprising that th.ese :m0~n.aster.ies flourishe~l.;Those. who desired perfect union with Christ and for whom martyrdom was,no 19nger possible flocked to these monas-teries. T~here, united in pra~er, these generous men and women were able to find a kind of native atmosphere in which to realize their ambition of perfect union with Christ by the "living martyrdom,' of the religious life. With the origin of monasticism there began a new epoch of Christian history, one that is still unfolding today. This is the history of the religious life. From one or two monas-teries, the fire of zeal that started them spread until it gradually covered the entire world. The organized life of consecration to God has gone through many stages of evolution, all of them prompted by the changing events of history. All through the ages the religious life has been adapting itself to the needs of the times until we find the greater percentage of religious today extremely active, whereas the religious of those early days were largely con-templative. But the religious of today are nonetheless branches of the same tree and the essential motivation of the religious life remains the same. IV. Practical Application Plus XII frequently urged religious to return to the sources of their life. Along with adaptation to modern needs, he stressed with equal insistence the need for renovation. The Holy Father realized that it is only when the spirit of zeal and fervor is pregerved and deepened that we can safely and sanely adapt, bringing the best effort to bear on the needs of the times. In striving to achieve this purpose, the religious of today would do well to endeavour to capture the spirit in which the religious life was founded. When we see the religious life as an outgrowth of and a s,bstitute for martyrdom, what a difference it can make in one's approach to the religious life. One sees clearly that the goal of religious living is perfect conformity to Christ, a wholehearted dying to self and complete living with and for Christ. The sacrifices inherent in the religious vows, resistance of the spirit of the modern world, the pressures and frustrations of daily activity in the life of the modern religious--all will be seen in a new.light when one realizes that these are but aspects of that death with Christ which leads to union with Him. It is by these daily sacrifices that the religious of our day are called to the same con-formity with Christ that was the goal of the martyrs. ÷ ÷ Martyrdom, and Religious Liye VOLUME 20, 1961 Lack of Sufficient motivation is ordinarily one of the greatest hindrances to the progress of a religious. It may help religious to ponder the fact that the vocation of the religious is essentially the same as that of the martyrs. The manner of realization may differ according to circum-stances. But the goal is identical--the wholehearted giving of self to Christ, dying with Him in order to live with Him. ÷ ÷ ÷ Coluraban Browning, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS llfi PAX The Call of God There have always b'een, and.always will be, voclttions. One has only to run through the pages 6f both Old and New Testaments to see that Goff has always called souls to consecrate themselves to Him or to serve Him or to come.back to Him. The call of God's mercy, for it is always that, may be heard at any time and in the most unexpected places, as witness the parable of the prodigal son, who was called to mercy in a pigsty. God is of an infinite adaptabilityl From the beginning of Genesis, We find God calling Adam and Eve back after their fall. Truly God's ways do not change, for His "I came to seek and to save that which is lost" is true from the beginning. So, t0b, God calls Cain after hig murder of Abel tO give him a spark of hope even in his punishment. Noah is called with all his family and is set apart by God for His service and his own salvation. But the first spectacular vocation in the Old Tegtament is that of Abraham. Leave thy country,, thy~kinsfolk And thy father's house, And come away into a land That I shall show thee. Here is the usual conception of a vocation, the leaving of all for God; and already there is the promise of what might be called a millionfoldl "I will bless thee and make thy name renowned., and in thee shall all the races of the world find a blessing." Abraham's might be ~alled a late vocation, for he was seventy-five years old when it came! His wife and his ,~ephew were called to accompany him, and God con- ~tantly encouraged him: "Have no fear. I am here. thy reward will be great ind~edl" St: Ambrose remarks that ,t is the privilege of the saints to receive a new name from God. God changed Abram's~:name to Abraham; and his wife's to one meaning "The Princess." She too was blessed, ,vho had been sterile, and bore Isaac~"the son of laugh-oero" + Pax is the nora de plume of a cloistered Benedictine nun whose monastery is located in Belgium. ~VOLUME 20, 1961 11~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 118 Vocations bring suffering, as Abraham discovered by the terrible test of his f.aith, when God bade him offer up Isaac in sacrifice. But God stayed that obedient hand at the last minute saying, "Abraham, Abraham, for my sake tfiou wast willing to give up thine only son." It is as if God is in ad~niration of this. sturdy faith of Abraham's, just as Jesus later was when faced with the dauntless faith of a woman, "Womfin, great is thy faith! . Thine only son," cries God; and in promising Abraham the reward of a countless posterity, through which all nations should be blessed, God is promising him no less than His own Son, who would save us all. We see the parallel with this situation in the words of St. John: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." God's love for Abraham and Sarah did not prevent His care for their bondmaid, Agar. Sh6 too is called and consoled in the desert by the finding of water .for her dying child and the promise of a wonderful future for him. It is no wonder then, that Abraham died contented. He had spent a hun drdd years in the service of God, and God had blessed him in all his doings. "God," a slnall boy onc~e remarked, "has some very funn) friends.", Jacob is,perhaps one of these, for in spite of St A_ugustine's lenient "not a lie, but a mystery," he appear., as "a t3vister"; but God who be.holds the heart saw hi., capacity for tenacious fidelity.and love. All God's dealing., with him are mysterious. Perhaps-He saw in Jacob, whc had, to put it politely, borrowed his brother's name, birth right, and blessing, the figure, o~. us all, of all mankind who would shelter:behind the name of His first-born Son Jesus, and in that Name and disguise, steal His blessin~ and the right of inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven. Nora of us can, then, throw stones at Jacob! He was called by God, in his sleep, from a ladder reach ing from heaven to earth, the passageway of countl~'s. angels (a ladder which has greatly intrigued the saints ant the fathers of the Church) with a free promise, with n( conditions! "I am the Lord, the God of thy father Abra ham, the God of Isaac, and tl~is ground on which thor sleepest is my gift to thee and thy posterity. Thy race shal be as countless as the dust., thou shalt overflow th, frontiers, till all the families of the earth find a blessing i~ thee and this race of thine. I myself will watch over the~ ¯. all My promises shall be. fulfilled." What a wonderfifl vocation Moses, the great contempla rive, had! From babyhood God endowed him with sucl grace and charm that he es~]ap.ed~death when Pharoa! killed the baby boys.o~ Israel. He, was saved by the ruler' daughter, who hired his, own.mother to nurse him. Got watched over him till the day when in the desert He caller him from out the burning bush. God often calls contem platives in the desert, for as St. Ambrose says: "The food of heavenly grace is given, not to the idle, not in the city . nor to those accustomed to worldly things, but to those of the kingdom of God." It needs contemplative eyes to see a bush aflame with God and ac0ritemplative tieart' to hear God's calling from so lowly a setting. How beautiful a name becomes when God pronounces it! "M6ses, Moses!" called ~God. "Moses" means "a rescuer," a saviour. Every contemplative is a rescuer of souls. Moses at once entered into the deep mysteries of God. "Take off thy shoes, for thou standest on holy ground. I am the God thy father worshiped, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. Up! Thou art to lead My.people out of Egypt." Moses is reluctant to accept this errand. His hu-mility tries to escape, from such high honors. Contem-platives often are tempted to wonder if their vocation is not presumption. Other people seem so much holier and more fitted for God's great designs. Moses is, like most con-templatives, a strange mixture of. timidity and audacity. God truly has ~strange ways of choosing His tools, of picking His elect! "Who am I, and Who art Thou, O my God?" cry the saints. "I'm not at all the person Thou needest"; and in the same breath, as it he hadn't listened to God's introduction, "Who art Thou?" Blessed humility, and blessed audacity of Moses, since! they gave us the splendid name God, "I am the God who is." Besides this amazing condescension of God to Moses, God gives His chosen one the gift of miracles to help him in his mission. But Moses in his modesty persists in pro-testing his incapacity for his vocation. He pleads his love of silence, his lack of facile speech. Contemplatives are often painfully aware of how inarticulate they are, how ineloquent when talking of what surpasses speech. The ~aints are sometimes regarded as fools by reason of this tongue-tiedness of theirs. Moses' vocation is fairly typical of God's call to con-templatives. He often accords them, at the beginning, a ~oretaste of "what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor ,ath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." He puts heart into them; perhaps otherwise they would lever have the courage for the long march through the .vilderness that will inevitably lie before them. God brushes away Moses' doubts and fears and gives tim a spokesman in Aaron, whom Fie calls to the priest- ,ood, to the preaching of His message and to obedience. 'Aaron will receive my commandments from thee, and re- ,eat them . " And despite the desert, they could scarcely loubt God's abiding presence with them on the way since -Ie made it clear in their darkest nights by the column of ÷ ÷ ÷ The Call o] God VOLUME 20, 1961 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS fire and the very cloud showed Him. there by day, to say nothing of His extraordinary care for them, so that neither shoes nor clothing woreout, and bread was sent them from Heaven. "Nothing lacks to those who love God." Most contemplatives can vouch for this amazing care of their heavenly Father at all times. An odd vocation is that of the soothsayer Balaam, whom God served in his own coin, so to speak, and led by con-tradictionsl He is like the sort of dirig6 who makes clear to his director along what lines he expects to be directed, in the way of his, own choosingl Balaam almost obliges God to let him have his own way, and God uses it to humble him mightily, by letting his donkey know His will for Balaam, and furthermore announce it, backed up by an angel! For this honor the poor ass paid dearly. One might note in passing that God seems by the witness of both Testaments to have a weakness for asses, human and otherwisel That is, if we dare use a human expression and talk of the "weakness" of God, as St. Augustine dare., do, of Him who is the Strength of the Strongl "Why hast thou thrice beaten thine ass?" asks Godk, angel. "I came to intercept thee, because this errand ot thine is headstrong and defies my will. If the ass had not turned aside. I should have taken thy life and spared hers." "I will go home again," decides Balaam. "No," say., God through His angel. "Go, but be sure thou utterest nc word, save what I bid thee." Magnificently, too, Balaam does that, to Balac's indignation; and despite his efforts a! bribery, Balaam blesses, instead of cursing, Israeli "Son, of Israel, countless as the dust, race of Jacob past al numbering, may death find me faithful as these, and be m) end like theirs." The grace of God suddenly floods him, as it has a way ot doing when we are obedient. "My errand is to bless," h( cries. Headstrong Balaam then humbly confesses tha "from being blindfold, he saw, heard the speech of Goc most high, had a vision of Him, and learned to see right.' This passage recalls that in the New Testament of th( blind man of Bethsaida, who was also" slow at learning t( see, who also had a vision of God, and at His touch learnec to see rightl Children are called, too, by God. Samuel was choser before he was conceived in his mother's womb. He was th~ fruit of the long suffering and many tears of his steril mother, blessed by Hell, the priest, to whom she declare( her vow of offering him to God "all his life long." Sh. brought him to the temple as soon as he was weaned and "evermore the boy, Samuel, rose higher in God' favour," One night, while he was "sleeping in the divin~ presence where God's ark was," he thought he heard Hel calling him and ran to him with charming obedience sa.) ing, "Here I am!" Heli sent him back to bed three times, then realized that God had called the little boy. He told him that if God called again, he must say, "Speak on, Lord, thy servant is listening." How lovely the account of Godls coming ag~iin in Holy Writ. "The Lord came to his side and stood there waiting." So often He does, and waits so long, so patiently before we Samuels recognize His voicel It was a fearful message for a little boy to have to deliver to Heli; but Heli, hearing it, made the admirable answer, "It is the Lord. let Him do His will." Saul and David both had kingly vocations; the first failed, as alas, vocations sometimes do. The second bore the hundredfold of fruitfulness. Both were rooted in humility, for neither seemed at all likely to become king. Saul scarcely expected to be called by God to royal honors and duties when he set out to hunt for his father's lost donkeys, any more than the little boy David expected to be king when he was shepherding his father's sheep. David kept his humility and so God exalted him; Saul lost his, and by disobedience fell from God's favour. Both fell, but David speedily confessed his sin. As St. Ambrose says: "He sinned as kings often do, but he did penance, he groaned, he wept, as kings are not wont to do. He con-fessed his fault, he sought for pardon., he wept over his misery, he fasted, he prayed, and publishing his grief abroad, he left a witness of his confession to all poster-ity,. To fall into sin comes from the weakness of nature. To confess the sin comes from virtue." '"l~he Lord loves obedience better than sacrifice," Saul was told. Disobedi-ence is revolting against God, and almost inevitably pre-pares the loss of a vocation. We have seen a few of the calls of God in the Old Testament; what shall we say of the vocations in the New Testament? St. John the Baptist links, as it were, the two Testaments; and the Church applies to his voca-tion the magnificent passage from .Jeremiah, whom God told: "I claimed thee for my own, before ever I fashioned thee in thy mother's womb. I set thee apart for myself." Each New Testament vocation is splendid in its simplic-ity. Jesus captivates hearts by a look, a word, a smile, or simply by His presence. St. Augustine has a delightful description of the beginning of St. Andrew's vocation. "They wished to see where He dwelt., to be instructed in His precepts. He showed them where He dwelt. They came and were with Him. What a blessed day they spentl What a blessed night. Who is there who can tell what they heard from the Lord? Let us, too, build in our heart and make a house, whither He may come and teach us, and talk with us." The Bible account itself relates best the story of all the The Call o] God VOLUME 20, 1'961 ~2! 4- REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS splendid New Testament vocations; of our Blessed Lady, of St. Joseph, of.~St. Pe.ter, St. John and the rest of the disciples. How many others there are of which we would gladly learn more, like that of the little boy who gave his bread and fishes to feed 'the multitude, or of Jairus' twelve-year-old daughter, who heard Jesus' Talitha cumi, "Little maid, arise." Who could doubt that she followed, seeking Him as eagerly as the bride in the Canticle of Can-ticles? There are vocations of ad~nirable people like St. Luke, the doctor, of St. Paul, the fiery zealot; of businessmen like St. Matthew; of thieves like Dismas, who stole heaven; of sinners like St. Mary Magdalene or St. Photina, who at Jacob's well, drew forth such streams of living water from the Sacred Heart! And that of Zacheusl When he could see nothing, he climbed a sycamore and saw the Lord passing by. Now the sycamore is sometimes called "a foolish fig tree." Little Zacheus, then, climbed the sycamore and saw the Lord. Thus they who in humility choose the things that the world deems foolish have a keen insight into the wisdom of God Himself. The crowd prevents us from seeing the Lord because the tumult of worldly cares oppresses the human mind and keeps its gaze from the light of Truth. We climb a sycamore when we attend to the "foolishness" (as the world deems it) of God's commandments, refraining from recovering What, is taken from us, yielding our goods to robbers, never inflict-ing injury for injury and bearing all with patience. The Lord bids us "climb a sycamore" when He says, "If one strikes thee on the cheek, turn to him also the other." Through such wise folly, we may see the Lord, and in contemplation catch a glimpse of the wisdom of God. So says St. Gregory the Great. "No one," says St. Ambrose, "can easily see Jesus, if he stay on the ground! One must climb above one's former faults, and trample on one's vanity. So it was that Zacheus came to receive .|esns as a guest in his house. And rightly did he climb a tree." St: Bede says that Zacheus, to see the Lord, had to abandon earthly cares and climb the tree of the cross, embracing thus the."folly" of Christ. St. Maximus has an entertaining sort of spiritual ledger account of the hardheaded businessman Zacheus' conver-sion. "Za.cheus," he says, "opened the gate of heaven to the rich by showing them how to buy heaven through the very means that once kept them out of heaven--namely, their possessions! He bestowed a treasure on them which would enable them to be rich for all eternity; he truly made a good bargain by showing them how to dispense their riches to the poor and so be eternally rich." Zacheus heard and answered our Lord's call with jo'y, unlike the other rich man who went away sorrowful "because he had great possessions." What shall we say of all the other humble and anony-mous vocations of the New Testament, of a deaf and dumb man, of how many blind, and lame~ and dead? Like all these, if we are very little in our own eyes, we act as a magnd~ for the love-of God'and for the grace of His turning to look on us and to say, "Come and seel" Better: still, like Zacheus,: we m.ayhear Him say, "Today I must dine in thy house-." Besi~ of all, we may hear Jesus' promise, "If a man has any love for me, he will be true to my wor~.l; and then he?will win my Father's love, and we will both come to hin~, and make our continual abode with himl" ÷ + The Call o] God 123 SISTER MARY JANET, S.C.L. ¯ Proposal for Small Missions: Taped Conferences ÷ Sister Mary Janet, S.C.L. is stationed at Saint Mary College in Xavier, Kansas, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS This is simply an idea. It concerns a possible spiritual service that the priest and the religious community in with a modern gadget might offer sisters living small, "spiritually impoverished" mission houses. The spiritual service is the conference; the modern gadget, the tape recorder; the "spiritually impoverished missions," those which receive little or no spiritual from a priest during the course of the year. The idea might be summed up as Taped Conferences on the Spiritual Life. There is no one way in which such an idea might realized. Sketched here are three possibilities. In one plan a religious community with a number smaller mission houses that do not enjoy the privilege regular conferences from a priest might secure the services. of a priest expressly to prepare a set of taped conferences for these houses. A distinct advantage of such a procedure would be that a priest could be selected who is well ac2 quainted with the particular community, its constitutionsl and customs, and its works. Furthermore, the community, could engage a man of proved abilities. Consider, for how a good retreat master could in this way follow up and amplify his original instruction, providing a spiritual focus and direction for souls over a con-siderable time span. How many conferences would he tape? This might vary according to the time the priest could give to such a proj-ect and to the number of conferences from one source community-might want. In general, six to eight confer-ences would seem ample, or perhaps enough for the re-, treat SUndays of the year. Probably--at first anyway-~' conferences in a series (where one is dependent on prem-ises set up in a preceding one) would seem less practical than autonomous conferences. Separate conferences would also simplify the distribution process. The subject of such conferences might well be deter-mined by a discussion between the priest and the religious superiors or even perhaps bysuggestions from ithe sisters themselves. The length ortiming 6f the tapes, too, might be suggested by superi6rs to fit into some. specific order of the day, as, for instance; a conference on the monthly day of recollection. Generally a half hour might be pro-posed as a relatively prudent length. For one thing, most Iape~ run one half hour; a longer donference would neces-i~ ate changing tapes--and there are distractions enough without mechanical onesl Too, we can only listen with maximum profit for so long. A half-hour is a safe average estimate. In this connection, it might be observed that the ;peaker can no longer rely ori gesture or facial expression ~r the command of his presence. He will need to compen- ;ate for these by careful use of illustration, examples, and ~enerally concrete, specific language. Once a set of conferences is taped, it could be dupli-zated to meet whatever demand there would be within the community. Note that five reproductions of a six-con-ference set of tapes wouldmake a conference on the,spirit-aal life available to thirty mission houses.After a tape had ;erved its purpose in one house, it could be sent on im-aaediately to another house, much in the manner we are !amiliar with in handling orented movies. Some initial planning in the form of a schedule for each tape would make distribution a minimum .chore. In communities which have a loan library, the tapes might well be added .o the materials these libraries make available to the sis- .er$. If the initial project proved valuable, the religious :ommunity could then enlist the aid of other priests and ~adually build up a considerable library of conferences or its sisters. A continuous program of new tapes--per-haps two or three sets a year--would seem ideal. A more ambitious project would originate with the )riests themselves. Here a diocese, an order, or a province )f an order of religious men might prepare and make ~vailable to sisters taped conferences on the spiritual life. Fhis, as I see it, would.be somewhat comparable to the ,ery real service religious orders of men are now perform-ng in publishing such magazines as the Sponsa Regis and he Review for Religious. This notion has fascinfiting possibilities. Think of the )riests in the cloister, older priests and those physically 11, priests,committed to work in seminaries and chancery ffices--for all of these, the tape is a possible pulpit. Tapes ould annihilate distance and a sister in New Mexico Ta~d Conterences VOLUME 20, 1961 ÷ ÷ ÷ Sister Mary Janet, S.C,L. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS could listen to Dom Hubert yon Zeller. They could bring the greatest spiritual thinkers of our generation into the most humble convent and they could preserve those voices for the next generation, Perhaps more ambitious yet: some large central agency concerned with the welfare' of religious--such as the Con~ ference of Major_ Keligious Superiors of Women's Insti-tutes or the Sister. Formation Conference might under-take such a project on a large scale, establishing a library of tapes for circulation among member communities. A small membership fee for each house or a larger one for a commu_nity would, I believe, cover the expenses of the project. ~ ° ~" Of course, the three outlined plans are not mutually ex-clusive. Indeed, they might well supplement each other and so offer .the sister "an embarrassment of riches~' in helping her gr6w in the spiritual life. Objections there would be certainly~ and it would be unrealistic to bypass therefor to pretend they could all be obviated. Such a project, for instance, would make a new demand on.already overworked priests. A certain, amount of expense and organization and book work would be in-volved:. What of the: .process of obtaining 'ecclesiastical approval? Some 'people simply"do not like being "talked at" by a machine, Furthermore, just. what advantage would the tape have over the,book? There are ,no real 'anSwers to the problems of time and taste. But there are some answers to other questi.ons., Ec clesiastical permission could no doubt be worked 6ut in side already existing channels. And, although th~ book is probably superiOr to the tape, objectively, still theteache, who uses the record or the tape can tell you that ther~ are times when the spoken word is more powerful and moremeaningful than the written word. More positively, jus~ wh;it purpose would such a projecl serve? A number of uses come to mind: for novitiates;' fo, sisters under temporary vows, :for ,sister,formation groups for the bedridden and .those, such as surgery supervisors who are unable to be :at community exercises, for prepa ration in renewing vows. But the most general use is on~ that can perhaps be illustrated by what is not, I think, ar undomm6n., experience among religious women in thi country today. It is principally why I think of this as ~ proposal for small missions. .'., ' A sister is missioned in, a parochial school in a fair-sizec town for nine or ten months out of every year. Here, ex cept for the Sunday sermon' in the parish church and th~ occasional and very generalized exhortation of her con lessor, the sister receives no formal spiritual instruction Her community may try valiantly to supplement this die during, vacation periods by institutes, tertianship pro grams, and so on. And fortunately for the sister, the Church demands the annual retreat. For very many sisters this is the only spiritual oasis in the year. Making good, solid spiritual conferences available to such a sister would be, I submit, 'a major act of super-natural charity. Too, it would "lengthen the arm" of the priest--or better, extend his voice~ which is, after all, the voice of Christ. + ÷ + Taped Conleren~es VOLUME 20, ,.1761 127 R. F. SMITH, S.J. Survey of Roman Documents ÷ ÷ ÷ R. F. Smith, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 128 The documents which appeared in Acta Apostolicae Sedis (AAS) during October and November, 1960 will be surveyed in the following article. Unless otherwise speci-fied, all page references throughout the article will be to the 1960 AAS (v. 52). Allocutions and Messages On August 24, 1960 (AAS, 817-19), the Holy Father addressed the athletes gathered in Rome for the Olympic Games. He told the group that the purpose of athletics is not the winning of prizes but the proper development of the human body. However, he added, athletics not only affect the body by producing health, vigor, agility, grace-fulness, and beauty; but they also produce constancy, courage, and habits of self-denial in the soul. Hence he urged the athletes to fulfil in themselves the old saying, "A sound mind in a sound body." He concluded his al-locution by calling upon the group to observe the city of Rome closely and to see the role that Rome has played in the spread of the salvation and the charity that stem from the Gospel. Five days later, August 29, 1960 (AAS, 819-29), the Pope spoke to the officials and administrators of the Olympic Games. With this group he stressed his intense interest in world peace on the basis of the brotherhood that exists among all men. He also recalled to his listeners the rues sage of St. Paul that they should strive for a prize that higher and more durable than any earthly prize (1 Col 9:25). On August 28, 1960 (AAS, 829--30), the Vicar of Chris~ sent a radio message to the people of Peru on the occasior of their National Eucharistic-Congress. He pointed ou to them that the unity and brotherhood of men find thei~ origin in the fatherhood of God and are nourished at th~ Eucharistic table where Christ is received who died the salvation of all men and who is the principle of supernatural life for the entire human race. On September 16, 1960 (AAS, 821-24), the Holy Father delivered an allocution to the Fifth Thomistic World Congress. In the remarks that he made to th~ Congress, Pope John emphasized that the moral teaching of St, Thomas is always directed to the attainment of a super-natUral final end. He also said that the explanation and solution of moral problems according to the principles of St. Thomas will lead to remarkable results in. the way of peace for the Church and for the entire world. Hence, h'e continued, if his listeners succeed in presuading both man-agement and labor to know their respective rights and responsibilities, they will at the same time be leading them to follow Christ who is mankind's protector in this Hfe and its reward exceeding great in eternity. This, he said, will require a diligent study of the works of ~St. Thomas; and he called for a constant increase in the numbers of those who derive their light and learning from the works of the Angelic Doctor, This increase, he noted, should not only exist among priests and scholars, but also among all those interested in the humanities and especially among the young members of Catholic Action. To this end the Pope also urged the wider distribution of St. Thomas' writings in vernacular translations. On September 24, 1960 (AAS, 824-27), Pope John XXlII talked to a group of heart specialists in the hope, as he put it, of giving them a knowledge of the dignity of their profession in the light of Christian revelation. The Bible, he said, stresses the preeminent place the heart has in the human person. It is the heart from which come forth holy thoughts, wisdom, and virtue; it is the heart which leads man to rectitude, simplicity, and humility; it is with our whole heart that we are commanded to love God; and when the Son of God came to live among men, it was His Heart that he proposed to men as an example: "Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart" (Mr 11:29). Hence, he told his listeners, while a superficial view might think that a heart specialist is dealing only with a problem in human anatomy, in the eyes of faith and in reality he is concerned with a whole world of moral and religious values. Moreover, faith will show the doctor the beauty of his efforts as a scientist in quest for truth; at the same time the same faith will teach him how humble he must be in the face of the limitless immensity of God, Finally, faith will show the scientist the image of God in his fellow men and thereby transform all his relations with them. This effect of faith, the Holy Father added, is especially apparent in a profession like the medical one which is entirely devoted to suffering human beings. Hence in their work the doctors should recall frequently that what + + ÷ Survey ot Roman Documents VOLUME 20, 1961 ÷ ÷ R. F. Smith, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 130 they do for their patients they do for that Christ who will one day say to them: "I was sick, and you vi.sit,ed me" .(Mt 25!36). On October 1, 1960 (AAS, 827-28), the Pope received the King and Queen of Thailand and delivered to them an allocution of welcome and good wishes. A similar allo-cution was given by the Pontiff when he received the Prince and Princess of Liechtenstein on October 8, 1960 (AAS 828-29). On October 20, 1960 (AAS, 893-95), the Vicar of' Christ visited the new building of the Beda in Rome and spoke to the English seminarians in residence there. Since the Beda's new building is near the Basilica of St. Paul he urged his listeners to recall frequently the woi'ds of St. Paul: "By the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace in me has n0t been fruitless" (1 Cor 15:10). He went on to say that vocations are a tangible sign of the presence of God in the world; when God calls, a young man gives up family traditions, ambition, and earthly advantages and seeks only the glory of God, the sanctification of His name, the coming of His Kingdom, and the fulfilment of His will. He concluded his address by telling his listeners that each nation has its own treasure of traditions and of native virtue that can and must be transfigured into a precious instrument of the apostolate. Hence he urged them to take the well known English traits of humanity, gentlemanliness, and reflectiveness and transform them in the priestly activity they are called to engage in. On the same day the Pope also visited the new building that had just been completed to serve as a generalate and international house of studies for the Trappists. In the allocution that he gave for the occasion, the Holy Father t61d his listeners that the contemplative life constitutes one Of the fundamental structures of the Church; it has, he said, always been present in the two-thousand year history of the Church, constantly fruitful in virtue and con-stantly exercising a mysterious and powerful attraction for the loftiest and noblest souls. In praise of their vo-cation, Pope John cited to the Trappists the words of Plus XI (AAS, 26 [1934], 106) at the canonization of the Carmelite St. Teresa Margaret Redi: "It is these very pure and very lofty souls who by their suffering, their love, and their prayer silently exercise in the Church the most universal and most fruitful apostolate." He concluded his allocution by asking for the prayers of his listeners and of all the contemplatives of the world for the success of the coming ecumenical council. On October 25, 1960 (AAS, 898-903), the Holy Father spoke to the judges; officials, and lawyers of the Sacred Roman Rota. He told them that the dangers that weaken the institution of the family are accentuated at the present time, and he called the attention of all men of good will to the serious problem of the sanctity of marriage. In the first part of the allocution the Pope emphasized the need today for the instructi6n of the faithful r~egarding the dignity and the obligations of conjugal life. Marriage, he told them, is not only a natural reality; it is also a sacrament, a sign of grace and of that sacred reality, the espousal of Ch

Issue 15.4 of the Review for Religious, 1956. ; A. M. D. G. Review for Religious JULY 15, 1956 To The Sons of Ignatius . Pope Plus XII For the Greater Glory of God . Henry Willmerlng Sisters' RetreatsmlV . Thomas Dubey The Occasional Confessor . Meurlce B, Welsh Mother Theodore Guerln . Sister Eugenla Thoughts on Transfers . Winfr~d Herbsf Book Reviews Questions and Answers Communicafions VOLUME XV No. 4 R V EW VOLUME XV FOR RELIGIOUS JULY, 1956 NUMBER 4 CONTENTS TO THE SONS OF IGNATIUS--Pope Pius XII . 169 SOME PAMPHLETS . : . 172 FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF GOD--Henry Willmering, S.3. . 173 ST. IGNATIUS AND THE EUCHARIST . 176 PICTURE MEDITATIONS . 176 SISTERS' RETREATS--IV--Thomas Dubay, S.M . 177 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 184 THE OCCASIONAL CONFESSOR-~Maurice B. Walsh, S.3 . 185 VOCATIONAL FILMSTRIP . 188 MOTHER THEODORE GUERIN--Sister Eugenia . 189 PAMPHLETS . 201 THOUGHTS ON TRANSFERS---Winfrid Herbst, S.D.S . 202 COMMUNICATIONS . 206 BOOK REVIEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS-- Editor: Bernard A. Hausmann, S.J. West Baden College West Baden Springs, Indiana . 210 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 24. Obligation for Postulants ~o Make General Confession . 2i9 25. Helpful Canon Law Books . 220 26. Putting Water in Finger Bowl Before Mass . 220 27. Too much Canon Law in Constitutions? . 220 28. Why Frequent Mass in Black Vestments . 221 29. Beginning Noviceship While Hospitalized . 222 SOME BOOKS RECEIVED . ¯ . 224 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, July, 1956. Vol. XV, No. 4. Published bi-monthly: January, March, May, July, September, and November, at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, .Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter, January 15, 1942, at the Post Office, Topeka, Kansas, under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Augustine G. Ellard, S.3., Gerald Kelly, S.J., Henry Willmering, S.J. Literary Editor: Edwin F. Falteisek, S.J. Publishing rights reserved by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Permission is hereby granted for quotations of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U. S. A. Before writing o us, please consult notice on inside back cover. To the Sons d Igna!:ius Pope Pius XII [EDITORS; NOTE: We present here the text of the letter sent by the Holy Father to John Baptist Janssens, General of the Society of Jesus, on July 31, 1955. The footnote references have been omitted.] IT was a real joy for Us to hear that the Society of Jesus, which you, beloved son, have been governing for the past nine years, is about to celebrate with solemn festivities the memory of its holy founder on the fourth centenary of his death; to the end that all its m'embers may be aroused to a more ardent love of their beloved father and lawgiver, and a more perfect observance of his Institute. These centennial celebrations receive Our hearty approval and We join thereto Our prayers for their success, all the more willingly for the well-founded hope that rich benefits will flow from them not only to the sons of St, Ignatius but also to the souls of the faithful. For, just as by an" Apostol.ic Letter expressing Our affection on the occa-. sion of the fourth centenary of the founding of your Society, as a gesture of comfort to Ourselves as well as to you, "We reckoned up with gratitude those remarkable achievements which God in His providence had brought about in the course of the past four hundred years "through'the Society of old and today," so We take pleasure in recalling the same on this occasion as a precious pledge for the future. We are also happy to exhort you once more from the heart of a father to carry forward with untiring earnestness, especially in the spiritual sphere, all your activities, your ministries and everything by which you may give timely answers to the changing and ever-increas-ing needs of our own times. We have been informed that all your provinces throughout the world have with a will set themselves to celebrate this centenary year by devoting themselves with still greater zeal and fidelity to the Spi6tual Exercises of their father and founder and to spreading their use more Widely. In truth, St. Ignatius has left his sons no legacy more precious, more useful, more lasting than that golden book which,: from the time of Paul III, sovereign pontiffs and innumerable saints in the Church have frequently praised most highly. If there is truth in that which Father La Palma wrote, that the book of the Spiritual Exercises was the firstborn of St. Ignatius, the saintly author can be equally well said to have been the firstborn of those Exercises. They are what invigorated his soul with new life, guided his first steps in the way of perfection, increased his strength to enable him 169 POPE PIUS XII Review for Religions to choose the divine King wearied by toil, harassed by insults, sub-missive to torture and death in the service of His eternal Father, and to follow Him to the very summit of love, so that, ablaze with the fire of divine love, he ardently desired to bring not only himself, but the whole world, to the feet of Christ our Savior. Ignatius, who had tested the great force of these Exercises, on one occasion declared that in them was contained ".everything that is most excellent that I can think of, feel and comprehend in this life, to enable a man to make fruitful progress in his own soul, and be of benefit and a stimulus to others." So no one will be surprised that your saintly founder wished to be fully tested in these Exercises each one who desired in this Society "to fight God's battle under the banner of the Cross, and to serve solely our Lord and His Spouse, the Church, guided by the Roman Pontiff, Vicar of Christ on earth.'; He wished his sons to imbibe that spirit, which is the foundation of the Society, from the same source from which he had drunk his new life. This spirit is a mar-velous and holy ardor of mind, aroused by the grace of God work-ing in the Exercises, which would make them not only desirous, but prompt and eager, to devote themselves to God's glory, and for the sake of the same, to undertake exacting labors. Hence, forgetful of their own convenience, shunning leisure, devoted to the practice of prayer based on personal mortification, they would strive with all their might to attain the end proposed to them in the Society. Btit when Ignatius, authorized by Pope Paul III, Our predeces-sor of happy memory, later composed the Constitutions and gave them to his companions, his intention was not that rigid laws should replace the living and life-giving law of interior love. And after the Society was established, he did not lose sight of the meaning of that phrase, "to be at the special service of the Holy See" under the stand-ard of the Cross, that Cross to which Jesus Christ affixed the decree written against us, after He had wiped it out, so that all men might be freed from Satan's power and march in the light of faith and warmth of charity. The command given on Mr. Olivet sounded clearly in his ear: .',and you will be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth." Later Augustine would write: "spread charity through the whole world, if youl want to love Christ because Christ's mem-bers are throughout the world." And Ignatius himself was destined to see over a thousand of his followers serving under the standard of the Cross in the distant lands of Europe, America, India, Ethiopia. This was the beginning of that apostolate which would call his sons 170 ~ 1956 TO THE SONS OF IGNATIUS to the vast field of the I~ord, some to the heathen missions, which the popes over the years would be entrusting to them to till with un-remitting labor, exact knowledge, 'even with their blood; others tO labor close to heads of state, or among those oppressed by slavery; still others to direct schools of youth or to occupy university chairs; still others to give the Spir.itual Exercises to every class of men, or to enrich and brighten the world of letters by their writings. It will be for the Constitutions to open the road by which the whole So-ciety and all its members, though dispersed throughout the worId yet united to each other and its head by the same love of the eternal King, might in the spirit of the Ignatian Institute attain that perfect manner, of life which is the chief fruit of the Exercises. Beloved son, who of the Society, in this fourth centenary year, will not listen .to that word, once Paul's now Ignatius': "Be con-tent, brethren, to follow my example and mark well those who live by the pattern we have given them." Through God's goodness, the Society never lacked saintly men, who, exactly obedient to the Exer-cises of Ignatius, kept that pattern unmarred, and drew energy and strength to live precisely according to the Constitutions, so as to re-produce in themselves more perfectly that patte,rn, and work more effectively for souls. Plus VII, of immortal memory, sought men of this stamp when he wished to equip Peter's storm-tossed bark with strong, expert oarsmen; Holy Mother Church in these troubled times asks the Society for helpers of the same mould. May today's sons of Ignatius, therefore, strive to follow in their footsteps. Under the standard of the Cross may they stand firm against all the at[acks of the princes of this world of darkness. Loving and ready obedience must be shown to superiors, especially the Supreme Pontiff; this is their most honorable badge. To worldly desires, love of poverty must be opposed; to empty pleasure a certain austerity of life and un-tiring labor; to the discords and. quarrels of the world, gentle and peace-bringing brotherly love, love for each other and for all men; to materialism that sincere and earnest faith which always acknowl-edges and reverences the presence of God in the universe. If all this comes to pass, Ignatius, though dead, will live on in his sons. As We write these lines, dear son, with all the love of a father's heart, Our thoughts turn to those fathers and brothers who have suffered or are actually suffering bitter exile and torture at the hands of their persecutors. Surely they are most worthy sons, echoing the most glorious traditions of the Society of Jesus. They are confessors of the Catholic faith,, who are aft" honor to their brethren as well as 171 PoPE PIUS XII an example. May God strengthen them; most willingly do We bless them. But it is to all the softs of Ignatius that We extend our lov-ing greetings, begging God that under the patronage of your founder, father, and lawmaker, protected by the ever Blessed Virgin Mary, they may day by day increase in virtue, thus moulded by divine grace into a strong instrument so that all things may be guided aright by the di~,ine hand, and happily contribute to the greater glory of God. In testimony of Our special benevolence towards the Society of Jesus, We lovingly bestow on you, dear son, and on all those re-ligious throughout the world entrusted to your charge, the Apostolic Blessing. SOME PAMPHLETS All That 1 Want. The story of John F. Logsdon. Edited by Paschal Boland, O.S.B. Grail Publications, St. Meinrad, Indiana. Pp. 107. 25c. In Silence Before God. Examination of Conscience. By M. M. Philipon, O.P. Translated by A. M. Crofts, O.P. The Newman PresL Westminster, Maryland. Pp. 46. 30c. Family Limitation. Modern Medical Observations on the use of the 'Safe Period.' By John Ryan, M.B., B.S., F.R.C.S., F.I.C.S. Foreword by .Alan Keenan, O.F.M. Sbeed and Ward, 840 Broadway, N. Y. 3. Pp. 36. (Price not given.) Sacramentals, Medals, and Scapulars. By Winfrid Herbst, S.D.S. Society of St. Paul, 2187 Victory Blvd., Staten Island 14. Pp. 55. 35c. Your Child's Religious Liberty. By Virgil C. Blum, S.J. Catechetlcal Guild, Educational Society, St. Paul 2, Minnesota. Pp. 64. 15c. Mental Prayer. By Cyril Bernard, O.D.C. Clonmore and Reynolds, 29 Kildare St., Dublin, 1955. Pp. 48. 2/6d. The Canon of the Mass. By Dom Placid Murray, O.S.B. Part I deals with the history of the canon. Part II gives a new English translation. Here is new light on an old problem. Pp. 14. Fourpence. The Furrow, St. Patrick's College, May-nootb, Ireland. The following pamphlets are from the Queen's Work, 3115 S. Grand Blvd., St. Louis 18, Mo., and are 10c each. How Brave Can You Be? By Bakewell Morrison. S.J. Pp. 31. Personality and Mental Health. By Hugh P. O'Neill, S.J. Pp. 27. These Lucky Catholics. By Daniel A. Lord. S.J. Pp. 40. Mary's Morning Minute. Compiled by Florence Wedge. Pp. 40. Mary Always Remembers You. By T. N. Jorgensen, S.J. Pp. 32. What a Sinyle Girl Can Do fdr Christ. By W. B. Faherty, S.J. Pp. 32. Which Rites Are Right? By Brother Aurelian Thomas, F.S.C. Pp. 29. The Tree of Life. Also, Seven Supernatural Powers. By Rev. Joseph A. Lauritis, C.S.Sp. Holy Ghost Fathers, 1615 Manchester Lane, N.W., Washington 11, D. C. Pp. 32. 10c each. Why a Priest Is Called Reverend Father." By Dora Rembert Sorg, O.S.B. Plo Decimo Press, Box 53, Baden Station, St. Louis 15, Mo. Pp. 22. 20c. 172 For Ehe reat:er lory ot: Henry Willm.ering, S.J. THIS well-known maxim of St. Ignatius Loyola ,aptly expresses his devotion to a great cause: the. spread.of God s kingdom on earth. We consider here how he came by it, lived by it, prayed for it, suffered and died for it; and how, realizing that he could not carry out God's work alone, he gathered disciples about him, who embraced the same cause: namely, to pray, labor, and suffer for this ideal, the promotion of God's greater glory. Inigo of Loyola lived in an era of conquest and discovery. The year of his birth, 1491, marked the conquest of Granada and the liberation of Spain from Moorish rule. In this conquest Inigo's father took a prominent part. The next year Columbus discovered a new world; and during Inigo's youth great national heroes, like De Soto, Cortez and Pizzaro, added many provinces to the Spanish empire. A brother, Hernandez, died in the conquest of Mexico; and two otherbrothers fell on Europe's battlefields. What wonder that the youngest son of Loyola should wish to distinguish himself in the service of his ~sovereign majesty and devote his talents to the promotion of the greater glory of Spain. In this ambitious career, God halted him after his first display of heroism. A far nobler course and loftier ideal was revealed to him. He was invited to enlist in the service of an eternal King. But the thought of transferring his allegiance frightened him at first; it seemed so fantastic to give up a promising career and disappoint all his friends. After a hard struggle, he yielded to divine grace, though the plan he bad for the future was still rather vague and imaginative. After making a pilgrimage to Palestine, he thought he might live as a hermit: pray, fast, and practice other austerities, as did the saints, in atonement for his past sinful life. Before God can use an instrument for His purpose, He must first temper it in the fire of suffering. The desire of doing and suffering great things for God is often "an illusion of self-love, and nothing so effectively blocks the designs of God as this human failing. Accord-ingly Inigo had to be purged of every vestige of self-complacency. After a brief period of peace of soul and heavenly consolations, he was continually troubled with harassing fears and scruples. He re-doubled his penances and prolonged the time of prayer and sought relief in works of mercy, but all in vain. Neither repeated confes-sions, nor the. advice of spiritual directors offered him the least con- 173 HENRY WILMERING Reoieto For Reliqious solatioh. It was only after his soul had been stirred to its very depths and he-had been led to the brink of despair that finally he regained his composure of soul; and then he had, as he said, "mar- ,,ellous illuminations and extraordinary spiritual consolations." He seemed io himself like a new man, "who had been awakened from a 'drugged sleep." Ever after he had a different outlook on life and cdncentrated all his efforts and care on promoting the greater glory of God. During this period he began to note down material for what was to become the book of the Spiritual Exercises. Briefly he set down in writing the truths upon which he had meditated, the ex-periences through which he passed; and, by combining them into a systematic course, he forged a weapon that would be serviceable, not merely to the soldier who first wielded it, but which would pass from one generation to the next as a trenchant "sword of the spirit, th'at is the word of God." ¯ We so often emphasize the infinity, knowledge, and providence of Gc;d. In the Spiritual Exercises we find another aspect of the divine nature made central: the will of God. St. Ignatius points out to us that God has a purpose, a plan, a will for each one of us. His Mm ih the Exercises is to make men realize this important truth and to bring them to that disposition in which they will say with our Lord: "I seek not my own will, but the will of Him that sent me." Because God is infinitely wise and good, His will represents the o. nly thing in life worth living and dying for. The man who seeks continually to know and do God's will lives for the greater glory of God. St. Ignatius made this the bed-rock principle on which he built up his own spiritual life. So firmly did he hold to it, that some years before his death he could say, that for thirty years'he had never put off anything which had been de-cided for God's greater glory. As a trained soldier, however, be wished to receive God's orders through a. captaih. The thoughtful perusal of the life of Christ dur-ing his convalescence had convinced him that Jesus Christ was the divinely appointed leader, whom all must follow. Since the prin-ciples taught by our Lord are the expression of His Father's will, and the example of Christ is the norm by which we may measure our conformity to it, the imitation Of Christ is the fulfillment of God's. will. The ideal is, that even when "the praise and glory of God would be equally served, I desire and choose poverty with'Christ poor, rather than riches, in order to imitate and be in reality more FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF GOD like Christ our Lord; I choose'insults with Christ loaded with them, rather than honors; I desire to be accounted as worthless.and a fool for. Christ, rath'er than to be esteemed as wise and prudent in this world. So was Christ treated before me." Our divine'Lord had a mission entrusted to Him by His Father: to call all men to His standard and encourage them to embrace His principles. He trained apostles and sent them throughout the whole world to spread His doctrine among men. Similarly St. Ignatius gathered disciples," taught them the principl~s of Christ. through the Spiritual Exercises, and, when they were well trained, he sent them to every land to spread G0d's'kingdom and promote His greater glory by word and example. With a view to perpetuating this work, he organized his companions into a "company," and called it "the Company or Society of Jesus." That this new religious order should, meet with opposition and persecution was inevitable. It introduced many innovations in re-ligious discipline that were demanded by the spiritual labors it planned to carry on. In a period when drastic reforms were urgently called for amoog both clergy and laity in the Church and when heretics were preacl~ing their false proj6~ts of reform in almost every part of Europe, St. Ignatius and his companions set about effecting a true reform. By means of the Spiritual Exercises many prelates and priests were induced to seek not their own advantages in life but the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ. The preaching and teach-ing of Peter Faber, Peter Canisius, Claude LeJay, Alphonse Salmeron, and other Jesuits in countries infested with the new doctrine of the heretical reformers saved many districts for the Catholic faith and converted countless souls from heresy, Yet this activity caused them to be calumniated, persecuted, and drixien from place to place. Along with their Founder, they bore such ill treatment #ith admirable fortitude and patience. Once when St. Ignatius was asked what was the most certain road to perfection, he answered, "To endure many and grievous afflictions for the love of Christ." Once the Society was founded and bechosen to direct the same, Ignatius lived in Rome for the rest of his life. He took the deepest interest in all the labors carried on by his companions and invariably showed the affection of a devoted father to every member whom he admitted into his Society. He ardently longed to share their labors: and, even when broken with age and infirmity, he said that should the Holy Father order it, he would immediately set out for any part of the world to spread God's kingdom. He was asked one day which 175 HENRY WILMERING he would prefer: to die immediately with a guarantee of his salvation ' or to continue for some years more, with opportunities of helping souls but with no guarantee at the end. Knowing his burning zeal for God's gIory and his all-consuming zeal for souls, we are pre-pared to hear that he. declared for the second alternative. Now four hundred years have passed since his death. Ever since and in every land the sons of St. Ignatius in his spirit and according to his principles have labored for God's greater glory. He is ranked by the Church among the great founders of religious orders, Sts. Benedict, Francis of Assisi and Dominic; and rightly so. As a prac-tical organizer and great lover of Christ, he served his Leader and King with an un'divided heart and induced numberless souls to live, labor, suffer, and die for the greater glory of God. ST. IGNATIUS AND THE EUCHARIST Few people realize the tremendous efforts of St. Ignatius Loyola and his early followers in behalf of frequent Communion. A thorough study of their Eucharistic apostolate was published in 1944 by Father ,Justo Beguiriztain, 8.2., on the oc-casion of the Fourth National Eucharistic Congress of Buenos Aires. The Spanish original has recently been translated by 3bhn H. Collins, S.,I., and published in a very attractive form under the title The Eucharistic Apostolate of St. Igr~atius Loyola. It is an excellent souvenir of this Ignatian centenary. Price:' $I.00. Order from: Loyola House, 297 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston 15, Mass. PICTURF.' MEDITATIONS Father Aloysius ,L Heeg, S,J., has prepared four charming booklets entitled Picture Meditations for the use of all who want to learn and practice a simple form of mental prayer. Each booklet contains seven meditations on the life of Christ, and each meditation is illustrated by a picture in full color. Not only are the booklets ideal for teaching youth the practike of mental prayer and, for helping the sick to pray~ but they should also be very useful for religious who find it hard to concentrate during the period of mental prayer. There are also two picture rolls. each containing 14 full-color enlargements (21x33 inches) o'f the pictures in the booklets. The price of the booklets is 10 cents each, 35 cents per set; special quan-tity prices. The price of each picture roll is $2.15 net. Order from: The Queen's Work, 3115 South Grand Boulevard, St. Louis 18, Missouri. 176 Sist:ers' Retreats--IV Thomas Dubay, S.M. WrE leave now in this series of articles problems dealing with retreat approaches, techniques, and mechanics and enter the less tangible realm of understanding and aims. While less palpable, these latter are at least equally crucial if not more so. UNDERSTANDING OF RETREATANTS' NEEDS Judging from their conferences and meditations, do you think that retreat masters understand your rea! spiritual needs? __yes, very well __sometimes yes, sometimes no __no, not too well Further comment (space provided) With this question the sisters were invited on to thin ice, for it can be at times genuinely difficult to know if one is understood or not. However, even though certain knowledge may often be impos-sible on this point, opinion is not: and it is the latter that was sought. Of those answering the question 192 (27.8 %) thought that re-treat masters understand their needs very well; 466 (67.7%) be-lieved that some priests are successful on this score and some are not; and 31 (4.5 %) thought that retreat masters usually do not under-stand them. The overall picture is a trifle disconcerting, not chiefly because of those in the third category, but because of the high percentage of sisters in the second. Any physician likes to think that he under-stands the patient, and any retreat master hopes that he possesses at least a good general understanding of a majority of the sisters' needs. However, it seems questionable their a large number of retreat masters hold.the sisters' confidence on this point. That a considerable num-ber of priests do hold that confidence cannot be doubted, but none-theless we would like to think that all enjoyed it. But most clouds have a silver lining, and we need not look in vain for a cheering side to this problem. The sisters' readiness to understand the difficulties the retreat master faces and charitably to explain any lack of understanding on his part is encouraging. We think that this spirit of kindliness is evident in their further corn-ments: It is difficult for a priest not living your rule to understand your spiritual needs. He tries his best, but he sometimes draws on his knowledge of other communities. A friendly chat on various subjects with the superior before retreat might help. .17,7 THOMAS DUBAY Review [or Religious This is only natural. Religious life among women differs from that among men just ~as] the dispositions of men "and women differ. How can the retreat master understand unless the Holy Spirit enlightens? A sister can usually tell the first day whether such is the case. Some priests seem afraid to get down to particulars--everything is so general that it i~ va.gue. Those who are teachers themselves seem to understand our spir.itual needs as teach-ing religious better than those whose main work is giving retreats. Sometimes I'd like to interrupt and say something like, "Yes, I know, but I can't .do that: this is my problem, see?" But on the whole they are understanding. Very few retreat masters understand the life of a hospital sister. It is very hard to be united to our dear Lord, because everything is rush, rush in hospital work today. We are sometimes too tired to pray. A really good retreat master is rare! Most do not understand the psychology of women. They miss real evils in religious life and fail to get at real problems. They judge what needs to be talked about by confessional difficulties which their own talks have often inspired. Many times they hit the nail on the head. Too frequently a retreat master judges by his own life and community. The activ-ities of nuns and their life is very different. Amazingly well. Too much attention, I think, is given to the needs of the purgative way and too little of a challenge to advancing sanctity. Because they are busy we get their courses which aren't what we need when our physical and mental state is mighty weary. The master would needs be pretty good to know all the spiritual needs of nuns. mean real feminine needs for a virile spirituality. Most priests do a pretty good job. Sometimes I feel they're not too patient with our problems. Sometimes I don't think they understand all the interior struggles of women. Wo-men are not, unfortunately, as "'manly" as men are. They can be very petty. Depends on the individual. Then, too, it is hard to reach everyone from age 20-80, engaged in all kinds of work. If the retreat master wants to know, he might pass out questionnaires after the retreat. Most of the time. It would seem that the more fully they live their own religious life the better their grasp of the problems of others. They try to, I believe, so why not give them credit? If one comes along who's dull, I make my own retreat find a good spiritual book for in between and get my spiritual needs supplied there. God's grace helps. Essentially our needs are the same and it is up to the individual and grace poured in to put his words to work (application). I love retreats for that reason--the exercise of that part of soul and brain! 178 July, 1956 SISTERS".RETREATS--IV Too often they seem to"forget we have voluntarily chosen a life of striving for per-fection and are therefore not, interested in minimum standards. It might be well "for us to single out for explicit mention the precise problems that the sisters think cause or occasion a lack of understanding in the retreat master: 1. The psychological differences between men and women. 2. Differences in the religious life as lived by men and as lived by~ women with the consequent failure to see the real problems in the latter. 3. Differences in the religious life as lived by different communi-ties of women. 4. Problems connected with particular kinds of work in which the sisters engage, e.g., teaching and nursing. 5. Tendency to be vague due probably to a lack of application of principles to concrete cases. 6. The assumption that sisters are interested only in mediocre goodness. The last two observations lead us naturally to the next sections of this article. HEIGHTS OF HOLINESS Thus far in our study the reader may have noticed that one of the deepest and most frequently reoccurring undercurrents causing muddy retreat waters is the wide variety in personality, background, and gifts of grace found in the sisters making any retreat. Perhaps nowhere in our study is this undercurrent more in evidence than in the present question, dealing as it does with the heights of sanctity. What one religious considers the "heights" another may regard as a mere stepping stone. A goal that discourages one religious may serve merely to whet the spiritual appetite of another. And, to make the truth all the more difficult to discover, most of the sisters in registering their affirmative or negative views are talking about entirely different retreats and retreat masters. We might reasonably hope for more agreement if all had made the same retreats. At most, therefore, we can seek to bring common ideas into relief and through them work out retreat approaches that will serve to meet the spiritual aspirations of even greater numbers of religious. The question put to the sisters was worded as follows: Do you think that retreat masters ordinarily urge you sufficiently to the very heights of holiness? ~yes __no Further comment" 179 THOMAS DUBAY Reoieto [or Religious A majority of the respondents, 410 (63.1%), felt that their retreat masters usually did urge them sufficiently to the heights of sanctity. Many of these sisters pointed out the fact that some of their retreat masters did not so urge them to sanctity but that most of them did. A minority of 240 (36.9%) were of the opinion that ordinarily their retreat masters did not do enough urging to the heights of holiness. Again the importance of the word "ordinarily" in the question was brought out in that here also some sisters in-dicated that an occasional priest was an exception to their statement. The sisters' further comments cgnnot fail to throw light on the problem. Respondents voting "yes": The greater number of retreat masters were splendid spiritual men with a fund of understanding human nature. Much or almost all depends on the retreatant herself. I believe in climbing the heights of holiness: however, most of us keep firmly on "'terra /irma" and practice observance of the rule which eventually will help us to attain sanctity. In a general way they do. I think they ought to do more of it in the confessional. Ordinarily retreat masters have that ability. Sometimes it is the sister's fault. Either she gets a poor start because she is so tired or she is not well physically. And some-times she does not work hard enough. Retreat masters cannot do it all. What is sufficient for a group, many members of which need'practical advice, is not necessarily sufficient for every individual. This answer is relative. I think this is my own fault because I am not fully relaxed or able to concentrate. Our life is so full of activity. We go from one thing to another all in working to save souls, but I think we need to take more time out to consider our own heights of holiness. Yes, and it helps very much if they use the small everyday occurrences and show us how to use these as stepping stones. This, no matter how often it is repeated, never gets old. I just wait for a retreat to hear this again--to open my eyes again. At the close of every retreat I feel like a new person, ready to conquer the world for Christ. Retreat masters certainly encourage holiness. Yes. I have my troubles trying to reach the heights I've heard about. Nevertheless, it all serves to make me very thirsty anyway. Maybe some day--who knows? We have had very good retreat masters these.last years. I don't blame the retreat masters for my lack of spirituality. They most likely remember that there are weak and strong souls, and therefore most of them' stick to a happy medium. Otherwise the weak would end in dis-couragement. It is often the retreatants' fault if they do not cooperate in heeding the good ad-vice retreat masters present, that they do not advance in holiness. Again we do not reflect seriously enough on the many beautiful truths explained to us. We feel and 180 dul~ , 1956 SISTERS' RETREATS--IV depend [sic] too often that it is the retreat master's task, rather than ours, to make the retreat profitable for our spiritual welfare. Normally the idealtis well presented and one leaves the retreat aiming high. The trouble lies not with the retreat master, but with th'e individual in carrying out the good resolutions formulated. Respondents voting "no": Not in a definite and practical way. The human element too often is used as a modifier--and we use that very skillfully ourselves. No, but the one who pointed persistently to those heights has influenced my life more than any other. Very few point to supreme holiness as a possible achievement. I would say, out of the 14 retreats I have made, in only two of them did the retreat master approach this. Perhaps they wish to be too considerate of our feelings. So they highly praise the very least we do, and are inclined to consider it sufficient to discuss just average or ordinary goodness. No one can impart to others what he himself does not possess. Holiness cannot be found or imparted in eloquent terminology. Many do not cha!leng~ the sisters to strive for great holiness. What they say is good, but they do not go far enough. Even if one soul answered the call and rose to eminent sanctity, much (vould be accomplished. Too much emphasis on the trite. Some conferences taken from books. Sometimes A waste of time to listen. More help could be gleaned from reading a go~d spiritual book. Many seem, like all too many sisters, content with "getting by." I think each of us longs for sanctity or at least at times longs to be aroused to do so. This I think is the retreat master's grand opportunity. We all entered religion to become holy. The evidence here advanced certainly does not warrant any blanket conclusion or recommendation. Many retreat masters are manifestly doing a superb job of leading these spouses of Christ to sublime reaches of sanctity. Others might profitably examine both themselves and their message to see if they are teaching the complete and undiluted doctrine of the saints both by example (in-sofar as in them lies) and by word. All in all we may conclude that sisters do decidedly want to be urged to the heights, but in a way that (1) does not discourage the "weak," (2) spurs on the generous, (3) enlightens all, and (4) is practical and concrete. IMPLICATIONS OF SANCTITY Our last point above brings us to the next item of inquiry: in retreats is the perfection of holiness (attainable in this life) clearly 181 THOMAS DUBAY Reoieto for Religious explained both in what it is and in how it is to be reached? The question as put to the sisters was worded thus: Do they usually explain sufficiently what those heights really involve and how they are to be reached? ~.yes __no Further comment : Of those answering the question 339 (53.8%) replied in the affirmative and 291 (46.2%) in the negative. It is interesting to note that a considerable number of sisters shifted their yes vote in the previous question to a no in the present one. There were also some--much fewer in number--who did the opposite, i.e., who shifted their no vote to a yes. These split votes would seem to in-dicate that approximately one-half of the sisters questioned are dis-satisfied with some one or both aspects of the retreat master's treat-ment of this matter of perfection. On the other hand, of course, it also indicates that approximately one-half are satisfied with both aspects' and that more than half are content with at least one or other of them. The mere numerical compilation points to the fact that more of the sisters are satisfied with the amount of urging to sanctity than with the explanation of what sanctity is and bow it can prac-tically be attained. This conclusion is confirmed by the observations of the respondents who selected the negative answer. Sisters voting "yes" commented: Yes, but I don't think they make these heights sufficiently desirable. This could be explained really adequately only over a long period of time. I think they do so as well as time and circumstances allow. Yes, I suppose they do, but some retreat masters make it seem more real and actually possible of attainment than others. Perhaps I only say this because I'm a very young religious. In general, yes. Again, they can't reach everyone present. It's much like a classroom procedure--some can't absorb the rfiatter. They explain the heights of sanctity very thoroughly. The main thing is living our rule and vows to the utmost. Personally, I feel I am not ready for the heights. I must first get a footing on the road to holiness. Perhaps most of us feel the same way about it and "the retreat master must help us make the first steps rather than scale the heights. Yes, but the manner is often presented as being very difficult rather, than as something to be faced with joy and confidence. I have always found great satisfaction through the spiritual guidance of the retreat master. 182 dulg, 1956 SISTERS' RETREATS--.IV Some do. Others, it seems, get lost in lesser details. Let us have a clear-cut picture of ends. They aren't too great for us to try. It is wonderful to struggle after great prlzes--more wonderful than to win the lowest. Sisters registering negative views: Never have I heard a really good explanation of this sort in a general retreat medi-tation. I don't think so. It seems to me to be too idealistic and not practical enough. It gives the desire but often not the way . Perhaps I have stressed the practical too much, but young religious still have the ideals and theories in mind, but often lose the ideal in trying to apply it to daily life. This may be the opposite with older religious, I don't know. I think that a theme or subject of the entire retreat which is stressed in every conference will be long remembered by the sisters. Practical ex-amples from daily life and lives of the saints are also helpful. Many religious do not know the graces God has in store for those who give all. Nor do they know the sufferings involved. But if the door of God's grace were thrown wide .open before them, they would want the sufferings involved. I've made retreats already xvhere I went back to the notes of other retreats in order to get sufficient material for a meditation, or for motivation to greater sanctity. Do you think. Father, that enough retreat masters have a central idea or in simple words have some theme about which they weave their meditations? Many times one comes out with fragments rather than one piece from" which to take a slice during the year as the need presents itself. They often explain in very general terms, e.g., in regard to the degrees of humility. But really, you can't give what you haven't got; therefore, only holy priests can do this satisfactorily. Sometimes too much emphasis is placed on (mere) ascetic life. I have met sisters who recoil at the mere word of mysticism, which is no other thing than a very close union with God. We want that, but we don't know how to go about it. Mystical union is a free gift of God, but even that should be explained. It involves sacrifice and generosity, but I think that if we realize better the tremendous grace of union witb God, we will be more ready to immolate our petty likes and comforts. I hope it is not unfair to our retreat masters to give them such a negative rating. But I do not believe their training prepares them adequately to do a competent job in explaining these matters to sisters. They either evade the topic, or suggest it is not for "ordinary" people, or emotionalize, etc. All of which leaves one with a lurking suspicion--and perhaps we are speaking euphemistically--that all is not quite as rosy as he might hope. These questions dealing with being understood and with attaining sanctity are crucially important, and yet it appears that many sisters are not satisfied with the treatment they are receiv-ing in retreats. Allowance certainly must be made for the variables of back-ground and spiritual development often so intimately bound up with problems of this type. But yet there are too many negative 183 THOMAS DUBAY votes to allow for any great stress on so facile an explanation. Per-haps the praise and/or blame involved in the varying responses are to be borne to some considerable extent by the [ndio[dtml retreat master. If this diagnosis be correct, the remedy lies in no blanket recom-mendation, no handy adage that is cut for every case. Each ~etreat master should appoint himself a committee of one to discover by every possible means whether or not he--not retreat masters in gen-eral, but he in particular--understands the sisters, whether he urges them to sanctity sufficiently and explains it adequately. To make this discovery a careful analysis of each of the sisters' written comments would probably be of immense help. For ex-ample, on reading the statement of a hospital sister that retreat masters often fail to understand her problems, the master would do well to examine carefully just how much he knows about the prob-lems of nursing religious and how capably he handles them. Or on noticing that some sisters complain of being urged only to mediocre holiness, the retreat master should examine his own attitudes, medi-tations, and conferences to discover whether or not they escape the censure. We feel--and so do many of the sisters--that a good percentage of our retreat masters would come out of such a self examination with flying colors. Those who would issue forth with slightly droop-ing standards would have lost nothing, but rather they would have gained much for God, for themselves, and for consecrated souls. OUR CONTRIBUTORS HENRY WILLMERING, a member of the editorial board for REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, is a professor of Scripture at St. Mary's College, St. Marys' Kansas. THOMAS DUBAY teaches theology and homiletics at Marist College, Washington, D. C., the major seminary of the Marist Fathers' Washington Province. MAURICE WALSH, a professor of canon law at Westo~ College, Weston, Mass., is a mem-ber of the Fordham Mission Institute and has recently returned after several months spent as canonical consultant in the chancery of the newly erected diocese of Kingston, Jamaica. SISTER EUGENIA, editor of the Coleridge Concordance, is vice-presi-dent of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, and supervisor ,of the high schools of the Sisters of Providence. WINFRID HERBST is'spiritual father at the Divine Savior Seminary, Lanham, Maryland. 184 The Occasional Cont:essor Maurice B. V~ralsh, S.J. CANONICAL legislation on confessors for religious women seeks to combine two contrasting advantages--advantages which are not always easy to reconcile: a) The requirement of peculiar jurisdiction for the confessor seeks to assure continued and competent spiritual direction in the confessional for sisters. b) At the same time, proper liberty and peace of conscience is protected by provision for extraordinary, supplementary, special, and occasional confessors. Historically, ' it is the first point (a) which early received em-phasis, with a trend more and more in the direction of personal liberty (b). The trend towards greater freedom in the matter of confes-sion for religious women has continued even since the publication of the Code of Canon Law, especially in the interpretation of canon 522, which provides for the so-called "occasional confessor": "If, notwithstanding the prescriptions of canons 520 and 521, any re-ligious, for the peace of her conscience, has recourse to a confessor approved by the local ordinary to hear the confessions of women, this confession, whether made in a church or oratory, even a semi-public oratory, is valid and lawful, every contrary privilege being revoked; nor may the superioress prohibit it or make any enquiry concerning it, even indirectly;, and the religious are under no obliga-tion to inform the superioress on the matter." Since 1918, the interpretation o~ this canon has become gradu-ally more liberal in canonical works. Authentic interpretations of the canon have genera!ly resolved doubts in the direction favoring freedom of choice.1 The same trend towards freedom is seen in 1Thus," the confession is lawful and valid not only in a church or chapel but also in another place legitimately designated (Code Commission. November 24, 1920). Though the requirement of the proper place is for the validity of the con-. fession, "have recourse" in the canon does hot mean that the religious herself cannot summon the confessor (Code Commission. December 28, 1927). The permission of superiors is not required, but the canon gives no exception from domestic disci-pline or the rule, nor are superiors required to grant any such exception in order to provide the occasional confessor (Private Letter of the Secretary of the Congregation of Religious, December 1, 1921---reported in the Canon Law Digest). Further-more, the place "legitimately designated" wherein the confession may be heard law-fully and validly does not exclude a place designated for a particular instance or one legitimately selected by the confessor himself (Code Commission. February 12, 1935). 185 MAURICE B. WALSH Reoiet~ ~or Religious the De Religiosis section of the Code for the Oriental Church, pro-mulgated in 1952. In the canon which parallels canon 522 of the Latin Code, the lawful place is not required for the validit~l of the confession heard by the occasional confessor. (The Commission for the Interpretation of the Code declared on December 28, 1927, that the circumstance of lawful place was a condition of validity for Latins.) The new Oriental discipline does make the special juris-diction required less stringent: it may even foreshadow a similar relaxation for the Latin Church, if and when a new edition of the Latin Code is promulgated. While canonical commentaries on canon 522 published in the 1920's were inclined to stress the necessity of authorization'and the benefits of continuity in confessional direc-tion, those published in the 1940's and 1950's tend more to warn against the dangers of undue interference in the choice of a confessor. A good many periodical articles have been published on the occasional confessor, both scientific and popular; the majority seem to bare had as their purpose the warning of superiors to be liberal in making the use of the occasional confessor possible. In fact, the last canon of the Code itself, canon 2414, is a sort of Demosthenic whip which lashes the overstrict mother superior wh6 refuses to grant her subjects the liberty of confession which the law concedes them. Perhaps the canonists, too, have done more than their share of lashing at poor mother superior in this matter. But--if you. will let me mix my metaphors--there is another side of the coin, and a good many suffering mothers superior probably would like to see a canonist flip it in the other direction for a change. The Canon Law in this matter still aims at the double benefit-- continued and authorized (therefore, presumably competent) con-fessional direction as well as freedom of choice. Some mothers su-perior have mentioned to me real problems that have arisen because canonists may have overstressed the liberty of the sisters in the choice of the occasional confessor. Some sisters have not always been en-tirely reasonable in their requests (or demands), either to 1~ave the convent at odd times for confession or to bare a particular confessor summoned on the spot. Requests of this sort are not easy to refuse. True, superiors are not obliged to disrupt domestic discipline or even to grant any special permissions in order that a sister may have the opportunity of confessing "for peace of conscience" according to canon 522. Still, in the light of all that has been written on the dangers of obstructing freedom of conscience (and the dangers are real), many have been inclined to accede to all requests in this mat- 186 Sulg, 1956 THE OCCASIONAL CONFESSOR ter, even when the request may seem to be, and is, unreasonable. There is no denying the fact that this general inclination on the part of many superiors is a good result of the present widespread knowl-edge of canon 522. If there has to be an error, it is better that it be in this direction rather than in the opposite. These few com-ments do tend towards that "opposite," because I am a little unwill-ing (perhaps unreasonably) to admit the absolute necessity of error in either direction. Occasional use of the concession ofcanon 522 is certainly proper and may even be necessary for the peace of soul of an individual religious. It would be Polyannish to assert that every ordinary con-fessor of every convent is always fully competent as a confessor of religious. Aside from the Missions, more normally the ordinary confessor is not himself a religious; many zealous secular priests have become good confessors for religious, but certainly no priest miracu-lously acquires by the mere fact of episcopal appointment the pro-found knowledge of religious life desired in an ordinary confessor. Even if the ordinary confessor be a religious, his profession of the religious state does not make him automatically the best confessor for every confession of every religious in the community. Where the ordinary confessor is less competent, there is likeli-hood of more frequent occasion for the use of canon 522. But even in this case, the occasional confessor is to be used (as the name in-dicates) only on occasion. If the occasions become so frequent that the .occasional confessor, without any authorization of the bishop, becomes equivalently the ordinary confessor of the community or the special confessor of an individual sister, then at least the lawfulness of these confessions may be called in question. In these cases, the occasional confessor is assuming that continued or habitual direction which requires episcopal appointment. Similarly, if a sister con-stantly "shops around" so that she really has no regular confessor, she has simply dispensed herself from that continuity of confessional direction which has always been required and which still is required of religious. This does not mean that canon 522 is to be used "for peace of conscience" only in a crisis and for the solution of an acute spiritual need. It would be erroneous to suppose (as some seem to do) that the occasional confessor is provided only for the case where the sister might find it embarrassing or extremely difficult to confess a particular sin to a priest who knows her and all the members of the community. Some have the false impression that this canon is pro- 187 MAURICE B. ~v'ALSH vided only as a kind of emergency exit, as an absolutely last resort. The Church intends canon 522 as much more than an emergency exit. On occasion, occasionall~, any sister is justified in using it merely for greater devotion, as a mearis of getting out of the mechanical routine of weekly confessions; this use, too, is for bet "peace of conscience." I suppose one might say the canon may just as well be used for pre-serving the peace as for stopping the war. A sister does not need a serious problem of conscience in order legitimately to use canon 522 for the peace of her conscience. The misuse of the canon comes when a notable proportion of confessions are made to the occasional confessor or confessors. Ex-cessive demands for a special confessor or too frequent recourse to the occasional confessor may be a sign of spiritual pride. A sister can rather easily deceive herself into thinking she is something of a mystic, that her spiritual life should become a full-time job for the best spir-itual advisor available, that the best is not at all too good for her. She can exaggerate the need for peculiar competence in the task of guiding her spiritual destinies. Too much solicitude about the choice of her confessor is rather a sign of spiritual immaturity than of real growth in sanctity. Perhaps I might try to sum up all these observations in this way. Canon 522 helps keep the balance between the two desired ends of competent, continued confessional direction and of that liberty in the choice of a confessor which favors peace of conscience. Much has been written to combat the abuse whereby canon 522 is unduly re-stricted. Though the opposite viewpoint has been less stressed, the too-frequent use of canon 522 is also an abuse. Clearly the canon is.being misused when there results a lack of continuity in confes-sional direction or a continuity which is unauthorized by the bishop. VOCATION FILMSTRIP Behold the Handmaid of the Lord is an audio-visual, full-color filmstrip repre-sentation of a specific religious vocation. It comprises !06 frames, two 10-inch LP records, and a teacher's manual. Price: $18.75. Order from: Sisters of Christian Charity, Mallinckrodt Convent, Mendbam, New Jersey--or from: Sisters of Chris-tian Charity', Maria Immaculata Convent, \Vilmette, Illinois. 188 Mot:her Theodore Guerin Sister Eugenia Foundress of the Sisters of Providence ~ of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana IN the designs of providence times of great struggle and great need in the world bring to light great leaders. This is true riot less in the world of religion than it is in the political sphere. Such a woman, a leader of eminent character, is the subject of this sketch. Born in the little seaside town of fltables, on the northern coast of Brittany, on October 2, 1798, Anne-Th~r~se Gu~rin entered the world in the turbulent and unsettled period of the post-revolutionary days of the Directory. She was given as much education as was avail-able at that tim~ and was fortunate in having a cousin, a young dis-placed seminarian, to direct her study and reading during her adoles-cent years. Her family was a deeply pious one but tried by unusual misfortunes. Her father, an officer in Napoleon's navy, was attacked and killed by brigands on his way home on a furlough. One brother bad been burned to death in an accident just before the father's death; and these calamities so unnerved the sorely tried Madame Guerin, that Anne-Th~r~se, at fifteen years of age, had to take over the man-agement of the home and the care of the remaining two children. Anne-Th~r~se had a strong inclination to the Carmelites, but her home duties prevented any such step. For ten years more, she remained with her family; and, at twenty-five years of age, she en-tered the young Community of the Sisters of Providence at Ruill& sur-Loir. This community, established in 1806 by a fe~v pious women, h, ad, since 1811, taken on a recognized form. Under Mother Marie Madeleine du Rosc6at (1817-1822), and Mother Marie, her successor, the community began to increase. Founded by Pere Jean- Fraricois Dujari~, the cur~ of Ruill&sur-Loir, the little community was governed by this holy priest, conjointly with the Brothers of St. Joseph whom he had also founded. He administered the affairs of the communities thus allied and financed them from a common purse, but after 1827 the two communities were separated. Under the direction of Mother Marie, the Sisters of Providence carried on a fruitful apostolate. Some misunderstandings arose between sub-jects and superiors over the separation, and these were the cause of sorrow for those involved, and for those who were innocently drawn into them. In 1823, while Pere Dujari~ still was active in the affairs of the 189 SISTER EUGENIA Review for Religious sisters, Anne-Th~r~se Guerin entered Ruill~-sur-Loir. From the first her superior qualities of mind and heart were manifested. The bene-fits of her careful education, her good judgment, and maturity of mind soon inclined her superiors to regard Sister Theodore as a most promising subject. Even though ill-health, to which she was always subject, showed itself in her year of novitiate, nevertheless, she was admitted to profession and named as local superior of a large estab-lishment at Rennes. During her incumbency here, she demonstrated that the confidence reposed in her had been justified. She was suc-cessful, not only in reforming the school affd the children of a troublesome district, but her influence extended through the children to the homes. What had been a disorderly parish became a model and well-regulated region. From this large place, Sister Theodore was changed to a little country parish of Soulaines. Here she had the opportunity of study-ing medicine and ph.armacy under the local physician and later sup-plemented this instruction by courses under Dr. LeCacheur in Paris. Her work in the parish school drew the attention of the inspectors of the neighboring academy at Angers, and medallion decorations from the French Academy were conferred upon her publicly in the presence of the cur~ and the town authorities for the excellence of her methods in mathematics. In addition to her scholastic achievements, she had interested a local nobleman, M. de la Bertaudiere, in the ruinous condition of the church; and as a consequence, a handsome and costly edifice was erected. This phase of her missionary life in France was soon to come to an end. In 1839, Pete de la Hailandi~re, named auxiliary bishop with the right of succession to the See of Vincennes, learned in Paris of the death of the saintly Bishop Brute. Accordingly, the new pre-late was consecrated in Paris and began to gather together missionary sisters and priests for the Vincennes diocese. When his plans for a group of sisters from a community at Ribeauville were frustrated, the Bishop came to Mother Marie to ask for a group to make the foundation. Before going to America, he had been stationed at Rennes and knew the Sisters of Providence there. The thought of a foreign mission had never been entertained by the Sisters of Providence; but even so, Mother Marie proposed the mission to the voluntary action of the community. Sister Theodore did not volunteer, feeling that her poor health would be a disad-vantage to any new foundation. However, when Mother Marie represented to her that unless she would head the mission, it could 190 dulg, 1956 MOTHER THEODORE GUERIN not otherwise be made, Sister Theodore gave her consent; and im-mediate preparations for the departure were begun. Friends were kind and interested in helping them with the financial concerns of their trip, and very soon the foundress and her chosen five sisters ~vere prepared for their new venture. Much of the information concerning America that had reached France dealt with the lives of the missionaries among the Indians, and certainly the imaginative narratives of La Rochefoucauld clothed the United States in an aura of romance. The novels of J. Fenimore Cooper, and his "noble Indians" were widely known and had, in fact, contributed to the foundation of Sainte Marie, Illinois. But of the igrivations and the vast loneliness of the forests very little was stressed. The sisters, however, were little concerned with romance and adventure. They were going into the New World to save souls and to answer the plea that Bishop de la Hailandi~re had made for the pioneers who were venturing into the newly opened lands of the Midwest. They hoped to spread the Faith here and to keep up the good work begun in Indiana. The technical details of government and the relationship and de-pendence of the new foundation upon the French mother house were discussed by the two bishops, Bishop J. B. Bouvier of Le Mans and Bishop de la Hailandi~re of Vincennes. The discussed points were agreed upon in writing: Mother Theodore was to be foundress and remain superior general of the Indiana mother house and all subse-quently formed establishments until the two bishops should jointly decide upon a change of administration; the sisters from Ruill6 might return to Ruill~ if they became dissatisfied in America, but Ruill6 would not assume responsibility for the American subjects. That was to be Mother Theodore's work. Mother Theodore also interviewed a young girl, Irma Le Fer de la Motte, who had intended to go to Vincennes with the sisters from Ribeauville; but, since that plan had failed, she entered the novitiate at Ruill~ with the intention of joining Mother Theodore as soon as her novitiate year was completed. Delicate, frail, and "good for nothing except to pray," as Mother Marie declared, this young sister was to function as a cofounder with Mother Theodore when she came to Indiana the next year and by her firmness and loyalty put to shame many a stronger person. Finally the little expedition set out in July, 1840, on the mer-chant ship, the Cincinnati. A timely gift of 3000 francs from Countess de Marescot was a godsend to them as their finances were 191 SISTER EUGENIA Religious limited. The "fifty days of penance," as Mother Theodore called the voyage, certainly merited the name. Mother Theodore herself was prostrated with seasickness accompanied by an inflammatory fever and lay practically at death's door. The sisters themselves feared that she would die on the way. A goodly part of their money had been stolen by a passport agent: and their baggage would have gone also had it not been for the watchfulness of one of the French work-men who, although intending to go to Vincennes, later followed them to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. Afte~ the long trip, the sisters were welcomed by the Parmentier family in New York who sheltered them while they awaited news from the Bishop and funds for their trip to Indiana. They visited the publishing houses and gathered information regarding text-books, maps, charts, and school supplies. They were dismayed to learn that a group of American Sisters of Charity were already lo-cated in Vincennes and wondered why they were needed if the situ-ation had already been met. They were to learn that the Sisters of Charity were withdrawing from the field and merely awaiting the arrival of the French sisters. They learned also that the scope and requirements of education in America were much more extended than in France and that consequently more things must be taught. The insistence on music impressed them, as they were told it was an ab-solute necessity to any kind of school. ' One of their great sufferings was their ignorance of the language; and, without adequate ability to make'themselves understood, they had yet to travel fifteen hundred miles into the interior. A short stop in Philadelphia, where they awaited their official guide, made them acquainted with the Sisters of Charity. They visited St. ~Jo-seph's Orphan Asylum to see American methods in operation; and, finally, under the care of Reverend William Chartier, the Bishop's representative, they began their month-long journey westward by railroad, steamboat, stage, and canal. At various, stopping places they met the Sulpician Fathers at Saint Mary's Seminary, Baltimore; the ,Jesuit Fathers at Frederick, Maryland, where they then had their novitiate; and Mother Rose White, Mother Seton's successor, at the Academy of Sisters of Charity, since transferred to the Visi-tation sisters. Mother Rose gave them some disconcerting informa-tion: "Sciences hardly known in our French schools are needed here, but the indispensable thing in this country, even for the poor . . . is music." From Wheeling they boarded the emigrant steamboat for the 192 dulg, 1956 MOTHER THEODORE GUERIN four-day trip to Cincinnati, the most painful part of the journey due to the lack of privacy, the rude passengers, the primitive arrange-ment for sleeping--mats on the deck of the vessel--and the crowded quarters. A steamboat ride took them to Madison where the Bishop met and welcomed them and acquainted them with the name of their future location, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, near Terre Haute, not Vincennes as they had naturally expected. On to Evansville by boat, and from thence to Vincennes by stage over a corduroy road was sufficiently discouraging, but the appearance of the ramshackle churches, the ppor quarters of the.clergy, and the wild aspect of the scenery, combined to increase their anxiety about their future. The sisters had expected to be located in a center of population; all their previous experience and training had equipped them to meet the need of such places; but, abandoning themselves to providence, they accepted the change in plans, and consented to go on to "that dreaded Terre Haute." Even though she could see no way in which she could take care of her community and provide for it in a dense forest, nevertheless Mother Theodore acquiesced and set out for" the chosen place. The trip from Vincennes to Terre Haute was fraught with dangers and hazards. The banks of the Wabash bad been inundated by the heavy torrential rain that poured for thirty-six hours; the corduroy roads were unsafe, but the trip must be made. The travelers, leaving Vincennes at ten o'clock on the night of October 20, encoun-tered many mishaps. Their stage was overturned, and they were compelled to seek refuge in a nearby farmhouse. They resumed their way again in the early morning and reached Terre Haute by late afternoon, too late to cross by ferry the yet unbridged Wabash. On the morning of the twenty-second, they continued their journey by ferry and rough overland wagon until about six o'clock in the eve-ning of the same day, Father Buteux, their chaplain, who had ac-companied them, uttered the momentous words: "We have arrived." No human being was in sight. Through the deep forest the heavy-hearted sisters made their way to the small log chapel where they knelt and dedicated themselves anew to the work of the Indiana mis-sion. The poverty of this chapel touched Mother Theodore to tears at the sight of the Lord of Hosts dwelling in such solitude. "No tabernacle, no altar," she wrote, "nothing but three planks forty inches long, supported by stakes driven into the corners." The Blessed Sacrament was reserved in a smalI pyx kept in a covered custodfurn. They united their poverty to that of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, 193 SISTER. EUGENIA Review [or Religious knowing that they could never equal His sublime destitution. Mr. Thralls, the farmer, and his wife, had prepared supper for them in the adjoining frame house, and in his generosity, offered to share his house with them until theirs could be built. The house consisted of two rooms and a porch on the first floor and a loft where corn and provisions had beeen stored. Mr. Thralls gave them the use of one room downstairs and ball of the loft above. In this small space were accommodated the six French sisters and the four postu-lants who had been awaiting their coming. On the day after their arrival, the sisters assisted at Mass in the log chape! and received Holy Communion. The request that they might have daily Mass as often as it was possible was practically the only condition that Mother Theodore stated in accepting the Indiana assignment. During their first weeks they were fortunate in having Mass daily; but, since Father Buteux was a missionary priest as well as their chaplain, there were times in the future when this privilege was not possible. The quarters allotted the sisters were sadly inadequate for the group of ten persons who were trying to live the religious life and to prepare for professional work. Accordingly Mother Theodore puchased the whole house from Mr. Thralls for the sum of $'400 which she took from the little fund that Countess de Marescot had given her. The Thralls family moved farther west and gave the sisters full possession. Even at that; the severe winter brought them much discomfort. Snow and rain came in through the poorly roofed loft which they continued to use as a dormitory. The rooms below served by turns as kitchen, dining-room, community room, study room, and one of the rooms as infirmary when Sister Marie Xavier fell ill of a fever and could not be left in the loft. On November 1, their trunks arrived from New York in good condition. The contents were soon put in place: statues of our Lady and Saint Joseph on the flat top of the bureau and a crucifix suspended from the nail in the wall. Plates and tinware were stowed away in the rough pine cupboard. One chair apiece and an all-purpose table completed their furniture. Thin mattresses or pallets of straw placed on the floor of the loft served as beds. The impossibility of opening a school in this deserted spot seemed to Mother Theodore more evident day by day. The half-finished brick building which was to have been their convent still remained unfinished. Bishop de la Hailandi~re remained adamant, however, to any suggestion of finding another location; and time 194 dulg, 1956 MOTHER THEODORE GUERIN proved his attitude a wise one. The uncertain trends of population in Indiana could not be relied upon: the canal towns seemed to be the prosperous ones; yet later on they were to be reduced by the rail-ways to small hamlets, and the canals rendered obsolete. Above all, there remained the utterance of Bishop Brut~ when he renamed the Thralls Station Saint Mary-of-the-Woods: "Some day there will be sisters here. You will see what great good will come from this place." Work proceeded slowly on the brick building. Mother Theodore then decided to retain the old Thralls house as their convent and use the brick building as a school. She was anxious that the school, when opened, should be of superior grade; and, later on, when it was pos-sible to incorporate the Institute, she had it chartered (1846) as an institution for the higher education of women; and she and her suc-cessors were "empowerd to do all necessary for the promotion of artsand sciences." Thus did sbe found the first Catholic institution for the higher .edudation of women in the state of Indiana. Insecurity and anxiety were constantly with Mother Theodore for the first seven years of her stay in Indiana. She could not obtain the deed for the property even though it had been bought by money given expressly for the sisters and their foundation. They could not build in a place they did not own and from which they were likely to be dispossessed at any time. The privations of the first years were very great. The sisters had to help fell trees, sow the grain for the harvest, plant potatoes and fruit trees'. Food was cheap in the markets, but nothing is cheap if one does not have money. In order to maintain a boarding school, the sisters must provide food for their pupils: and they hoped and prayed for a good harvest. In July, 1841, the brick building was sufficiently prepared to open school; and on July 2, 1841, the first of their pupils arrived. As one of the novices was a good English teacher, classes were opened in English as well as French. Music and art were to develop rapidly as soon as a place could be provided for holding these classes. Illness, ever attending Mother Theodore, reduced her many times to a critical state; and it seemed only the prayers and sacrifices of the sisters could restore her. Mother Theodore's first care, sick or well, was the instruction of the sisters and their formation in the spiritual life. She met them daily at five o'clock in .the evening and explained the meaning and importance of the Rule, preparation for the sacraments, the meaning 195 SISTER EUGENIA Reoieu~ for Religious and obligations of the vows. At other times she gathered them around her to help them with teaching methods and to impart to them her own skill. The little community numbered at the end of the first six months, four professed, four novices (two of the French sisters were still novices), and eight postulants. Mother Theodore began to think that her work as Foundress was now finished and implored Mother Marie to send a more experienced and stronger person to take over the mission, meanwhile stating in detail her needs, her relations with the sisters, and her very precarious health, but also her resig-nation to whatever was decided. But little help came from France. The mother house there was engaged in building a larger house; and, with the usual economy of the French, the superior felt that all the funds should be in hand before the building was commenced. Ne-gotiations were also going forward for the final approbation of the rules; and; to this plan, the faraway foreign mission .was a dubious asset. In Indiana the violence of the Know Nothing Movement was beginning to gather strength; the financial panic of 1842 limited" credit greatly; and the final cross of the fire of 1842 reduded the sisters to the deepest destitution. The fire was thought to be of in-cendiary origin as its occurrence could not otherwise be explained. The granary, the stock of fruit gathered, the barn with the plows, farm implements, and wagons, all were lost in the great conflagration. Only the prayers of the sisters s~ved the convent from destruction. Very little help was at hand to assist them in this disaster. The sisters cut down trees, moved logs, labored .to put out the fire, and almost all of them suffered burns and injuries as a result. In addition to this, they were haunted by the fear of future fires, having in mind the burning of the Charlestown convent. But the sisters had to face the reality. They had no money, no friends, no food, no credit, nothing but their invincible confidence in the providence of God; and this trust, by the mercy of God, Was never to abandon them. Mother Theodore appealed to the Bishop for help and discussed with him the pla'n of going to France for aid. His Lordship gave them funds to tide them over their immediate difficulties and felt that the trip to France would be an excellent means of securing help. He also issued the-required letters of introduction and permission to solicit alms. Necessary delays set their departure date for May !, 1843. Mother Theodore took as her companion a young American novice, Sister Mary Cecilia, whom she wished to have .the advantage 196 dul~, 1956 MOTHER THEODORE GUERIN of seeing the French mother house and of studying music under pro-fessors during their stay. Last-minute preparations were made, and the journey was deemed more n, ecessary when letters from Mo'ther Marie regarding a proposed return of the French sisters and the formation of an entirely new com-munity under Father Buteux made known to them a situation they knew nothing about. The plan was unknown to Bishop de la Hailandi~re also, although his attitude toward Mother Theodore and the sisters became more hostile than before. To his demands that the community become a diocesan one, change its Rule and Constitu- ' tions to fit his ideas, the sisters had set up a firm opposition. To gather enlightenment as to the course to pursue was one of Mother Theodore's objectives in returning to France. The voyage was made, and the two petitioners arrived i}t France only to find that many of their friends had left Paris for the cooler mountain-country places. Their quest seemed disheartening at first, but through the help of Mssrs. Aubineau and Veuillot who pub-lished their story in L'Univers, M. Martin du Nord, through whom they secured an interview with Marie-Amelie, Queen of the French, and M. de Choiselat, treasurer of the Association of the Propagation of the Faith, they were able to secure permanent and steady contribu-tions of funds which came to them regularly for many years. The news from Indiana was very disquieting. The Bishop had called for an election of superior-general, even though Mother Theo-dore had been appointed as Foundress with an unlimited term of office. The results of the election confirmed Mother Theodore in 6ffice, ¯ but the effect of this exhibition of loyalty was hardship for the little band of sisters. Acting on Mother Marie's advice, Mother Theodore prepared.to return to America, much fortified by the help and advice she had received from Bishop Bouvier. Before leaving France she affiliated the community with the Association of Our Lady of Vic-tories in Paris. Mother Theodore had also secured three postulants to make the return voyage with her. Hastily, Mother arranged the necessary details for the work she had begun: Canon Lottin agreed to act as her treasurer, receiving the funds from the various persons collecting for Saint Mary-of-the-Woods and arranging for some of it to be placed on interest. Mother and her companions embarked at Havre on November 28, on an old sailing vessel, the Nashville, which hardly seemed sea-worthy to them. Their fears were well grounded, for the ship was almost split asunder by the violence of a storm which arose in mid- 197 SISTER EUGENIA Review for Religious ocean. Their rescue from shipwreck was nothing short of miracu-lous as their ship actually capsized, but by a contrary wind, which miraculously arose, the ship was righted. Mother Theodore felt that this was an answer to the fervent prayers of the sisters to St. Anne, the patron saint of Brittany and promised a chapel and an annua! procession in her honor if they reached port safely. Hardly had this danger been averted when another equally perilous threat-ened them. The captain, who had been overexerting himself in buf-feting the storm, was stricken with apoplexy and lay on the deck as if dying. Mother Theodore's knowledge of medicine stood them in good stead then; she saw that the captain should be bled; and, call-ing for some necessaries,, she performed the operation. The captain soon rallied and was able after a few hours to resume his post. Mother Theodore's nursing skill was also called upon to take care of a dying man whose wife had fled from his side at the sight of death. She also baptized a new-born infant who died shortly after. The anxiety and care pressing upon her spirit completely wore out Mother Theodore's strength: and,.when the ship finally reached New Orleans, she was taken very ill and had to remain for several months under the care of the Ursulines of New Orleans. The news she received from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods increased her alarm. She sent Sister Mary Cecilia on with some of the party and was finally able, some months afterwards, to make the neces-sary trip by way of Vincennes. Here she met with many misunder-standings on account of the money she collected and the money which was accumulating for her in France but, after a stormy and painful two days, was permitted to return to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. For three years more this situation continued with more or less feeling. In 1846, the sisters, postulants and workmen were prepar-ing to leave Saint Mary-of-the-Woods and take refuge in another diocese where they could follow their Rule in peace, when the news of Bishop de la Hailandi~re's resignation reached them and caused them to remain. Their credit at the local stores was established as soon as the word was given that the sisters were receiving steady help from France. They were able to provide the necessaries, not only of life, but of good instruction for their pupils. Their own personal poverty re-mained. Their clothes were mended and patched, and the furniture of the mother house remained the simplest possible. Straw ticks served as beds, but were placed on the floor. Until 1862, the novitiate possessed one good bed which was always given to the latest comer 198 July, 1956 MOTHER THEODORE GUERIN among the postulants. W6e to the unhappy one who was the first one of two to arrive on the same day! With the succession of Bishop Bazin, whose administration lasted but six months, and the long administration of Bishop de St. Palais, his successor, the troubles of the first seven years seemed to vanish, to be replaced by other minor cares. The deed to their property, se-cured at last, entitled the sisters to build and develop their institution and to lay the foundations of their future extension. At the time of Mother Theodore's death in 1856, the community was teaching in ten missions in addition to the Institute at, Saint Mary-of-the- Woods. The community had received a few subjects frorn France, some from Belgium, but the majority of the new candidates were from the United States. Calls came from all sides for the sisters to open new schools: but Mother Theodore, realizing that she must first instill the religious spirit into her incoming subjects, was slow to send them on a mission. She instructed them herself, and visited the missions diligently, braving the discomfort of the rough wagon, the canal boat, and the primitive railroad. She did not spare her-self in serving: but at last toward the end of 1855, she conceded that her strength was definitely broken. Poor as the community was in worldly goods, it did not lack all the spiritual blessings that Mother Theodore could obtain for it. The first Sodality of the Children of Mary was formed in 1854, but May devotions had been held every May beginning with 1841. The Bishop had given permission for midnight Mass which was celebrated with few interruptions year by year~ In 1843, permis-sion was given for the private celebration of Forty Hours Devotion before it was canonically erected in any diocese in the United States. The devotion was held on the three days preceding Lent, and was continued on that date thereafter with but one or two interruptions in the long survey of 113 years. In 1843, Mother Theodore had affiliated the community with the Association of Our Lady of Vic-tory in Paris, and through the Parmentier family had registered the sisters' names in the Confraternity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and later in that of the Sacred Heart of ~Jesus in the Frehch Church in New York. Little has been said here of the loyal service rendered to Mother Theodore and the community by the delicate little Sister St. Francis Xavier, once thought to be "good for nothing but to pray." Her courageous spirit belied her delicate frame, and her sure sense of jus-tice- was a strong support to the often-harassed Foundress. During 199 SISTER EU.GENIP, Review for Religious Mother Theodore's absence in France and the consequent troubles in Indiana, Sister St. Francis never failed in her appointed trust--that of keeping the community intact until Mother's return. Death was now to claim this valiant sister, and in ~lanuary, 1856, she went to her reward. In May of that same year, Mother Theodore succumbed at last to the long series of illnesses which had tried her ¯ strength. In her sixteen years in Indiana, Mother had finished the work given her to do: she had established a mother house, and had formed to the religious life sisters of such moral strength that they were able to continue her work, and to transmit to others the essen-tial spirit of the congregation. She had established an incorporated institution for the higher education of women which was later to be known internationally as Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. Her work seemed to be completed. Tribute~ to her memory poured, in. The desuits Who had given the annual retreats to the community for many years held her in high esteem. Reverend dohn L. Gleizal, S.d., who had overheard her in-structions to the sisters, told them that their mother was a second Saint Teresa. Her acquaintance with ecclesiastics was very wide. Many of the bishops and priests laboring in the Middle West had come from the same land of Brittany. The first sixteen years of the existence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods coincided with the development of the Vincennes diocese, and Mother Theodore's Life, Journals and Letters, ¯ and other documents, are firsthand sources which supplement the ecclesiastical history of the times. Her full account of the first synod of Vincennes is the only cgmplete record of that part of the synod which was open to the public. In addition to their historical value, the above mentioned sources are human documents which tell the tale of Mother Theodore's patient suffering and heroic endurance. In 1907, her remains were'exhumed from the grave in the ceme-tery to be reinterred in the crypt of the newly dedicated Church of the Immaculate Conception. In the course of the exhumation it was discovered that her brain was ~intact and presented an appearance similar to that of the brain of a living person. This unusual happen-ing, coupled with the common belief and knowledge of the sisters that Mother Theodore's life was characterized by holiness, led to the introduction of her cause for beatification. The first process held at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods had, as witnesses, many who had known Mother Theodore, and. some who had been the recipients of favors through her intercession. Later it was found that similar 200 SISTER EUGENIA Review for Religiou~ processes must be conducted in France in order to cover Mother Theo-dore's early life, but the troubled condition of European affairs de-layed action in this regard. In 1954, Monsignor Emidio Federici was appointed postulator of the cause. Through his efforts an Italian translation of the biography of Mother Theodore was prepared, and together with the Positio, or pertinent data of the cause, was placed in the hands of the Cardinals and Prelates of the Rites for study. On December 6, this august assembly was addressed by Cardinal Piazza, Ponente of the cause, who read the Relatio and forcefully presented the cause to his colleagues. After the general discussion, the cardinals returned a favorable vote. On February 19, 1956, the Holy Father, after hearing the detailed account of the session from Cardinal Cicognani, chairman of the assembly, promptly granted his approbation for the introduction of the apostolic process. The cause is now entering upon the second stage of its advancement. The Life and Life-Work of Mother Theodore Guerin, by Sister Mary Theodosia, appeared in 1904; but it was necessarily incom- 'plete owing to the fact that it was not possible to use all the ma-terial in the archives. In 1937, Sister Mary Theodosia edited The Journals and Letters of Mother Theodore Guerin. During this same year a vast amount of material was sent to the community from the diocesan office at Alexandria, Louisiana, comprising letters from Mother Theodore and the early sisters to Bishop Martin, ordinary" of the diocese then known as Natchitoches and many letters from bishops and other ecclesiastics who had known the sisters. The con-tents of these letters cleared up many disputed points and vindicated the position Mother Theodore had taken. In 1948 appeared the first volume of the Historv of the Sisters of Providence in America. by Sister Mary Borromeo Brown, in which all available letters and archive material are incorporated. PAMPHLETS Titus Brandsma, Carmelite, Champion of the Catholic Press. By Rev. Aquinas Houle, O.Carm. Mary, 6415 Woodlawn Ave., Chicago 3 7, I11. Pp. 29. 10c. Holy Hour Pamphlets. The Sentinel Press, 194 East 76th Street, New York 21. N. Y. 10c. Faith. gcv. Gerald Dorais. S~S.S. Hope--Bv the Side of a Grave. Rev. Hector Lemieux, S.S.S. Fraternal Charity!. Rev. Gerald Dorais. S.S.S. Watch and Pray. Blessed Sacrament Fathers. Institution of the Hol~! Eucharist. Rev. Daniel Sullivan, S.S.S. Hol~t Hour Guide. Rev. Lionel Vashon. S,S.S. 15c. 201 Thought:s on Transfers \Vinfrid Herbst, S.D.S. A religious once wrote to his major superior: "If I may confide my innermost sentiments to you, here they are: I have a deep longing to go back to my borne country and labor there-- but not against the will of God." Another said that it was his wish to have no wish at all in this matter. What is to be said about those attitudes? No doubt the most perfect frame of mind is to wish that the most just, most high, and most amiable will of God be done in all things. The most difficult but most meritorious thing to do is silently to offer to the Savior the sacrifice of one's dearest wishes. A religious who does that has surely mounted high on the ladder of perfection. He has scaled heigh.ts that all should endeavor to reach. It is natural to have preferences, that is, to be drawn more to one person or place or thing than to another. But to cling to those preferences, to nurture them, and when occasion offers to give ex-pression to them with a view to influencing the superior and in order to obtain what would be most pleasing to us, is a sign of im-perfection. We ought to make ourselves indifferent in the Ignatian sense of the word. To make ourselves indifferent to all created things is to be on guard against our natural affections and exclude any one of them that is not ultimately reducible to God and subordinate to Him. It is to fight against our will when we find it bent on having something against the will of God. It is good to hear a religious say that be has no special preference for this or that study, that occupation, those surroundings, such and such a country or section of a country. But it makes a bad impres-sion when he nevertheless straightway, either directly or indirectly, lets it be known that he would like to do what be is doing and stay where be is and hopes that arrangements can be made to prevent a change. That is not the spirit of perfect obedience. "Behold in the days of your fast your own will is found," says Isaias (58:3) ; and we may add, behold in your obedience your own will is found. All religious know that there are some who are as eager to be transferred to some different place or country as others are to re-main where they are. Perhaps it might be a mooted question whether more would rather go or stay. We are not deciding that. What is of prime importance is that, whether they are transferred or whether 202 THOUGHTS ON TRANSFERS they have to hold down the same position in the same old place, they are content in doing the will of God. Religious also know that superiors are very considerate when it is a case of sending men to countries with bad climates, difficult languages, handicaps of all kinds, when the post will put a man's mettle to the test. They usu-ally ask for .volunteers, or at least ask those selected whether they have any solid objections or whether there is any impediment in the way, of which the superiors perhaps do not know. But they generally do not ask the subjects whether they have any special prefer-ence for the work, whether they feel attracted to it. If they do, it is merely a concession to human weakness. It should be each one's preference to have the example of the Divine Savior before his eyes. "In the head of the book it is written of me that I should do thy will, O God." "Not my will but thine be done." The transfer of religious from one house to another is a matter of special attention also on another score, one that vitally concerns the welfare of the whole order. It sometimes happens that superiors hesitate to transfer subjects, with resultant stagnation. Theoretically the superiors know that, if the constitutions of the respective order provide for it, and according to such provisions, any member may be transferred to any house of the province or order; but, when it comes to practice, they are often reluctant to transfer subjects unless there is a grave and manifest reason for doing so. They have the feel-ing that they must give the subject a reason why they are transferring him, because of the false notion that a transfer is a sort of a penalty. Were such an attitude of hesitancy or apology to prevail in a given province or order to the extent that it would become a sort of custom or a thing that is understood ("He couldn't get along there, so the major superior had to transfer him!"), it would be to the common detriment of the order; indeed, it is not too much to say that it would be the beginning of a gradual decline. Not to be transferred may never be the privilege of any individual .religious. Things would have come to a sorry pass when a remark like this could be made: "So, you transfer me; just transfer X and Y and you will see what happens." Of course, a transfer is not a casual matter. Each superior must give much prayerful thought to the matter, decide before the Lord where each one is needed or where he can best be used--and then act accordingly. It is simply taken for granted everywhere, particularly in the matter of transfers, that a religious must obey. Even the Holy See stresses this, as in the reply to an appeal made to the Sacred Con- 203 WINFRID HERBST Review fo~" Religious gregation for Religious. "He should submit to his superiors." ¯ Certainly, it is sometimes hard to obey. But Christ goes before us and we know the reward, as we read in that famous passage: "He humbled himself and became obedient to death; yes, to death on a cross. This is why God has exalted him and given him the name above all names" (Phil. 2:8, 10). Now, when a superior needs new men in his house, he has his own ideas of what they should be--ideas usually shared by all local superiors. These are some of the marks that should distinguish them: 1. They should be humble, unpretentious men who let them-selves be told a few things, who understandingly adapt themselves to their surroundings, who do not think that they know everything better but silently learn to weigh the pros and cons of things as they are. They are not men of whom the philosopher says, "'Statira sapit~nt, statiro sciunt omnia!'" It is hard to translate this, but the expression means something like "The. smart aleck knows it all and spouts high and far all that he thinks he knows!" Such characters can be extremely irri(ating. 2. They should be men who are not afraid of sacrifice, who are not afraid of a bit of rough going. The timorous, hesitant, weak-ling type who sees difficulties everywhere and hesitates to do and dare is as undesirable as the overbold and the conceited. In many ways the life of a religious is a life of real sacrifice, and pampered and spoiled individuals will hardly find conditions suitable to their liking in any house anywhere. Such, no matter where they are, will, to a greater or lesser extent, be a cross to themselves and to others. 3. They should be men who pitch right in to do the work .that is to be done, not the kind that give it a wide berth, always presup-posing that they ar~ fulfilling the superior's wishes and are not in-terfering in the affairs of others. Men who close their eyes to the work that is awaiting willing hands or, if they see it, unconcernedly pass by and let it be loaded onto others, are of no help to a house; on the contrary, the burden is doubly heavy when one sees that others who ought to help do not do so. "A brother who is helped by a brother is like a strong city," says Holy Writ; and only when all do their generous share is anything worthwhile accomplished. Indeed, such unified action is of the very essence of a community. Get a number of people together, and you have a group or a multi-tude or perhaps a mob but not yet a community. In order that they may be a community in the real sense of the word, they must work together, uniting their efforts for the attainment of a common goal. 204 July, 1956 THOUGHTS ON TRANSFERS If in one way or another a religious does not apply himself to the promotion of the common cause, he is not doing his bounded duty, no matter what other' qualifications he may have. 4. The men should be capable of doing the work for whicl~ they were assigned to the house. It stands to reason that that work differs greatly. One is the task of the teacher, another that of the spiritual director, the retreat master, the missionary, and so on down the line to the least (?) lay brother peeling potatoes in an isolated corner of'the kitchen. This means, too, that the men should as far as possible be specially trained and prepared for the work they are to do; for, as the expressive Latin phrase hasit, non omnia possumus omnes--we cannot all do everything. 5. The men should have a spirit of mortification. It is .prob-ably too much to .expect that they should be so advanced in the spiritual life as directly to long for and avidly seek the cross, that is, suffering and sacrifice, as did, for example, St. Andrew the Apostle, who greeted the cross on which be was to die with "O good cross, so long desired!" or St. Ignatius the Martyr, "I know what is good for me; I would be ground by the teeth of beasts that I may be found a pure bread!" or St. Teresa of Avila, "Either to suffer or to die!" or St. John of the Cross, "To suffer and to be despised for Thee!" Yes, it is too much to expect that of the men. Saints such as we have mentioned were rare blossoms in the garden of God; and, when we ordinary religious contemplate anything like that, we are heartily ashamed of our pitiable weakness. They were spiritual giants and followers in the truest sense of the word of the Savior who carried the cross and died upon it for us men and for our salvation. We are, generally speaking, merely delicate members of the Mystical Body of Christ. When it comes to the patient endurance of suffering for the love of God and to be mbre like Jesus, who died upon the cross, we really ought to strive after this ideal: to desire to be naturally very sensi-tive to suffering and at the same time to be placed in such circum-stances as will put our endurance to the test--and by the grace of God to come forth from the test triumphant. But this ideal postu-lates a degree of perfection which, alas! we generally do not possess. Since we are as a rule not so advanced in spirituality, are in fact the kind of men who have to reckon with marked weaknesses, we shall do well if from the start we learn to overcome ourselves in little things: to bear bodily discomforts (heat, cold, hunger, thirst, pains and aches and indispositions, misunderstandings, false imputations, 205 COMMUNICATIONS Review [or Religious or whatever it may be) and to harden ourselves at least to the ex-tent that we carry on in the patient endurance of what simply has to be borne. Eventually we may reach that degree of perfection in which we no longer feel very much. the disagreeable things of daily religious life. This may sound very much like advice unto imperfection! But no--there will still be a healthy spirit of mortification, considering the variety of circumstances in the various countries of the world and the different religious houses of the order. St. Paul says to Tim-othy, "Train yourself in piety." And with that as a foundation we might add: Train yourself also in self-denial and mortification, to bear heat and cold and hunger and thirst and labors out of love for God; otherwise you will be disappointed with yourself and will be a disappointment to others; otherwise you will experience as true of yourself the words of Solomon: "He that nourishes his servant delicately from his childhood, afterwards shall find him stubborn" (Prov. 29:21). This servant is your body. Unless it is kept down, hardened, it becomes more and more rebellious, querulous, demand-ing. It will be hard to meet all its demands, impossible to satisfy them fully. 6. In a word, they should be men who, if an assignment calls for it, can take whatever is demanded of them as regards climate, oc-cupation, primitive housing conditions, poor or distasteful food, and such like hurdles. With the Apostle Paul they should be able to say: "In whatever circumstances I am, I have learnt to be con-tent. I know how to live in privation, and I know how to live in abundance. I have been initiated into each and every condition: of satiety and of hunger, of abundance and of want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me" (Phil. 4:11-13). Communica :ions Reverend Fathers: A rather peculiar situation presents itself annually in religious communities as a result of new assignments, wherein an individual suddenly finds himself a member of a new household. Ordinarily, the mere physical and exterior adjustments offer no special difficulty, but their psychological counterparts are quite another matter, and it may take months, perhaps years, before an individual religious finds himself completely "at home" in his new surroundings. In 206 dulg, 195 6 COMMUNICATIONS such circumstances we may be too prone to intimate that any diffi-culty encountered is solely on the side of the individual entering the community. This, it seems to me, is an over-simplification, because the community, the individual, or both together, may be at fault. Let us presume that the community is a normal one, composed of religious who, with high ideals of personal perfection and of their apostolate, are striving in a concrete manner to perfect themselves therein. Such a religious house presents a solid, integral supernatural organism with unity of pursuit and of purpose. However, one must ¯ remember that the individual members of which it is composed, though leading the supernatural life perhaps on a high level, remain human beings. As such they are not exempt from personal foibles, character weaknesses, prejudices, and in extreme instances, wild ec-centricities. Naturally these will present a more or less serious hurdle to the smooth psychological adjustment of the newcomer. Problems may arise variously, depending on the qualities of the particular in-dividual and also on those of the community into which he is en-tering. An awkward and at times almost impossible circumstance of ad-justment might exist in the setting of a community in which through many years changes have been few. Certain offices and privileges have been apportioned in the same way over a long period of time. Those holding positions of trust--spiritual, academic, or otherwise --have not only kept them, but hold to them tenaciously. A species of religious "aristocracy" has been built up which constitutes a "block" in the lives of others. This need not be a large group or clique; even a "two-some" that works behind scenes, or openly for that matter, may not only dominate but actually tyrannize an en-tire community. By their judgment is arbitrarily determined who is and who is not to be accepted. Anyone on whom they chance :o frown is regarded as of little consequence. A newcomer entering such a house is, in common parlance, automatically "in" or "out." If he meets favor with the "aristocracy" he is definitely "in," though from the standpoint of virtue, integrity of character, and personality, he may be far lower in any objective scale of values than his less favored companions. Contrariwise, if the individual be not favored by this "'upper stratum" he is automatically "out," and it may be for his whole religious life, though ~he possess personal qualities of a high caliber. This situation is understandably aggravated when the same su-periors remain in office over long periods of time, by means of a 207 COMMUNICATIONS Review /'or Religious circle of superiorships from one house to another of their order. No one with a different outlook; mentality, or background is ever allowed to rule; this makes for an unfortunate system of inbreeding detri-mental to any religious congregation. Things never change; the same abuses remain; nothing is ever done to break down the "block." On entering a community operating under such a regime, a religious may find himself through no fault of his own, ostracized, and relegated to the "out" members of the lower stratum. Though be possess su-perior qualities of intellect, heart, and will, he is never consulted, nor are matters ever discussed with him. Should obedience require that a religious remain in such an environment his only way to peace is within--in the living of an intense interior life. And, if he has been accustomed to find his spiritual sustenance in doctrine and in truth, not in pious emotionalism and sentimental devotions, he should, with God's grace, which may come down on him like an avalanche, be able to work out for himseif a reasonably happy life. But it will have to be led on an almost purely supernatural level, since for him, any compensation on the~-human level scarcely exists. This is his only solution, and one dare not say it is an unfortunate one. It may be a special dispensation of grace leading to a marvelous culmination of his whole spiritual life. On the other hand, there is the religious who, on receiving his transfer to a new house, is of the opinion that it is solely the re-sponsibility of its resident community to see to it that he is adjusted thereto happily. He may entirely overlook the fact that he too has a personal responsibility in the matter. Instead of assuming the at-titude of one who waits to receive everything from others, such an individual must go out of himself and become aware that he too has a contribution to make to the happiness and well-being of others. To state it bluntly, instead of "Here I am. What are you going to do or not do to make me happy?" let him reverse the pronouns and the emphasis to "What can I do to make others happy?" Such an attitude is intuitively perceived by the other religious, and he will be accepted automatically. Or, by way of a positive approach, a re-ligious may, on entering a new community, pause to make an honest personal evaluation: "Do I possess spiritual, intellectual, social gifts, perhaps, by way of the virtues of prudence, humility, compassion, for instance, by which I might enrich the hearts and minds of my fellow religious?" It may be some specific human gift of a charm of manner, or a social grace, which will not only endear him to others, but also enhance the cultural texture of his community. God 208 ,lul~l, 1956 COMMUNICATIONS may have placed him here precisely to share these gifts with this particular group of religious. Or it may be that some one person here, yet a stranger, has, in God's designs, need of him. This may be the most important reason why God sent him to this place. Not infrequently an individual has a fellow-religious approach him in later life and say, "The remark that you made on such and such an occasion has made all the difference in my life!" In any event, a whole-hearted bestowal of oneself will be irresistible and at once break down all defenses. Whereas should the newcomer begin by shutting himself up ~vithin himself, and present himself as a closed cosmos, he will never arrive at that true rapport which charity re-quires. It may also happen that a religious skilled in a certain field such as journalism, drama, music, or the like, is sent to a house in which there is another who, without his qualifications and benefit of de-gree has, over a period of years, adequately performed that service. Even before the newcomer arrives the individual whom he is obvi-ously not to assist but, in all likelihood, to replace, forgetting the vir-tues of his calling, looks forward to him as little less than an intruder, and strives to alienate the community against him. On the other hand, the newcomer may be a shade too conscious of his training and skills, assume a superior attitude, and act as if nothing of good had been done before. He proceeds to a complete turnover. Though this is likely an extreme case, it nevertheless can result in much unhappi-ness for both religious concerned. A heart-to-heart talk between the two might be indicated, the overtures being made by the newcomer. But only the spirit and charity of Christ in whose name they serve, can eliminate the unpleasantness of such a situation. A last emphasis, though by far not the least important, is the crucial role of a religious superior in such situations. He must be alert to the problem as it exists for both parties concerned. \Vith a deep human insight and true supernatural solicitude for all of his subjects, he will intervene and, having carefully determined on which side the blame chiefly rests, take immediate and if need be, stringent measures to remedy matters. If he be just, prudent, and God-fearing, showing no preferences, his attitude of mind will be at once apparent to both parties to the problem and they will be docile to his counsel. This may be difticult, but where prejudice is concerned, rooted as it is in the emotions, reason will not easily break through. Nor should he stoop to a solution of mere expediency. So too in the problem ¯ of community adjustmenL rather than circumvent it by expediency 209 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious the superior will act as a sort of referee between the members.' For the situation not only objectively, but most probably subjectively as well, is reciprocal. Finally, for religious of either sex who, because of their work and the structure of their communities are of necessity moved from place to place in the course of their lives, a reflection on Christ's, words, "i was a stranger and you took me not in," may prove highly pertinent. ,Also, "what you have done to these . . . you have done to me!" The truth of these words is so direct, so simple, that it is a marvel how we miss it! A noted master of the spiritual life once questioned. "Are we so busy being religious, that we fail to be Christians?" The answer to this question, as regards the newcomer in our midst, can be given a pointed application.--A SISTER. (Material for this department should be sent to Book Review Editor, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana.) FATHER VINCENT McNABB, O.P. Por÷rolt of a Grea÷ Dominican. By Ferdinand Volenfine, O.P. Pp. 418. The Newman Press, West-minsCer, M~r~l~nd. I%~. $~.00. Father Valentine deserves the gratitude of all, both within and outside his Order, for the excellent book he has offered us. It is ex-cellent because it succeeds so well in achieving precisely that goal which Father Valentine clearly sets for himself. He does not intend to write a biography. But he wants to produce a "portrait of a great Dominican"--and he does. For here is the portrait of a "very great Dominican"--to borrow the appraisal of the present provincial, Father Carpenter. The book will inspire the diligent reader and make him grateful for this unveiling of the workings of grace in the impetuous, childlike soul of Father Vincent McNabb. As Father Valentine says, "the one and only person who could fittingly and adequately write the biography of any man would be his guardian angel." But xqithin the limits of human competence. Father Valentine has painted a masterful portrait of Father Vincent dynamically cooperating with the Holy Spirit working as the artiste merueilleux within his soul. The author achieves his goal by his very extended research. He seems to have tapped almost every conceivable channel which might 210 July/, 1956 BOOK REVIEWS carry some reflected image of Father McNabb's character. He uses many direct quotations, a large number of letters from Father Mc- Nabb, some of his articles, together with historical backgrounds, recollections by intimates, and even handwriting analyses. Added to this rich amassing of the facts on Father Vincent's life, the book is marked by a rather successful approach to that impossible ideal of perfect objectivity in interpreting facts. The author is careful to dis-tinguish between the particular theory of character development which he uses to explain Father McNabb's life and the facts themselves. Of these latter he records some that favor Father Vincent, but a good number that are not very flattering to him. The book is composed of four parts with appendices. The first part sketches more of the external historical picture of Father Mc- Nabb's life. It stresses the psychology of the growing youngster and his character formation, particularly under the influence of his mother. Part two shows us more fully the heart of Father McNabb. How the brethren viewed their fellow Dominican and superior, what he was in the e~'es of the people to whom he ministered so charitably, and what activities his own zeal, social ideas, and humiliations led him to are here presented to the reader. Part three lets that reader see Father McNabb through the eyes of those xvho either were near-est him, like his family, or were very apt to form just appraisals of the man, such as Hilaire Belloc and Gilbert K. Chesterton. The last part is a collection of Father McNabb's letters, covering a period of almost fifty years and giving many an insight into his character. This section also corroborates the author's sketching of the spiritual development that occurred in Father McNabb's life. The book makes interesting private reading. There are lines memorable for their local color or for the vividness with which they picture Father McNabb in one of his many moods. With careful screening of some of the more documentary parts, the book might make profitable refectory reading. One specially enriching section is entitled "Father Vincent's Reminiscenses of His Priestly Life." From it the reader possibly will gain his greatest appreciation of the stature and spirit of Father McNabb. As a substitute for the somewhat loose connection of the four parts and of their subdivisions, some readers might desire a more closely knit narrative which in a unified procedure would portray all the facets of the hero's character. But this would seem to be ask-ing for something that approaches a biography. Again some readers may not agree with the author's confidence or the method employed 211 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious when he analyzes the dominant factors forming Father Vincent's character. But the author himself is the first to admit that this is an optional part of his theory and not an essential in the foundation of the facts he has established. If you pick up the book, you will find that in Mmost every chap-ter you will be in violent disagreement with one of Father McNabb's views or practices and then suddenly be in love with him for some sacrifice or statement he makes; and yet through it all, you will be delighted and inspired by this unique character striving heroically for humility and obedience because of his deep love for Jesus, Mary, and Josepb.~FRANK M. OPPENHEIM, S.J. GOD AND HIS CREATION. Theology Library, Vol. II. Edi÷ed by A. M. Henry, O.P. Transla÷ed from fhe French by Charles Miltner, C.S.C. Pp. 511. Fides Publishers Association, Chicago. 1955. $6.50. The s~cond volume of the Theology Library, following the plan. of the Summa, treats of God and His creation. It is divided into three books: Book I, God Exists, has three chapters which con-sider the revelation about God, His existence and essence, and the Trinity. Book II, God Creates, presents, in five chapters, the doctrine of creation, of evil, of the angels, of the octave of creation, and of man. Book III, God Governs, studies the mystery of divine govern-ment, the angels and divine government, the two economies of divine government. The different chapters are all by different theologians. Certain features call for special praise. Before the treatment of each of the twelve general topics, we are given a r~sum~ of the scriptural basis for the truths involved. The very first chapter is an excellent ex-ample of this. It takes the reader through the whole of Scripture to showy him the growth in the idea of God, and to emphasize the tremendous deepening of the concept in the New Testament through the Incarnation of the Second Person. Father Paissac's development of the theology of God's attributes has many deep and helpful in-sights. One of the best is his close association of the notions of the good and the beautiful (pp. 62 and ~3). The idea of the beautiful helps very much to see the meaning of the truth that a thing is "good in itself." Another feature is the clear way in which each topic is approached so as to highlight the essentials of theological method. The second chapter furnishes an instance: first the question is stated, then the data of revelation are gathered as the answer to the question of fact (An est?), and finally the theological explanation is given (Quid est?). A word of criticism is, however, iri order here. In the 212 Julg, 1956 BOOK REVIEWS first volume Father Liege had made it clear that the starting point in any theological investigation must be the teaching of the magis-terium. As Pius XII insisted in the Encyclical Humani Generis this is the starting point even for the theologians. Yet, in the places where the data of revelation are gathered preparatory to theological elabor-ation, we find the order of the older manualists used: Scripture comes first, then the Fathers of the Church, then the documents of the magis-terium follow in their historical place. But it is imperative to show even in the scheme of presentation that the first of the theological loci is the teaching of the rnagisterium. A third feature is the con-sciousness of modern problems manifested in the treatment of each topic. Added to this is the presence at the end of each chapter of a few pages called reflections and perspectives in which topics for further study and for discussion are suggested. Finally, a short bibliography of easily available works in English is given after the reflections and perspectives. In the review of the first volume of the Theology Library doubt was voiced as to whether the work was adapted to those who had not had formal training in philosophy or theology. These doubts must be raised again. For the treatment of the matter is, in general, too compressed, and the style is full of technical terms or of allusions which only a person trained in philosophy would understand. The translation is very disappointing. Not that there are many inaccuracies. Rather it is the presence in the English of so many features that smack of the original French, features which make the reading unnecessarily difficult, confusing and exasperating, which leads to this criticism. For example: the plethora of nominative ab-solutes is retained; the inversions of French style remain; the use of the English it to refer to antecedents which the French clearly marks either by pronouns of different genders or by words with different suffixes retard the reader and often leave him undecided as to just what the antecedent is; the rather common use of the present tense in French in passages of somewhat animated narration is kept in the use of the English present.--JAMES J. DOYLE, S.J. PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY IN PRACTICE: By Willlbald Demal, O.S.B., D.D. Pp. 249. P. g. Kenedy and Sons, New York. 1955. $4.00. This is a difficult book to review, and not merely because its print is so fine. It is addressed to priests and "educators "to whom God has entrusted the task of pastoral care." (p. ix) This audience has a degree of competence and professional alertness. The author seems tO count heavily on the discriminating powers of his prospec- 213 BOOK REVIEWS Review for RMigious tive readers, for he says many things that are, at best, questionable. He is anxious to score a point, and to do it he will at times exag-gerate: or" use a universal negative, when he must know that an exception, will come readily to mind and so convict him of falsity. He is dogmatic on matters that are merely probable, and it is only the refusal of the informed reader to take him literally that saves some statements from being unorthodox. No clerical reader will get far into the book before turning to its beginning to find out if it has an imprimatur. And many, I think, will be surprised to find that it has. It must be said in justice that the text itself contains the cor-rective of, and antidote for, many of the extreme positions, which would, then, seem to be advanced for the sake of good, clean argu-ment. There is, of course, a danger that the unwary will carry away some false impressions. Before giving a critical analysis of a few of the author's tenets, let me indicate, with some passing observations, the range of topics one is asked to consider ~vhile reading this book. His remarks on the psychology of the sexes are penetrating, though one will not always agree with what he says. Assessing re-sponsibility for acts that are commonly considered grievously sinful is often beset with difficulties. Kindness and understanding, tact and charity are well insisted on as requisites for work in the confessional. When he tells us that the Holy Ghost is the real guide of souls and that God guides them through the priest as His instrument, he seems to contradict his position that the priest needs psychiatric lore. He seems to concede an overpowering influence to the unconscious and to be too ready to admit that men are "determined" and consequently are not free. He opposes coeducation because it tends to destroy the polarity of the sexes, but then goes on to say that both sexes benefit from mutual contact. Judgment weakens in old age, which, sur-prisingly, is characterized by good judgment (p. 124). He gives a good test to determine if our ruling passion is sensuality or pride (p. 126). The temperaments are well done and the reader will be sure to classify all his acquaintances--and perhaps himself-~ as choleric, sanguine, melancholic, phlegmatic, or a mixture of them. A brief outline is given of the contributions of Kretschmer, Kiinkel, Freud, dung, and Spranger. It is a disappointment that the author makes no attempt to. digest this mass of theory and evaluate it, per-haps in terms of temperament. He has some rather penetrating re-marks on the scrupulous and some which will occasion debate. Should a priest discourage a psychopathetic person from marryin.g? 214 dulg, 1956 ¯ ¯ BOOK REVIEWS Few pe6ple are healthy and most people are in one way or another psychopathetic (pp. 210, 237). Let me now give .a few illustrations of the author's penchantto exaggeration. Conversion is well said to be "the triumph of divine grace over human nature with its inclination to sin." Teresa of Avila was converted at the age of 40, though she entered the convent at the age of 18. When conversion finally does occur, "it excludes the possibility of oscillations and relapses." (p. 7) This seems to be our idea of confirmation in grace. What of St. John Fisher's remark about the condemned criminal being led out to execution, "There but for the grace of God, go I"? "Man is incapable of true resignation to and union with God before 40." After that, presum-ably, he can be converted. Father Demal may quote mystics for his opinions, but he is out of touch with the battles human nature must wage to get into heaven, even after the age of forty and bulwarked with the best of resolutions. A conversion such as he envisages would spread endless sunshine over this de facto vale of tears. The author is little tolerant of "casuists who pass moral judg-ments on human acts by means of stop watch, yard-stick and scales." (p. 9) "It is impossible to formulate exact laws and directives which would clearly separate venial from grievous sins . . . the just de-cision will be made by God, not by moral theologians." (p. 118) Even St. Alphonsus comes in for some mild criticism, since he is said to have "underrated the importance of natural disposition for the preservation of chastity and overrated the importance of divine grace." (p. 181) In sober fact there are times when a prudent confessor is in doubt whether a sin is mortal or venial and this is the point Father Demal must be striving to make. He does not seriously mean that a con-fessor can never know that an infraction was mortal, for he tells us that when penitents come to confession "without any sincerely spiritual intention of amendment . . . the only course is the refusal of absolution." (p. 11) When an infraction is venial, one scarcely refuses absolution. If one searches diligently, he will find in Father Demal most of the accepted canons of the "moral theologians." In his final chapter the author notes that some priests are suc-cessful in their treatment of psychopathic persons and others are dismal failures, and offers this as the explanation: "Of first im-portance is the priest's knowledge of the various psychopatbies, their distinguishing symptoms and the indicated therapy." (p. 237) This is questionable. Were a priest to fancy himself as a psychiatrist, his 215 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS Review [or Religious thought would tend to be concentrated on the discovery and listing of symptoms rather than on a manifestation of genuine sympathy.

'- u VOL. IX. No. 6 NOVEMBER, 1900 ooTheoo Gettysburg Mercury CONTENTS An Evening Lesson, Abraham Lincoln, Lament for the Pine, Rabbi Ben Ezra, . Thanksgiving Day, . Editor's Desk, A Chapter of a Life, The Stability of a Republic, Shakespeare's Attitude Toward Education, . 193 The Horse vs. the Automobile, 196 Our Old School Ground, . . 198 When Should a Young Man Choose his Profession, . 201 How it Looks from the Road, 203 My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is, 203 m FAVOR THOSE WHO FAVOR US. For Fine- Printing go to i Jo Co Wile Priiptlipg Sfaw CARLISLE ST. GETTYSBURG, PA. C. B. Kitzmiller Dealer in Hats, Caps, Boots and Douglas Shoes GETTYSBURG, PA. R. M. Elliott Dealer in Hats, Caps, Shoes- and. Gents' Furnishing Goods \ Corner Center Square and Carlisle Street GETTYSBURG, PA. EDGAR S. MARTIN, ^CIGARS AND SMOKERS' ARTICLES. q^f l2^ t&* Chambersburg St., Gettysburg Leadership IN THE CLOTHING and MEN'S PURNISHING Business It is strictly here—everybody knows it. Testimony ? The stock itself. The pen suffi-ciently nimble to tell all the good points of our ::::::: FALL AND WINTER. SUITS AND OVERCOATS has not been found. We will keep you dressed right up-to-date if you buy your Clothing and Furnishings here. : : : : STIINE McPherson Block. No. II BALTIMORE STREET THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY, The Literary Journal of Ptnnsylvania College. Entered at the Postoffice at Gettysburg as second-class matter. VOL. IX. GETTYSBURG, PA., NOVEMBER, 1900. No. 6 AN EVENING LESSON. [J. B. B., '01.1 'Twas in a dusky twilight hour I wandered down the vale, Beneath the cooling- azure bower My spirit to regale. I spoke to God ; He answered back And nought our talk disturbed, Till down the narrow winding track A noise our talk disturbed. 'Twas not the sound of human tongue, Nor beast nor bird aloof; But ringing from the hills among, A call to man's behoof. I stepped aside and turned awry To watch the iron steed, Till rumbling, roaring, rolling by He vanished o'er the mead. My thoughts again to God returned, He spoke once more to me, And from his sovran lips I learned These words of majesty: So run my plans creation through Across the track of time, Tneir goal as sure, their course as true Their journey more sublime; And nations, that as thou will show Attention's early gaze, In wisdom, and in strength shall grow, To prosper all their days. 172 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY ABRAHAM LINCOLN. [ORATION BY J. FRANK HEILMAN.] '"PHIRTY-FIVE years have passed and the Republic is stronger A than ever. The battle smoke of civil war has rolled away, and as we look into the clear past our first glance meets the colossal figure of Abraham Lincoln. He seems a mountain— when you examine each particular crag and feature how homely he appears; but stand back half a century, behold the entirety. —Do you not see the hand of God ! We wonder at him for his greatness, and we are proud of him that he is ours. We cannot imagine Lincoln as a Grecian or a Roman ; he is not English and certainly not French—he belongs to us alone but his fame is the world's. Our broad land can no more contain that than the pres-ent generation can estimate its duration; ages are the units which shall measure its extent and eternity shall not behold its com-pletion. Let us for a while then consider him who, under God, more than any other preserved our liberties and kept us as a peo-ple what we are. The nation was falling; that government of which sages had dreamed, that Republic toward which the Liberian exile cast his longing eye, the hope of mankind, the home of the brave sink-ing into theory ! On the fate of our country hung the fate of the human race for all time and our country was perishing. "Hu-manity with all its fears" was "hanging breathless on her fate ! " Should kings reign forever and the people never be free ? Then came the hour and the man;—from the ranks of the common people appeared the "rail-splitter" of Illinois. Who was that unknown man ? When England saw him she jeered at his home-ly face, France mocked his big hands and bent shoulders, the great men of his own land had no faith in him—but he had come with a mission, God had sent him ; and amid the clash of armies and the hell of war he rose Godlike. Those big hands erased the Mason and Dixou line, tore the shackles from the slave and held our country on the great world map ; those bent shoulders lifted our Republic to the highest place in history—and when his work was done he sealed it with his own blood. Then France took the name of the backwoodsman and said, "It belongs with Richelieu and Napoleon " ; then England took that homely face and hung it with Shakespeare and the elder Pitt; while the negro, THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 173 holding up to the world the shackles and chains of two centuries, exclaimed, "Lincoln broke these." The hisses turned to cheers ! While he lived, however, Lincoln was never fully appreciated, it was only when he had passed away and strong men staggered under the great burdens which he had borne so well, that his countrymen began to feel how strong he had been ; it was not until the giant of the forest had. fallen that, by the space unoccu-pied, its magnitude was realized. Then the world looked on and wondered—that child of poverty, that rail-splitter, that uncrowned king! His influence rose from an unseen shoot to a vast and mighty tree, and now in the hour of civil heat and international suspense our country rests beneath its shadow. Unknown, untried, slandered, without a single precedent in all history, called by the American people to lead them—where ? —through an earthquake epoch that was splitting the land north from south and shaking the pillars of human liberty. When Abra-ham Lincoln entered Washington, kings rejoiced, proclaimed that republics were forever done ; but when they bore him back to the west, historians wrote, "Republics shall stand and kingdoms fall." When amid the jeers of Europe he entered the Capitol our coun-try was breaking apart and five million slaves breathed our air; but when they bore him, murdered, back to Illinois our land had been united forever and our flag made the flag of the free. Yes, he was poor and unpolished, awkward and homely, true, he was a rail-splitter, and yet—he was a king ! His wisdom, his elo-quence, his humanity, courage and prophetic vision blended into the ideal statesman just as the prismatic shades fold into the pure white. Then, too, so many heroes are famous either for great heart or great brain power, but in Lincoln the great heart and the great brain were together. While the awful responsibility of the Re-bellion was sinking its story deep in his brow, and while the re-peated disasters of our armies where so nearly overwhelming him that occasionally his mind was weak, he found time to write and in the name of the Republic to thank mothers whose sons had fallen in battle. A master of language ! what did he know of Latin or Greek—to-day a university of Great Britain is studying the perfect English of an off-hand letter. A stump speaker who distorted his face to provoke a laugh, they tell us that his Gettys-burg oration will live with "De Corona." Washington was 174 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY proud, aristocratic, in habit and reserve English; Lincoln was a democrat, out and out a man of the people, distinctively Ameri-can. How appropriate it is that he sleeps his last sleep far away in the West, on an arm of the "Father of Waters," in the bosom of our country, in the heart of the people he loved so well. It is said that the greatest of Italian sculptors owing to the superstitious fear of losing his genius always left unfinished some parts of his creations, but it seems that when God formed the masterpiece of American history, He gave to the world the in-comparable boon of a leader perfect in every respect. Your children's children shall lisp his name with reverence, aye, when continents have changed their coasts and the twentieth century shall be called the dawn of history, your posterity, the great American people, shall point with pride to Abraham Lincoln, our uncrowned king. LAMENT FOR THE PINE. [C W. WISER, '01.] High up on the mountain side, In his cabin lone and drear, Pondering o'er the glowing fire, Sits the aged pioneer. Cold without the wind is roaring, Thro' the tops of many trees ; Dismally its wierd notes moaning:— "Gone is summer's gentle breeze." Darkness now is quickly gathering 'Neath her folds the parting day, And with forces growing fuller, Comes the storm, the night to sway. Bright within a great log burning On the ancient hearth aglow, Lightens up the little cabin, With its smoky rafters low. In his arm chair, dozing, napping, Sits in peace the aged swain; While upon the window pattering, Fall the little drops of rain. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY Thus he sits and gently dozes, In the fire's cheery glare, While without, in roaring tempest, Mournful sounds now pierce the air. Hark ! he cries, what do I hear In the wildness of the night, Is it then a lost one near,—■ Or the eagle in its flight. Ah I I know, it is the sighing Of the top of yonder pine, How it sets my heart a throbbing, When I think of days long syne. How my heart aches at the thought Of those days so long gone by, When beneath the mighty forest Naught was seen of yonder sky. When within its darksome shadows Roamed at large the nimble deer, And upon its mossy carpets Walked the panther and the bear. When beneath its mighty shelter Naught was felt of winter's sting; Snugly sheltered 'neath its branches We did wait the coming spring. Long since those trees have fallen Like stout heroes of the past; Felled by the brawny woodman, Tho' they braved the wintry blast. Ah ! no more I'll see those pines, As they towered to the sky, And no more will feel their shelter As I thro' the forest hie. In their place new ones have risen, Scrubby trees of oak and pine, But no more I'll see its glory As I did in days long syne. 17S The dead leaves their rich mosaics Of olive and gold and brown Had laid on the rain-wet pavements, Through all the embowered town. —Samuel Longfellow- -November. 176 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY "RABBI BEIN EZRA." [C. C. GROVE.] /^"\N taking up the present theme, realizing as I hope some of ^S the great depth and beauty of the poem, my spirit is found breathing with Milton: " What in me is dark Illumine ; what is low raise and support," that I may bring to the notice of someone the consummate beauty of religious philosophy in Browning's "Rabbi ben Ezra." "Bring to the notice," I said, for it has been well written, "This is one of those poems which can never be profitably anatyzed or commented on: it must be read." Therefore, it is ours only to give the poem in sections with some outside substantiating and explana-tory thoughts. Like Longfellow's "Psalm of Life," this poem is an address of an old man, the Rabbi, to a young man, concerning the course of life, to light him on the way and to counsel him that he may come off victorious. He begins :— Grow old along with me ! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made : Our times are in His hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God : see all, nor be afraid ! " The glory of the sun in the zenith is one; in its setting, a more serene, benignant glory. Such is old age—"I shall know, being old." In "Saul," the poet expresses the same in other language, thus :— By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shall enjoy More indeed, than at first when unconscious, the life of a boy. Would there were more who think Tennyson's Ulysses :— How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use ! As tho' to breathe were life ; More ready to "see all" nor "be afraid." The fears and hopes of youth's doubtful stage are thus out-lined :— Not that, amassing flowers, Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours, Which lily leave and then as best recall ? " Not that, admiring stars, It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars ; Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all I " THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 177 Not for such hopes and fears Annulling youth's brief years, Do remonstrate ; folly wide the mark ! Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without, Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. While "Young, all lay in dispute" and so it must needs be. i/ove, hope, fear, faith,—these make humanity These are its signs, and note, and character.—"Paracelsus." These are exponents of character, as Bailey says, in Festus, Sc. A Country Town :— Who never doubted never half believed, Where doubt, there truth is, 'tis her shadow. Yet this is not all; the hopes, joys, and pleasures of youth although not remonstrated against are nevertheless proper only in their place and season. Poor vaunt of life indeed, were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast; Such feasting ended, then as sure an end to man ; Irks care the crop-full bird ! Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast "Such feasting ended" would but mark the beginning of a period of lassitude, inactivity, and indifference. Does any care harass the crop-full bird or doubt the well-fed beast? But strong souls, having passed the days of being fed on broth, are different. Says George Eliot in "Spanish Gypsy," Book IV :— Strong souls Live like fire-heated suns, to spend their strength In furthest striving action. Not enjoyment and not sorrow Is our destined end or way, But to act that each to-morrow Finds us farther than to-day. Let us then Rejoice we are allied To That which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive ! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of God Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe. We have a nearer hold of God, possess a closer relationship with God who gives than with His tribes that take. Ours it is to minister, not to be ministered unto; to provide and not par-take ; to sow and not share the harvest. Our relationship is more close with God, the giver, than with the hosts who would merely receive. 178 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting- that bids nor sit nor stand but go ! Be our joys three-parts pain ! Strive, and hold cheap the strain Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe ! Enviable ye "strong souls"; yea, ye, who like Paul say, "I glory in tribulation also." For from such a course, For thence,—a paradox which comforts while it mocks,— Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me : A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale. Aspiration, breathing toward higher things, ennobles, exalts man more perhaps than a backward glance at past achievements, as is said in "Saul," " 'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man would do." He might sink to low depths, to the brute even, but would not. To the brute ? Yes, for What is he but brute Whose flesh hath soul to suit, Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play ? To man, propose this test—Thy body at its best, How far can that project thy soul on its lone way ? The body cannot stand this test, nor was it intended to do so. Yet it dare not be looked upon as a mere encumbering tenement as Browning in the next four stanzas shows, bringing out the fact that our body is holy ; that it is glorious, even divine to live in the "rose-mesh" of flesh. Yet gifts should prove their use : I own the Past profuse Of power each side, perfection every turn : Eyes, ears took in their dole, Brain treasured up the whole ; Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn ? " Not once beat "Praise be Thine 1 I see the whole design, I who saw Power, see now Love perfect too : Perfect I call thy plan : Thanks that I was a man ! Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what Thou shalt do ! " For pleasant is this flesh ; Our soul in its rose-mesh Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest: Would we some prize might hold To match those manifold Possessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best! Let us not always say "Spite of this flesh to-day I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole ! " As the bird wings and sings, Let us cry "All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!" m THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 179 To revert to the second of these stanzas, this is the expression of man at the very crest of the mountain of his glory and power. It all follows the order of Divine Revelation—Power, Love—first Elohim, then Jehovah, then "God is love." There also appears the trust begotten of love. Here is a man in his prime. "The truth of truths is love." Now we pass to age. Its glory, knowledge : "I shall know, being old." Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage, Life's struggle having so far reached its term : Thence shall I pass approved A man, for aye removed From the brute , a God though in the germ. And I shall thereupon Take rest ere I be gone Once more on my adventure brave and new; Fearless and unperplexed, "When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armor to indue. The former years have taught; age comes to pass sentence on youth ; then shall aged man go forth unperplexed by the varying changes and problems of life, removed from the brute, a God in powers and thought though embryonic. Stanza five presented man in Youth as gladly being of those who "provide" and "effect." Now at the beginning of the period called "Age," he tries, tests, calculates the profit or loss resulting from those efforts, those "fires." "Every man's work shall be made manifest : for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is." Youth ended, I shall try My gain or loss thereby ; Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold: And I shall weigh the same, Give life its praise or blame : Young, all lay in dispute, I shall know, being old. Thus ends Youth, and Age begins. The latter carefully ex-amines the past and pronounces at last its worth. Youth dies as the day and glory tinted Age begins. For note when evening shuts, A certain moment cuts The deed off, calls the glory from the gray : A whisper from the west Shoots—"Add this to the rest, Take it and try its worth : here dies another day." So, still within this life, Though lifted o'er its strife, Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, "This rage was right i'the main, That acquiescence vain: The Future I may face now I have proved the Past." THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY For more is not reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act to-morrow what he learns to-day, Here work enough to watch The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play. How beautifully expressed the thought that the Master's life was for an example that we should follow, and that too, carefully, devoutly, day by day ! The previous stanza reminds one of that superb simile of Goldsmith's in "Deserted Village" lines 187-192. Age has passed the active stage. As Youth was told to ' 'trust God; see all, nor be afraid," so our minds are turned back to think of the beginning of a new stage by similarity in verse: As it was better, Youth Should strive, througfh acts uncouth, Towards making-, than repose on aught found made: So, better, age, exempt Prom strife, should know, than tempt Further, Thou waitedst age : wait death, nor be afraid ! Now comes the serene period of waiting. It is glorious only as it is found in the way of righteousness, Prov. 16 : 31. Enough now, if the Right And Good and Infinite Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own, With knowledge absolute, Subject to no dispute From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone. Be there, for once and all, Severed great minds from small, Announced to each his station in the Past! Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained, Right ? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last! Supply the relative whom twice ; first, with / as antecedent, sec-ond, with they as antecedent. The sentence is hard to pass, for the decision is not easily made. The Right some would say is not absolute therefore. It is so and universal too but man in applying the principles to particular cases does not know all the conditions, and circumstances or may be laboring under a delu-sion or superstition ; hence, the difficulty. Now, who shall arbitrate ? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me : we all surmise, They, this thing, and I, that: whom shall my soul believe? There follow now several paragraphs concerning the proper judgment of life, comparing man's with God's estimate of worth. "Man looketh on the outward appearance but God looketh on the heart." THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 181 Not on the vulgar mass Called "work," must sentence pass ; Thing's done, that took the eye and had the price ; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice: But all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account: All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount. Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through the language and escaped: All I could never be, All men ignored in me, This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. The great Judge shall consider the secret intents of the hear t We know not these, how can we judge? We may know them for ourselves ; therefore, we are commanded to judge ourselves. The last clause attracts to itself (its own elaboration) or causes the poet to expand the metaphor most beautifully. "We are the clay, and Thou our potter; and we all are the work of Thy hand," Isa. 64 : 8, or Jeremiah gives it more fully, 18 : 2-6. Aye, note that Potter's wheel, that metaphor ! and feel Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay— Thou, to whom fools propound, When the wine makes its round, "Since life fleets, all is change ; the Past gone, seize to-day !" Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure. He fixed thee 'mid this dance of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest: Machinery just meant To give thy soul its bent, Try thee, and turn thee forth sufficiently impressed. What though the earlier grooves which ran the laughing loves Around thy base, no longer pause and press ? What though, about thy rim, Skull-things in order grim Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress ? Look not thou down but up ! To uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp's flash, the trumpet's peal, The new wine's foaming flow, The Master's lips aglow ! Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel? But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who moldest men ! And since, not even while the whirl was worst, Did I—to the wheel of life With shapes and colors rife, Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst: 182 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY Foolish proposition that, that "since life fleets, all is change," when applied to man's real self, his spiritual being and its life. The "Past is gone," but only in that it is "past recall." "Every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." The deeds in the body shall all have to pass examination. They are not gone forever. " Tempus res humanas mutat," but not the characters of men. " Potter and clay endure." How meter, rhyme and alliteration, everything conduces in the first two lines of the next stanza to show the evanescence of circumstantial influences ! These are just enough to bring about the proper results in all God's people. " All things work together for good to them that love God." We must fret and chafe because in later 3'ears the shapings may be more stern in character and less attractive. They all and each have their place to bring about true beauty and strength of char-acter. Let us look to the higher import and purpose in all works, and especially in ourselves, "heaven's consummate cup.'' We need not fashion ourselves upon earth's wheel, according to the designing of men. " Be not confor7ned to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." Not " earth's wheel" then, but the great Fotter we need now as ever. Lastly, after striving in youth, following meekly and trust-ingly in later life, and waiting reverently to have the Potter's plans completed, the whole is surrendered, to be taken for use in the temple above, when the flaws shall have been righted, when this inglorious body shall be raised in glory, incorruption and im-mortality. So, take and use Thy work, Amend what flaws may lurk, What strains o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim ! My times be in Thy hand ! Perfect the cup as planned ! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same ! c*p The drying up of a single tear has more Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore. —Byron. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 183 THANKSGIVING DAY. E. C. RUBY, '02. /'"VUR Thanksgiving Day is a composite one. It is made up ^-^ from parts of celebrations of that day by other peoples. We have taken the time from an Indian festival which used to take place during the fall of the year. The wild-wood festival, with its feasting, its dancing of Indian warriors to the songs of their dusky sweethearts, may well be called the original Thanks-giving Day in this happy land of ours. The Thanksgiving we celebrate at the close of every harvest season owes something to the religious rites of ancient nations. The oldest of these is the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, with its magnificent festivities. It was the feast of the " ingathering" of the harvest of all the fruits, the corn, the wine, and the oil. The labors of the field were then over for the year, and the feast was an occasion of joyousness and gladness to the people. The glory of the great Hebrew festival has long since passed away, but the fundamental principle—that every one should equally rejoice in the fruits of the current harvest, together with the whole people of the land '' before the Lord''—has entered into the harvest observances of Christian lands. Greece celebrated the great feast known as the Eleusinia, or the feast to Demeter of the beautiful robe. Demeter was the goddess of harvests. Her daughter, Persephone, had been kid-napped by Pluto, and, because she had tasted a pomegranate seed, could remain with her mother only part of the year. This made Demeter angry, and she left the gods, made her dwelling upon the earth, and taught Celeus, King of Eleusis, how to plow, sow and reap. For this the Greeks celebrated the Eleusinian feast, one of the grandest of the Greek festivals. The Romans celebrated a harvest festival called the Cerealia. It took its name from Ceres, who was the Demeter of the Romans. This festival was a general holiday, every one resting from work, and eager for enjoyment and pleasure. Coming nearer to our own harvest festival is the English Har-vest- home. This was usually a day of boisterous mirth. The people kindled bonfires, danced on the green sward, and engaged in athletic sports. The Pilgrim Fathers remembered this festival in their new home, and expressed their thankfulness for their first harvest by 184 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY a feast. Of their harvest, Governor Bradford tells us that " they began now to gather in ye small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recov-ered in health and strength, and had all things in good plenty." Thereupon the Governor issued a proclamation appointing a Feast of Thanksgiving. On the appointed Thursday the feast was opened with religious services. Then came a period of feasting and recreation. The real Thanksgiving dinner took place on Saturday, the last day of the celebration. The earth, the air and the water had yielded of their bountiful supplies to make this Thanksgiving dinner, and when the pioneers sat down to the meal they saw a table spread with water-fowl, wild turkey, veni-son, corn and barley ; with this cheer they gave thanks that "by the goodness of God they were far from want." Our Thanksgiving of to-day has taken some part from each of these different festivals. It has taken the time of the Indian meeting ; its charity is gained from the Jewish Feast of Taberna-cles ; it has copied the festivals of Demeter and Ceres, in giving thanks for the crops ; its mirth and festivity has a flavor of the English Harvest-home festival ; and its spirit of thankfulness and religious adoration was given to it by our Pilgrim forefathers. When the American Colonies had established their independ-ence, and had united themselves under one form of government, the New England Thanksgiving custom was gradually extended to the Middle States, then to the West, and more slowly to the South. In 1863 it began to be annually proclaimed for observ-ance throughout the country. For more than thirty years has Thanksgiving been a national institution throughout this country, while as a religious festival it dates back over two and three-quarter centuries—to the first celebration by the Pilgrim Fathers of New England. In the early days of the planting of church and commonwealth on this continent, when a sterile soil began to yield its bounties to the often-famished settler, it is pleasant to recall that the little community took delight in giving public ex-pression to the spirit of thanksgiving, which has now grown into a mighty custom over the entire Republic, after the annual har-vesting of the fruits of the earth. The following extract Irom Mrs. H. B. Stowe's " Oldtown" indicates graphically the general character ot the New England Thanksgiving observance : "Great as the preparations were for the dinner, everything was so con- I ~ THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 18S trived that not a soul in the house should be kept from the morn-ing service of Thanksgiving in the church, and from listening to the Thanksgiving sermon, in which the minister was expected to express his views freely concerning the politics of the country, and the state of things in society generally, in a somewhat more secular vein of thought than was deemed exactly appropriate to the Lord's day." There is no religious tradition more interesting from its an-tiquity and its general significance, or more suggestive and useful as an American custom, than that of the annual Thanksgiving service, the purpose of which is to express general thanksgiving for the bounties of the year, and especial thanksgiving for national prosperity and progress. In this light alone the service ought to command, without any exception whatever, a more than usual interest in every church of every name. It is little less than a national misfortune that the opportunity of Thanksgiving Day is not universally improved by all churches. Throughout the entire history of the most ancient tradition of Thanksgiving it has always been recognized that the best and highest expression of Thanksgiving was that of charity to the suffering and the needy. The same Thanksgiving Day which marks the close of a season of bounty should not less mark the opening of a season of benefaction, the giving of thanks finding its full expression in the sharing of our bounties with those who may suffer want. A more recent and no less commendable feature of our Thanks-giving Day, is the custom of gathering together in family reunions which keep well knit the bonds of kinship and attune hearts, often sundered by discord, to the universal note of harmony and common rejoicing. This pleasant feature is beautifully expressed in the following verses from a poem written by Phoebe Carey: " O men, grown sick with toil and care, Leave for awhile the crowded mart; O women, sinking- with despair, Weary of limb and faint of heart, Forget your years to-day and come As children back to childhood's home. Walk through the sere and fading wood, So lightly trodden by your feet, When all you knew of life was good, : ■ 186 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY And all you dreamed of life was sweet, And ever fondly looking- back O'er youthful love's enchanted track. Go sit beside the hearth again, Whose circle once was glad and gay ; And if from out the precious chain Some shining links have dropped away, Then guard with tender heart and hand The remnant of thy household band. Draw near the board with plenty spread, And if in the accustomed place You see the father's reverend head, Or mother's patient, loving face, Whate'er your life may have of ill, Thank God that these are left you still." November woods are bare and still, November days are clear and bright; Each noon burns up the morning's chill, The morning's snow is gone by night ; Each day my steps grow slow, grow light, As through the woods I reverent creep Watching all things lie "down to sleep." —Helen Hunt Jackson. All brilliant flowers are pale and dead And silent droop to earth, While pansies chill in velvet robes Count life but little worth ; But in these dark November days That wander wild and wet, Our thoughts are winged to summer hours On breath of mignonette. —Eliza O. Pearson. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. Entered at the Postoffice at Gettysburg as second-class matter. Vol. IX. GETTYSBURG, PA., NOVEMBER, 1900. No. 6. Editor-in-Chief, S. A. VAN ORMER, '01. Assistant Editors, W. H. HETRICK, "W. A. KOIII.I'.K. Business Manager, H. C. HOFFMAN. Alumni Editor, REV. I\ D. GARLAND. Assistant Business Manager, WILLIAM C. NEY. Advisory Board, PROF. J. A. HIMES, LIT. D. PROF. G. D. STAHLEY, M. D. PROF. J. W. RICHARD, D. D. Published monthly by the students of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg") College. Subscription price, One Dollar a year in advance; single copies Ten Cents. Notice to discontinue sending* the MERCURY to any address must be accompanied by all arrearages. Students, Professors, and Alumni are cordially invited to contribute. All subscriptions and business matter should be addressed to the Business Manager. Articles for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address THE GETTYBURG MERCURY, GETTYSBURG, PA. EDITORS' DESK. '"■pHERE is a tendency on the part of college students to sell *■ their text books as soon as the branches in which they have been used are completed. There can be no objection offered to this custom in general, for many of the books will not be needed again during the college course, while the money invested in them can be used to advantage by most students ; but there are books that ought not to be sold—books that ought to be not only kept but used throughout the college course, and chief among these is the Rhetoric. If we measure the importance of a branch, in comparison with others, by the use to be made of it in after life, surely no other branch can claim more of our time and energy ; it we would express ourselves forcibly and accurately in 188 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY speaking and in writing, we must be familiar with the principles of Rhetoric ; if we would obviate the humiliation that comes from having our writing in after life criticised and condemned, we must cultivate the habit of looking up troublesome and un-certain points while in college. J> That the colleges of our country are taking an active part in the present political campaign is evinced by the number of clubs that nave been organized and the selection of the great issues of the campaign for discussion in literary societies and debating clubs. Colleges rightly invite free thought and free discussion of political issues in the class room as well as in student organiza-tions, for these and similar issues are to confront those now in college when they shall have become local leaders in political circles. A careful, thorough and unbiased study of National economic problems must necessarily broaden the intellectual hori-zon of the student and prepare him the better to meet the de-mands that shall rest upon him as a citizen. A CHAPTER OP A LIFE. T,. W. GROSS, '01. INVITATIONS were out announcing the wedding of Miss *■ Estella Wellington to J. Harry Ashland. It was to be a church wedding in the Episcopal church of that town. Friends and relatives of both families from far and near were invited. At last the day dawned and the merry wedding chimes rang out bright and clear. It was in June, the beautiful month of roses. Nothing could be more beautiful than the gay and happy scene that was presented to the honored guests who filled the little church on this occasion to witness the ceremony. Nature seemed to offer her congratulations in the extravagant profusion of flowers she furnished for the bride and the decorations. The birds in the tree tops along the deep, shady drives warbled a merry march for the bridal party as it passed to the elegant mansion of the bride. Harry Ashland was not rich. He was the only son, and the pride and joy of his mother's heart, and so it was with a feeling of sadness THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 189 that she, regardless of the gaiety and mirth around her, saw another woman claim a place in his affections. He had married against her choice. Yet she saw that her son dearly loved the one he married and was loved in return, and so said not a word except iu gentle reasoning; but even the desire of his mother, much as he cared for her, could not alter his intention. He married his choice and Mrs. Ashland calmly submitted, and made the occasion of the wedding and short visit at home of her son as pleasant as possible. Harry was industrious, popular and a general favorite in his home town, as was always shown by the host of friends who greeted him on his visits to his mother. He had no other profession, but traveled for his uncle, who was manager of a large machine in-dustry in the South. He had been in his uncle's office for some time, and when he was promoted to collector his salary was raised sufficient, he thought, to warrant his taking the step he did, and so he married. His wife came from an old Maryland family, bringing him wealth, social distinction and culture in exchange for his name, honesty and good character. He met her since he was working for his uncle, and although she was, perhaps, above him in the social scale, yet his manliness, comeliness and winning personality won her heart and hand for him; and finally she decided to share his fate through life. He had no fortune to depend on, yet his prospects for a successful life were bright as the morning sun. And they hoped in a year or so to have a home as beautiful as her own down in Maryland. In August Mr. and Mrs. Ashland moved to their residence in a small town in the territory Harry was to work, storing their goods and boarding at a hotel. He at once took the road and began business for his uncle. L,ong trips had to be made, some-times by rail, others by stage, and sometimes he drove in a buggy over long, lonesome roads through the wild and mountainous country. Business was good, and although it required him to be away from home a great deal of his time, he was happy in the thought that it was done for the one he loved above all others. His uncle entrusted him with collecting large amounts of money from which he drew his own salary and paid other assist-ants under him, turning the balance over as the net earnings of the company. 190 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY Harry had now been married a year, expecting by this time to have a neat little sum over and above his family expenses at the hotel, but found that their boarding there was very expensive. His wife was accustomed to the luxuries of life and dressed according to the fashions of the day. Thus the satisfaction of her fastidious tastes drained his yearly income to its lowest dregs. It was with disappointment that he learned these facts; yet he started again with renewed determination to make more money the next year than he did the first, and in'spite of everything, make his coveted home for himself and wife to enjoy life with the wealthy. The second year rolled around without apparent change in his financial affairs. His expenses were increasing, the savings decreasing ; yet he made more trips through mountain and valley, and through town and city than ever before in his energetic struggle for existence. Besides his loving wife he now had a little girl to welcome him home with her childish prattle and glee, and he often dissipated his gloom and disappointment on coming in from a hard trip by talking and a frolic with little Iyida. But still it seemed as if the clouds were lowering and his domestic horizon getting darkei instead of brighter. He was often found in deep thought by his wife, who would try to cheer him, unconscious of his real trouble, never dreaming that she might be the cause of it. He often thought of his mother's advice about this very thing, of marrying within his class, and thought, now there might be something in it, after all. But he would rather struggle to the last than say a word to check his wife in the spending of the money he would earn. May be Harry had too much pride. About this time he was sent out to make one of the largest collections of the year, and he rather dreaded the trip because it had to be made in a buggy over lonesome and rough roads. However, giving his wife and daughter a loving farewell he started on the trip. He visited subordinate agents and dealers, collect-ing money from each till, by the time he was ready to start for headquarters, he had a little over five thousand dollars in his possession. This money he kept in a tin box securely fastened under the buggy seat. He had never been molested by highway-men himself, but often had heard of such robberies occurring in the vicinity through which he had to pass, and he felt a peculiar THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 191 dread pass over him lest he should be attacked on this particular trip when he carried so much money. Harry had been driving all day and his horse became very tired and somewhat jaded. He hoped to reach his destination before night-fall, but being in Autumn and the days growing shorter, darkness gathered sooner than he anticipated. A drizzling rain set in, and to add to his difficulties, his horse became lame from much traveling. As a result intense darkness caught him in the very worst part of the road. Yes, he was robbed. His worst fears were realized. A full and vivid account of the bold and daring robbery appeared in the daily papers giving all the details. But the highwaymen had the money and were still at large. It was the same old story. The tired horse was stopped and held while three or four men sprang at the occupant of the buggy, bound him hand and foot, gagged him, tied the horse to a tree in the wood by the road side and then hastened away with their booty. He remained in his help-less condition till at last, after a night of agony trying to free himself, he was set free by a passer-by in the morning after the banditti were miles away. He went at once to his uncle, told his story and had detectives started in pursuit of the robbers. But the old man was angry, flew into a rage at such a great loss of money, blamed Harry for neglect and carelessness, and finally discharged him from his service. This was the climax to all his trouble. He tried to reason with his uncle but he would hear none. Harry could not pacify him. He went home to his wife with a heavy heart; his bright-est gleams of home and success blasted, utterly ruined. His wife tried to console him, but with no avail. He saw bills staring him in the face, his month's salary stolen and nothing for the future in sight. Here again pride came in his way and he refused several offers of help by kind friends because the salary was lower than he had been used to getting and in the humbler occupations. His discouragement increased; at times he became moody and silent. The thought of his great misfortune, his uncle's relentlessuess and his domestic affairs weighed heavily upon him. At last it became unbearable and he told his wife he must go to the city and obtain a position worthy of his station in life. He bade 192 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY them goodbye and left little L,ida and her mother in their rooms at the hotel. Harry was gone, alas! never to return. He failed to obtain the position, his money was soon spent, and he paid his last dime for a piece of rope. The next morning his cold, distorted and lifeless body was found hanging to the limb of a tree in a secluded part of one of the parks about the great city. His body was identified by his friends, who were notified by the authorities, and taken home and buried. Time, the great physician, the healer of all wounds, bound up the broken hearts of his many friends, and soon they looked up again. He was rid of the world and its struggles and soon for-gotten by it, remembered only by a few of his friends. One life less in the world ; one leaf fallen from the great tree—the world; one pebble less on the great sea shore; one drop less in the ocean. Soon the waters closed over the ripple and were as placid as before. THE STABILITY OF A REPUBLIC. W. H. HETRICK, '01. TVTATIONAL, evolution in the course of its progress has finally •*■ ^ given government a sublime perfection in the principles and constitutions of modern Republicanism. A republic such as our own, firmly grounded on union, liberty and independence, is not modern in development, but stands as the complete product of the ages. Its grand perfection and accomplishment is the re-sult of long centuries of national experience. Out of the confu-sion of the past, the rude primitive rule of patriarchs, the disso-lution of empires, the unrelenting tyranny of despotism, the heart-less cruelty of kings, out of innumerable wars and inhuman wrongs, God, the maker of destiny, has perfected a government for man, and we call that government a republic. Heretofore the government of nations was, to a great extent, at variance with the desires and thoughts of the human mind. There was no satisfaction in serving ; no morality in slavery ; no justice in taxation without representation ; no virtue in ine-quality. Man since his creation has felt and expressed a strong dissatisfaction with the government imposed upon him. It was his conviction that he was and by right ought to be free. A deep inexplicable fact of his being forced him to the belief that the law THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 193 which governs society should conform to his own conscience and reason. This was the requisite of his soul. When once attained and instituted, government would be perfect. There would be nothing beyond it; no deeper principle for higher attainment. It would be the consummation of law. Such is our own republic. The principles in her constitution strike deep into the heart of being. Liberty, union and inde-pendence are not artificial, not the invention of mind nor even the result of thought. No ! They are the aspirations of the soul; the uniformities of all natural law. Ages of time, millions of people and hundreds of civilizations, by the power of progress, have at last evolved from the great powers of human experience an en-during form of government, that can never fall or be dissolved by the presence of faults or the schemes of men. Our country shall never degenerate from her elevated place of greatness. To bring this about would necessitate retrogression, and retrogression means a changing of law for something worse. It would be the destruction of a perfect law for the adoption of one whose im-perfection was the principal cause of its revision. It would be contrary to the nature of things. It would mean imperialism which belongs to the past. It would mean despotism, militarism, disorder. It would be forcing the law of nature, of reason and of justice against its own development. No! Our constitution is founded upon a rock, the rock of tried experience, the deepest law of progress. It must ever stand as a monument built for all time to come. SHAKESPEARE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD EDUCATION. EMORY D. BREAM, '02. WHRN we turn to the history of education to ascertain the relative position of Shakespeare among the great writers of the world, we are told that Greece had its Homer, Rome its Virgil, Italy its Dante, Germany its Goethe, France its Hugo and England its Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton and many others ; but if one of these distinguished writers were to be chosen king over the others, Shakespeare would, by common consent, be placed upon the throne. Naturally, then, we would expect a man of such a lofty liter-ary position to be a patron of education. Although he has written no treatise on education, nor is he recognized as an educator, yet 194 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY one cannot read his works intelligently without noticing how careful he is to endow the nobler characters of his plays with the love of knowledge. For instance, in " As You L,ike It," who does not admire the noble discontent of Orlando with a condition that hinders manly development ? In the " Tempest " do we not immediately recognize Prospero as a true Student ? Shakespeare distinguishes the educated man from the unedu-cated. The fact that he firmly believed that the mind, God's greatest gift to man, should be cultivated and adorned, is proved by the case of Orlando. He is discontented with his breeding, and recognizes that though he is a gentleman by birth, yet that avails little if he lacks breeding. " For call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox ? His horses are bred better." How strongly Shakespeare empha-sizes in these lines the fact that God would not have endowed us with minds superior to animals if he did not intend that we should cultivate them. Intelligence is a distinguishing mark of a lady or gentleman. In the " Merchant of Venice " this fact is brought out clearly. Bassanio lacks commercial ability and is unable to win for him-self the means necessary for the support of a man of rank ; yet he possesses the elegant tastes of a gentleman, and when supplied with money, he has no trouble in winning the heart of Portia, a young woman of wealth and high social position. Shakespeare is careful to portray her even as having good sense enough to esteem spiritual higher than material qualities. This is clearly shown in the.conversation between Portia and Nerissa when Nerissa recounts to Portia the various suitors that have sought her hand. She finds fault with all until Bassanio's name is mentioned. Here Shakespeare shows a distinction. The Nea-politan prince took so much interest in his horse that he boasted even of being able to shoe it. Faulconbridge, the young baron of England, is, in Portia's words, "A proper man's picture ; but alas ! who can converse with a dumb show ? '' But when Bas-sanio, the Venetian, a scholar and soldier, is named these two ac-complishments win for him favor in the eyes of Portia. In these examples Shakespeare made the educated man of greater weight than all the men of wealth, noble birth and polish. An educated person is recognized by people of less ability as being superior to them. This is also brought out plainly by THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 195 Portia after Bassanio has opened the leaden casket, and, according to the command given in the stanza of poetry that it contained, has claimed her with a kiss. In the conversation that follows she calls herself an unlessoned, unschooled and unpractised girl, but not too old to learn. Thus she recognizes Bassanio as her superior. In turn, when Portia is pleading for Antonio, Shylock admires her ability to argue, and as soon as she seems to be giving justice to his side of the question, he bursts out in exclamations of praise. " A Daniel come to judgment! Yea a Daniel! O wise young judge, how I honor thee ! " Considering the fact that Portia has before this confessed herself to be an unschooled girl, such ability to plead a case seems contradictory ; but this shows that educa-tion is not merely book knowledge. Though Shylock may have thought that it was to his interest to laud the wise young judge, yet doubtless Shakespeare wished to lay stress upon the influence that an educated person has over an uneducated one. Lastly, a love for study and close application is necessary to acquire an education in the true sense of the word. In " Hamlet," where the king tells Hamlet that his intention to return to Wit-tenburg to school is contrary to the wishes of the king and queen, from the words, "We beseech you, bend you to remain here," we would infer that he was a diligent student and loved study. The most forcible illustration of this, however, is Prospero. He was so attentive to his books that he neglected his duties as a ruler even so much as to allow his brother to usurp the throne. In the conversation between Miranda and Ferdinand, while he was piling up the logs, Miranda requests Ferdinand to rest awhile, saying that, "He's hard at study. He's safe for these three hours." Indicating how diligently Prospero studied. These seem almost like words of advice from the great dramatist to those who wish to be real students, and they show that Shakespeare not only was favorable to education, but believed that everyone should be educated. O reader ! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring ; O gentle reader ! you would find A tale in everything. —Woods-worth. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY THE MORSE VS. THE AUTOMOBILE. H. L. STIFEL, '03. pVER since this world began there has been in existence a cer- -*-' tain class of persons, who have opposed, with all their strength, every innovation, every invention, which untiring labor or a happy chance has brought before the public. Though I do not consider myself as one of this mean-spirited class, I wish to speak a word in favor of that good friend and servant of man, the horse, as opposed to the automobile. Of the three classes of the automobile, steam, gasoline and electric, it is hard to make a choice of the one with the least ob-jectionable features. The latter we may reject at once, owing to the difficulty in charging the batteries. An average electric ma-chine will run for twenty miles ; then it must be recharged. This circumstance renders it absolutely useless for long tours, as there are but few places along a country road where this recharging may be effected. Even in the city, the owner of this type of the automobile may find himself compelled to procure a team to drag home his horseless carriage. Nor is the steam wagon much better. It requires a great deal of labor in firing up before each trip. Another disagreeable feature is the incessant noise of the steam. Besides, a man must, to all purposes, know as much as a licensed engineer before he is capable of managing such a ma-chine. The steam pressure and the amount of water in the boiler must be careiully watched. The fire and fuel also require con-stant attention. There remains only the gasoline type. This is the most practical of all three, but it also has one very unpleasant feature. It is everywhere accompanied by the disagreeable odor of gasoline. Any one of these three classes, moreover, needs as much care as would two horses. The machine is fitted up with a large amount of nickel and brass trimmings, which, in order to be kept presentable, require as much polishing and cleaning as would a team. Then, too, the mechanism must be kept clean and free from rust, and must be thoroughly oiled, not to mention the fact that it must be kept in good running order. It has been asserted that the automobile will eventually dis-place the horse entirely. This I emphatically deny. In my opinion, it is only a fad which society, bored to the last degree, has taken up. At all events, in its present stage of development, THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY it is nothing but a toy. In the course of time the automobile may prove to be more serviceable thau the horse for heavy haul-ing or rapid transit, but it can never take the place of the hon-e for pleasure driving. There is a vast difference between guiding a mere machine and spinning along a road behind a spirited horse. The keen sense of satisfaction felt in the mastery of a creature of flesh and blood, intelligent, and with a will of its own, would be entirely absent in the running of an automobile. In regard to the matter of safety, the horse is again superior to the steam or gasoline wagon. A horse, on the darkest night, will keep on the road by instinct. An automobile, guided by a man, of course cannot do this, for man hasnot this instinct which is given to the animal. Therefore, the driver, if we may call the person who runs the automobile by that name, is likely to find himself lying in a ditch beside the road. We have often read of horses stopping and refusing to go on when their instinct tells them there is danger ahead. This again is impossible to the auto-mobile driver, for he receives no such warning. Naturally, an accident may happen to a careless driver with the most intelligent of horses; but is not the danger much greater when a careless man has a boiler full of steam, or a tank of gasoline under him ? A small stone, lying in the road, may strike a front wheel and throw the steering gear to one side, ditching the machine or send-ing it over an embankment, with an explosion, perhaps, as the result. An ordinary vehicle would simply run over the obstruc-tion with no worse effect than a slight jolt. In view of these facts, let us cling to the horse, an intelligent animal, capable of loving and of being loved, rather than take up the automobile, a thing of cogs and machinery. In following out this course we shall obtain more pleasure, and we shall obtain it with greater safety. Is it not, therefore, the more desirable ? o*p I hold it true, whate'er befall, I feel it when I sorrow most ; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. -Tennyson. 198 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY OUR OLD SCHOOL GROUND. [D. M. MISLCHIOR, '02.] TT may seem very odd that one should select a plain, country "■ school as the most interesting place he ever knew, yet, for me, there is no other place that carries with it so much personal interest as those nooks and crooks about our old school house. The beautiful parks about Philadelphia are very interesting not only for their beauty, but also for their historical connections; there is pleasure in watching the ocean dash its breakers against the beach of some seaside resort ; the rush and bustle of Broad-way is fascinating ; yet, I imagine that if I ever live to be an old man and think of the happy days of my past life, no recollections will come before me so vividly as those connected with that old school-ground. I should not say old so far as the building is concerned, for when I started to school it was a comparatively new one. About a quarter of a mile east of Springtown it stood—and still stands —upon a little hill beside a quaint, old Evangelical church. The house was a substantial brick building—much after the manner of all country school houses in a prosperous farming community. The playground was not much of a recommendation, for aside from being small it was uneven and rocky. It was probably for this reason that we sought other places for our sports and often wandered far beyond our prescribed limits. There was a row of sheds back of the church for the accom-modation of such church goers as were willing to pay a yearly rent to protect their teams from the rain or the burning sun. Here we would all gather on a rainy day, as long as it was not too cold, and amuse ourselves as best we could, playing such games as a half a hundred lively boys and girls could play in so small a space. On the east side of the building was an anything-but-hand-some- looking rail fence, and on the inner side of this we built huts, made of rails, corn-fodder, and dry leaves. At the back of these stood a row of cider and Baldwin apple trees, and many a feast we had off them, the owner having long before given up hope of ever getting any of the apples for himself. Running at right angles with the school ground was the road and right in front of the school house was the top of a very steep THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 199 hill which afforded us ample means for coasting. And what sport is more fascinating than coasting when you have a straight '' drive " tor a quarter of a mile or more ? I remember one im-mense sled (double-deckers were unheard of at that time) which was the pride of the whole school. Two big fellows would sit on it facing each other, and then a heap of little boys would be piled on crosswise and away they'd go. At the top of the hill there were usually immense snow drifts, and it was lots of fun to tun-nel them. First a fellow would start from the top and, feet first, would work his way through until a good sized hole would be made. Then little subways were made until the top, becoming too weak, would fall in. In the field on the other side of the road we would often build an immense snow fort, and how hard we would fight to defend it! It would be captured and recap-tured, until the teacher's bell would call us to our afternoon's work. Below this field ran a mill race, and I can well remember how, in the early part of September, we would sneak down to it, undress and take a lively little swim in the almost bitter cold water—a practice that was prohibited not only by the teacher, but also by our parents. Once, especially, do I remember how I sneaked away one noon with a fishing line in my pocket to try a half hour's luck at angling, and how I slipped from a log, fell in to my waist, and in the hope of not being detected put on a brave face and determined to sit the whole afternoon in my wet trousers. But the teacher had heard of my misfortune through someone else and was waiting for me. Instead of getting a thrashing, he gave me a sealed note to take to my father and sent me home. Believing that a great deal of harm is often done by exposing domestic affairs, I'll not say anything of the interview with my father in his private study. After the long, weary winter months were past, Spring would arouse the sleeping fields and woods, and then perhaps the most fascinating part of those school days would come. The early flowers, especially arbutus, would come out in the valley below the school house, or on the mountain back of it; and many, many times we would scour those fields and bring back not only flowers, but turtles, snakes and other such harmless creatures as would terrify the girls. Then, although perhaps chiefly in the Autumn, would come the time to play Hare and Hound, and through fields, over 200 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY streams, up the hills we would run, heedless of wet feet, torn clothes or of being late for school. Down at the foot of an adjoining field stood a lime kiln, and back of it along a small mountain creek we would sit and cut willow whistles, dare each other to do almost impossible feats, and just have a jolly good time. It was down there that on the last day of school we were always permitted to play that forbidden game—"ring tag." That was one of the times when the boys condescended to play with the girls, and everybody kissed every-body else good-bye. It was a bit of foolishness, and yet when one thinks back, and the faces of all those schoolmates come before him, he is struck with surprise to note what changes eight or nine years may bring. Some of them are married, a few have died, others are away attending some higher institution of learning, while the majority are still there, but gradually scattering one by one. Often, when thinking ofhome, I see before me that school house —a church on one side enclosed by a row of trees, fields of corn stubble on two other sides, and the well-travelled road directly in front. There is the narrow, rocky lane leading down to the mill-race, coasting down which a little girl, caught between a sled and rock, once broke a leg and was lamed for life. To one side stands the coal shed. On the right is the rock on which the auctioneer stood when we had "horse sales." So as I stand there and look upon spot after spot where one little thing or another happened that I shall never forget, it seems to me that if I live to be ninety years old, I shall never find a place of more personal interest than the scenes of my early country school life. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear ; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air. —Grey. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 201 WHEN SHOULD A YOUNG MAN CHOOSE HIS PROFESSION ? HEIGHTMAN, '02. '"PHIS question, manifestly of so vast importance to every young *■ man, should be presented to him at an early age. But he should be careful lest he make a decision too hastily. Often does a man see his mistake too late when, after spending a long time in preparation, he enters upon his chosen profession, and feels that it will be neither pleasant nor profitable to him. But he can put the blame upon none else than himself, unless perchance he has been forced by his parents against his own will to choose a certain profession, though he has had from his early youth a long-ing to be engaged in another—one in which he is confident of success. This we know ought not to be. Every young man has, without doubt, an inclination to some one profession, and he should be allowed to pursue it and not be persuaded to follow the same profession in which his father is engaged, simply because his father has made a success of it. And then, too, how often is a young man led into his father's business at so early,an age that he is scarcely old enough to have formed a true conception of the world. True, it may be the very best thing the father can do to give his son employment as early as possible, especially if he be inclined to be wayward ; and still more, it may, as is often the case, make a good, energetic busi-ness man of him, when, if he were allowed to remain idle a year or more, he might contract slothful habits, which would cling to him all through life. But yet, I think the father makes a mis-take if he does not give his son ample time to learn to know the world, and to be able to decide rightly and satisfactorily his pro-fession for life. In doing this, however, the father should not allow him to spend one moment in idleness. If he cannot send him to college, he should ever have some duty for him to per-form, and should afford him every facility for improving his in-tellect, by encouraging him in a desire for knowledge, and by surrounding him with the best books. If a young man can go to college, and would make the best possible success in life, let him, by all means, decide before he goes to college, what will be his profession. Doing this he will have a motive before him, and will press onward with renewed vigor at every step of his advance. Throughout his course, 202 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY whenever he learns anything which he knows will be of value when applied to his chosen profession, for the very reason that he realizes its worth to him, that knowledge will impress itself upon his mind, and he will retain it when he enters upon his pro-fession. How essential is it, in this our day, to concentrate our efforts upon one line of study or thought in order to reach that degree of excellence required if we would be among the men in the first ranks of our profession. Especially is this so in the ministry. It is the belief of some that the successful minister is the one who has made special preparation in the study of God's Word all through his college years before he enters the seminary. He will surely be able to understand theology much more readily if he is well versed in the truths of the Bible, upon which theology is based. So it is in the preparation for any profession. First to choose a profession, and then to use every effort to advance to as high a degree of perfection as possible in this one line of study, is the secret of the success of all eminent men. But there are those who are at a loss to make a choice—some thinking that they would not be suitable for the profession they would like, and continuing on in a state of indecision possibly throughout their course, while others, somewhat indolent, put it off until they find which one will require the least energy on their part. What a fatal mistake ! Not prepared for anything espe-cially, they may go out into a business life and be successful, but not, indeed, to the degree of success they would have had they made special preparation—nor would they have as much satisfac-tion. And again, does not every young man have some one talent, which, if he cultivate it, may not only give him wonderful suc-cess in life, but may make his name famous ; while, if he allow it to remain dormant, and gives it no attention, though it mani-fest itself repeatedly, he doubtless loses his one chance of suc-cess in life. However, a man cannot always know what this talent is. In this case, let him make an earnest endeavor to find out what he may best fit himself for, and in what direction his mind and pleasure are bent the more ; but let him quickly make his decision. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 203 MOW IT LOOKS PROM THE ROAD. A. L. VERMILYA. Search the woods and rake the meadows For a robin, owl or bat; Something that when slain and mounted May adorn my lady's hat. Rip the feathers off the songsters, Take each head and tail and wing, For them is my lady waiting, Tender-hearted, gracious thing. See her sitting in her carriage Making all the show she can ; On her head a cemetery, In her hand a feather fan. Yet she talks of love and mercy To all things in honeyed words, While she's decked in borrowed plumage Torn from slaughtered singing birds. O, Consistency! thou jewel, Teach these women common sense ; Teach them, while they prate of kindness, They themselves give rank offense. MY MIND TO ME A KINGDOM IS. My minde to me a kingdome is; Such perfect joy therein I finde As farre exceeds all earthly blisse, That God or Nature hath assignde ; Though much I want that most would have, Yet still my mind forbids to crave. —An Old Song. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. C. P. SOLT MERCHANT TAILOR Masonic Bldg., GETTYSBURG Our collection of Woolens for the coming- Fall andWinter season cannot be surpassed for variety, attractive designs and general completeness. The latest styles of fashionable novelties in the most approved shades. Staples of exceptional merit, value and -wearing-durability. Also altering-, repairing-, dyeing- and scouring- at moderate prices. .FOR UP-TO-DATE. Clothing, Hats, Shoes, And Men's Furnishing- Goods, go to I. HALLEM'S MAMMOTH CLOTHING HOUSE, Chambersburg St., GETTYSBURG, PA. ESTABLISHED 1867 BY ALLEN WALTON. ALLEN K. WALTON, President and Treasurer. ROBT. J. WALTON Superintendent. flammelstomn Broom Stone Company Quarrymen and Manufacturers of Building Stone, Sawed Flagging and Tile Waltonville, Dauphin Co., Pa. Contractors for all kinds of Telegraph and Express Address. Cut StoneWork. BROWNSTONE, PA. Parties visiting' the Quarries will leave cars at Brownstone Station on the P. & R. R. R. For a nice sweet loaf of Bread call on J. RAMER Baker of Bread and Fancy Cakes, GETTYSBURG. PA. EIMER & AiUEND, Manufacturers and Importers of Chemicals and Chemical Apparatus 205, 207, 209 and 211 Third Avenue, Corner 18th Street NEW YORK. Finest Bohemian and German Glassware, Royal Berlin and Meissen Porcelain, Pure Hammered Platinum, Balances and Weights. Zeiss Mi-croscopes and Bacteriological Apparatus; Chemical Pure Acids and Assay Goods. SCOTT PAPER COMPANY MAKERS OF FINE TOILET PAPER 7th and Greenwood Ave. PHILADELPHIA PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. The Century Double-Feed Fountain Pen. Fully 'Warranted 16 Kt. Gold Pen, Iridium Pointed. GEO. EVELER, Agent for Gettysburg College PRICE LIST. No. 1. Chased, long- or short $2 00 No. 1. Gold Mounted 3 00 No. 3. Chased 3 00 No. 3. Gold Mounted 4 00 Spiral, Black or Mottled $2 SO Twist, " 2 50 Hexagon, Black or Mottled 2 SO Pearl Holder, Gold Mounted S 00 THE CENTURY PEN CO., WHITEWATER, WIS. Askyour Stationer or our Agent to show them toyou. Agood local agent-wanted in every school mmmmwmmmmwmwmmmmmmwwmm^ Printtigand We Print This Book THE MT. HOEEY STATIONERY AND PRINTING CO. does all classes of Printing' and Binding, and can furnish you any Book, Bill Head, Letter Head, Envelope, Card, Blank, or anything1 pertain-ing to their business in just as good style and at less cost than you can obtain same elsewhere. They are located among the mountains but their work is metropolitan. You can be convinced of this if you give them the opportunity. gi Mt. Holly Stationery and Printing Co. ^mTSiV ^iumiiuuiUiiuuiuuiiiUiuuiUiUiUiUiUiUiUiumi^ R H. S. BENNER, .DEALER IN. Groceries, Notions, Queensware, Glassware, Etc., Tobacco and Cigars. J7 CHAMBERSBURG ST. WE RECOMMEND THESE BUSINESS MEN. Pitzer House, (Temperance) JNO. E. PITZER, Prop. Rates $1.00 to $1.25 per day. Battlefield a specialty. Dinner and ride to all points of interest,including-the three days' figrht, $1.25. No. 127 Main Street. MUMPER & BENDER Furniture Cabinet Making, Picture Frames Beds, Springs, Mattresses, Etc. Baltimore St., GETTYSBURG, PA. You will find a full line of Pure Drugs and Fine Sta- People's Drug Store Prescriptions a Specialty. .00 TO. .fjotel (Gettysburg Barber Sfyop. Centre Square. B. M. SEFTON J. A. TAWNEY ** Is ready to furnish Clubs and Bread, Rolls, Etc. At short notice and reasonable rates. Washington & Middle Sts., Gettysburg. \YT TJ rT\nODT Successor to W. T . ^KJUKJISJ., Simon J.Codori Dealer in Beef, Pork, Lamb, Veal, Sausage. Special rates to Clubs. York St., GETTYSBURG. Davib Croxel, Dealer in ^ine (groceries anb notions t^x^york Street. .GO TO. CHAS. E. BARBEHENN, Barber In the Eagle Hotel, Cor. Main and Washington Sts. YOHN BROS Agents for the Keystone State, Waldo, Washburn, Groupner & Meyer. Highest Grade Mandolins, Guitars, Banjos, Mandollas and Mandocellos. Headquarters for Phonographs, Graphophones and supplies. Trimmings of every description. All sheet music one-half off. Large discounts on Books and studies. 326 Market St., Harrisburg, Pa. FAVOR THOSE WHO FAVOR US. Spaldings Foot Ball Supplies Are universally used wherever the game is played, thetrade mark being- the guarantee. TheSpalding-Official Inter-collegiate Foot Ball is used by all the leading- colleg-es and athletic clubs of the country/ Price $4.00. Send for catalogue of all Athletic Sports. Spalding's Official Foot Ball Guide, with the new rules for 1900, and records, reviews and instructions, including- pictures of 1600 play-ers. Price 10 cents. Sandow's Spring- Grip Dumb-Bells. In-vented by Sandow. Have no equal as an exerciser and developer. Every muscle benefited. Spalding-'s Championship Hammer with ball bearing* pivot and wire handles. Used by all experts. "H. Vardon" Golf Clubs. Made from Harry Vardon's own models furnished ex-clusively to us. Spalding-'s Athletic Library. Devoted to Athletic Sports. Published monthly. Ten cents per copy. Send for list. A. G. SPALDING & BROS. (Incorporated) NEW YORK CHICAGO DENVER ROWE, Your Grocer Carries Full Line of Groceries, Canned Goods, Etc Best Coal Oil and Brooms at most Reasonable Prices. OPPOSITE COLLEGE CAMPUS. S. J. CODORI, y* Druggists* Dealer in Drugs, Medicines, Toilet Articles, J> Stationery, .Blank Books, Amateur Pho-tographic Supplies, Etc., Etc. BALTIMORE ST. R. H. GULP PAPER HANGER, Second Square, York Street. COLLEGE EMBLEMS. EMIL ZOTHE, ENGRAVER, DESIGNER AND MANUFACTURING JEWELER. 19 S. NINTH ST. PHILADELPHIA SPECIALTIES: Masonic Marks, Society Badges, College Buttons, Pins, Scarf Pins, Stick Pins and Athletic Prizes. All Goods ordered through A. N. Beau. To Repair Broken Arti-cles use Remember '< MAJOR'S RUBBER CEMENT, MAJOR'S LEATHER CEMENT. Meneely Bell Co. TROY, N. Y. MANUFACTURERS OF SUPERIOR BELLS The 2000 pound bell now ringing; in the tower of Pennsylvania Col-lege was manufactured at this foundry. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. The Pleased Customer Is not a stranger in our establish-ment— he's right at home, you'll see him when you call. We have the materials to please fastidious men. J. O. LIPPY, Merchant Tailor 39 Chambersburg St., Gettysburg, Pa. G, E. SPANGLER, Dealer in Pianos, Organs, Music, Musical Instruments, Strings, Etc. YORK STREET, 1ST SQUARE. GETTYSBURG. L. D. Miller, GROCER Confectioner and Fruiterer. Ice Cream and Oysters in Season. 19 Main St. GETTYSBURG City Hotel, Main St. Gettysburg. J* Free 'Bus to and from all Trains Thirty seconds' walk from either depot Dinner with drive over field with four or more, $1.35 Rates $1.50 to $2.00 per day- John E. Hughes, Frop. Capitol Ctt£ Cafe Cor. Fourth and Market Sts. HARRISBURG, PA. First-Class Rooms Furnished. Special Rates to Private Parties. Open Day and Night. European Plan. Eunch of All Kinds to Order at the Restaurant. ALDINQER'S CAPITOL CITY CAFE. POPULAR PRICES F. Mark Bream, Dealer in Fancy and Staple Groceries Telephone 29 Carlisle St., GETTYSBURG, PA. .Photographer. No. 3 Main St., GETTYSBURG, PENNA. Our new effects in Portraiture are equal to photos made anywhere, and at any price. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS Klrigbt, 140-142 Woodward Avenue DETROIT, MICH. Manufacturers of High Grade Fraternity Emblems Fraternity Jewelry Fraternity Novelties Fraternity Stationery Fraternity Invitations Fraternity Announcements Fraternity Programs Send for Catalogue and Price List. Special Designs on Application. MOTEL GETTYSBURG LIVERY GETTYSBURG, PA. LONG & MOLTZWORTM, Proprietors Apply at Office in the Motel for First-Class Guides and Teams THE BATTEFIELD A SPECIALTY Ube :S5oIton Market Square Ibarriaburg, flJa. Large and Convenient Sample Rooms, Passenger and Baggage Elevator. Electric Cars to and from Depot. Electric Light and Steam Heat. J. M. & M. S. BUTTERWORTH, Proprietors Special Rates for Commer-cial Men " EZ 1ST IMMER CUT ET WAS ZU WISSEIN." These are the words of Goethe, the great German poet, and are as true in our day as when uttered. In these times of defective vision it is good to know something about eyes. A great deal has been learned about the value of glasses and their application since Goethe lived. Spectacle wearers have increased by thousands, while at the same time, persons losing their eyesight, have been greatly diminished. If your eyes trouble you in any way let me tell you the cause. Examination free and prices reasonable. We grind all our own lenses and fit the best lenses (no matter what anyone else has charged you) for $2.50 per pair and as cheap as SO cents per pair, or duplicate a broken lens if we have one-half or more of the old one, at a reasonable charge, returning same day received. .E. L. ECOLE. 807 and 809 North Third Street, HARRISBURG, PA PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS- (^entpol Jlotel, ELIAS FISSEL, Prop. (Formerly of Globe Hotel) Baltimore Street, Gettysburg, Pa. Two doors from Court House. MODERN IMPROVEMENTS. Steam Heat, Electric Light and Call Bells all through the House. Closets and Bath Rooms on Every Floor. Sefton & Fleni-ming's Livery is connected with this Hotel. Good Teams and Competent Guides for the Battlefield. Charges Moderate, Satisfaction Guaranteed. Rates $1.50 Per Day. GET A SKATE ON And send all your Soiled Linen to the Gettysburg Steam Laundry R. R. LONG, Prop. R. A. WONDERS, Corner Cigar Parlors. A full line of Cigars, Tobacco, Pipes, Etc. Scott's Corner, Opp. Eagle Hotel. GETTYSBURG, PA. c Try My Choice Line of A High-Grade Chocolates ^ at 40c per lb. Always fresh at J[ C CHAS. H. McCLEARY (| Carlisle St., Opposite W. M. R. R. U Also Foreign and Domestic Fruits Y' Always on Hand. JOHN M. MINNIGH, Gonfeetionepy, lee, •■-""lee Creams. Oysters Stewed and Fried. No. 17 BALTIMORE ST. The Leading Barber CSfyop (Successor to C. C. Sefton) Having- thoroughly remodeled the place is now ready to accommodate the public Barber Supplies a Specialty. .Baltimore Street. ESTABLISHED 1876 PENROSE MYERS, Watchmaker and Jeweler Gettysburg Souvenir Spoons, Col-lege Souvenir Spoons. NO. 10 BALTIMORE ST., GETTYSBURG, PENNA. L. f\. klltW Manufacturers' Agent and Jobber of Hardware, Oils, Paints and Queensware. GETTYSBURG, PA. The Only Jobbing House in Adams County.

Issue 50.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1991. ; Review Religious Volume 50 Number 5 September / October 1991 50 TM ANNIVERSARY VOLUME REVIEW FOR RI:.LIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at St. Louis University by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus: Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Telcphonc: 314-535-3048. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis MO and additional offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to R~:\'~EW Foa R~:I,I(;IOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Subscription rates: Single copy $3.50 plus mailing costs. One-year subscription $15.00 plus mailing costs; two-year subscription $28.00 plus mailing costs¯ See inside back cover for subscription informa-tion and mailing costs. © 1991 REVIEW I.'Oa R~:t,tc, IOUS. David L. Fleming, S.J. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Michael G. Harter, S.J. Elizabeth McDonough, O.P. 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This order is for [] a new subscription [] a renewal [] a restart of a lapsed subscription MAIL TO: REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ¯ 3601 LINDELL BOULEVARD ° ST.LouIs, MO 63108 IIII III IIII II IIII III I PRISMS. What did you go out to the desert to see? A prophet? The question which Jesus asked his own people takes on a special poignancy for us toda~y in the Church. Our biblical tradition indicates that God raises up prophetic people in dark and difficult days. Because many see the time of renewal called for by Vatican II as a period of continuing strug-gle and tension--sometimes sadly with positions defended or fixed rather than with dialogue explored--affecting people and priests in parishes, bish-ops in national hierarchies, and religious in the same congregation, there is a greater tendency today to go running out, searching for a prophet. As usual there is also the temptation for some to play the prophet. But the prophetic tradition strongly emphasizes that tree prophets do not identify the role for themselves. God plucks people out of ordinary circum-stances, evokes some kind of personal conversion, and then speaks and works through them, even in their own reluctance for the role, and in their fear and trembling. Although we tend to apply the word prophet glibly to some modem-day leaders, educators, and writers, we perhaps are not far off the mark when we search for those movements and calls of God that come in incremental ways through ordinary-looking people and events. It is to acknowledge that prophets, like saints, have a range from "capital P" prophets (like our canonized "capital S" saints) with a major message of modeling and influence ~o the almost hidden (because of everydayness) small-letter prophets who in limited and confined ways raise questions, sug-gest new directions, make us uncomfortable, and at the same time give us hope. Prophets of lasting influence are s~arce at any time in our world's his-tory. Yet we may find it all too easy, even now, to mute the "smail p" prophet either ir~ our fixated search for major prophetic voices or in our disdain for less-than-radical calls. The even greater loss, however, happens when we may intentionally or unintentionally downplay our own lived (small p) prophetic witness to Christ's values--an integral part of our own chosen way of life. Review for Religious has been p~rivileged through the years to present voices of personal witness and articles of challenge and critique which repre-sent this common spectrum of our e ~eryday prophets. In this issue, "Inner Africa: A Journey of Conversion" by Susan Rakoczy is a personal witness to 641 642 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 God's continuing call to go beyond a familiar homeland and to pay its enlivening costs---costs borne more within oneself than without. Jean Steffes considers directly in her article the theme of the prophetic-witness aspect of contemporary religious life. The articles by Giallanza, Levey, Arbuckle, and Mueller give further reflections on various aspects of religious life that affect its present and future witness. From the area of contemplation, the ground of all prophetic activity, Joseph Tetlow uses a very simple image from the changing seasons of the year to present an understanding of God's calls and our responses for a com-monplace continuity of spiritual growth. In a similar way Gerard Luttenberger sees through the contemplative Fourth Mansion of St. Ter6sa a way of praying apostolically. A prophetic relationship of faith with our United States culture grounds Hoffman's treatment of creative leisure and, in a very different fashion, Hinojosa's suggestions for formation, as he espe-cially has the Hispanic candidate in mind. Rywalt shares his experience of the sometimes dark journeying required of religious trying to follow God's lead in the transfer process in this consecrated lifeform. The prophetic and priestly people which we are will find fresh insight into the manna-food for our joumeying in Billy's "The Bread Kernel," clari-ty in Meyer's restating of the ministerial priesthood foundation through a deeper appreciation of an ambassador's role, and consolation in the gentle wisdom of living reflected in McDonald's "Faithful Servant." Perhaps, in our effort to identify prophets, McDonald's theme goes right to the heart of the matter. No truer discernment or greater tribute can be given to any prophet, spelled with large or small p, than to be identified, like Moses, as a faithful servant of God. David L. Fleming, S.J. Four Seasons of the Soul Joseph .4. Tetlow, SJ Father Tetlow wrote "The Mirror in the Field" for our November/December 1988 issue. His current address is Jesuit Hall; 3601 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. I~uring the experience of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, you have a sense of movement and of progress. Particularly during a nineteenth-annotation experience of them, you have the sense of getting along with things and of genuine growth in God. When you have finished the Exercises, if you are like many exercitants, you miss that sense of movement and progress. Even though you continue to pray as long and as seriously as you did during the Exercises, you may well come to wonder where "growth" has gone, and a sense of your life in Christ unfolding for you. You know how times of consolation and times of desola-tion mark spiritual growth or its absence, but this is the microeconomy of the spirit, a topological map of a mountain that does not tell you which range it is in or even which hemisphere. You might find some sense of getting along by applying the traditional phases or stages of spiritual growth. You would recognize, to start with, the stages of the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways. You have heard of the Dark Nights, of the Senses and of the Soul. But reading these stages requires great expertness and an intense concentration on the interior life. You may find them of limited help in reading your growth in the Lord while you live an ordinary life in the world. Furthermore, these traditional stages of spiritual growth have focused tightly on the individual spirit. They do not comprehend a lot of the "your life world." They do not illuminate the interplay of others' needs and inter-ests with your own, or the tension between remaining faithful to your self and growing more faithful to those whom God gives you to love and be 643 644 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 loved by. Each of these traditional ways of gauging where you are in your interior life instructs you how to pray at a given time and what to pray about. They do not much tell you what to pray for. Now that you know the Spiritual Exercises, you might find it useful to think of phases or stages of the interior life in terms of the Four Weeks. You can take the Weeks as seasons distinct from one another. They really do match the phases or stages of growth that we go through as we live contem-platives in the active world. If you interpret your experience in these terms, you will not find a lot of instruction on what to pray about (that instruction will rise out of your current experience), but you will find sound instruction on what to pray for. The Seasons of the Four Weeks Think of the seasons not as four parts of one whole life, but as a cycle that we all go through in our life world. Consider life as a whole at this given moment, and picture how it is colored seasonally. The first season would be like this: You go along working hard and praying easily. You feel like springtime, and your whole self sprouts new life. Your life world seems filled with promise. Life is given to you, rising up from within your self and teeming all around you. In such a time, you are in the season of the Fourth Week. The truth is that Jesus came to "give you joy, and to the full," and he was transcendently powerful to achieve what he set out to achieve. As you know, we are created to live in consolation, which means that we share the sureness of the risen Christ that the reign of God comes, for each one of us and for all of humankind together. So we live in the joy of Christ, as we have a fight to do, and this is the Fourth Week. You enter Christ's joy, in work and in prayer. Ask yourself: During this springtime, what do you ask for? You go through times, as all of us do, of confusion and darkness, your inner world and life world matching. Your life world itself may be in tur-moil, and perhaps threatens your family, career, or health. All of us have experienced these times as wars succeed one another and one national crisis after another: toxic waste, the Savings and Loans debacle, the awesome national deficit. In a very real sense, when we suffer these times we are bear-ing the sins of all peoples--the sins of unjust rulers, of greedy people with economic power, of self-centered people who feed on us. In these times you feel powerless and perhaps even helpless. You live in depression or doubt or perhaps even jeopardy. In such a time you are walk-ing with Jesus Christ in his Passion. This is not merely metaphor: our Master warned us that we would feel persecuted and hunted, for if his life world Four Seasons of the Soul / 645 treated him as it did, then we are to anticipate faring no better. St. Paul said that we are to fill up the sufferings that Christ Jesus has still to undergo for the sake of his body, the Church. Sometimes we live in the Passion of Jesus, feeling the terrible weight of taking up our cross daily. In this wintry time of the Third Week, what grace gives you a sense of growth and movement? Again, at times you seem merely to be working along from day to day. You do not feel any great consolation or any notable desolation. You trust God by enacting your own desires and conscience and by doing the next good thing. You do not feel any great pressure to have life all figured out, or the vexing pressure of strong temptation to this or that sin you are prone to. You pray to the Father and listen to the Spirit. You live out your discipleship faithfully and enduringly. This is the Second Week, as you walk with Jesus of Nazareth, either in the long decades of his hidden life or in the brief exertions of his public life. It is full summertime, and you are growing in God. You take summertime concerns to prayer and stay with Jesus proclaiming his Good News. But summertime can seem lazy and unmoving. What grace will help you sense progress? Finally, there come times when you feel the weight of your own sin. You do again something that you thought you had truly put behind you. You fail to do something that you had set yourself most resolutely to do. You are in the First Week again. You find out that your ideal has little of the noble in it, or that your self-image includes falsehood, or that you have been acting as though you loathe your self and despise your life. Then you feel the deep burning of shame. Or you realize that you have been violating your own conscience, deliberately deceiving your own self and spreading your poison around you. Then you feel the icy sting of guilt. Yet all of this time you already know how God loves you, even how God keeps on being your Creator and Lord. This is the season of fall, when you join the cycle of life and death that belongs to this earth of ours. You flirt with spiritual death, but you know that you will not die, but live. You cannot doubt that God forgives again and again, and you take into your prayer that utter confidence in God's forgiving love. This is the season of the First Week. Once you have asked God's forgiveness, what else are we to ask for in order to have the experience of movement and growth? It is to find the answer to this question that you think in terms of the sea-sons of the Four Weeks. Other stages and phases instruct us in the kind of prayer we might give ourselves to. The "unitive way," for instance, suggests a prayer of deep quiet. Other stages help us hold onto the kind of faith and 646 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 hope we need to exercise. The Dark Night of the Senses helps us know that it is, indeed, faith we are exercising, and not doubt. Other stages or phases name kinds of temptation and grades of consolation and desolation. A pray-ing person who has been drawn to apophatic prayer will readily recognize daydreams of food as a desolation. But the stages and phases give little instruction on the very humble question of what, specifically, we are to ask for. Or perhaps more accurately, what instruction they do give is not readily accessible to the majority of praying Christians. "I Ask for What I Want" Matching the Four Weeks with the seasons of discipleship suggests immediately and accurately what you ought to ask God for. Each of the Weeks has a specific grace. These specific graces are precisely what we need in each of the four seasons of discipleship. When we feel the burning of shame or the icy sting of guilt, obviously, we ask forgiveness. Equally obviously, we receive this forgiveness even before we ask it. Then what? You would immediately reject dwelling on the shame or the guilt. You would repudiate self-lacerating examination. What you need is a sense of your complicity in humankind's sin, and a sense of how the disorder manifest in your life world lies waiting to manifest itself in yourself. You can ask for that plainly, and you will have a sense of getting on with God's project. You can also ask another gift of the First Week: the answer to the three questions in the colloquy of the first exercise. The deepest grace of the First Week is to be given eyes to see Jesus Christ. While you stand under the cross of Jesus Christ, you ask yourself, "What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What might I do for Christ?" The growth and movement in answer to this prayer have to do with understanding the past and looking to the future. If you have been sinning, then start with how God succeeded in you, with what you have done for Christ. If you are acting sinfully, you need to attend to what else you are now doing: What are you doing for Christ? And as you repent yet again, you stand with Christ and ask what you might do for him and for his body the Church. This is the growth in the season of fall. A second season: of busyness. Your attention runs in a hundred direc-tions. You face concrete decisions hour by hour. You have to deal with oth-ers day after day. You have to remain authentic to your own self and grow more and more fully a member. Here, in this heated season of summer, you might ask most appropriately for the gift of the Second Week: to know Jesus Four Seasons of the Soul / 647 better, to love him more, and to go the way he goes. He has been through this summer and through the desert of busyness. For some the life of the Lord will be an inspiration (as Carl Gustav Jung said it ought to be). They will learn from Jesus of Nazareth how to relate in the dusty marketplace to the God who chooses to be father and mother to us. For others the life of the Lord will be an example for imitation (as the Church has taught since Jesus proclaimed himself Way, Truth, and Life). For all of us, growth in God means growth in loving Jesus of Nazareth who is the Christ. That is the grace you ask for in the summer, the Second Week. When winter comes upon your self and your life world, you cannot escape suffering. Well, in the Third Week, you have watched with Jesus through his Passion. Remember this accompaniment and what you asked for then. Perhaps you will ask to accept your suffering in compassion with Jesus suffering and to know shame "because the Lord is going to his suffering for my sins," while you have acted in complicity with all humankind in sinning. This is the grace of the first contemplation at midnight. In any pain or suffer-ing, growth will lie in and through compassion. You might be drawn, again, to ask that your own suffering somehow be "with Christ in sorrow, [your] anguish with Christ in anguish, [your] tears and deep grief because of the great affliction" Christ endured for you. This is a great gift, and those who embrace their own suffering in the world know what Jesus knew. This pain will end nothing, but will end; ifI can discern no movement toward life, I know my growth is where I am; God is faithful. This prayer to God transmutes a wintry time from merely a depression or recession or grave aggravation to a time of growth in Christ. Finally, when you live in happiness and your life world hums along in springtime, you can most reasonably beg God that you enter into the joy of Jesus Christ. There lies the way of movement and growth, first of all because you will not be immobilized by anxiety. We hold the happiness of earth tightly because it is given and taken away, apparently randomly. Unlike the joy of the earth, Jesus' joy is not given and taken away; it is given and to the full. Growth does not mean having things permanently or living secure or figuring everything out. All of these are illusory, and depending on any of them is writing on water. Growth for Christ's disciples entails precisely shaking off dependence on possessions and all defense against risks of personal encounter. You grow a more complete self with every deeper realization that God's is the initia-tive, the victory, which is Jesus' joy and glory. You grow more secure as you accept more and more fully that you did not earn life or joy and that, if you can make no demands, the One who gives constantly turns out more willing 648 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 to lavish gifts than you are to accept them. This is Jesus' joy and his glory. So in these springtimes we find our growth in begging "to be glad and rejoice intensely" not because of the great go6ds God is bestowing on us, but "because of the great joy and the glory of Christ our Lord." A Simple Matter of Moving Along Understand, the Four Weeks are not epigenetic stages that build one on another in succession, with the latest stage transmuting the earlier ones. This is the model used by Erik Erikson and the growth psychologists, and it is not appropriate here. The "seasons" mean something much simpler here. Nor does the word refer to an account of the adult life cycle, the "seasons. of a person's life" devised by Daniel Levinson and his colleagues. The "seasons" here are briefer and include not only internal dynamics but also the actuali-ties of your life world. As phases or stages, they would hardly be long-term and do not name permanent changes in the self. Think of it this way: Many skilled retreat directors begin an eight-day retreat by asking the retreatant what Week they are living. The retreat guide does not imply that the retreatant is going through a life cycle or.a phase with permanent effects--nothing so essential and long-range. The implica-tion is that we all go through certain seasoris and that we can usefully think of those seasons in terms of the Four Weeks of the Spiritual Exercises. Many who have made the Spiritual Exercises yearn to keep the sense of progress and of forward motion that sustained them through the long days or months of prayer. They can help themselves do that by continuing one exer-cise that promoted that sense of progress during the Exercises: the preparato-ry prayer. Even those who turn to the Church's lectionary for the material of daily meditation or contemplation can ask for the special grace of the season they are in. They feel no unease or contradiction. On the contrary, they have a sense of familiarity and consonance, and a sense of getting on with life and with prayer. Few of us feel inclined to go back through the prayer texts and cycles of the Four Weeks, particularly over and over again. But you might find it useful to keep mindful of the special graces of the Weeks, and of the preparatory prayer. Re-creating Religious Life Joel Giallanza, C S. C Brother Joel recently completed his service in the ministry of provincial administra-tion and is currently Adjunct Retreat Director at Maryhill Renewal Center. His address is Maryhill Renewal Center; 600 Maryhill Road; Pineville, Louisiana 71360. /'~mong the principal tasks confronting religious life as the twenty-first cen-tury approaches is refoundation or, more descriptively, re-creation. While religious may not be completely comfortable with the demographics of increasing ages and decreasing numbers, they do not appear discouraged or despairing about the future: In fact, some communities have been reporting a modest and consistent increase in vocations and new apostolic ventures. Chapters, assemblies, and other gatherings of religious continue to search for the most effective means of responding to the needs of the Church and the culture in which they live. Among those means they assign high priority to ~'efounding or re-creating religious life itself. To that end, religious have explored the !ives and teachings of their founders and foundresses as well as the experiences and events which shaped the darly years of their communi-ties. The work now is to interpret those lives, teachings, experiences, and events for further practical application to contemporary religious life. The work now is to prepare for the future. Any creation, by its very nature, does not follow a predetermined blueprint. Nevertheless, there is one primordial model we can consider: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." These reflections will focus on the first three days of creation as a metaphor for the re-creation which religious need to undertake as they move toward and into the twenty-first century. In the Beginning During the first three days of creation, as Genesis relates the story, God 649 650 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 separates creation, giving each part a distinct identity. Only after this funda-mental work of separation and identification does God begin the cultivation of creation, filling it with a rich variety of living things, culminating in the appearance of humanity. Day 1 ~ Observation In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, covered in darkness; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day (Gn 1:1-5). It is intriguing that, after the heavens and the earth, light is God's first creation. Light enables us to observe and to distinguish; light enables us to see what needs to be done. God was present and active, though creation was covered in darkness. The creation of light makes observation and identifica-tion possible. Thus, light is distinguished from darkness; the former is iden-tified as day, the latter as night. Re-creating religious life involves observation. Religious must look courageously and see clearly the quality of every aspect of their lives and then distinguish between what will enhance that quality and what will not. To some degree this self-observation has been going on as religious respond-ed to the Church's call to read the signs of the times. However, with chang-ing demographics and subsequent adjustments to communal life and institutional commitments, religious need to refresh their response to this call and examine their lives yet more closely. In recent years apostolic religious life has known what it is to be "with-out form and void, covered in darkness." Some of this experience stems from the demographics and economics which have signaled the significant change--if not the death--of the religious life of twenty-five years ago. Some stems from the communal, ministerial, and structural implications of those demographics and economics. Some stems from modifications which religious themselves initiated through the process of'revising their constitu-tions and the traditional practices of their personal and communal lives. The ways in which religious live and minister and organize their congregations have changed and no doubt will continue to do so. Clearly, religious life has responsed to the Church and the cultures in which it witnesses. That religious life has undergone change is by itself no indication that nothing further need be done. Could the formlessness, emptiness, and dark- Re-creating Religious Life / 65'1 ness which religious sometimes feel about their way of life be the result of not observing areas needing yet further clarification and identification? These observations of mine focus on one area central to the lives of apostolic religious: celibate community. There is an asceticism inherent in any way of life in which two or more individuals have committed themselves to one another. Principally, that asceti-cism involves maintaining the common good over personal preferences. The acceptance of such an asceticism is essential to a healthy marriage and family life and to a healthy celibate community. Without that asceticism, the basic mutuality of the commitment begins to erode, and eventually the passion and dynamism within the relationships dissipate, then disappear altogether. If we observe the quality of our celibate community life over recent years, we have to ask whether there are times when consecrated commitment degenerates into corporate complacency. This is not to imply that religious have lost the ability to live community. Rather, it asks whether we have suf-ficiently explored other models of living a celibate communal lifestyle with-in the heritage and tradition of our congregations. Frequently in the past, community "happened" in a relatively large resi-dence associated with a congregational ministry. The daily schedules and general patterns of life within the community were much influenced by the needs of the ministry. Generally, those schedules and patterns reflected and were consistent with individuals' expectations. As ministry diversified (and individualized) during the last twenty-five years, expectations also diversi-fied. Common schedules and patterns became less possible and less realistic, given the broad spectrum of responsibilities and time commitments of local community members. Unless those expectations are observed, articulated, and modified as necessary, particularly in residences originally associated with a single ministry, those members unable to be present at certain times and events can be branded as having lost their sensitivity to or even their appreciation of the value of community. The ways in which expectations are lived are not solely internal; others observe how we live together, for better or for worse. Coworkers and other associates shape their perception and understanding of religious life by the pattern and quality of life they observe among us. Though we cannot live our lives in slavery to the multiple, diverse, and often inconsistent expecta-tions and assumptions with which others characterize us, we should not for-get that religious life is a form of witness to the Church and the culture. It bears a responsibility to be a living example of the Gospel and a working model of Jesus' mission. We need to observe our life as celibate community with a probing and 652 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 questioning eye. Are our communities prayerful, hospitable, and happy? Do we take individual and collective responsibility for the house in which we reside? In our communities, can we comfortably and frequently discuss the Gospel, faith, and religious life? Do we invite and welcomethose consider-ing religious life? Do we enjoy one another? Do we know one another? Do we live our life together with passion? Day 2 -- Separation God said, "Let there be a space between the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." God made the space and separated the waters which were under the space from the waters which were above it. And it was so.And God,called the space Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day (Gn 1:6-8). With the dawn of the second day, God begins to put order into creation. Specifically, he makes some working room, so to speak, space in which to continue and complete the work of creation. If the first day emphasized observation and identification, then this second day emphasizes separation and distinction. Re-creating religious life involves separation. In recent years religious have spoken and written much about the need for continuing renewal. Chapters and other gatherings have focused extensively, and sometimes exclusively, on the renewal and refoundation necessary for religious life to be a continuing evangelical and apostolic force. Chapter documentation often remains disembodied as the demands of ministry and the routines of daily life reassert themselves after the chapter closes. Patterns of life change neither quickly nor easily. Regardless of how sublime and profound chapter proceedings may be, we will never effectively legislate renewal and refoun-dation. We must provide space for patterns of individual and communal life to be re-created. For celibate community, the observation and articulation of differing and conflicting expectations may suggest creating some new space. Can quality of life be sustained and intensified if those expectations are left to coexist without enough space for coordination? But, on the other hand, if coordina-tion becomes synonymous with the lowest common denominator, is the effort to provide such space worthwhile at all? Sometimes, no doubt, coordi-nation will bring about re-creation, but this does not seem to be the normal pattern; more often than not, re-creation by separation should be considered. Separation will involve establishing new local communities. Alternative housing could be provided for members who are committed to exploring and implementing a communal lifestyle that will meet their expectations and Re-creating Religious Life / 653 maintain a consistency and an integrity which reflect clearly their commit-ment as religious. The assumption here is that such alternative communities would be established with the highest common denominator as the standard. Prayer and relationships and the practice of the vows would be regularly reviewed to assure that standard. Separation is not schism, it is not a condemnation of other communal lifestyles within a congregation. Twenty-five years ago it was possible to find striking, and even exact, parallels throughout the local communities of a sin-gle congregation. Often those parallels were evident among many congrega-tions, also. Today, even between large local communities of the same congregation, we can find striking differences. Separation has to do with dis-tinction, not division. It seeks to express the rich diversity of ways in which a congregational heritage can be embodied among those committed to it. Major superiors have a significant role in this, a multifaceted role. First, they can take the initiative of identifying people and providing resources for new ventures even if the original initiativecame from community members themselves. The major superiors' involvement could signal the validity of the venture for those whose first reaction is critical. Second, major superiors can offer their support, encouragement, and assistance as new communities get underway. When some "red tape" needs cutting or some bureaucratic procedure needs streamlining, they are usually in a privileged position for expediting whatever needs to be done. Third, they can serve as initial observers and objective consultants for new local communities, Their role is not to mold groups into their own image and likeness, but to see that the members remain faithful to the principles and practices they have agreed upon for their life together. Finally, major superiors can be a buffer between nascent local communities and the established community. Not everyone in the latter group will agree with new ventures and the direction they repre-sent. Major superiors should avoid any defensive posture which would make the new communities look like aberrations in the eyes of the established community. They should focus their explanations about these ventures on their continuity with the congregational heritage. Separation is a means of re-creating celibate community; it is an invest-ment in the future. No doubt there are risks involved, but the prophetic nature of religious life has always placed religious in precarious situations. The risks are a challenge to acknowledge God's providential presence and activity. As religious we must reaffirm our faith in providence and move boldly into the future. Without faith, we undermine the very foundation of our religious life; without movement, we betray any assurance we profess to have about the future. 654 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 The future will come, but not in a vacuum. The choices we make now will determine the quality of that future. In making those choices, we need to create a fresh space, to provide a place for the future. Day 3 -- Cultivation God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. God said, "Let the earth produce growing things, plants bearing seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit containing their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth." And it was so. The earth produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit containing their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day (Gn 1:9-13). The third day brings cultivation to what has been created. With the emergence of land, "growing things" can appear; each of these growing things contains individuality and generativity. Life--and all of creation-- will continue; there will be another day. "And God saw that it was good." With this third day, God has completed the foundation for what will appear on the succeeding days of creation. And the foundation was good. Re-creating religious life involves cultivation. The future quality of celi-bate community will not appear by spontaneous generation, nor will it be manufactured according to elaborate specifications. It must be cultivated. Establishing new local communities does not signal the dawn of the seventh day; it is not the time to rest and lay aside further efforts. Quite the contrary, it is the time to move forward enthusiastically and confidently with every-thing that has been initiated thus far. This is the time for "growing things?' The root of the word cultivate is a term which can be translated "to move around" and "to dwell," depending upon the context. This dual ety-mology is quite appropriate for these present reflections. Cultivating celibate community requires some moving around. Community compromises vitality if it stops moving according to its own informed choices; that is, if it begins to operate on automatic pilot. Vitality springs from the continuing observa-tion and articulation of expectations. Patterns of personal and communal life must be mutually monitored with integrity and without fear of reprisal. Relationships must be nurtured naturally With quality time and refreshed regularly through reconciliation. Cultivation assumes that expectations and patterns and relationships will evolve. Cultivation flourishes in an environ-ment of exchange, interest, care, and concern. Cultivation moves around Re-creating Religious Life / 655 within and among community members to prevent that stagnation which taxes commitment and tempts to convenience. Cultivating celibate community requires some dwelling. Cohabitation is not celibate community; it merely means that two or more people inhabit the same residential space and need not involve any interpersonal commitment. Dwelling goes beyond living together to include entrusting our lives to one another. If we do not have mutual trust with those with whom we live, then what grounds do we have for claiming we entrust our lives to the Lord? It is a basic tenet of faith that the quality of our relationships with one another verifies or falsifies the quality of our relationship with the Lord. Truly dwelling with one another, recognizing that our life together makes a home of the house, is a certification of our love relationship with one another and with the Lord, and a witness of integrity to others. There is no flawless formula for assuring cultivation; it involves all the effort, discipline, and asceticism requisite for any healthy relationship. There are, however, some principles which can support that effort, discipline, and asceticism. First, clarity of vision: Members must have a sense of the direction in which they hope the community to move. More than an in-house conve-nience, that vision is part of the apostolic character of celibate community. Second, communication of values: A common vision is built upon shared values. Without this sharing, there is little common ground to cultivate; com-munity quickly becomes an arid land. Third, cooperation for vitality: This is a discipline and an asceticism which positions the common good as the high-est priority. The vitality of vision and values can be cultivated only coopera-tively; it cannot be assumed. Fourth, concern for vocation: This is the foundational principle. Vision and values have no vital and substantive pur-pose and meaning unless community members share a sincere concern for the integrity of their commitment to the vocation of religious life. In practice, these principles are skrategies which must characterize the re-creation of celibate community. Cultivation is a daily enterprise which will mark the presence and activity of community members with one anoth-er. Thus, cultivation never comes to a point of sufficiency, beyond which no further efforts are necessary. There will always be both peaks and plateaus in the quality of life within any community. The principles of clarity, communi-cation, cooperation, and concern are reminders that neither the peaks nor the plateaus are places of permanence. We must cultivate celibate community if it is to have a prophetic place in the future and even if it is to have a future at all. We must cultivate it since the culture will not support it. We live in a culture whose materialistic, indi- 656 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 vidualistic, and sensualistic preferences and practices have compromised its capability for fostering the personal commitment which lies at the heart of both celibacy and community. The decline of marriage and the family is but one testimony to that compromise. Celibate community can stand as a prophetic sign that such a commitment is humanly possible. For the future, that sign may be the small seed which is cultivated into the means of trans-formation for the entire culture. In the Days to Come "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." As the story is presented, nothing existed before God began his creative work. Everything could be made as an original, without the pressing and pressuring influence of a long-standing tradition. God could, so to speak, work from scratch. Re-creating religious life, and celibate 'community in particular, cannot assume the absence of any influence. There are values and traditions and practices by which communal religious life has endured and prospe,red over the cen-turies. The observation, separation, and cultivation which will position reli-gious life for re-creation cannot dismiss that influence as unnecessary, nor distance it as untouchable. The influence of those realities which have shaped religious life can be incorporated and assimilated into the re-creation; thus will be their creative transformation. Admittedly, some refinement may be necessary to preserve the spirit of those values, traditions, and practices. Nevertheless, such refinement is not a ruling of inadequacy, but a rendering unto new life. In the days to come we must observe closely the ways and means of our religious life together. We need to articulate clearly and forcefully the values by which we will actually live.Prophetic statements from individuals or chapters or other gatherings that remain forever disembodied phrases will never be true characterizations of religious life. Indeed, they can become pharisaical, lofty ideals without living intent. Observation, as I have used the term, has more to do with enacting motivation than with simply gathering information. In the days to come we must separate ourselves from whatever patterns of life have compromised or constricted our desire and ability to live our religious commitment with intensity and integrity. We must re-create the spirit of being called, of being set apart for the Gospel. Without that spirit, the prophetic prowess of religious life is neither affectively experienced nor effectively expressed. Within that spirit, religious life claims the power and proclamation which are the inheritance of Gospel witnesses. In the days to come we must cultivate our life together. We need to re- Re-creat.ing Religious Life / 657 create the commitment we have made to God and to one another. We have at our disposal a power for and a promise of common life that can bring hope to a world broken by betrayal, gouged by greed, and disheartened by deceit. The passion with which we live our celibacy, poverty, and obedience will counteract the standards set by that betrayal, greed, and deceit. The convic-tion with which we re-create and realize our communal life will cultivate and confirm the presence and activity of the kingdom within and around us. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This is an old story, but one that may be enacted once again as religious life approaches the twenty-first century. Observation, separation, and cultivation are strategies which can support the work of re-creation; and yet we should never displace the fundamental truth that this is God's work, all is grace. The alliance between those strategies and that grace will enable us to speak of religious life and of celibate community with the same bold confidence which marked Yahweh's promise for the temple. "The Lord Almighty speaks: 'Is there any-one among you who can still remember how splendid the temple used to be? How does it look to you now? It must seem like nothing at all. But now do not be discouraged, any of you. Do the work that is needed, for I am with you, so do not be afraid . In the_days to come the new temple will be more splendid than the old one, and there I will give you prosperity and peace' " (Hg 2:3-4, 9). To the Bird of My Prayer Songster, your hymn of praise Never ceases in a melody all your own; Chanting a song--pleading, thanking-- With the sheer joy of having voice to sing. From highest pole to roof, you find your perch, No earth-bound bush can stifle flight to God. Anna Louise Staub, S.S.J. 217 W. Commercial St. East Rochester, NY 14445 Prophetic Witness in Contemporary Religious Life Jean Steffes, CSA: Sister Jean Steffes has been general superior for the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Agnes. Her address is: 427 Gillett Street; Fond du Lac, Wisconsin 54935-4598. The notion of being prophetic in today's society can conjure up many images in us, depending upon our perspective. For some of us being prophetic might seem a quality to be admired in Dorothy Day, Archbishop Romero, the martyred Jesuits of El Salvador, and the Agnesians Maureen and Teresa of Nicaragua, but one to which we could never aspire. It wo~ld mean speaking, acting, or giving witness in larger-than-life situations that may never be the platform for most of us. Another perspective might give rise to images of angry demonstrations directed at society and culture or at our Church. The call for greater inclusion of women in roles in Church and society, for the right to life of the unborn, the unwanted, and the elderly, and for the preservation of our environment can result in tactics that seem or are angry. For those who shrink from such approaches, even the very valid and necessary content can be lost. A third image of the prophet (which we may enjoy) is of one who foretells the future. In our society there are those who use past patterns to predict our economy's collapse or other dire conse-quences. For those of us who live a Gospel faith, such prophets do not give the hope so necessary to engage in present realities and so make the world a better place here and now. The images I have shared are overdrawn stereotypes, but they show the difficulty in speaking on the topic of prophetic wit]aess. In this reflection I will explore three broad areas: (1) What does it mean to be prophetic? (2) prophetic witness and the current experience of religious life: (3) an agenda for the future. 658 Prophetic Witness / 659 What Does It Mean to be Prophetic? Walter Brueggemann says in The Prophetic Imagination, "The time may be ripe in the church for a serious consideration of prophecy as a crucial ele-ment in ministry."~ Prophets understood how change is effected. They knew the power of language, how to "evoke newness, 'fresh from the word.' ,,2 Let us develop at some length Brueggemann's ideas of prophecy. He states, "The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the domi-nant culture around us . ,,3 I believe his approach can help us understand prophetic witness as it applies to the goals and meaning of religious life. Beginning with the story of Moses, we can learn what it means to form an alternative community. The story of the Exodus shows us how Moses and the Israelite people were brought out from their domination by an imperial religion and the politics of oppression and exploitation. The religion and pol-itics of Pharaoh worked hand in hand to keep him in power and control. Through the interaction of Moses and Aaron with Pharaoh and his regime, the Israelites began to see the difference between the freedom of God and the lack of freedom of the Egyptian gods. Belief in the Egyptian gods served to maintain a social order that allowed for oppression and exploitation. The God revealed to the Israelites is tied to no social order. God is a God of free-dom who calls for an alternative community built on the politics of justice and compassion. The alternative consciousness that Moses fostered in the Israelites was both critical and energizing. His critique, validated when the Egyptians were struck by plagues which their gods were powerless to counter, showed up false claims to power and authority which could not keep promises in the face of the free God. Prophetic criticism has an element of grieving in it as the prophet mourns the oppressions encountered. The Israelites were afflict-ed, oppressed, and ground down by the dominant Egyptian culture, and so they risked the freedom of the free God against the regime. The energizing happened not through what the Israelites already possessed but through what was promised. God went before them in pillars of fire and cloud and trans-figured this fear into energy. The people were energized to follow the free God to establish an alternative community built on justice and compassion. Though the Israelites left Egypt to live more freely, they, too, eventually developed a dominant culture. It was characterized by the reign of Solomon, whose whole achievement appears to have had the self-serving purpose of securing the place of the king and king's dynasty. Solomon did not welcome the ideas of a free God and an alternative community any more than did Pharaoh, for they threatened the established order. There were three bases 660 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 for Solomon's rule that generally mark any dominant culture. First, there was incredible well-being and affluence, though it was not equitably shared. Some went without enough so that others might have too much. Second, an oppressive social policy sustained the standard of living. There was a system of forced labor in which laborers met the needs of the state although unable to meet their own needs. The politics of justice and compassion disappeared, and the order of the state became the overriding agenda. Third, there was the establishment of a controlled and static religion. God and God's temple became part of the royal landscape. How could God, seen as living in a house provided by the king, say anything critical or abrasive? Solomon was countering the counterculture of Moses: the economics of equality was countered with the economics of affluence, the politics of justice with the politics of oppression, and the religion of God's freedom with the religion of God's accessibility. The dominant culture of Solomon managed to brush aside Moses' vision. The gift of freedom was taken over by the yearning for order, and the human agenda of justice was used for security. Against reali-ties like these, people are called to utter prophetic words. Moses both criticized and energized. Like him, Jeremiah is shown as proclaiming the critique while Second Isaiah offers the energy for the new vision. The prophets offer symbols that contradict a situation of hopelessness and give public expression to long-unspoken fears and hopes. They show us that the dominant culture leads people to despair of new life. They present an alternative consciousness, grounded in the unwavering faithfulness of God, that can energize the community to new forms of faithfulness and vital-ity. Jesus, too, is shown as a prophet who criticized the dominant culture of his day. "Jesus is remembered and presented by the early Church as the faithful embodiment of an alternative consciousness.''4 Jesus' ministry and death oppose the politics of oppression with the politics of justice and com-passion. The counterpart to the crucifixion is the birth of a new reality that finds full expression in the resurrection. What does this very challenging reflection on prophets and prophetic consciousness have to say to us in religious life? What is apostolic religious life's prophetic role in church and society today? It is important to reflect on this, recognizing that we have generous portions of both dominant culture and alternative consciousness within us. We recognize our conflicted nature, yet we aspire to a prophetic role in church and society. We must ask, then, whether apostolic women religious have been co-opted by our dominant consumer culture or whether we manifest an alterna-tive consciousness based on the freedom of a free God. Do we show a belief in community and interdependence as inherent in our way of life, or are we Prophetic Witness / 66'1 fragmented and self-centered? Are we motivated by a desire for justice and compassion, or do we prefer stability even at the price of the exploitation and oppression of "invisible" others? The questions are hard but necessary as we examine the religious way of life for evidence of prophetic witness. Prophetic Witness and the Current Experience of Religious Life Our challenge as women religious is to position ourselves to recognize the revelation of the future. One current writer, Mary Jo Leddy, N.D.S., speaks of the need to develop a postliberal model of religious life. Her thesis is that the basis for our contemporary religious life in North America is a declining culture that depends on the liberal thought fed by industrial capi-talism. While liberalism has made many contributions to modern society, it cannot deal with the reality of limits. If there can be no limits, ultimately there can be no meaning or values. Liberals tend to see themselves as contemporary or progressive and in conflict with the conservative or traditionalist ideas of Church and religious life. In Leddy's view, the more serious obstacle to the transformation and renewal of religious life results from the tension between the liberal and the prophetic approaches. The prophetic leads us to a more radical response in spirituality, mission, ministry, and community. The prophetic is risky, for it calls us to response to an unknown future rather than reaction to a no-longer-valid past. Leddy says, "We who live in a disintegrating empire today are summoned at prophetic moments to criticize the patterns of decline within our culture and within ourselves, to contemplate the holiness of God in the midst of these dark times, and to evoke the creative desire in one another for a meaningful alternative for the future.''5 These words are very similar to those Brueggemann uses to describe the prophetic imagination. The prophetic intersects with our apostolic religious life. Contemporary writers call religious to the same challenge the prophets faced in biblical times. Religious congregatiohs represent an alternative to the values of the dominant culture but do not stand apart from the people. Rather, apostolic religious recognize clearly the need for reflection, discernment, and a ground-ing in the holy as they criticize, yet energize, themselves and their peers to bring the values of the Gospel into contemporary society and culture. We have reflected on what it means to be a prophet. We have also recog-nized the challenge it presents to apostolic religious. Let us now look at cur-rent beliefs and responses regarding apostolic religious life in light of prophetic witness. I will consider mission direction, the meaning of member-ship, and some current realities. These areas provide us with the material to critique and energize our own prophetic potential. 662 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 Mission Direction Although expressed differently in each congregation, mission direction today involves in some way a commitment to transformation of the world, the Church, and ourselves through promoting systemic change for the quali-ty of life; justice for the economically poor; furtherance of the role of women in church and society; and mutuality, inclusivity, and collaboration in all relationships. Such mission direction clearly reminds us of our partici-pation in the mission of Jesus. When we call ourselves to systemic change for the quality of life, what do we mean? We are asking for two things, systemic change and quality of life. When we say the system is not working well, how do we want to change it so it will work better? For whom do we want it to work better? If we take a global view, we see that entirely too much of the world's popula-tion is forced to live at a level that does not meet its basic needs of food, shelter, health care, and education while a minority has more than its share. We see that, in order to feed the wants and needs of a market economy, rain forests are irrevocably destroyed, topsoil is depleted, deserts are expanded mercilessly, and the world's fresh-water supply is tainted and diminished. On local and national levels we 'must ask ourselves how the needs of the poor are being met. After all, Jesus was clear in showing us that whatever we do to the least of his people we are doing to him. The poor are receiving poorer education, less nourishing food, substandard or no housing, and inad-equate health care in this country so rich in resources and technology. We must use our ingenuity, gifts, and talents to change a system that has canonized greed and competition in order to satisfy wants. How can we in our own daily living point the way to change that would benefit those with least access to the system without denying the legitimate gains and goods of our society and culture? Such responses as simplifying our lifestyle by avoiding use of Styrofoam, recycling our disposables, and making thought-ful choices regarding food and other consumer goods can raise our con-sciousness and lead us to getting others involved and to networking with those already involved. Indeed, most changes begin as ordinary people change their thinking and the patterns that go with their thinking. We must know our values so that they, rather than the manipulative marketing of an over- consumptive dominant culture, will shape our choices and responses. We claim that we want justice for the economically poor. This value links with the goal of systemic change for the quality of life. Jesus' life and ministry showed us his love of preference for the poor. This is not to say that Jesus does not love all, but that his ministry was not directed in the main to those who were the power brokers of his day. These, of course, he invited to Prophetic Witness / 663 join him in loving God and neighbor, but the cost was generosity, sharing their possessions. Jesus was good news for the poor. Are we who are called to continue Jesus' mission also good news for the poor? Whether in direct service So the poor or in ministry with middle- and upper-middle-class peo-ple, are we focused on a more just distribution of and access to necessary goods and resources? Do we in our teaching and in our healing, pastoral, and social works always have in mind those who are less fortunate than we are? Are we willing ~o call others to this consciousness even when we see and know that the poor are not to be idealized? They, like us, have faults and failings and may not reflect Christ as we might want them to. A reverence for the poor calls us to a view of Christ very different from that of popular piety. While comforting, it is challenging; while open and inviting, it is demanding; and while satisfying, it never ceases to call out for more--more love, more generosity, more hospitality. Not all of us are called to direct ser-vice with the poor, but all of us are called to seek justice for the poor. In this quest we continually recognize that we, too, are among the needy and are enriched by those we serve. Another commitment common to religious is to the furtherance of the role of women in church and society. Worldwide, the conditions of women vary from those in countries where women have legal equality to those where brides are still considered property. Women the world over have the primary responsibility to feed and care for the children even though means and resources are not equitably at their disposal. In the United States a vio-lent crime is committed against a woman every three minutes, and a woman is raped every six minutes. Households headed by women are increasing while the rate of their income is dropping. Children are our most precious resource, but those who care for them are denied the necessary means. Our Church struggles with the role women are to play in its pastoral, liturgical, and philosophical reflections.In the U.S. the most recent draft document on women's role in the Church and society calls for equality for women in theory but holds back in p.ractice. As John XXIII said in Pacem in Terris in 1963, "Since women are becoming ever more conscious of their human dignity, they will not tolerate being treated as inanimate objects or mere instruments, but claim, both in domestic and in public life, the rights and duties that befit a human person.''6 The women's issue is more than an issue, it is a perspective that demands attention and response. Once unleashed, the forces of confusion and dissension drive towards resolution. In our lives we will use inclusive language, advocate for women, and net-work to help make society a friendlier place for women to develop and share their gifts and talents. Despite such a commitment on the part of congrega- 664 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 tions, there is dissension among women religious in language usage and other matters. Our heads and hearts find themselves in conflict here, leading to results that could be less than satisfying. Can we avoid being our own worst enemy in the search for inclusivity? Let us not deny the richness of our past, the demands of the present, or the call of the future as we work for justice and right for women in contemporary society and church. Another area of commitment of apostolic religious today has to do with mutuality, inclusivity, and collaboration in all our relationships. The values implied here are very positive, and yet to achieve them one must give in order to receive. The mystery of sacrifice is contained in these words in a way that is not apparent at first glance. For mutuality to occur, I must not only believe in myself, I must also learn to believe and trust in the other. With whom do we allow ourselves to be mutual? Do we let power, position, language, style of dress, or education prevent us from speaking our truth or hearing that of others? In terms of inclusivity, do we go to the extremes either of having no boundaries or expectations or of expecting everyone to fulfill every role or function in an organization? Inclusivity involves includ-ing others in the concerns affecting their own lives. Not all will do every-thing, but there must be input from those affected. In terms of discernment, though all are included, not all perspectives can be responded to or chosen. We often try to make inclusivity mean pleasing everyone all of the time even though this may be impossible. Finally, let us look at c.ollaboration. If we pull the word apart, we can see the meaning as co-labor or working with. At one time we may have considered ourselves collaborative if we hired lay teachers and nurses and more so if we hired lay administrators. Collaboration at its most radical, however, calls us not just to bring others into our projects and have them do things our way, but to work with others and to respond to the signs and needs of the times together. Unhe.althy com-petition or too rigid control in ministry or community strikes at the heart of the love which binds us together so that the 'risen Christ may be discovered among us and in our world. The Meaning of Membership The consideration of mutuality, inclusivity, and collaboration leads us into the meaning of membership. Community life is a topic, issue, and reali-ty that continues to generate much attention. As apostolic religious we have such different experiences, expectations, and definitions regarding commu-nity life and the meaning of local community. Sometimes when the phrase "local community" is used, the assumptions and expectations already in place cause us to "shut down," to become unable to continue a dialogu~ Prophetic Witness because we are really unable to h~ar one another. (I personally have felt anger, despair, defensiveness, longing, fear--and also hope--around this topic.) What has led religious women to this state and what can we do to move beyond shutdown and breakdown to a breakthrough? It is clear that, in this matter, apostolic women religious are striving, striving to understand meaningful bonding and to express it through authentic participation in community. Someone recently said that we may have so emphasized mission and ministry in the years of renewal following Vatican II that c6mmunity has become the shadow side of our way of life. If that is the case, the difficulties surrounding our efforts to deal with community life are deep and profound. We must face and deal with this central area of our way of life so that we are nok torn apart by unclear expectations and assumptions. I offer three perspectives for consideration in the area of community: human-growth issues, the importance of faith community and faith sharing, and l~ousin~ in community. We sometimes get bogged down by human-growth issues in our lives with one another on the local or on the broader community level even though our lived experience points to the need for human growth and development among ourselveg. Each of us knows how difficult it is to change herself and how truly futile it is to expect to change another. Each of us must deal with herself and her own issues in as healthy a fashion as 16ossible. Only when my behaviors and patterng are healthy may I be able to imiarove the dynamics between myself and those with whom I interact on a r~gular basis. The challenge here is to deal with my own behav-iors, realizing that I have no real or lasting power over the behaviors another may choose. My role is to try not to feed into unhealthy behaviors that may be pre.sent around me. Although unatteiaded human-growth issues can wreak havoc on healthy relating within community, still apostolic religious must recognize that we will never overcome all of these problems either individually or corpbrately. Gra~e biailds on nature; it will not replace or deny our humanness. We must realize how eadh sister's desire and motivation influence her choices regard-ing her behavior and interaction. We cannot choose for each other, only for ourselves. Each ~'eligious needs to be challenged to a self-knowledge and self-awareness leading to growth. Practices such as spiritual direction, the annual retreat, and the daily consciousness examen can keep us grounded in reality yet open to ongoing conversion. We must deal with human-growth-and-development issues, but not remain there. We must be committed to the making of or participating in faith community as a means of nurturing shared life, shared love, and shared vision. We must find ways to relate regularly and meaningfully with our sis- 666 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 ters in community in order to reflect on, renew, and recommit ourselves to the mission, charism, and spirit of our congregation in our daily lives. Depending upon our miriistry and the proximity of other congregational members, how we do this will differ; that we must do it if membership is to mean more than an annual touchdown or the reading of congregational mate-rials is the reality we face. Some Current Realities I. recogniz9 that each congregational member will have other communi-ties thai will lay claim to her time, energy, and affection. That is good and healthy. My point is that we must have quality time for our own congrega-tion as well, as part of the ordering rhythm of our lives. Sometimes one's commitment to ministry or to parish can become so all-encompassing that ther~ is. little or no time or energy left for her to express her membership in her religious congregation. For me, the making of faith community involves reverence for one another, presence to one another for celebration as well ag dialogue and reflection, honesty so that we can affirm one another or call each other to growth, and a commitment to the goals and developing agenda of our congregation. This topic of makirig and participating in faith community leads to another important topic: the difference between housing and local communi-ty: We often equaie the two and this ~quation may not reflect that community life is broader than housing. The recent lived reality of women religious shows that faith community on the "local" level is not necessarily synony-mous with where a sister lives. In some locales th~ sisters have committed themselves to hei,ng a faith community without walls; regular meetings, cele-brations, and gatherings among them challenge and deepen their member-ship in the cbngi'egation, in other locales the sisters in a particular house function well as a faith community. We must recognize such differing com-munity realities and encourage them on the local level as well as on the con-gregational level. A commitment to community in our current society of intenge individualism and consumer gratification keeps us involved in a prophetic role. An Agenda for the Future The prophetic nature of this life to which we are called leads us to cob-sider an agenda for~the future. Any living organization must be open to change or it will die. In a sense change is an ordered type of death, not death as final but rather death leading to new life. One of the greatest strengths of apostolic women religious is the serise that the agenda or common goals Prophetic Witness / 667 belong to all of us. This strength we will build on as we look at change and new life for us religious. Central to understanding ourselves as women religious is understanding our spirituality. I believe that the biggest challenge for each of us with regard to spirituality is to lead more integrated lives. Integration does not just hap-pen in a person's life. It must be worked at daily through a continuous blend of action and reflection leading to further action. Somehow the aspects of one's life must be part of a whole rather than segments that do not overlap. In an integrated life my religious commitment is not separate from who I am when I am at leisure. My response in mission and ministry is not limited to my paid professional work but may overlap into volunteer involvements in food pantries, visiting the sick or elderly, letter writing, and other activities. Community life is not an end in itself in an apostolic religious institute, nor is it merely a refuge that ought to be there when I want and need it. Community is a place or space where I share faith and vision, humanness, and the quest for the divine. My ministry is not all-consuming; I do allow myself necessary time for recreation and reflection. And my prayer life is more than specified exercises or spiritual reading. All these somehow fit together and reflect my spirituality, my integration of life. An integrated life has powerful witness value in a society that wants everything and does not want to be reminded of the need for balance. Integration is not synonymous with transformation, but it can surely open us to being transforming elements in the institutions and structures of society and culture. In our desire to be prophetic witnesses, we commit our-selves to transformation of the Church, the world, and ourselves~ I recently read that one way of understanding transformation is to look at the life cycle of the butterfly. First there is a caterpillar; next there is the chrysalis stage, in which the organic matter is quite shapeless and formless; finally, there is the butterfly. Transformation is what happens in the chrysalis stage. The process is not very appealing; it suggests a profound letting go as well as an openness to a different future. While transformation has global ramifications, it will not begin at the global level but rather at the local level, where we can encourage one anoth-er to let go of attitudes or practices that may have been more helpful to a known and comfortable past than to the needs of the present or the concerns of the future. The desire for transformation of the world, the Church and our-selves flows directly from our relationship to God, self, others, and creation. It is expressed in a commitment to justice, peace, and the integrity of cre-ation. Transformation is not something anyone can directly make happen by willing it. No one person caused the recent freedom movement in Eastern 668 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 Europe, nor can one individual move our economy from a military focus to a domestic and global focus responding to human and planetary needs in a humane fashion. Likewise, no ond person's recycling of materials will reverse our problem with excessive waste. Yet all of these and many other alternative responses can indeed lead to transformation. When such respons-es begin, networking or replicating starts to happen and systems begin to change. At the May 1990 meeting of the council of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) in Rome, the following global challenges to evan-gelization were identified: the widening gap between the rich and poor; indi-vidualism characterized by greed, violence, terrorism, abandonment, indifference, and irresponsibility; loss of human dignity through political oppression, social discrimination, and economic injustice; the breakdown of family life; the destruction of the environment; inability to trust the human community, coupled with a preoccupation with survival. These challenges help us to formulate an agenda for transformation that is larger than ourselves, and they clearly link with the transformative ele-ments for religious life in the future developed by the major superiors of U.S. women's and men's communities (LCWR/CMSM) in August 1989: prophetic witness; contemplative attitude toward life; poor and marginalized persons as the focus for ministry; spirituality of wholeness and global inter-connectedness; charism and mission as sources of identity; change of the locus of power; living with less; broad-based inclusive communities; under-standing ourselves as Church; and developing interdependence among peo-ple of diverse cultures. These challenges and transformative elements reflect in broad strokes the goals and concerns ofapostolic religious. Though the future depends in part upon us and our efforts, it depends even more on the grace of God our Creator, the inspiration of the Spirit, and our cooperation with each other as members of the body of Christ, joined in a common humanity and gifted with a common creation. Our communion with and in Christ calls all humanity "to reclaim relationships with family, clan, and tribe, to choose the common good, to seek solidarity with one another and with the earth.''7 For transformation to occur, we must believe and act in such a way that we give the message that life has meaning and that, assisted by God's grace, our responses make a difference. The prophetic imagination described by Brueggemann remains viable as we respond in our own times with an alter-native consciousness, as we critique our dominant culture and yet energize one another for a more just and compassionate future. Our faith gives us the vision and the mission, our hope gives us spirit and energy, and our love Prophetic Witness / 669 grounds us in the mysterious blend of transcendence and immanence that is life. I close this reflection on prophetic witness and apostolic religious life with Isaiah's words: "Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Is 43:18-19). NOTES I Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), p. 9. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid, p. 13. 4 Ibid, p. 88. 5 Mary Jo Leddy, Reweaving Religious Life: Beyond the Liberal Model (Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications, 1990), p. 164. 6 John XXIII, Pacem In Terris, in Seven Great Encyclicals (Glen Rock, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1963), p. 297. 7 Helen Maher Garvey, B.V.M., excerpt from notes on the Meeting of the General Council, UISG, Rome, Italy, May 7-11, 1990, p. 2. Storms Tornado watch, the weatherman said, to last until ten o'clock. Four hours to wait for what may be or not. Storms of spirit come suddenly; swirl through the heart's towns and wash its skies to morning clean-- with no hours to wait for what so swiftly is. Sister Elizabeth deSales Dee, S.S.J. St. Joseph Convent 7300 Torresdale Avenue Philadelphia, Pa. 19136 Mission or Consecrated Religious Person: Which Comes First in Apostolic Institutes? Marie Therese Levey, R.S.~. Sister Marie Therese has taught school in country areas of Australia. Later she spe-cialized in teaching instrumental music: piano and violin. More recently she has done research in liturgical music and earned a Ph.D. Her address is St. Joseph's Convent; P.O. Box 472; North Sydney, N.S.W. 2059; Australia. In May/June 1988 this joumal published Sister Georgine Scarpino's article "The Unemployed Sister: Challenge and Opportunity." It defines the unem-ployed sister as a woman religious physically and emotionally capable of active ministry who, despite seeking work, currently has no formal position. It gives two causes for this modem phenomenon: the location of the work and the way ministry decisions are made. In summary, Sister Georgine points out the need for congregations of women religious to develop programs within religious institutes to address both employment and unemployment. Surprisingly, no published response has followed her article until now. Since women religious have sacrificed potential material wealth, marriage, and motherhood in order to serve the Church in institutes devoted to apos-tolic works, it seems unjtist that the situations described occur. However, occur they do, and the first step toward rectifying the problems is to admit them. One then asks why they exist and seeks an appropriate cure. Sister Georgine presents causes of these problems in the United States. Although here in Australia there are general parallels to what she describes, yet the causes and thus the cures seem somewhat different here. The present writer has, in religious life, personally experienced "job search" and the special type of demoralization which occurs in close-knit communities when one is the "odd man out." I thus feel equipped to write on this subject. Regardless of the differences between countries in reasons for the phe-nomenon of the unemployed sister, I believe that the two elements most 670 Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 671 needed in addressing the problem of appropriate placement in apostolic works of religious personnel in institutes of consecrated life are: (l) a correct balance in religious leaders between their attitudes towards responsibility for the institute's authentic mission and their attitudes towards the rights of the individual members; (2) adequate use of written media, particularly those which are internal to the religious institutes and which include forums for peer review and the opportunity for subjects to respectfully challenge those directives or oversights of superiors which seem to threaten the authentic mission of the institute or the rights of its members. Mission and Person The religious state belongs to the life and holiness of the Church (canon 574), and the primary mission of the Church is the care of souls. Ecclesiastical law insists that apostolic action for institutes of consecrated life should confirm and foster union with God (c. 675, §2). The Church has Msb a social mission, namely, to support and protect people's material well-being and to inspire and promote true civilization through Christian philoso-phy. 1 In the social category of mission can be placed the apostolic pati'imony of many institutes, and the Church insists that such patrimony, or intentions of the founder, should be.preserved by the institute (c. 578). Thus, leaders of institutes of consecrated life f6unded for apostolic works, in order to justify their ongoing existence and their acceptance of candidates, need to ensure that both the corporate entity and the individual members have a correct con-cept of this patrimony as well as machinery to implement it. Bearing in mind that the Church places the person at the center of the social order, religious leaders have a r~sponsibility to see that members of the institute are placed in apostolic works which are appropriate to the tal-ents and needs of each (see Perfectae Caritatis 18). The pastoral commit-ment of a leader in an apostolic institute does not remove--but, rather, ¯ increases--her obligation towards seeing to appropriate placement of per-sonnel. Although religious leaders nowadays delegate administrators for works for which members of their institute are the trustees, a large part of the responsibility of preventing serious damage to the person through long-term lack of appropriate apostolic work must lie, by the nature of their role, with the religious leaders. Moreover, the responsibilities leaders have to individtial persons within the institute vary according to how long and in what manner they have contributed to the institute (see REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 1989, p. 460). Since it is often claimed that consecrated religious are in short supply, the application of the above principles might seem straightforward. In reality 672 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 there are circumstances in the modem world in general, and here in Australia in particular, which cause it to be very difficult for congregational leaders. As in the United States, the location of the work in Australia affects the opportunity to do it, and the way ministry decisions are made in America has parallels h~re. Some details may clarify the differences between practices in the two countries. Conditions in Australia Prior to Vatican II, the missioning procedures in Australian apostolic religious congregations were relatively simple. Obedience, or the will of God, was equa~ed with doing what a superior told one to do and living where the superior told one to live. In larger Australian congregations, (over 1,000 members) often more than half were primary school teachers, and a large proportion of the remainder were either secondary teachers or nurses. Changes of residence for those "in the ranks" usually involved interchange between personnel engaged in similar works. This principle of interchange was fundamental to the smooth application of the third vow. When a difficult posting was required--for example, to isolated rural areas--younger reli-gious under perpetual vows were usually sent. Postings to apostolic works almost invariably came directly from a major superior, whether or not that superior's apostoli~c background was in the relevant work. Recruitment of staff for a school or a hospital by an administrator, or board, was foreign to most Australian apostolic religious congregations of women prior to about 1960, whether the mission was in the city or in the country. In the early 1960s a radical change occurred in the overall secondary education system in the most populous state of Australia, New South Wales. That change to what was called the Wyndham System, emphasizing science and the arts, was much more revolutionary in Catholic education for girls than it was either in state education or in Catholic education for boys. In the typical local Catholic school run by consecrated religioi~s women in Australia before that time, the girls remained in the same school, almost entirely staffed by r(ligious, from kindergarten through secondary school years. In state education and in Catholic education for boys, secondary schools were already separated at least from lower primary schools. Thus, state-school teachers and men religious in secondary education had been required to have university degrees before some larger institutes of w~men religious recognized such a need. When the more farsighted Catholic educa-tors pointed out that it would now be a problem to provide adequate sec-ondary education for the girls of less well-off families in local pa~:ish schools, some congregations saw in their higher grades a source of more Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 673 thoroughly trained religious personnel. That vain hope made difficulties in long-term planning for the transition from religious to lay staff. A further dramatic change in Australian education, which was to affect all ministries, occurred in the early 1970s. After a break of twenty years, the Australian Labor Party, headed by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, was elected to govern the country. One of its earliest reforms was to make uni-versity education free. Although some criticized the extraordinary cost this was to the nation, the move brought the opportunity for tertiary education to the masses. Before that time, university education had been for the fortunate and the chosen. Now the initiative for tertiary education was up to the indi-vidual. The suc.c~'ss achieved by some "late starters," many in their forties and fifties, revealed how much talent had previously been unused. From about 1975, attitudes within religious congregations changed for both superi-ors and subjects. Superiors began to listen more attentively to those who did well in their tertiary studies, and subjects found their personal confidence and self-esteem strengthened by their academic achievement. With the advances made in the study of theology and the social sciences, it is now rarel~ pretended that apostolic religious life is simple, or that doing the will of God is always as clear-cut as that decided by another human being alone, whether or not that person h.appens to be a religious superior. Because of the broader scope of ministries open to women religious, modem specialization, and improved administrative techniques, the principle of interchange among personnel--which for many years had been integral to the practice of the third vow--is now becoming more and more difficult. In addition, although the median age of religious congregations is rising faster than that of the general population, many religious feel they have the right, and indeed the duty, to request proximity to aging parents. Religious congre-gations in serious decline have virtually no young sisters under perpetual vows who might be sent to isolated schools in rural areas. Since the majority of Australian sisters have reached the "winding down" stage of their lives, many now look to the cities from whence they originally came. In addition to these developments within the Church, the governments of Australia and New Zealand have acknowledged, in the form of funding, the benefits to the country as a whole of certain works of the private sector, including Catholic, and have thus made it necessary to rethink the ecclesias-tical structures for some ministries in which religious are involved. The equitable processing of government funding necessitated merging many local works, including parish schools within dioceses, into larger systems, most of whose personnel are now lay. These mergings required the develop-ment of policies acceptable to the relevant bishops, major religious superi- 674 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 ors, and state and union representatives for the management of the works, particularly those of healthcare and education. Making the policies work in practice required the establishment of sophisticated structures, which in turn required religious or lay personnel with the proper management skills. As a result, the power of the leaders of religious institutes with regard to the placement of personnel in traditional works in Australia and New Zealand has been lessened. Unlike lay staff, religious in Australia are not permitted employment status; this is not the case in New Zealand.2 Because of all of these circumstances, religious superiors have had to rethink how to preserve their true patrimony oi" authentic mission and what human cost would be involved. Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? The whole issue of the employment, or active involvement, of religious personnel leads to the question: Which is of greater importance to an insti-tute claiming to be dedicated to apostolic works, the works for which it was founded or the persons who will serve in those works? For leaders of insti-tutes whose acceptance of candidates demands that they offer them appropri-ate apostolic work, the answer is neither obvious nor simple. However, the Church has offered some very sound advice in the general area of human work. Of the documents which have come from the Vatican since the council, few could be more relevant to our times than the encyclical letter Laborem Exercens (LE) of the present pope. Pope John Paul II presents human work as "one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of the crea-tures." It is "from work [that man's life] derives its specific dignity" (LE Introduction). Pope John Paul describes the "conflict between labor and cap-ital in the present phase of history" (LE 1 l f f). The Church, he points out, has always taught "the principle of labor over capital." Both are causes of pro-duction, but while capital is the mere "instrumental cause," labor is the "pri-mary efficient cause" (LE 12). In the labor-over-capital issue, Pope John Paul equates labor with per-sons and capital with the material returns from their labor. Consecrated reli-gious, even those who have employment, individually receive no capital }'or their labor. They have sacrificed this right for a stable form of living by which they can follow Christ more closely under the action of the Holy Spirit (c. 573). In Australia and New Zealand, more than half of the person-nel in apostolic institutes made their commitment in the years when religious superiors had supreme control over placement into works, and they are now beyond the stage at which they might have arranged for alternative security Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 675 in old age upon seeing that the original system in which they sacrificed pos-sible wealth, marriage, and motherhood was beginning to break down. So the competent authorities obviously have a serious question of obligation towards them now. Many of the religious have perhaps forty years of life which they could still offer in apostolic works within the Church. Pope John Paul also writes concerning the roles of the "direct and indi-rect employer" (LE 17). By the "indirect employer" he refers to many differ-ent elements in society which make up the human environment of the worker. He says: "The role of the agents included under the title of indirect employer is to act against unemployment, which in all cases is an evil, and which, when it reaches a certain level, can become a real social disaster" (LE 18). These are strong words from the pen of the vicar of Christ. The principal agent in the concept of indirect employer for religious personnel would be the wider Church in that country. Should not, then, sections of the local Church accept part of the responsibility to address any problems of unem-ployment for religious? As well, the question should be raised within reli-gious institutes: Is it justifiable for religious superiors to accept candidates to poverty and obedience within a particular institute when those superiors do not have the power to place them in suitable work soon after profession? Perhaps declining numbers in a congregation increase the temptation for superiors to do so, and perhaps they excuse their actions with the reminder that all should "trust in God." I believe that succumbing to such a temptation would constitute power abuse of a particularly destructive kind. The abuse would surely be more damaging if others within the institute were already searching for similar employment, and were exposed to the same market forces. Power and Recruitment for Apostolic Works The power of recruitment brings us to the heart of the present discus-sion, namely, the opportunity for or deprivation of suitable apostolic work for religious personnel. It is neither possible nor desirable to completely sep-arate apostolic persons from the society in which they live. Professed mem-bers of Australian religious institutes are exposed to the forces which are part of the sophisticated living of the decade leading up to the twenty-first century. In this society ~nd age, control of recruitment for works represents power. For religious personnel, recruitment can be translated into mission-ing. Procedures for the missioning of religious should be such that they lead to the spiritual strengthening of the members and the corporate growth of the institute. The immediate practical problem to be faced by governing bodies of religious institutes is to develop policies for missioning procedures that 676 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 are within their power to implement, that support evangelization, that are just and equitable and adapted to the personhood of each sister, and that accord with both canon and civil law. Nowadays apostolic work for religious may be broadly placed into four categories: (1) viable institutions of which the con-gregation is the trustee, (2) charitable works of the congregation or of other ecclesiastical bodies, (3) viable institutions of other ecclesiastical bodies which pay stipends or salaries for the work of the sister, and (4) viable and nonviable works found in profane structures at the initiative of the religious. (1) Viable institutions owned by a religious institute are, in a distinctive manner, part of its patrimony. They are, as well, material assets of the insti-tute, which its leaders should, in. poverty, care for "with the diligence of a good householder" (canon 1284). Viable works of religious congregations are businesses, and for businesses to survive and attract personnel today, they must be competitive. Vatican II (Gaudium et Spes 64) teaches that eco-nomic development through technical progress "must be fostered, along with a spirit of initiative, an eagerness to create and expand enterprises," and that the purpose of productivity "must be th.e service of. the whole human per-son, viewed in terms of his or her material needs and the demands of his or her intellectual, moral, spiritual, and religious life." Pope John Paul points out that "capital cannot be separated fr6m labor" (LE 13) though, of course, in the case of religious persons, the capital is, through poverty, directed elsewhere than themselves. Religious persons, knowing that they are materially contributing towards the whole, find in the capital "confirma-tion and support" (LE 13) for the work done. Sound economics and evangel-ical poverty should go hand in hand. In order to maintain the correct balance between responsibility to the institute's mission and respect for the rights of the individual members of the institute, congregational leaders (trustees of the works) must regard the work and those involved in it as separate entities: the work itself is important regardless of who does it. Individual members must have the same percep-tion so that they may practice the spirit of poverty, or detachment. There should, accordingly, be protective structures for the ministry, including sometimes the combining of similar works under one administration so that they will continue even in cases of illness or of anyone's taking longservice leave. It is particularly important that this principle of continuation be respected when works require only one person in the local area, for example, instrumental music practices.3 Setting up protective structures for ministries in order to maintain the institute's patrimony will include policies for recruitment of staff. In those works in which a number of religious and lay people, are engaged, religious superiors have the direct power to influence Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 677 administrators in the recruitment of personnel. It stands to reason, then, that---other things, like professional qualifications, being equal--in recruit-ment for works of which the religious institute is the trustee, preference should be given to its own members. (2) The category of charitable works might include refuges for the needy which are supported by the congregation and by external donations. Without viable works there can be no charitable works. The Church's teaching on a "preferential option for the poor," by which the poor should have a preferen-tial claim on the Church's resources, cannot be initially applied without the resources. Once competent authorities decide that a charitable work is authentic to the charism of the institute, then the congregation should set up, as it should for its viable institutions, protective structures to preserve the work, whether or not there are religious personnel to staff it. Indeed, true missionaries strive to make themselves ultimately dispensable--teaching the disadvantaged how to be self-reliant and how to recover the dignity which is their right (see LE 9). Protective structures would include finance arrange-ments which can be monitored, and the work should be the source of support for the individual religious workers; that is, their salaries or stipends should be fed back into the general system. Again, for a religious institute's own charitable works, other things being equal, one would expect that members of the institute who are under civil retirement age should be considered first when positions are vacant. In Australia, women over sixty years of age (men over sixty-five) who have limited assets (a category which includes religious) are eligible to apply for the Social Security payments from the government. With the pres-ent societal structures, it seems that religious who receive Social Security should not deprive others (perhaps more deserving) of needed employment positions. In some dioceses it is established policy not to accept into stipend-ed positions religious women who are over sixty. If protective structures for an institute's works do not include allocationof salaries, or stipends which are independent of Social Security payments, then receipt of the latter would generate for the ministry an artificial security which could destabilize long-term plans for it. (3) In the third category above, which here in Australia refers principally to Catholic education, lie the greatest current problems of placement of reli-gious personnel. In most of Australia, the recruitment of staffs for nonpro-motional positions in Catholic schools is in the hands of local principals. This power evolved with the gradual acceptance of lay staffs into the parish schools previously staffed by religious. Perhaps to our discredit, it is only recently (since about 1975) that there has been widespread acceptance of lay 678 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 teachers into promotional positions. In general, the power of religious supe-riors to place personnel in diocesan works is limited to those positions which were previously held by other religious of their own congregations. Declining numbers, and thus declining positions, led to some religious being exposed to market forces for ministries. School principals, whether religious or lay, still have the power and responsibility of staffing. This has now become an excessive burden for principals of Catholic schools in the coun-try, and an excessive power for those in the city. One solution would be to have staff recruitment moved to the systemic level so that consistent staffing policies might be applied across dioceses. This might lessen the number of religious who today feel forced into the fourth category above. The exposure of some religious to market forces in the area of ministry is quite a different method of missioning than the appropriate placement of a person by a religious superior. The question should be asked: Is it just for the two types of missioning to coexist ~within the same religious institute? The answer to this important question will require great honesty and humility on the part of religious leaders. Religious exposed to market forces are some-times refused employment in diocesan works or, when school enrollments drop, dismissed by school principals of their own congregation who have the power of recruitment. Such practices are effectively structuring out of Catholic education the few teaching religious who are left, and are a serious cause of unemployment amongst religious. Some religious teachers even turn to the state school system for employment rather than lose touch with the classroom and "real life." Considering the authentic commitment which the religious have made, this alternative seems to the present writer an anomaly. On the other hand, relatively little investment has been made by the wider Australian Church over the last twenty years for the education in theology of lay teachers for Catholic schools. The above problems can now be solved only by negotiations between diocesan and religious leaders who have in mind the well-being of both the mission and the persons. As well, past oversight in planning could perhaps be avoided in the future if religious are encouraged to contribute ideas through appropriate media. Adequate Use of Media There are two levels of written communication which are particularly important in preserving a correct balance between responsibility for authen-tic mission and respect for the rights of individuals. These levels are media within the wider Church and media within religious institutes. Media within the Wider Church. Recruitment of personnel for Catholic works is effected via both the Catholic journals and the metropolitan dailies. Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 679 Like most other countries, Australia has its regular Catholic state and dioce-san papers. Because these are virtually all the Catholic community has for information on what is happening in the Church, they warrant better support and readership than they receive~ In general, editorial staffs in this country strive to maintain an adequate standard of journalism. Despite these vehicles of communication, religious leaders sometimes offer only private invitations to coveted positions which become available. They would avoid much criti-cism if they were to justify, via the Catholic media, such private invitations, especially those to academic posts in Catholic theological institutes, which remain predominantly male. Media within Religious Institutes. If any group of people ever needed to be skilled in transmitting information to each other, it would surely be the members of a religious community. Today there is frequent reference to the "role of the prophet" within religious institutes. Prophets must have vehicles in which they can deliver the message, and the printed word offers the par-ticular benefit of time for considered expression and response. I believe that religious institutes need especially these two kinds of print media: directo-ries and forums for challenge. Directories. In order for general leaders to affirm a work as part of the institute's authentic mission, they must understand clearly what the work is about and be sufficiently convinced of its value to defend it, if necessary, at the general chapter. On the other hand, if chapter delegates believe that the congregation has more ministries than they can validly affirm, they should seriously and courageously argue that systematic steps be taken towards reducing the number.4 Chapter delegates, in order to make valid contribu-tions to discussions and debates regarding works, must have information about their nature and value. Since this is so, it stands to reason that those who elected them--namely, all members of the institute--should have it too. Therefore, each apostolic institute in today's world needs its own official directOry, revised and published annually and containing information on the residence and mission of each member. The directory, which would be an implicit demographic study of the institute, should contain, as well, an annu-al financial statement of the institute and its provinces, with statistics on works which had some elements in common. I believe this would assist greatly in the appropriate placement of personnel and act as a deterrent to increasing fragmentation in ministries. Forum for Challenge. If members of religious institutes with at least parallel qualifications to lay teachers are to have the same work opportuni-ties in the institutes' traditional ministries, then positions that are open should be advertised first within "the system." Trade unions insist on this 680 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 right for their civilly employed members, so it should not be too much to expect within the religious institutes themselves. As well, religious subjects often have insights and ideas for better management which are unknown to superiors. They should have the opportunity to share them. Their ideas may be of benefit to all so that problems like unemployment may be addressed before they gain a hold. Since religious women were, for over a hundred years, to an extent indoctrinated not to express an opinion, they will need to be encouraged to contribute. Therefore, internal journals which contain forums for challenge must have a mandate from a competent authority and must be frequent and regular. When what is written in them is not uncharita-ble- that is, criticizes a policy or a structure and does not attack a particular person--and is limited in audience to professed members of the institute, then it is not a threat to loyalty. Indeed, such a forum could become a c.orpo-rate examination of conscience and could preserve or restore the balance between responsibility for authentic mission and the rights of the person. It could also act as a specific prevention or cure of the evil of unemployment within the religious institute. In educating religious to the use of an internal journal, it should be pointed out that the institute, being made up of human beings, is quite subject to error and that it could be harmful to their beioved congregation to write only of its virtues and to overlook its faults, including possibly incorrect policies with regard to the placement of personnel. Conclusion More than twenty years have passed now since religious congregations first experienced declining numbers and lay teachers became an ac.cepted part of Catholic education here in Australia, so there has be~n adequate time to face up to problems which have occurred regarding recruitment for specif-ic works. Sister Georgine recommends that a program "address all the dimensions of employment and unemployment." However, "job clubs" and "comprehensive programs" are unlikely to take shape until religious leaders acknowledge that the problem is there. I believe that leaders also have the duty to provide those engaged in the works with information and reflection based on surveys or particular works so that they will know what the scope of that work will be in the future, how long the work itself is likely to sur-vive, and what the superiors are planning in that regard. There is no guarantee that any of the above proposals are a complete cure for the evil of unemployment within religious life. However, endeavor-ing to maintain a correct balance between responsibility f~r the mission and respect for the persons of the members of the institute goes to the causes of the evil and is more likely to effect a long-term cure. The use of appropriate Mission or Consecrated Religious Person? / 681 media is a method of achieving the "maximum feasible participation" in effecting a cure. We are living in a world at the brink of the third Christian millennium. It is a world which needs the commitment of consecrated reli-gious life as much as ever and perhaps more than ever. A life wholly dedi-cated to contemplation is a rare gift. However, there is plenty of evidence to indicate that apostolic institutes of consecrated life have an important place in contemporary society. The chief characteristic of Christian moral doctrine besides its Christocentric orientation is the integration of love and justice, the latter being "the strong and firm will to give to each his due.''5 For a reli-gious woman who has sacrificed potential marriage, motherhood, and career in order to serve the Church in an institute devoted to apostolic ministry, unemployment is a serious injustice. The Church and religious institutes should work together for both prevention and cure. NOTES I See R. Hoffman, "Mission," in The New Catholic Encyclopedia. 2 For the purpose of the present article, the word employment will sometimes refer to apostolic work, whether or not the religious has employment status in the civil law. 3 The present writer admits to a certain bias towards instrumental music teaching. I believe that this work is of great importance to the liturgy of the Church. One of the long-term effects of the mergings of parish schools and the employment of lay teach-ers in Australian Catholic education was the death of much traditional music prac-tice, which was not absorbed into the diocesan systems and had few protective structures. It seems to me that the most important strategy for preserving the practice of music is to remove revenue management from the hands of the individual teacher. Otherwise the work tends to become like that of a self-employed person--a situation which is not compatible with either poverty or obedience. Skilled musicians in parishes attract worshipers. I believe that budgeting towards producing musicians for the Church should be part of its primary mission. 4 The idea of permitting novices to have unlimited scope in "working out" their future ministry is, I believe, a recipe for disaster; apostolic congregations already have difficulty in staffing missions recognized as authentic to their charism. 5 New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8, p. 70. Quotation from St. Thomas Aquinas (ST 2 a2ae, 58.1). Inner Africa: A ,Journey of Conversion Susan Rakoczy, 1.H.M. Sister Susan Rakoczy, I.H.M., began ministry in South Africa in October 1989 and currently lectures in systematic theology and spirituality at St. Joseph's Theological Institute in Cedara. Her address is 21 Buchanan Street; 3290 Howick; South Africa. It was about 2:30 in the morning as the door of the plane was opened. The humid and steaming air of West Africa enveloped me as I was pushed down the stairs by the crowd onto the tarmac of Ougadougou airport. Swept along with women carrying immense bondles on their heads, children looking for their parents, and determined men striding forward, 1 suddenly thought, "I am on holy ground--I am in Africa." But if I had bent down to kiss the ground I would have been trampled--better to let myself be borne by the flow of humanity to the small airport terminal and the arrival procedures. In the rush and confusion of all the formalities I could sense that I had now entered something deeper than my own self for 1 was touching "mother Africa." Later, as we stowed our luggage in a friend's car for the drive to the hostel to spend what was left of the night I wondered, "What have I done with my life?" What indeed. ? The experiences of my years in Ghana (1982 to 1988) provided many different answers to that question. Most essentially they led me into the depths of conversion Which I can describe now as "inner Africa" for I soon learned that "mother Africa" would ask everything of me. The Call Some people dream all their lives of serving outside their own country, but that was not my experience. Not until I was finishing my doctoral studies in religion at Catholic University in 1980 did I sense a call to serve beyond North America. Through the months of preparation, prayer, and discussion 682 Inner Africa: A Journey of Conversion / 683 which preceded my journey to Ghana, people often asked, "Why are you going?" Slowly I clarified my own sense of call, speaking of my desire to share something of my gifts and education with the "young Church" of Africa. As I read about Africa and its needs, struggles, and promise I became aware of a continent and Church reaching towards maturity of faith and vision. Somehow I sensed very deeply that I wanted to be part of that. But it is not enough just to desire to serve in Africa. It is an immense continent, large enough to contain the continental United States two-and-a-half times. I received an invitation to teach in the major seminary in northern Ghana (our congregation had come to that section of the country in 1976) and so the plan was to come and spend a year getting acquainted with the culture and life of the people and then to begin teaching in 1983. As with many people who come to Africa, things did not turn out quite as I had planned. While I did work in Navrongo, a small town in Ghana for a year, the seminary door never opened wide enough to admit a woman theologian. But life at the Centre for Spiritual Renewal, a retreat center in the city of Kumasi, gave me a much wider scope for ministry with opportunities in retreats and spiritual direction, intensive leadership formation with prayer group leaders, and writing and editing, all of which enabled me to enter more deeply into Ghanaian life and culture. All the preparation I tried to do, while helpful in some ways, was still inadequate to the challenge of Africa. After I arrived I realized that what I needed was a radical openness, a sense of adventure, a desire to meet the continent and its people on their own terms. As the day of departure neared my own sense of expectancy of what was ahead increased. Shortly before I left I spent a few days on retreat at our com-munity hermitage. The entries in my journal for those days speak of praying for courage and joy and experiencing great wonder at this call I had received. The night before I left I wrote: Tomorrow~departure. I feel more than ready. Mostly I feel a deep free-dom and joy which has placed fear on the sidelines. Somehow 1 know I will meet the Lord--in and of his people--in ways never before imag-ined and experienced. And that is enough--more than enough--to move me across oceans and cultures. 1 go in utter joy and freedom. As the plane left United States soil the next day, ! remember how my whole spirit moved forward towards Africa. Soon I descended the steps of that plane that hot morning in Ougadougou. Inner and outer Africa now began. Call To Conversion As I reflect on my years in Ghana, I experience them in the images of 684 / Review for Religious; September-October 1991 "outer" and "inner" Africa. The first was the living of African reality in terms of my ministry; it describes what I did, with whom I lived, the rich-ness of my experience in those years. But "inner Africa" was the core of it all. My years in Ghana were fore-most an experience of conversion--a turning from, in order to turn to some-thing else, something which challenged everything I thought I was, knew, and had within me. Paul Robb, S.J., describes well the essence of conversion as a journey into the unknown: It is difficult to endure conversion because it seems to put into jeopardy our very lifestyle and ministry, but even more so because we sense that it touches the very roots of our life. It reaches deep into our being---our personality, our choices, our very self. It touches in places that are unknown, places where we are strangers. To begin a journey into an unfamiliar, haunting land is frightening, but not to know whether we will find life or death, blessing or curse, at the end can be terrifying. To enter the journey with all its uncertainties proves the possibility of finding life and life in abundance. Not to begin the journey, but to harden and steel oneself against it, is already death.2 The images are true and strong and evocative of my own African experi-ence. In my first weeks, as I entered "outer Africa" in its immensity with all the challenges of a new culture, 1 also experienced a sense of inner chaos. Some days I felt as if I were drowning, the waters of Africa enveloping me, About two months after I arrived I realized that I had to truly "walk through the door of Africa" ifI were to survive. In my journal I wrote: I have straddled first- and third-world existence in great disharmony. Today I felt that part of this is ended--it is within Africa now--that (God's) grace will work, from the inside out. It is as though 1 have now truly entered Africa. Once I had walked onto the solid ground of Africa never again did I feel this inner chaos. The work of conversion could now begin. These conver-sions were multiple and touched every dimension of my life as a North American woman of faith in a radically different culture: My first-world perspective was turned upside down; I was called from idealism to realism; I moved from giving to receiving; 1 experienced strength becoming weakness; I passed from death to life--from myself to God alone. Inner Africa: A Journey of Conversion / 685 First-World Perspective Turned Up-Side Down We come to a new culture as we are. If we are even halfway faithful to the challenges of cross-cultural experience, our own self-understanding of our home culture will change dramatically. This I experienced very pro-foundly. I discovered that I had brought a very large amount of cultural bag-gage with me. It was disconcerting to be criticized as "too American" at times--that is, too self-assured, too curious, too organized, too conscious of time; too ready with my questions and opinions. What was salutary, if painful, was the opportunity to allow my world-view to shift into new patterns. I first learned that the United States is not the center of the universe, even if it often acts that way and its military and eco-nomic policies impact the rest of the planet in such dramatic ways. It is one country among many, with its own strengths and weaknesses. I learned also how diverse and beautiful are the gifts of the people of other countries. 1 especially experienced this gift in the opportunities 1 had to meet people from so many different parts of the world and to enter into something of the richness of the world's cultural heritage, to see how differently people can feel, think, and organize human life. There were two central ways in which my world began to be "turned upside down": my experience of poverty and my attempts to learn new dimensions of the common life and hospitality. Poverty is a hard and often a "loaded" word. We fight it and yet some-how sense that in being poor we will find the key to new life in solidarity with others. The Gospel's call to detachment from riches and from every-thing that would hinder our response to the invitation from Jesus to disciple-ship has always challenged Christians profoundly. To come to Ghana was certainly to see poverty and share in it in some small ways. It was indeed a shock for me to see the extent of poverty and marginality: lack of clean and safe water for so many, schools with few books, hospitals and clinics without supplies, limited transportation, rudi-mentary communication, erratic electricity. Some of the practical details of my new lifestyle were a challenge. It was "farewell" to dependable electrici-ty, unlimited water, telephone service, easily available fuel, and to book-shops, movies, and regular postal service. It was, on the other hand, "hello" to a sense of living on the "edge of things" at times--lanterns and attempts to get kerosene for them, recycling every possible drop of water, limited food supplies, simple amusements, and difficulties in communication. All these changes were hard in different ways. I wrote: I am struck again by the gap between theory and practice in my life, for 686 / Review for Religious, September-October 1991 example, to talk about poverty, being with the poor--and then not to embrace poverty wholeheartedly, as indeed Jesus did. The:conversion to acceptance of and a certain ease with my new simple lifestyle took time. I never did get used to the erratic postal system and its consequences for poor communication with family and friends. On the other hand, as the years went by I gradually experienced in myself a certain ability to live with much less and to find in that a real freedom. To have to do things simply and patiently experience inconvenience gradually became a way for me to share some sense of solidarity with the poor who have no options and no outside resources. I was becoming comfortable with the simplicity of Ghanaian life and my heart was slowly becoming centered on what was most essential. I was not poor in the way the ordinary Ghanaian is poor but I did come to experience in small ways the shocks and diminishments of poverty. 1 also learned new meanings of community life and hospitality because African life is lived in common. The extended family of several generations living together in one compound has been the normal pattern in rural areas. Daily activities take place outside, and people are inside only when it is rain-ing, or at night, or if they are sick. The atmosphere in both urban and rural areas is one of physical and psychological openness to friend and stranger. Entering into such a different cultural atmosphere of hospitality and availability also challenged my Western habits. In the West we live inside; people come into our lives generally at our convenience thanks to the cultur-al presuppositions that one lives by calendars and schedules. But in a situa-tion where the culture says "welcome" all that changes. People walk into one's life often unannounced, and the person at the door could bring the unexpected pleasure of a friend coming to visit or someone arriving for a retreat without any previous communication or someone coming to ask for prayer---or the bishop with overseas visitors. 1 learned to be always ready to adapt to people's needs and to realize that my life and my time were really no longer my own, Prayer time was often interrupted; reading and study had to be immediately abandoned to answer someone's need. Privacy became very relative since, although I had my own room and office, my own space and time were now the resources of the people I tried to serve. These demands taught me much about my own selfishness, the need to have my own way, my own schedule, my own plans. I never did become totally comfortable with being physically and psychologically available at all times. Yet gradually I learned to absorb something of the spirit of welcome and hospitality which are so important in Ghanaian culture and to live them in my halting way. Inner Africa: A Journey of Conversion / 687 The first dimension of conversion in my life then was a shift in con-sciousness from being a woman of the first world to one living in the third world and trying to enter fully into life there. My American perspective and cultural habits were turned upside down and inside out. The result was a double-consciousness for I saw, and felt, and experienced first- and third-world realities at the same time. Nothing could or would be the same again. From Idealism to Realism Soon after I came to Ghana I realized what a "good press" the African Church has in the West. The reading I had done before I arrived had given me the overwhelming impression of a "young Church" on its way to real inculturation as a true African expression of the Christian faith, with signifi-cant achievements already made in liturgy and catechesis. It is true that inculturation is happening, theological development and reflection are proceeding, liturgy is more authentically African in some places--but the pace of everything is slow and that is the pace of Africa. Idealism about the Church was gradually replaced by a realism about the Church as it is. To be a "young" Church is exactly that. In the southern part of Ghana modern Catholic

Issue 11.4 of the Review for Religious, 1952. ; A.M.D. G~ Review for Religious JULY 15, 1952 Parallel Vocations . Nicholas H. Rieman Bibles . William M. Sfritch Unigeni÷us Dei Filius . Pope Plus x~ To a Master of Novices . Fra L. Ganganelli .Higher Education . Sister M. Bonaventure National Congress Questions and Answers Modesty Crusade Book Reviews VOLUME NUMBER REViI::W FOR RI::LIGIOUS VOLUME XI JULY, 1952 NUMBER CONTENTS PARALLEL VOCATIONS--Nicholas H. Rieman, S.J .1.69 BIBLES--William M. Stritch, S.J . 177 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 182 REPRINTS OF SPONSA CHRISTI . ¯ . 182 UNIGENITUS DEI FILIUS--Pope Plus XI . 183 BOOKS FOR.PRIESTS . 198 FOR ORGANISTS AND CHOIRMASTERS .1.98 LETTER TO A MASTER OF NOVICES--Fra Lorenzo Ganganelll 199 TEN-YEAR INDEX STILL AVAILABLE . 202 HIGHER EDUCATION AND "REAL RELIGION"-- Sister M. Bonaventure, O.S.F . 203 NATIONAL CONGRESS . 210 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 19. Prescriptions for the Chapter of Faults . 211 20. Precedence in Receiving Communion . . ¯ .212 SHALL I START TO DRINK? . 213 BOOK REVIEWS~ The Morning Offering; What is the Index?; The Seminarian at His Prie-Dieu; The Carmelite Directory of the Spiritual Life .214 BOOK NOTICES . 217 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS . 221 PROMOTE THE MODESTY CRUSADE . 223 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, July, 1952. Vol. XI, No. 4. Published bi-monthly: January, March, May, July, September, and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street; Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter January 15, 1942, at the Post Office, Topeka, Kansas, under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Jerome Breunig, S.J.; Augustine G. Ellard, S.J.: Adam C. Ellis, S.J.; Gerald Kelly, S.J. Copyright, 1952, by Adam C. Ellis, S.J. Permission is hereby granted for quota-tions of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U. S. A. Before writincj to us, please consult notice on Inside back cover. Parallel Voca!:ions Nicholas H. Rieman, S.3. ~yJE RELIGIOUS know the worth of our vocation. We rank it -W among~ur greatest blessin~gs. A precious gift in itself, it car-~ ries .with it numerouk other gifts, such as our. rpraye~-'and Mass, spiritual guidhnce', our companions," and our apostolic work'. We are glad we took the step knto religion, andewe miss no chance to draw others to religion too. .But perhaps we are not aware that our r~ligious vocation can be partly.sh'ared even with lay folks. A. molag the most effective ways we~h~ve of sha"ring our vocati6n ig encourag-. ing and conducting third 0rd~rs. confra:ernities, so'dalities and simi'- l'ar organizat!ons.~ The present article confines itself to. the parallel vocation as found in the Sodality'of Our Lads,. .' ¯ There is a special reason why tile possibilities of ~uch a Sqdality should be unfolded to religious.~ It is this: .while the director of-a Sodality must always beLa priest, yet"in a scho01or hospital the', actual l~andling of aSodality .is often left"to Brother Michael or to -Sister 3oan. Also, besides those who are moderators ofSodalities, many other religious superiors, principals, ¯floor. supervisors in.hos-pitals, teachers, nurses, he'ads of different ~ictivities--can help much. They.can lend interest and co0pfration to 'insure that the Sodality in their institutions be a true Sodality, and lay people bent on some-thing more than me.dioctity be drawn to its rankS. Many Feligious are, then, in a tposition to forward good Sodalities. By doing so;. they can share many of the benefits of a religious vocation with those who follow the la~; Sodal.ity vocation. - For m'embersbip in the Sodality is also a vocation. Our present Holy Fatber'has clearly in his Apostolic Constitution Bis Saecular~ placed the Sodality in the troop--sof Catboh"c ~-A "ctton. And Catholic Acti0n~-the words are thdse of Plus X'I is "a vocation strictly and properly so .called." ¯ It is not, of course? a religious vocation. Y,et if is ~ vocation, a way of life, a call to perfection.' The. S6d;ility is open only to those who are ready,.by Go'd's grace, to-adopt the'de2 .mandihg spiritual.and apostolic progr~am it involves. ' Btit'why is the Sodality such an ap't means for sh~iring With lay people something of our religious v6cation? 'F6r.the simple reason that the vocation, of a religious and that of a Sodalist are much alike. ¯ 1.69 NICHOLAS H. RIEMAN Review [or'Religiqus It is nottoo'mu~h t~ call them paraliel vocations, Only a~det~iled comparison will display how far-reaching this parallelism is. Of. course, only true Sodalitiei--those that follow the papal directives and the Sodality rules-~can prodiace this parallelism'and the result-' ant rich spiritual harvest. So, in pointing oot the resemblances.be-l~ ween t'he two vocations, I shall ~lso suggest how ~a Sodality must be co'nducted in order to secure these benefits. . What then. are some of the parallels between religious and So-dality life? First, becoming a Sodalist, like becoming a Franciscan or a.Sister of'Merry, is a lifetime,undertaking. Joining the So, dality is not like joining the staff of the school paper or the dramatic club. These latter are hobbies; the Sodality is a vocation, A Sodalist agrees to follow the Sodality way of life not just at school, but when on vacation, when working in a facto.ry or office, when married--in. short, for life. Pius XII. knows that very well: be never, says, "I wa~ a Sodalist, but always, '"I am a. Sodahst, although he took his act .of consecration and' entered the Sodality 56 years ago. More will b~ said later of the Sodality act of consecration. Here it isi'enough to.stress one thing. This consecration, and so the ac-ceptance of Sod, ality obligations that goes with it, is for life. True, a temporary act of consecration for 'a year can" be and sometimes is made in Junior Sodalities (those in grammar schools), since at that age level most of the candidates are sddom mature enough for a life-time dedication. But the ordinary act ofconsecration taken by teen-~ agers and adults is, as clearly, indicated in both its forms in the Sodality Rules, perpetual. The Sodality vocatioia, like a religious vocation, is perpetual. Besides being a. lifetime dedication, becoming a S6dalist is also, l'ike becoming a religious, a full-time occupation. One must be a Sodalist 24 hours a day. Just as being a Christian Brother .affects not only a. man's Mass and his meal-times, but his work and recrea-tion too, s6 being., a Sodalist doesn't mean only .attending meet.ings, saying one's rosary, 'and taking p~art in a cl0thes-for-I~or~a drive, 'Being a Sodalist must--and in a Sodality that follows the rules, does. --affect a boy's lock~r-room langu;ige, the kind of formal a girl wears to a prom, and every other action that fills the dajr of either of them. Tru.e, a Sodalist does not, as is generally true of religious, have his wgrk assigned by ~uperi0rs. 'Yet a Sodalist, just like any of us, has to show a good example and. beactively ap0s~olic every minute of his waking day. Nor is this an impossible ideal, a pipe. 170 dui~,1952 ~ARALLEL VOCATIONS dream. In Sodalities that follow Plus XII's stipulations and actually .require,observance of the. Sgdality rules, this is a normal result, re-alized, if not perfectly,. at least in large measure. The act of consecration to Our Lady which admits one tb the Sodality parallels very close.ly the vows of reli~ious orders. Even the .wgrding of the act of consecration in the St. Francis,de Sales fbrmula, ~clbsely resembles the vow formula of some religious. "It is not a vow, of. course, and so does not bind ur~der sin, but it is a solemn dedication. ~ And What doek the Sodalist promise? Pius XII gives us the'answer. "To apply oneself seriously to sanctity, each in his proper state: to dedicate .oneself, not in any manner whatsoever but 'with ardor, in ~the measure and manner compatible with each one,s social condition to the s'alvation and perfection of others: in a word[ to emplby oneself strenoously in the defense of the Church of Christ: such is the assignment of the Sodalist, freely, resolutely ac-cepted in theact of his con'secration." In short, he says, "conse-cration to the Mother of God in the Sodality is an entire gift of one-self throughout life and for all eternity." It is the solemn, acceptance of a way of life forall one's future vears. The act' of consecration is the cornerstone of the Sodality vocation, even though not absolutely required for valid reception. It should be for the incoming Sodalist a thing only a little less tremendous than. the taking of vows i's to .religious This act of consecration is often renewed by earnest So-dalistS, .just as rdligious often renew their vows, even though they are perpetual. The Sodality~onsecration is not specific~illy directed to vows' of r~overtv, cha'stity, and obedience, as are the.vows of religious. Still it implies that Sodalists practice these three virtues to a higher degree than ordinary Christi~ins. A special obedience to the hierarchy of the Church is requi.red by the Sodality's character as Catholic Action, and. was referred to by PiusXII as a prominent feature of Sodalities. A relative indifferdnce to material goods, is obviously necessary for the practice of a constant apostolate. Lastly, chastity--according to one's state, which doesn't necessarily mean celibacy--is naturally the ideal of one speci.all'y dedicated to.Mary. ¯ The Sodality, too, has its ~novitiate," call~d the probati6n. It is required of all candidates before admission. A religiolis,novitiate mus~ be a year lbng, and man~, orders and congregations require two years. How long is the Sodality probation? "Not less than two months" is required by.Sodality rules, but most effective Sodalitles ,171 NICHOLA~ H, RIEMAN " ~ x Revieu2 for'Reli~Tious rriake it.six months and quite a few of tlqem, especially thoke for hi~h" school students a.full ,year. The purpose of the Sodality p~b-bation is the same as that of a religious novitiate: tb acquaint, to test. t6 train. " " "It acquaints_ tl-i~'aspiraht with what the Sodality is.~ind how. it functions.'so that he can bi~tter "decide whether .hE wants to make-the" sacrifices inv~lved.It tests the candidate, and tries to find out whether~ he~ha~iwhat it takes.,to livEforevek the Sodality v~ay of life. It. trains him in" devotion to. Mary, in spiritual exercises ahd apostolic activi-ti~;: so that if- he ,is accepted, he ,will already-h'ave largely~, acquired the attitudes .and habits nee-ded to li,¢e and'act as/a Sodalist ghould. dust like.a, religlous novitiate. the Sodality 'probation is' heavily. weighted'on'the spiritual side. It stresses ingtructi'on, direction. 'and above, allT-prayer. ' " " '. ¯ -Like a religious.'order, or congregation. the S0dalit~ has its, rules. They.'are not-as demanding' as the rules of religious, btit tt~ey do clearly aim at a,high degree'of spirituality. They are all-in the pam-ph! et. Sodalit~l"Rule~. 'In his A1fostolic. Constitution of 1948 Pius XII.refers to them 25. times. It is clear that in. his mind an easy test of the calibre of"a Sodality.is whether it really keeps the rules. In a Sod~dity as."in religious orders the ~pirjt of the rules is always more important tha~ the letter, and'so Sodality rules w,hich refer only ,to procedure at, meetings and such topics should n'ot bd applied wood-enly . Yet the:rules embbdy the. spiril~ .of an organization, and if" th~yfallinto disregard and disuse, the rd'sult will be as disastrbus toa SQdality as: it would be to, a religigus'order.~ ¯ :-. In .its spiritual practices, and .to a. smaller exteni i~ its apostolic a.ctivity a °Sddality, clgsely parallels religious.c.ongreg~tions.- First, let.'us 'ma'ke a thorough survey of"it.s spiritual.exercises, for they are the dynamo on'wh.ich Sodality activities depend. Most .of these dai.ly duties are containe_d'in R.u:le 34 of the Sodality. This rule deserves to be quo,ted in full: ":Sodalist~ must be very careful, to p~actice'~hose exercises of piel~y which are most necess.a.ry for fervbl of life. Every morning.on ~i~jng,,let"them make 'the. acts of faith, hope, and'ch~r-ity; thank God our Lord for His.benefits:: offer Him their labors~ with the" intention of-gaining all",.the mdu.lgences~ they.can~.through-out that day;, and invoke 't~'e Blessed. Virgin'. by reciting thd Hail Mary three times. Le~t. tbem.':devote at least a quarter of an hour td mental prayer: be presenL if they can: a'~the adoiable Sacri}ice of,the Mass; and recite the most HolyoRosary, or some Office of Our'I2ady. 172 "dul~], 1952- PARALLEL VOCATIONS In the evening before retiring, let them carefully examine their con-science and make a fervent act of contrition, for the sins of-their whole life and especially for those committed on that day." The t~rst item mentioned on the day's spiritual schedule of a So-dalist is the prayers on rising:, faith, hope, love, thanksgiving, offering'of works, three Hail Marys. The aim of these brief vocal prayers is of.course to start the d~iy r.igbt, with and for God.They remind us at once of the "morning prayers~ . morning visit," or "first visit," of religious.They are a dedication of.the day to God. Next is mentioned daily mental prayer "at least a quarter of an hour:'" All religious institutes have, I believe, a half-hour of mental prayer, and some have more. The Sodality rule demanding daily mental prayer is as clear and unconditional as the rule of reli-gious c6n'gregations on. this point. The'only difference is in the length of time. The conclusion ought to be obvious. If a' religious-would not admit to vows a novice who did not regularly perform his meditation, why should we expect h S6dality to admit candi-dates who are not reasonably faithful in fulfilling this clear Sodality demand? Again, if novices need instruction in the bow-when-where- why of mental prayer to enable them to perform it profitably, won't Sodalists need the same? A Sodality in which the members are' faithful to their rule on mental prayer will be a Sodality that can move spiritual mountains, even if i~ has'only fifty members or even only ten. Further, says the rule, Sodalists must attend daily Ma~s "if they can." This practice, too. is modelled on that of religious. How-- ever,, for religious the "if they can" is gefierally an unneeded addi-tion: since their ~ommon life and work assignments are arranged so that it is a!ways possible for them to do so. Though daily Mass may sometimes be impossible for this or that Sodalist, such cases are rare. The trouble is that too often the '.'if they can" of the rule is taken to mean,"if th.ey choose': or'"if they do not find it incon-venient." But the John Carroll Univeisity Sodality, and marly another too, has sfiown that practically all Sodalists can atterld Mass seven days.a week if they want to. Daily Holy Cohamunion, of course, cannot be required of.Sodal-ists any more than it can of religious. But Sodalists in iheir Rule39, as all religious somewhere in their rules, are strongly urged to fre- ¯ quent and even daily Communion. Most Sodalities that observe the rules and require daily Mass find that all their members receive Corn- NICHOLAS H. RIEMAN . °. Reoie~o for ReligiO~s" .muni6n freq~uently, and the great majority of l~he.m~daily. Next the).Sodality rule requires daily, recitation of the rosary, or an Office of. Our La~y --- ~.g.; theOffice 6f the Ihamac~late .Concep-., tion. On day, s w.hen~the Sodality meets, such an Office, or part of it, is sometimes said or sung in common. ]3ut in their daily prac-tice, most Sodalists piefer the rosarY, and this .dail~ du.ty is o~ten perforrfied in"an ideal Way, with one's family. In religious orders and'congregation~, the daily rosary also forms, either by rule or by ¯ custom, part of th~ spiri(ual exercises, at least where the Office of Our Lady.is not required. Like most religious orders, the Sodality rules requir~.a daily ex-~¯ . amination of conscience at night. The reason is the same., We all know how a daily check on.our faults or virtues helps us to fiaake ,our following 0f Christ .a, practical thing, a love of deeds,and not. merely of imagination. The particular examen too, which focuses our attenti6n'or~ a "single virtue or fault, and in° which we religious find so much value, ought to be offerdd by us to Sodalists as well. A Sodalist, like a relig!ous,needs direction in this business;' of striving for p.erfection. Both need a ~piritual directo? to answer p.r~b~lems,.instruct, enc~ourgge. This i~ particul.arly trfie for the reli-gious nowce or the Sodality probationer, but it is true also for those who have already made their'lifetime consecration. S6dalists ought, to.~o to confession often; and to'get real spiritual direction from regular confessor. Rule 36 of the ~ddality is very clea~,on tl'Jis mat~ ter. .How, ever, although one's spiritual director is always a priest,~ still just as a novice-mistress can help her charges.greatly in their ori-entationto.~ eligious life, so fdr example in a girls' school, if'the So-dality moderator is a nun, she c~in on a more limited scale greatly "help her incoming Sodalists, ¯or those who are.already 'rnemb~rs, in their spiritual life.¯ Sodalis~s must make an annual retreat. Rule 9, which imposes" this i3b.ligat~on, does not set a specific l~ngtl~ of ti.me, b~t only says,¯ "There shall be a retreat every year for some days.-. " This rule does, however, str, ongly advise a clo~ed [etreat,° not fia~rely an ope,n retreat'in wl~ich the retreatants go home in the afterfioons. Also,-it cl,e.arly expects .tha~ the Sodali~(s' not only listen to t.alks, but perform meditations during the retreat~. For best rest.Its, too, the retreat h~uld, be fdr Sodalists only, just as theretreat a nun to be for nuns of her institute¯ only, not for a mixed gathering of nuns, priests, ' and .lay people. If such oa Sodality *r~treat is really im- 174- ¯ July, 19~2 -,~ PARALLEL VOCATIONS' possible, then even during the regular school or coll~ge retreat, Sodalists could make some speci~il m~ditations on their Sodality way of life,' and assign a special time for examen and for some spiritual readingdirected to" their own spiritual level. For~among Sodalists as ¯ -among re!igious the retre~it should be a powerhouse that makes its fotce'felt all through (he yea.r. It can do this best if it is adapted. to their'Sc~dality way of life., Closely" parallel in their spiritualduties a~d practices, the Sodal- .ity and.religious communities are para.llel, too,-though much less so,. .'in.their work, their apostolate. This is r;ot true of strict °contem-i~ lative orders engaging irf no outside activity, for while the prayer and penance and union with God of such contempla, tives'have an apostolic as well as a personal motive and .are in fact a tremenddus . apostolic weapon, yet they cannot, be called.external activity. 'But with religious communities engaging in external works, the Sodal, ity in its apostolate has certain likenesses. If'well understood, these, simi~ " larities will help us to cohceive,the Sodality more correctly; and mo~e.~ ¯ easily share with Sodalists our Own apostoli.c outlook, 'energy, and techniques. Apostolic work is, first of ,all, just as essential to the Sodality as to acfive:~eligious c~mmunities, and it is as deeply .rootedin pe"r-sonal sanctity. A teaching Brother who¯ recites~fill his pra~;e.rs me-ticulously but who is careless about preparing fo~ his classes is not' living.his rel~igious life f.ully.~ .Nor do~s a nursing ~ister have a-true view of he.r life.if she thifiks of holiness only as something personal,¯ and. does not see that.her.work demands sanctity, and depends 9n it. So .to_6 a Sodalist must see Sodality meetings and projects and his own day-to-d~iy contacts With his friends as part of his Sodality vo-. cation. He must clearly grasp, too, that ~11 Sodality action, since its aim is. to develop in men the grace-life, depends less on clever tech-niques. ~ban .on souls charged, with the grace of God. In the S0- dalit~ as in an active, religiohs ~c0mmunity, the spiritual and .the apostolic do not existside by side unrelated to each Other. The So~" dality does,riot have two goals; buta single goal; a spirit.ual- .apostolic goal. The.two facets, of that g0al are mutually dependent. One cannot exist without the other. Also, in the Sodality .as in religion, the apostolate is organized. 'Since the work of most S6dalists study and class, nursing,, office work, factory, work,, homemaking is riot, like the work ofia reli- ~ gious, °.directly. assigned by religious superiors, the activity-of the , 175 NICHOLAS .H. RIEMAN Reoiew ?or Religious S0dalists is both organized and individual. It .may be strictl~i or-ganized, that is, not only pl~nned in a meeting but carried out by a group. Such would be a weekly trip by S0dalists to theLittle Sis-ters of the Poor to help them care for their' charges. Sodality action may be planned together but cariied out individually, as in the con-tacting of busines~ firms to have them halt sexy advertisingor dis, play Christmas cribs. Or it may be completely indiv, idual, though inspired by Sodality ideals, as when a Sodalist persuades his or her non-Catholic roommate to go to Mass sometimes. Since we reli- -gious. even thdugh our work be hssigned, to some extent use these various apost'olic approaches ourselves, we can and should help So-d~ lli~ts with whom we deal to do the same. '"Among the primary ends of Sodalities." says Plus XI.I, "is to be reckoned every kind'bf apostolate. " " No form of apostolic ac-tion. therefore, is closed to the Sodality, and so the activities of a Sodality should be g~ired to.local needs. Such adaptation in the apostolate is a feature of not.a few religious orders and congrega-tions. We often kee the same order conducting schools on all levels, .foreign missions, hospitals, and sometimes, also parishesi Even if a congregation limits its work to education, its schools will not be car-bon copies.of, each other, but will be adapted somewhat to local con-ditions.'. The needs of each milieu are individual, and ju.st as our own apostolate ~as.religious is adapted to varying conditions, ~o we can show our Sodalists bow to do the same in their adtion for Christ. ¯ One thing more. It is almost to be expected of Sodalists that the choice of their future occupation b~ made due regard being had for their personal bent and quMifications on the basis of its al~ostolic Opportunities. One natural result of this is that'a vigorous.Sodality quickly becomes a rich source of vocations to priestly and religious life. But there are other implicatio~ns too. A Fuller-brush salesman can be an apostle, of course. But picture how much vaster are the apostolic p0ssibilities of a teaching position ' in a secular university, or of hel.ping to unionize the office-fforkers of America. . Certainly in a Sodality worthy of the name many of [he' membe.rs will choose their life's work from ~apostolic motivesl if we religious~ lay open to, ,them the potentialities. And we ought to. be adept at doing this, seeing that many of us chose our own life work .on that score. Enough has been said t6 show the fir-reaching similarity in various ways. ,between the religious life and the way of life of a true Sodalisf. The Sodality is not, of course, a religious order or con- 176 ¯ ¯ BIBLES' gregation, not even,'a~Third .Order, "among other reasons because.all Sodalities, except for the small minority in Jesuit, houses, are u£det i~piscopal direction. The Sodality has always tal~en care. to make this point clear.' Yet the Sodality does ~losely parallelreligious br-ders in their novitiate,and vov~s.and rules, in the spi~iti~al exercises they practice, and even in part in .their apostolate. These parallels are something we religious can. well ponder and utilize, for they have an important meaning for us. ~ They mean that we cannot expect Sodalities to be the kind of Catholic Action forces the Pope wishes them to be Unless we demand observance of Sodality .rules almost asreligious are expected to keep their rules. The~i mean that if we make our Sodalitie's,hll.that they should be, we can to ~.large degree and in a workable way shareeven with zealous laymen and laywomen, boys and girls, the multiple graces and advantages of our ownreligious vocation. Many of the same tools that we use to advance toward sanctity and to draw others to Christ can be used too by.our zealous lay people, ifwe con~luct Sodalities ascording to the mind of Pius XII,and en~ourage such lay people to membership in those Sodalities. By fostering viggrous So-dalities we can share with lay persons something, of the "pearl of great price" that is our religious vocation. For tb be a religious and to be a Sodalist are parallel vocations. Bibles William M. Stritch, S.J. THE following rare .and, curious editions of _the Bible, mainly non,Catholic, a~e famous either for so_me eccentricity of their ¯ translation or for some remarkable feattire o~ their publication. The Aitken Bible. The first whole English Bible printed in the United States,. by Robert Aitken;0Philadelphia, in 1782, and at l~i~' own expense. HeIost about $3000.00 on his ~renture, owing to the ,number of copies imported from England shortly afterwards. The title page, six by three and a half inches, bore the coat of arms of the State'of Pennsylvania, and says ~he project w~as appr'oved (bu~tnot sul~sidiz.ed)' and recommended by .the U. S. Congress assembled 177 WILLIAM M. STR[TCH .: ~ ~ RetJieto September 12, 1782. This edition" of 'the King James known.hlsQ as the "Bible of th~ Revolution," is more rare than even the Gutenberg Bible,notmore.than twenty-fiv~ copies .being known to exist. The~Library of. Congress copy Was acquired in 1891 for $650.00. The Breeches Bible. )klthough Wyclif in 1380, and Wm.Cax-ton in 1483,rendered the word translated "aprons" in Gen. 3:7, by the word "breeches." it ~emained for the .16th century Geneva Bibles to' be called ."Breeches-" Bible.' They were printed in England for only forty-one years, yet proved so ~p0pular .that even today those wl~o make no preterise to be Bible collectorslike t6. boast thaLthey, possess a "Breeches" Bible. The "Breeches"~ Bible of 1560 was the ¯ first Bible in English to be divided'into verses. The 1594e~lition is famous for havi.ng, the date "1495" on the New" T.es~am~nt title page~ ,The ~Bu~,Bible. An English,translation of th~ Bible printed,in 1551 ?by.John Daye; and so called from the rendering of the verse in Ps. 91:5, '.'Thou shall¯ not"nede' to be afrayde' f9~ eny bugges by nyghte~" A Copy of this Bible is, or was, until the outbreak0f'w~ir in 193.9, i~n .the library of the town'of Sc~uthampton, Ehglarid. : The Carey Bible. To Mathew Carey (1760-1839) of Phila-delphia gqes the ho.nor of publishing for'the first time {n the United States: . THE HOLY BIBLE Translated from lthe Latin ¯Vulgate ¯ Diligently compared ~vith the Hebrew, Greek. and other editions in divers languages., a.nd first published by The English College at Doway, anno 1609 Newly. revised and "c~rrected, acco'rding to ,¯ The Clementine Edition of the .Scriptur~es with annotations 'for elucidating The principal difficultie~ of Holy Writ , (Title page of Cafey',s B~ble, ~Ph~ilad~lpl~ia, .publishedDec. ¯ . The Caxto~ Memorial Bible. In 18~77.~ fou~ hundredy~ars after ,the introdu.ction of printing int6 England, one ht)ndredcbpies.of this Bibl~ were printed and bound in.twelve, hours to celebrate th~ occa-sion.' . ~ ~ The Ears-to-Ear. Bible. So named because of.a m~isprint in an editic~n of 1810~ inwhich Matt. ~3:13 reads, ~'wh6 hath ears to bar let him hear.r' ¯ Also has "good w6rks" for. "dehd'works" iri St. Paul's."Epist.le to.the Hebrews, 9: 1'~. 178 Jul~ ~ 195~ " BIBLE~ " "The Geneoa'Bible. '~ t~anslation printed in 1560. It was the work of E, nglish Protestant refugees living in Geneva, whence its name. - The Great Bibl-e." Being the Bible."in largest volume."' It pos" sessed a title page of elaborate design, in which Henry VIII ~w.as de-picted as.handing 'Zthe word of God" $0 Archbishop Cranmer and other clergy on his right Band, and to Cromwell and various lay-peers on hi~ left. Thi~" Bible is'also known as the "Chained Bible," due to the fact that s~x of ther~ were "upon divers pillars in .(St.:) P~ul'~ chi~rch, fi~ed unto the same with chaihs for all men to read in them that would." A copy. of. this Bible,,on'vellum, is now St. John's College, Cambridge, Er~gl~nd, containing the.statement at the end that it was.';fynished in. Apryll, anno 1539." " The Indian B~'ble. Tbi~ is the first Bible.printed .in what is now the U. S. A., by 3ohn. Eliot, the Apostle tO the North American In- ¯ dians. ¯.The first Indian translation of the Bible was iia th~ dialect of the-Naticks, a Massachusetts trib.e .of the' Algonkins,. and was made under the auspices Of tile Corporatior; fcff the. Propagation of ~,the Gospels among the Indi~ng~of Ne~ En.gland. .The Nev) Testa-ment appe.ai.ed.first in 1661, and two years aftei, the entire Bible. Some Of the Indian words used by Eliot are so" extremely long that Cotton Mather thought they :must hhve been stretching .themselves ever since the confusion of the tongues at Babel. A second revised edition, wasoprinted in .16~5, only" twelve copies of which are know~n to exist. A copy.of the edition Of 1663.:sold some years, agc~ for $2,900.00. The Jefferson Bible. "This is a compilation made l~y~ Thomas Jefferson during'his first term as pre~idknt of the U.S.A, ~nd c~nsists of passages from the Four G0sp~ls cut out and'pasted in a book ac-cc~ rding tO a scheme of his own. Jefferson began the work in 1804', In 1895 the federal gox;ernment purchased this curious book from-. the Jefferson~heirs, and the original is n~w in the Natiohal Museum in'Washin~t0n. The Fifty-Seventh Cbngress (.190.1-03) issued a limited edition of'the Jefferson Bible to its members. The" Leda Bible. An edition published in 1572 and so called becaiase the decoration to the'initial at the Epistle to the Hebrews is a startling and i~congrubtis woodcut of Jupiter visiting Leda in the guise of a swan. The Gutenberg Bible, In 1930, by speciai ac~ of ~ongr, ess, the Library of Congress. purchased the Vollbehr collectign of 3,000 in-o -. ~ 179 WILLI'AM M. STRITCH Revieto ~or. Religious cunabula which included 6he of the three known perfect copies on xiellum Of the Gutenber'g Bible. The price p~id for the colledtion was $1,500,000. .The Bible itself was not. pri~ed, separately, but Dr. ~ollbehr paid $250,000 for it, which was increased by interest charges and an export' tax to a total in excess of.'$350,000, the hBiigbhlee'sst ppurbicliec aetvioern .p iasi hdo f~o rk an opwrinn,t endo rb coaonk .i tT bh'ee deexfaicnti tdealyte a ossfe trhteed that it.was.printed by Johann Gutenberg at Mainz. A copy of this Bible in the National Library of Paris. contains two manuscript dates, August 15, 1456, and August 24, 1456. It is therefore ap-' parenf that the Bible was printed before August, 14.56. Bibliogra-phers agree that Mairiz was the city.whekein it was p~oduced. The name of Johann Gutenberg, universally acknowledged as the success-ful inventor of the process of printing from movable metal type, ap-pears nowhere in the Bible, but we do-kno~¢ from available and con-temporary evidence that he Was deeply interested in it, and for' that reason this Bible is c6mmonly referred to as the Gutenberg Bible. Printed in a large .gothic type, the edition contains 641 printed leaves. The two other perfect,vellum ~opies are owned by the Brit-" ishoMuseum in London and the National Library in Paris. No one knows how many capies of this Bible were originally printed, but at lea~t forty-five ~opies of this Bible. of which twelve are vellum copies, are extant today. The beautifully printed and well' preserved copy in the Library of Congress is appraised at $1,,000,000 and is known as "the choice~ book in Christendom,." The Leese~ Bible, Although parts of the Hebrew scriptures had been preyiously translated into English for Jewisl~ use, the first com-plete English Old Testament for that purpose was translated by Isaac Leeser and published in 1853. Leeser fOllowed the style of the' King James Versioh, but made so many changes in the text thai his work is essentially a.n independent translation. This monumental work held its place in English and American synagogues until it be-gan to .be replaced by. the Jewish version of 1917. ,The Murderers Bible. An edition of 1801 in which the mis-print murderers for murmurers makes Jude 16 read "These are tour- .deters, full of complaints,, walking according to their own desires." ¯ ThePtacemakers Bible. An editionof the Geneva Bible, 1562, so called from a ,printer's error in Matt. 5 :9 "Bles~ed are the place-makers (peacemakers) fo~ they shall be called the children of God." The Printers Bible. An edition of about 1702 which makes Da-i80 BIBLE~ vid pathetically complain that "prin~ers (princes) havepersecuted me" (Ps. 119:161)'. The Rebecca's Cdmels Bible. Printed ii~ 1823 in which Gem -24:61 tells us that "Rebecca .arose. and her camels." instead of "her damsels." The Standing-Fishes Bible.Bible printed in 1806 in which Ezek. 47:10 reads "but it shall come to pass.that fishes (instead of fishers), shall s~and upon it,'; , ~Tbe Smith'Bible: .Julia Evelina Smith (179~2-1886) of, Glas-tonbury, Conn., transla'ted the Bible into English from .Latin, Greek, and'Hebrew, ~ind h~s be~n the only woman to translate the Bible in any language. She started the project when she Wfi's 77 years of age and cgmpleted it when 84. Her translat,on of the Bible was published in Hartford, Conn., in 1876, arid at her'own~expense. The To-Remain Bible. Bible printed at Cambridge, England, in 1805. Gal. 4:29 read.s,. "Persecuted hini that was born after the ~pirit to remain., even' so it is now." The words "to remain" weie added in error by the compositor, the editor having answered a proof-reader's queryas to the comma after "spirit" with the penciled reply "to remain" in the margin. The Thumb "Bible~ An edition published in Aberdeen, Scot-land. in 1693. It measured one inch square and half an inch thick, and was calle~ "Verbum Sempiternum." A Mr. J. W. Bradley, Halifax, Nova Scotia, has what he bMieves is the world's smallest Bible. Measuring only-5/8 of an inch square with 500 thin pages. It was printed by the Oxford Un.iversity Press in 1859. ~ The Treade Bible. An edition of the Bible published in 1568, and so ~alled from its" rendering of J~r.' 8:22, "Is there no treacle (instead of "balm").in Gilead?" The Unrighteous Bible. An edition printed at Cambridge, Eng-land, in 1653, containing the printer's error, "know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit (for "shall not inherit")~ the Kingdom of ¯ God" (I Cor. 6:9). The same'edition, gave Rom. 6:13 as "n~ither yield ye your members as instruments of righteous unto sin," in place of "unrighteous." ." The Vinegar Bible. An edition printed at Oxford, E.ngland, in 17i7; in which the chapter heading of Luke 20 isgiven as~ "The Parable of the Vinegar/' instead of the "Vineyard;',' It was printed by J. Baskett; becauseof manyother errors it soon ca~e to be styled' WILLIAM M. STRITCH a basketful:of errors.". Copies of this edition are. very rare. Christ Chu.rch at Shrewsbury, New.dersey, is said to have one of the few° known copies i~n existence. "The Whom/Who "Bible. Both versions, Catholic and non- Catholic, admit that grammatical blundbr which for centuries bas rasped the nerves of sensitive purists, namely, . the questio~a of Our Lord, (Matt. 16:t3), "Whom do men say that .the Son of-man iS?" The revised (1881) American standard version and the Cath-olic Confraternity t)f Christian Doctrine version of 1941 rectify that error by making it "Who." In connection with the AmeriCan standard.version of 1881. it may be news to many of our readers to learn that the Chica9o Tribune published the whole version of the New Testamentdn a single special issue on May 22, 1881. The Woman's Bible. The idea appears to have been born in the mind of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. ¯ In a stout pamphlet, published in New York, 1897, the lady having appointed a tentative commit- .tee of twenty-three women, .instructed each member to purchase a Bible and go through it from Genesis .to Revelation, marking all' .the. passages, in which women were mentioned, these passages were then to. be cut out and pasted in a black book, and correct readings and " comments thereon written underneath. OUR CONTRIBUTORS SIST]~ M. BONAVENTURE, of the Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania," Ohio, has been teaching graduate courses in Engl,ish at the Catholic University, Washing-ton, D.C.', for more, than a decade. NICH(~LAS H. RIEMAN, who has directed So-dalities as a Scholastic, is now' studying theQlogy at West Baden College, West Baden, Indiana. WILLIAM M. STRITCH writes from Campion High School, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. " ~ REPRINTS OF ~PONSA CHRISTI In May and July, 195 I, we p~inted the Apostblic Constitution, Sponsa Christi, and'the explanatory in'struction of the Sacred Congregation. of Religious. We now ha~e~some reprints of thi~ material that we can sell in sets' 6f ten and multiples of t.en., . The .price is one dollar for ten copies, and a dollar for each additional set, of ten. Please enclose payment with yohr order and address it to: REVIEW'FOR RELI- 61OUS, St.'. Mary's College,. St." Marys," Kansas: '." 1~2. Un ,"g e"n ,kDu si eFili us Pope Plus XI Apostolic Letter Addressed to the Suprem, e Heads of Religious Orders on the Care of Religious DisciplineI [.EDITOR'S NOTE: The ptirpose of this important document, in the wdrds of its author, Pope Pius XI, is: "to urge members of religious institutes, both those who are already priests and those who are candidates for the priesthood, to the study of the sacred learning, the absence of which would~ prevent them from performing with full competence the functions of their vocations." 'It is printed here at the request of a number of our subscribers. Though directed chiefly to religious clerics, the content, particularly the'sections indicating how sound theological learning can deepen the interior life, may also provide other religious with material for fruitful meditation. Sub-titles have been inserted.] BELOVED Sons: Health and Apostolic Benedictioia. The only-begotten Son of God, entering the world to re-deem mankind, was not content with imparting those sp[r.itual precepts the observance of which brings ~ill men to their:appointed .end. He ~eclared. also that those who wished to follow His foot-stbps more closely should embrace and practice~ the evangelical counsels. Whoever pledges himself by vow to observe these counsels strips himself not only of those encumbrances which retard our progress on the road to ordinary sanctity--riches, family cares, or immod-erate liberty in the.use of material things--but mox~es so directly and unreservedly towards a life of perfection as to seem almost to have attained'the haven of eternal salutation. ' ~. Wherefore from the earliest Christian era there have never been wanting souls who have harkened to the whisper of¯ God and, nobly and' generously denying themselves all things, have entered the way of perfection and indomitably persevered therein. Histor~ witnesses continuously to the sacred army of men and women who have con-secrated and pledged themselves to God in various religious Orders and congregations which, through the centuries, the Church has solemnly approved and ratified. ¯ N~r do these _religious communities bear the same unvarying spiritual character. The life of perfection, though in essence unchangeabie, inanifests itself in a variety of fruitful forms. In. 1AAS 16:133-48 (1924) ~ 183 POPE PIUS XI Review for 'Relioiofis separate and distinctive manners, with diversified exertions of charity and zeal'do the varidus orders Of religious S6uls, according to the ~pecial ways of theii'institutes, pursue th~ ~16ry of Gdd and the sal- . vati~n of their neighbor. . , From this wide diversity of. religious orders, as ~rom trees "of." manifold species in God's spiritual garden, springs a.gloriouslvariety of spiritual fruit unto the salutation of men. Such striking complex- " ity of fo~m with basic unity of design, such identity 'of aim v~ith precise distinction of spheres, presents a .spectacle of impressive and monumental ,beauty. It is a dispensation of Divine Providence that new needs of,the .times should call forth and nourish r~eligious congregations specially adapted to the meeting of these fresh exigencies. And so the Apostolid See. under whose standard religious orders pHr~arily serge, mindful of th~ blessings which at all times they have cbnferred upon. the Church and Upo, n civil society, h~as ever cherish[d these holy instkutes with peculiar solicitude and affectl0n. , The sti~reme pontiff has always rdserved tohimself the approvin~ and confirming their constitutions and statutes: he h~is in times of crisis tirel~ss'ly defended them from their' adversaiies: and'. when. occasion.so demanded, he has not been slow in rec~illing them-to their pristine.observanCe and to their original reverence for the glori-ous ideals 0f their respective rules. This great concern of the Church that religious men Should be pre-erfiinent in adherence to the holy laws of thei? order and that they should constantly increase in perfection, is manifested by the solemn decrees and exhortations of the Council of Trent. "Let all regulars, both men and'-women, mold and regulate their lives in keei~ing with.the iule fhey. profess; particularly let them faithfully -observe whatever pertains to the perfection of their professibn, the vows 0f poverty, chastity, and.obedience, and any others which may be peculiar to.their particular institute or ha~,e bearing ,on th~ ,ob-servance of common life, both in food and in clothing.''z ~ The Code of Canon Law, in its.preface to the section on regula-tions for religious men and women, b_r[efly describes and defines th~ religious life as'being ao"stable mode of. living in common by which ,the faithful, undertake, besides the ordinary precepts of the faith. ~he evangelicalcou~asels through the'instrumentality ~of the yows of obedience, chas~ity~, and poverty . . . and thus proceed in the way,of ZSess. XXV. c. I". De Reoul. i84 July, 1952 UNIGENITUS e~angdical perfection." Thi~ religious state, declares the Code dis-tirictlE, is: to be ."esteemed highly by all."3 Tb extent indeed of Our ~onfidence in the virtue ~f religiou's men, and in their helpful co-operation, We ha~e-already demon-strated in Our .encyclical letter Ubi Arcano, affectionately addressed tO the bishops of the Catholic world'. We ~said therein, that for,more. than one reason we relied ~r,eatly. on the regular clergy acthally:t.o apply the remedies We bad proposed to meet the many evils under which human society was laboring. ¯ Further, in Our former letter on the supervision of .clericfil studies, addressed to the Cardinal Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Studies in Seminaries and Universities, in the identical embrace of Our purpose and~in Our deep solicitude to proyide for the training of clerics called to the sacred ministry, We included_equ~liy as~well' member~ of religiou~ orders, since what we ¯therein observ.e.d and decr~ed affectedthem in great measure too. at least such as are destined, for. the priesthood. Nevertheless, We are urged, dearly beloved sons. ,by Our loving and vigilant concern for your goo.d, to address, you byspeCial letter and to present certain admonitions to you which if your spiJ:itual sons will but observein their conduct and intercourse.thei'r pro-- -cedure and the whole tenor of,their lives will undoubtedly be such as is impera(ively demanded of them by. the truly unique and ~sub- -lime voc~ition.¯really divine, which is theirs. Revet:ence for Fot~nder First of all. We exhort religious men to ~'egard the founder of ~their order.as the supreme example to befollowed. The "religious who so regards the father" and lawgiver of his institute, will .more certainly and more abundantly partic'ipate in the divine grace deriv, ing from a religious vocatiofi. It is-abundantly clear that those men of" pre-eminent sanctity, When they established their religious congregations, obeyed a divine impulse. As long, therefore, as the son reproduces in his life °the special mode of sahctity conceived by th~ father as the distinctive mark 8f the congregation, the son will not be recreant to the obliga-tion'assumed whefi he entered religioh. Wherefore let religious men. as devoted sons, dire~t their thought and care to defend, the honor of their founder and father both by obedience, to hi~ .pre.s~'riptions and admonitions, and by imb,fing 31C 487[ 488 POPE~ PlUS Reoiew [or Religious themselves with his spirit. Nor will they. fall from their estate as long as they walk in the footsteps of their founders: "And their-children for their .sakes remain forever. Would that religious would so loyally adber,e to the rules of their institute and so retain the manner, of life established, that ithey would show themselves ever.y day more worthy of the religious state. Such fidelity cannot fail to win for the manifold ministries which they exercise' at all times the powerful support of heavenly graces. In all our activities let us seek only the kingdom of God and His justice: and this should be the sole objective in those works which, beloved son~, are wont to occupy the efforts Of most of your spit, itual subjects: sacred missions, and, the. education of youth. As for " the,apost.olate,-.let them take care thai in their'foreign missions, as My predecessor wisely admonishes,s they do not employ ~he Gospel to further the interests of their country or to increase its ppwer. Let them r~ither !ook'only to the eternal salvation of the infidels, while at the same time. elevating their material standards of living to the extent that this may fo[ward their progress to eternal happiness. Those religious whose duty it is rightly to instruct and educate youth-must be especially careful lest, too much preoccupied with training theik students to excellence in fine arts, they so neglect the religious development of their minds and hearts that their students enter the world wellZinstructed indeed in letters, but totally ignorant of sacred, science. LWhoever lac,,ks this is deprived of themost precious and most beautiful of all adornments and. lives in the greatest empti-~ hess of soul: "All men are vain, in whom there is not the knowledge of God.''6 The Seraphic Doctor speaks appositely in this .regard: "This is the fruit of learning, that faith should be built up in all men, tha.t God should be honored, morals elevated, and those conso-lations derived which/pring from the union of the beloved with. her divine.SpouSe through supernatural dharity.''z I. BENEFITS OF SACRED LEARNING Since it is of the highest importance that this knowledge of sacred science should be held in the greatest esteem and deeply imbibed by the mihisters of the Church, the chief concern, of this Our exhorta-tion is tO urge members of. religious institutes, both those'who are 4Ecclesiasticus 44 : 1 "~ 5Epist." Apost. Maximum Iliad, November 30, 1919 6Wisdom 13:1 7De Reductione Atrium ad Theol., n. 26 186 Ju/g, 1952 UNIGENITU~' already" priests and those Who are candidates for the priesthood, to the study of the sacredlearning, the absence of which would pre-vent them. from performing with full competence the functions of their vocation. For those who have conseciated themselves to God the one, or certainly the chief, obligation is that of prayer and the contemplation or meditation on divine things. How can they rightly fulfill tlqis solemn duty without, a profound and intimate compre- _hension of ~h~ doctrine of faith?. The necessity of such study'We 'urge on those pa~iicul~rly who devo'te their lives to divine contem-plation in the cloister. Such souls ~rr indeed if they believe that after having previously, neglected or later discontinued their theological "studies, the$ can, though deprived of that copious kn.owledge 9f God and the mysteries of faith which is derived from the sacred sciences, readily move in a high spiritual plane and be'lifted up and borne. aloft to interior union with God. 'Help in Apostolate As to those who are engaged in teaching or preaching or in the cleansing of souls in the sacrameht of penance, or are sent on sacred missions or pursue tti~ir ministry in daily familiar intercourse with people, shall not .the vigor and efficacy, of these manifold activities be in exact' proportion to the high degree of erudition" with .which they are perfected, and adorned? The Holy Spirit, too, the Paraclete, by.the lips of His prophet, has proclaimed the priest's n~ed of a comprehensive and in~imatel knowledge of sacred science: "The lips of the priest shall keep knowledge.''s How can solid theological learning be lacking in the legate of the Lord of wisdom,9 that legate who is minister and doctor of the New ;F~stament, ~alt of the earth,~° and light.of the-world,n the legate .by whose tongue the Christian people recei;ce the words of eternal life? " Let those trembl~ for themselves, therefore, who approach the sacred ministry with minds ill-equipped with holy learning:. Not unscathed shall they stand in their lack of preparation, before Lord, who has spoken the awful threat: "Because thou hast rejected. kn6wledge, I will reject thee, that thou shalt not do the office of pi'iesthogd to Me.;'~2 Moreover,.if ever in the past it behooved the 8Malachias 2 : 7 9I Kings 2 : 3 l°Matthexv 5 : 1 3 ~20see 4 : 6 187. POPE PIUS XI - " ' \ Rebietu For Religious ¯ priest to be adorned with le.arning, much more so is thai .quahty required of hin~ in thes~igresent times when in,.all spheres of human activity learning arid science are valued at such high ,price and are so closely bound" therewith that men, even thuse who are less wise-- as.is almostalwi~ys the case boast that whatever they do, the3/do in [he hattie of science:. So. let us strive with intense earnestness that the Catbolic /aith be sustained b.y the support and protection of human learning of every kind. In the light which thislearning casts th~ beauty of revealed truth will .be Unfolded before ~he eyes of, all and tile falsity of the ¯ captious chaYges ~vhidh pseudo-science is wont .to heap up against the ¯ ~dogmas i~f faith will be exposed as. occasion may requite. ' For. as'Te~tulliamhas so beautifully written: our faith "anxious-ly desires one, thirig.only, that she benot condemned unheard.''u In the same connection, let .us not forget the "words of Jerome: "Piety Without culture profits itself alone, find, however much by personal merit it builds up Christ's church, it yet equally harms her by silence in the faceof her adversaries . ~. It is the priest's duty, to answer whenever ~he law is calleqdue isnti o.n. -, And so the priest, "both secular and regular, must. propagate Catholic doctrine as widely as possible, and illuminate and defend it. This,doctrine of the Church not only contains all that is needed to" refute and disprove any objections which may b.e ¯urged against it, but., ~rovided it be,clear_Iv, explained, cannot fail to draw~ souls to " itself, if only they" be free from p, rejudice. This truth'was not missed by the great doctors ~Sf,the so-called Middle Ages. Led by Thdmas Aquinfis and Bonaventure they exerted themselves to, drink as defiply as possible of the waters'of divine wisdom and go comm,unica,te their knowledge to others. ' - Help for Interior Life There is, beloved sons, the furthe~ advantage that the v~y effort of mind and talent and powers which you~ members will expend in the pursuit Of.}hese studies will effect that they will imbibe the reli-gio, us. spirit more deeply and-will fittingly sustainthe honor and digni.ty of the exalted state of life Which they have embraced. For h~e who ~nters upon the study of theology addresses himself to a weig,.hty task indeed; and one invoIving, intense labor and'heavyin,- convenience. It is a task admitting no slothfulness or laziness, which ~3Apol., I . l~Epist, ad Paul.in,. LIII- (al. CIII) , 188 July, 1952 . UNIGENITUS is the mother and mistress of many evils.15 But the earnest student, applying,himself wholeheartedly to this truly hard intellectual labo} acquires the habi~ not onlyofcirc~umspection in ju~gmeht and' delib-eration in act, but repres~ses also and 'dominafes more easily hi~ pas-sions wh'ich, .if allowed loose rein,' grow steadily Wors~ and hu}ry the s.oul tothe abyss of all vices. In this iegard Jerome writes: "Love the scienc~ of Holy Scrip'ture and y~u will. not love the vices of the flesh.':16 And again~: "The knowledge of the S~,riptur~s begets virgins. 17 But the religious man shouldbe urged to these studies by a fur-t- her motive the.re~li.zation of the gra~city .of the obligation, arising from his very vo~atioi~, of achieving a' perfect degree of virtue. It is clearly imt3ossible for anyone to progress efficaciously toward perfec-tion and to reach it safely without practicidg the interior life. But can this interior life be developed and strengthened by an.y more effectiv~ means than the study of-things divine? ~Persistent and daily meditation on those marvelous gifts of nature and of grace and on ~individual men will cohsecrate one's thbugh~ts and feelings, and lift them. up to heavenly things; .nay more, it fills men With the spirit of faith and unites them in closest intimacy, with God. For, who reproduces in himself more perfectly the image of Christ, 2esus than he who ass~rnilates to his v.ery.flesh and blood the dog,matic and moral truths of divine revelation.?. 'Most wisely,, then, did the founders" of religious °orders. fol-lowing the lead of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, ~ommend with more than ordinary earnestness to their sons the .study of the sacred sciences, o It has. bdsides, been proved by experience, beloved, sons, that those of your religious who most devotedly have'-applied their intellects to the study of the teachings of the faith, have as a rule been all the more successful in achieving a higher and more com-prehensive degree of sanctity; whil(on the contrary,.those who have neglected this sacred duty have often lfipsed into tepidi'ty and have sunk not infrequently into a condition of spiritual deterioration in- 'volving even the violati6n of their vowS. Wherefore, let all religious remember the words of Richard of St.Victor: "Would that each of us Would immerse himself in these studies all the day long until" the sun set, until the love of vain things graduallygrow weak. until the heat of concupiscence be extinguished and the Wisdom of~carnal pru- ¯ lSEcclesiasticus 3 3 : 2 9 ~6Epist. ad Rust. CXXV. (al. IV) ~TComm. ~fi Zach, ].II, c. l O 189 ¯ POPE PIUS XI : Revleu2 for Reliflious ~d~nce grow cold.''~s .We exhort religious men also to make their own .the prayer of St. Augustine: "May Thy Scriptures be mY ,chaste delight" may I not err in them, nor deceive because of them.''19 II. DIRECTIVES FOR TRAINING.OF CLERICS Since, then, the constant and attentive pursuit of sacred doctrine brings such rich emoli~ments tb religious men, it,is clear, beloved sons, how weighty, is your obligation to provide for your subjects every opportunity for theological study and' for continued contact, with theological science, at every subsequent stage of their religious life. We must realize, moreover, how much future, candidates for religion are benefited by a proper formation and training of their mind and will from their earliest years. In the first place, in these courupt times Christian education is sadly neglected, in the home ~nd the young, exposed to widely prevalent snares of evil, are deprived of , that solid religious instruction which alone has power to mold char-acter in conformity with the divine commandments or even with a .humanly decent.mod~ of life. It follows, therefore, that yqu can take no more advaptageous measure in this regard than the establish-ment of preparatory seminaries and c011~ges for yourig men who give some indication of possessing a religious vocation. We observe with deep satisfaction that in a goodly n, umber of places such insti'tutions are in fact being founded. In this matter, however, you are,to take to heart the admonition.addressed by Ou'r predeces~sor, 'Pius X, of 'holy memory, to the superiors of the Dominican Order. The Pontiff warne'd against admitting too readily, or ifi too great numbers youths whose aspirations after that hol'y manner c;f life are not certainly i~- spired from on high.-,° After having given long and prudent consid7 eration therefore to the selection of young men as candidates for the religious life, ~ou "will take great care that, along with instruction in piety suited to their years, those lower subjects be taught them which are usually taught in the q~mnasia,~'I so that'they do not enter the ¯ novitiate before they have finishe'd the humanities, unless indeed a sufficiently, sound reason advises otherwise in a particular instance. It is an obligation not only of charity but even of justice that you should display the utmost assiduity and diligence in this matter¯ of the education of your young candidates. If by reason of the small 18De ditT. sacrif. Abr. et Mariae, I 19Conf., lib. XI, c. 2, n. 5 20EpiSt. Cure Primum, ad Mag. Gem O.P., August 41 1913 ~1IC 589 190 dulg~ 1952 UNIGENI ,TUS: number of members in an institute, br for other reasons, a province¯ has insufficient facilities fo} imparting this education prescribed by canon law, let the young men be sent¯ to anothe~ province or to another seat of learning where they can be properly taught according to the directions of canon 587. Preparator~l Schools In i'he lower ~chools, however, let the injunction of canon 136~4 " be religiously followed: ':The most honored place in the curriculum is to .be awarded to religious instruction, diligently imparted in a manner suitable to the ability and age of each one." For this instruc-tion, furthermore, only those books are to be used which are approved by the ordinary. It is to be remarked incidentally ~hat even students of scholastic philosophy should not omit this study of Christian doc-trine. They will most profitably use that golden book, the Roman Catechism, a work in which one is at a loss which to admire more, the wealth of sound doctrine or the elegance bf the Latin style. If your clerics, from tbeir earliest youth, accustom themselves to draw their knowledge of sacred truth from that fount, they will not. 9nly come to theology better prepared, but also, .from familiarity with ¯ that "excellent book they will learn how to teach the peopl,e wisely and to combat with skill the lie~ which are wont to be chattered against revealed truth. , , Those iniunctions which, in Our Apostolic Letter Ot~ciorum Ornnium, We addressed to the diligent attention Of the Catholic bishops concerning study.of the Latin tongue, We urge and co.mmand youalso, beloved sons, to observe in your literary schools; for to you also pertains that law of the Code which, concerning students pre-paring for holy orders, says: "Let them be carefully taught languages~ particularly. Latin and their native tongue.''22 The high imp.ortance bt~ an accurate knowledge of Latin in your young religious is sug-gested by a multitude of reasons. Not only does the Church.employ that lang.uage as a servant and bond of unity; but we also iead the .Bible in Latin, we chant and offer the Holy Sacrifice in Latin, and we perform.in .that tongu~ nearly all ttie sficred rites. The Roman Pontiff, besides, addresses and teaches the Catholic world in' Latin, and the Roman Curia employs no other tongue in ,tra6sacti~g its business and in formulating decrees which apply to all the faitht~ul. He who is n~t well 'versed. iri Latin is much embarrassed in his ap- 2alC 1364, 2° 191 POPE PlUS XI Review for Relig~ous, proach to,~thos( rich v61ume~ of the Cht~rch's Fathers: and Doctors, many of whom used no' Other medium of expression in explaining '.and defending Christian.dbctrine. -Let it then.be your earnest aim that your clerics, destined for ".the .future ministry of the Church, shall attain a real:mastery of'and a very practica!.familiarity with that language. Novitiates " ¯ Their p~ri~paratory studies concluded, the students and all.c~andi-dates, whose determination to consecrate themsel~ces "to Godhas been proved and whose good character, more than mediocre mental gifts, spirit of piety; and integrity of morals have been established to the satisfaction of their dffectors, may be admitted to the novitiate. I~ th.e"'no~ritia~e, as in a sort of training ground, they shall, learn .by actual practice the principles and virtues of the religious life. How impc~rtant it is that.the souls:of the candidates should be " mos~ carefully trained during-this period of n6vitiate may be learned. not only from the testimony of masters of the religious life. but "most of all from experience. This latter teaches that no' one reaches and maintains'himself in a state of religiou~ perfecti0n~unless he has first laid in his soul the foundations ofall the virtues. Wherefore let the novices, eschewing all profane studies and othe~ attractions. concentrate entirely, under th'e guidance of their directors, 6n the exercises of theinterio.r life and the acquisition, of virtues, tfiose par-ticula. rly .which are most intimately connected and associated with the vqws Of religion poverty, obedience, and chastity. "Extremely helpful to this end will be the reading arid considera-tion of the Writings of St. Bernard, of ,the Seraphic Doctor Bona-ventuie, and of Alphonsus Rodrigud-z, as well as.~of those spiritual masters who are the special ornaments of each particular institute. Time has dot only failed to dim or lessen the, force and e~cacy of these teachers~ but has even heightened their Val~e in this our day. Nor should the novice ever forget that such as h~. is in the novitiate. so shall he be during the rest of his hfe: and after a tepid, or misspent noviceship the possibility of,supplying for what has been missed in the novitiate by renovation of spirit is usually~a forldrn and base-less hope. Philosophy and Theology . ~ Thereupon you shotild see to it, beloved sons, that your subjects. after.completing their noviceship, be ass!gne.d to houses distinguished 192 ,Iu!q. 1952 UNI~ENITU$ for ~obs~'r~ahce of your' holy ~ules. Tl~ese houses should offer also° facilines for the most profitable and exact course of philosophy and theology, made" in accordance, with definite and ordered procedure. Definite and or'tiered procedure, ~Ve said: that' is, not only should there be no promotion to a. higher grade without sufficient evidence of p~oficiency in the lower, but there must not even be any~¢u.rtail-ment or~omission of any part of.a course, nor any abbreviation of the t~ime t6 be devoted to a branch of study, as prescribed by the ,Code. Unwise, thereforev--to speak conservat.ively are those superiors who," pressed perhaps by time and necessity and desirous of availing themselves of their subjects' ministries as soon as possible, wish their subjects to receive their trai.ni~g for the priesthood by a sort .of accelerated method. Has not experience proved that those who h.av.e made their studies hurriedly and wittioiat thoroughness c~n scarcely .ever, if at' all, remedy this defect in their training, and that whatever little ,advantage may at timCs have been gained from this advanced reception of orders eventually fades away and vanishes, since these religious must of ne~cessity be less .apt for t~ ministry? Take care. moreover, lesf your youiag religious, .while studying philosqpfiy and theology, should grow yold in their struggle for virtue. On the con-" trary they should continue to a~rail themselves of the services of the most learned masters of the spiritual .life, so that finally, as behooves religious men, they shall display in themselves solid, learning joined to holiness of life.- And here We cha.rge you with special earnestness to exercise care in selecting eminen.tly suitable instructorsin the higher studies, mas-ters who~elife will be wo~rthy models for the imitation of all. Their proficiency, too, must be pre-eminent .in that subject which it is their office to teachl And~so, no one'should act either as.professor.,or instructor unless he has completed with merit the course of philos-ophy, theology, and allied branches, and has proved his possession of sufficient equipment and skill as a teacher. We .c.all your attentionfurthermore, to this injunctioh of the Code of Canon Law: "Provision must be made th'at there be separate masters for at least the following subjects: Sacred "Scripture, dogmatic theology, moral theology, and ecclesiastical history,"~ These m~is- "ters should spare no effof~ to'ffansform, th,eir sthdents into holy and tireless apostles of Ch. rist, equipped with those ornaments of learnirig 1,93 POPE P~usXI Reuieu~ for R~ligious and prtidence by" which they Will b~ abl4 not only"to instruct the simple and ignorant, but also to refute those, puffed up by what. is fallaciously called science. They will. be able likewise to preserve' all. from the contagion of error which, because it usually is presented so speciously and cunningly, is calculated to beget and inflict greater damage on souls. . But if happily, by God's grace, your subjects p.roceed wi'th gen-erous spirit in the straight paths of Christian learning and become greatly proficient therein, the labor which you best6w,-beloved sons, on this so salutary task will reward and rejoice .you with a most abundant fruit beyond .your. fondest expectations. ¯ Further, We exhort you to regard as holy and inviolable those words which, in accord with the spirit of canon law, We wrote in Our'apostolic letter on seminaries and the studies of clerics. Therein We urged that, in teaching the precepts of 15hilosophy and theology, masters should follow faitl~fully the scholastic methdd according tO the principles and doctrines of Aquinas. For who ~an deny that the scholastic discipline and the angelic wisdom of St. Thomas--that discipline and method praised so repeatedly and enthusiastically by Our predecessors--have a native efficacy both f6r tl'Je illustration of divin~-truth and for the marvelous refutation 6f the errors of every age? In the words of Our predecessor of immortal memory, Leo XIII, the Angelic Doctor "so abundantly rich in divine and huma.n science, so comparable to the very sun . has by his sole efforts brought it hbout that all the errors of past ages have been refuted by one man, and invincible alms have beeh supplied for the defeat of th.ose errors which will arise in endless succession through the ages.''2a Most a'ppositely contintJes the same Pontiff: '"Let those who Wish to be truly philosophers~and such must be the. especial desire of religious men--let those l~ay the first principles and foundations of their doc-trine in Thomas Aquinas.''25 How much it behooves your spiritual sons to hew close to the . general line of scholastic doctrine is abundantly evident. Perceiving the intimate relationship existing between philosophy and revelation, the Scholastics-d, eveloped and synthesized that wonderful mutual concordance, in such wise that philosophy and revelation afford each other light and the maximum of support." Nor can these two s.ci- 24En~ycl. Aeterni Patris 25Epist. Nbstra Erga, N6vember 25, 1898 194 ,Iulg, 1952 UNIGENITUS ences contradiqt each oth'er, as some madly assert, for both derive from God, the suprem'e and eternal truth; and while philosophy manifests the findings o'f reason, re~elation displays the firm data of faith. Indeed the two sciences are so mutually in harmony that each c.ompletes the other. Hence it follows that from an ignorafit and untrained philosopher a learned theologian can never be educed: and, contrariwise, he w~o is igno.r~ant of divine truth can never be a per-fect phil.osopher. In this regard St. Thomas says truly: "From the principles of faith .new knowledge is derived for the faithful, as from.the prin-ciples of natural reason new knowledge is derived for all; hence theology is a science." In other words, just as from reason, which is a participation in divine Wisdom, philosophy derives'the basic prin-ciples of nattiral cognition, and declares and ex.plains them, so from, the light of supernaturaI revelation,, which by its splendor" illumines and completes t, he intellect, theology borrows, develops, and explains the truths of faith. These two sciences are two rays f~om the same sun, two rivers from the same source, two edifices resting,on the same foundation. Of high dignity indeed is human science, provided it submits obediently to the truths of faith. If these truths are disregarded, human science must i,nevltably ~nd inexorably fall into numberless errors and deceits. But if, beloved sons, your subjects command the sum of human knowledge which they have beap'ed up for tbem~elg.qs to'act as handmaid and servant to that science which is divine; and if~ besides~ they glo,w with an arderit love and desire for revealed truth, they will be true men of God and will be .universally regarded as such; and'by word and example, they will.do much fo'r the peop!e ~of God. For, "'all Scripture is inspired by God"--or as the Angelic Doctor explains this passage( sacred doctrinal is perceived by the light .of divine revelation--"and useful for teaching, for reprovifig, for. correcting, for instructing in justice; that the man of God ma) be perfect, equipped for every good work.''26 Spirit of Faith .But in the ,case of young religious, the first {equirement is that 'their spirit of faith should be" nourished to vigor. Otherwise.they, shall to no avail engage themselves in this boundless field of divine and. human .knowledge: for, if the spirit of faitb is weak, the stu- 262 Timothy 3 : 16-17 ¯ PoPE PIU~ XI Review fbr Relipious dent,"like one. blind, cannot penetrat~e into the. profun, dities'.pf .super-na~ ural truths. Nor is itof less importance'that the religious shpuld albproach °his studies with a,pure intention. -"There are some Who wish to 2~arn,'~ warns St. Bernard, ".solely .in order to l(arn; and ~his is base curiosity . There are o~her~ who wish to learn in order to sell their knowledge, perhaps for money, perhaps for honors: and. this is ba~e t~affic. But there are also those who wi~h tO learn in order that'they themselves m~y.be buildedl and this, is prudence,''27 In their above-mentioned studies, therefore, your young religious should propose to. themselves this one aim: that they "please God and, . win for themselves "and for their r~eigbbor the. greatest, pbssible spir-itual emoluments. And in science disjoin, ed from virtue there is more of offense and danger than of true utility for those who b~come proud by reason of their learning lose the gift of faith and blindly plunge headlong t° their souls' destruction--your sons must with all .assiduity cultivate the virtue of humility,, necessary f0~ all indeed~ ' but especially to bestriven after by students: and ~they must plant it firmly.in their hearts mindful as they are that God alone is sub- ~tantial wisdom and whatever man possesses, no matter, how.pro-found, is .as nothing compared with the vast sum of learning of which he is ignorant. Beautifully to the point speaks St Augustine: '" 'Knowledge,' says the'Apostle, 'puffeth up.' What then? SbSuld you flee knowl-edge and ch6os~ to know nothing rather than to be puffed up? Why should I address you i~ it is better.to b'e ignorant than learned? Love knowledge', but prefer charity. Knowledge, if it, be alone. "puffeth up. But because charity~buildeth up, it permits no( knowl-edge to be puffed up. Knowledge puffeth, up therefore where cbarity-do~ s not build up; where charity bu!IdL yp, knowledge is made Your sons, therefore, if indeed'they pursue their' studies with: that spirit 0f~charity and devotion frbm which all other virtu'es have their Origin and b~ing, would be like a medicinal fragrance warding. off ,the fear" of corruption: and by. their gifts of doctrine will ~ c~r.tainly becbme all the more pleasing in God's sight'and all the more useful toHis Church. " ¯ III. DI~RECTIV~S FOR 'LAY RELIGIOUS~ it now remains for us to turn our thoughts to those" religious ~7In Cant. serrao XXXVI~, ~Sermb CCCLIV ad Cont., c. ~I _duly, 1957. . UNIGENITUS who,ltl~ough not called to.the dignityof the priesthood, have pro-nounced, the same vows, of r~l.igion as the priests, and are .not less obliged to God ahd bound by the duty of acquiring perfection. That they .also, though unversed in letters or the higher mental disciplines, may achieve the loftiest grades of sanctity i~ evident from',the fact. that many of them indeed have won by reason of the eminent holi-ness' of.their lives the loud.and, constant praise of the Catholic world, or have even been" inscr!bed.by the authority of the Roma~ Pontiffs in .the number of the saint~, to be regarded and invoked as patrons. and intercessors before God. These con~ersi, or lay,, religious, "who, because 6f their special status are free from those da'ngers which not infrequently :'fac~ the priest 15y reason of the very dignity of his office, enjQy substantially the same spiritual privileges and aids which religious institutes with mater~al:providence commonly share indiscrimina~tely .with itheir ~hildren. It .is just. thin, that the lay religious should value highly- ¯,the gift of their vocation, and return thanks to God for the gift. often renewing the determinatiQn which they made on the d~y'of ~:heir ~orofession. that they would live.according to the spirit of their reli- . gious bule to their last bre~ith of life. And here., beloved-sons, We cannot refrain from remindilag you how weighty is youy obligation to see to it thatthe !ay.religiotis, both" during the time of their probation and during the remainder of their -life, are adeqtiatels~.:supplied With those spiritual hell~whlch~th£y. so much need to make progress and to persevere. They are perhaps all the haore in need of these aids by.reaSon c;ftheir humble eondition.hnd hurfibl~ ministries. " ~Vherefor , .superiors, in selecting the.dwelling places and duties " of the la~y religious, should take careful account of the character of each and the possible weaknesses of each;.and if'sometimesthese spir-itual sons should show a decrease of ardor in the'performance of their 'obliga~tions.as religious, no paternal solicitude and effort should be sl~afed in recalling them g~ntly but firmly to holin.ess, of life: And particularly should superiors make it their constant concern either themselves to instruct the lay religious in the eternal and fun-damental truths ofthe faith, or to commit this.duty of instrtic~ion to ~competent priests. The knowledge and frequent meditation off these truths will be a powerful spur to th~ virtue of all, whether those whose,work is confined to the cloister or thos who live in tl~e world. The,above admonitions We wish to extend also to all ,congrega- 197 t .POPE PlUS XI tlons Of lay religious. For. t-he'members of these congregations there is indeed ~required .a fuller 2knowl~dg~ Of Chri_stian doctrine and an~ erudition beyond mediocrity, since theY are. frequently .engaged, according to their institute, in the instruction of boys and young men. Such are the thbughts, beloved sons~ which We desired from a heart filled with phternal~ love to address to you concerning the direc-tion of your curricula of study, as well as concerning some other matters of scarcely, lesg importance. These thoughts and injunctions, We.feel sure, you will follow with alacrity and devotion, both be-cause of your affection to'cards Us and because of your zeal for the advancement of your respective institutes. May Our words be fixed deep in the hearts of your novices and scholastics, and bring, by the intercession of your founders and fathers, an abundance of blessings and benefits. In conclusion, as an augury of grace and an evidence of Our. paternal love towffrd .yoursel;ces, beloxied sons,, and all tl-ie religious commit}ed to your charge~ We bestow upon eacl~ and all of you, with the deepgst affection, Our ApoStolic Benediction. '" Giveri at Rome, ih St~ ¯Peter's, the nineteenth day of March, on the Feast of. St. Joseph, spouse' of the Virgin .Mary Mother of God, in the year 1924, the third of of Our pohtificate. Pius PP.XI . BOOKS FOR PRIESTS Two re~ent books of help for priests are THE PEOPLE'S [SRIEST, by' John C, Heenan, and PRIESTLY BEATITUDES, by Max Kassiepe, O.M.[., translated by A. Simon, .O.M.I. Both authors, the former who is now Bishop of Leeds in England, and the latter, an experienced ,German missionary, chaplain, and superior, know what they are talking about. The Peotgle's Priest, written for diocesan priests by one of them, is full of-practical, common sense, pastoral guidance, that is inspired throughout by an enlightened appreciation of the beautiful relationship that exists between the good i~riest.and his peo~ple. (New. Y0rk: Shoed ~ Ward, 1952, Pp. xi q- 24'3. $2.75.) Priestly Beatitudes contains twenty-two sermons.for a priest's retreat. In general, the talks follow the usual development according-to The Soiritual Exercises of St. lynatius with the merit of a constant advertence and application to a priest's life. The ring of authenticity is unmist'akable. (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1952. ,Pp. v + 393.S5.00.) '. FOR oRGANISTS AND CHOIRMA~s'rERs Father \Vinfrid Herbs.t, S.D.S. has helpfully 'got,herod together in a convenient booklet answers to many questions that often confront church musicians. This pamphlet, lnformdtion /'or Organists and Cboirmdsters, can be obtained from the Salvatnrian Fathers,' St. Nazianz, Wisconsin. Let:i:er !:o a Mas!:er-ol: Novices. L. Ganganelli [ED1TOI~'S NOTE[ This letter is said to have'been written by Fra Lorenzo Ganga-nelli, who late.r .became Pope Clement XIV, to a ,Jesuit in England 4¢ho had been .a former student. We cannot guarantee the authorship, but-the content of the letter is of value to every one.] Reverend Father, The office that you discharge requires as much gentleness as firm-ness. You must bear in mind that although a religious should be .circumspect in his demeanor, yet you cannot expect the same gravity from a young man as from. his elders. Ttie special gift of a nbvice master ~ons]sts in bei'ng able to recogni.ze the source from which.his novices' shortcomings proceed, in order to humble them if they are due to pride, to stimulate them if they arise from indolence,, to mor-tify .them if they p.roceed from sensuality, to check them if they spring*from impatiense. You must see .that your.young men are always .occupied. Besides .fixing their minds and restraining their imaginations, emploYment brings out their talents. In the case of-some, these develop slowly, but with a little patience and insight it is not hard to tell whether the cloud will be pierced at length by the sunbeams.o~ is.doomed to remain dark forever. If you suffer yourself to be carried away by a zealthat is wanting in sweetness, .you-may someday or other dismiss those who" would have been th~ glory of your order. '.They who have most ability are often those who have the most impulsive dispositions, and if one is not,sufficiently master of himself, it may, happen that certain, little sallies of humor, which are nothing more than mere bits of levity, will ruin a young man forever, by causing him t'o be excluded from a state of life where he would have rendered important services to ~b~ Church. ~ Take special care not to observe the same method of direction for all. Onemay need a sharp rebuke, for another a mere glance is enough.Let your silence itself speak, and you will seldom be obliged to give a reprimand. The young almost always imagine that ;t is throtigh ill-humor or the desire to scold that they are constantly receiving admonitions, and often they are not mistaken. Watch carefully, bat without allowing it to be perceived, To betray an appearance of mistrust fosters a spirit of deceit and un- 199 L. GANGANELLI _r o R~view for R¢liqiot~s ~ruthfuln~s. A tone of friendship soothes a ~6vice's feelings, whilst an air ofseverity wounds and irritates him. Scarcely ever~allow a fault to pass unpunished when it goes directly against the religious s~irit, a~n~l give particular heed to whafever offends against, inorality, Purity belorigs to.all Christians. but it is required of priests and reli-gious abo~e all'. You must make a distinction between a fault cord-mitted on the sp.urt. of the moment and a habitual defect. Remember that true virtue is not harsh and that .a smiling countenance inspires~cgnfidence. A cold and severe exterior, ~Imost alx~ays re~els, because, it bears the appearance of pride. ~nusDt ob en owti speu sWh iptheirnf etchtei omne taosou rfeh ro.f f doirs mcreetni oanr.e Ontohte .r~wnigseel tsh, ea nydo u~nogu' will conceive an.aversion, for you. and will weary¯ of piety itself. It is: not the repetition of precepts wh!ch makes novices improve. One ¯ migh~ preach all day long without-accomplishing anything if-prin-ciples are,not inculcated. When the~mind is convinced by reasoning that tl~ere necessarily exists a God. and hence a religion, and that' the. only true one is that which we profess, it does not allow itself to be dhzzled by sophistry; if sin is committed, it is with the conscious-ness of doing wrong. Do~ away with the system of, spying, as a public nuisance. It accustoms people to play the part of hypocrites and false friends. Do not allow yourself to conceive a prejudice against anyone. It' is thr~ugh.such ,prejudices that the innocent are every day. persecuted, -whilst the guil.ty triumph. If something is reported~ to you about a third party; take care tc; inform yourself of the facts of the case. and never condemn anyone.without giving him an ,opportunity to clear himself. Do not chastise withoutprevious warning, unless there is ques-tion of an-offense that demands the immediate infliction of'suitable punishment. Be more indulgent towards ¯secret' faults, as they ,are ,not attended with scandal which is the grea~er evil. Follow the Ggs-pel rule in r~gard to g~ving charitable admonition ~o such as go astray. ",(Remember "seventy times seven" and the father "of the prodigal.) " Do not forager that the y6ung must hhve recreation, and that~the mind is as a soil,"which to yield, greater ,fruit has need of., rest. More-over, ~t is advisable that everything sh'ouldhavethe appearance of being done freely. Obedience becomes an intolerable yoke unless the-superior is careful to lighten its burden. 200 Julg, 19.52 MASTER OF, NOVICES Do not place iff the.hands ~)f your novices any of those apocry-' phal.books which St. Paul" calls old wives tales .--"ineptas autem et afliles fabulas devita." Faith is not supported by lying, and religion is truth itself. Vary the readings of your- young scholars, and for tear ofexciting or mis'directing their imagi.natio.ns, do not apply them exclusively to the contemplative styl~ of works.,¯ Besides, at an age s6.t~nde&the memory must have facts that it can-retain. Above a~ll preserve peace in the midst of your little flock', by endeavoring to lift up the souls entrusted to your care above all the little details of the life of the cloister which only too often degenerates into disputes, hatred, ~nd jeaiousy. Teach them to-be great in the smallest .things, and to impart a value to their:meanest duties by the manner in which they acquit tbemse|v~es.of them. Smother ambition; stir.up emula'tion. Otherwise you will train up proud men or boors. Instil] into your novices an espY'it de corps, but without anything exc.essive. ~ If one is not attached' to the insti-tute to which he belongs, he gra~lually grows weary of his state;" if one is so excessively, he thinks his order hecessary, despises all other religious" communities, and g6es so far as to canonizecertain ~buses t6 which he has become attached through routine or prejudice. Show yourself always even tempered. ¯There is nothing more .ridiculous thhn a man who is unlike himself. The young have a keim eye for deciphering a superior's character. - They are rarely mis-taken in the case of one who is odd or whimsical. It throws them ¯ otit in their calculations and Wins their esteem when they see a supe~ riot who pursues always the same even tenor, showing firmness on all occasions but without any sign¯of.ill-temper. ¯ Avoid familiarity: yet, be less the superior th~.n .the-bosom friend of those.who have been confided to you. Let tb~m find in you a fath'er, and let them understand that it is your grehtest pain to re-. prove them. Show no predilection except towards such as have more wisdom and piety, and let it be only in circumstances in which it may serve as a lesson for the indolent and flighty. Never employ artifice tO bring about the faults that you wish to discover. Such clever tricks" are not consistent With honesty. Let your ~unishmeffts~ be in pro-p~) rtion tO th~ gravity of the faults, and do not go.and make a crime out of certain light transgressions which imply neither malice nor disorder i~f the heart. .It is not by sho.uting that men are corrected. St. F~ancis de 201 L. GANGANELLI Sales used to say that he touched sinners more by professions of friends.hi~ for them than by scolding them. The language, of the Gospel is that of persuasion. Do not 'lead anyone by extraordinary paths and check those who would wish to follow them, unless there be evidence of a stiper-natural call; but these cases are so rare that they cannot serve as a 'law. The time for' mysticism and that sort of pure speculation is gone. It would be dangerous to rec'all it. ' Leave young men free to speak in your presence Without intimi-dating them. It is the way. to discover their interior. In a word, demean yourself as a kind father of a family who does. not wish to make his children either slaves or hypocrites .or dolts but subjects knowing how to render to God His due, to religion its rights, and to so'ciety what belongs to it. The first of all rules is to learn to l'ove the Lord, and to do nothing, that could displease Him. This is the one object of all religious institutions; for you know, Reverend Father, as well as I do, that our regulations would be often puerile, were they not meahs of leading us to God. Every founder has de- . vised such as he thought most suitable for his purpose. Beware of such pedantry as to po, se as one incapable of error and knowing everything. When I was teaching and ~som~thing was asked that I~ did not know, I admitted mY ignor~ance without make-shift of any kind before my pupils themselves, who only esteemed me the more for it. Young people like to ha'ce you put yourself on, a level with them. If I have drawn this paper out at length, it is because the life of a master of novices is a life of details. You might have addressed someone better qualified to speak on the points at issue, but it would have been hard for you t6 hit upon one who would have served you with greater interest. . FRA L. GANGANELLI Convent of the" Holy Apostles, Rbme (between 1760-1769) TEN-YEAR INDEXmSTILL AVAILABLE C0pies~ of the Ten Year Index of the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS '(1942-1951) are still available at one dollar per copy. Kindly enclose paym~ent with the order from: REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, St.Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. 202 bligher I::ducat:ion and \ "Real Religion" Sister M. Bofiaventure, O.S.F. ALTHOUGH formal higher education is a relatively recent fac-tor in the spiritual life of S!sters, when viewed in the light of the g~neral history of religious .orders,. yet its. impact has already been felt deeply' enough to draw comp.laint, comment, and serious study. Beginning with a consciousness of inadequate.returns f~om university w, ork, as attested by members of various religious communities, the reaction has grown at times to a serious conviction of over-emphasis on intellectual and professional training and a fore-boding tendency to generalize that American religious women of the mid-century 'are more widely instructed but less cultured, less dis-ciplined and balanced than the Sisters of a generation ago. Since th~ blame cannot be lald upon higher education in itself without destroy-ihg the intrinsic meaning o~ the term, we face the alternative that the fault must lie in the relation between the r~ligious and the experi-ences of higher educatior~. The error must be sought in the .formula used for integrating these experiences. For mdst religious, the initi~l mental attitude toward higher educatiori, the acceptance or the denial of its necessity, basically con-ditions all furtbe~ reactions. This facto~ of "necessity" should no longer be debatable: its validity has been pointed out repeated.ly in the authoritatiye language ot~ papal encyclicals and in the exhorta-tions of religious leaders. Yet restatement might be in order. Through the centuries of her existence Holy Mother Church has constantly defined and demonstrated that the scope of education is the whole aggregate of human life, physical and spiritual, intellec-. trial and moral, individual, domestic, and social. Irt his encyclical on Claristian education Plus XI reminds the world that such an edu- .cation can be imparted only by good. teachers thoroughly grounded in the matter they seek to teach, teachers who' have learried to under-stand and evaluate properly all the various aspects of human life-- religious, social, political, industrial, economic, and scientific--in their modern dynamic setting. ~ : Our present Pontiff, Pope Plus XII, has h~ightened this empha-sis. The encycl!cal "Humani Generis" not only stressed the prepara-' 203 SISTER M. BONAVENTURE ," ~ory n~ed ,of higher education but ~reeminence in intellectual le,adership Review foc Religious also sounded a clarion call to : "It is well kn,own how highly the Church re.gar,ds human reason . But reason can perfgrm its functions safely arid well only when properly tiaine~i, that is~ when imbued with that sound philosophy, which has .long been,,as it were, a patrimony . For' this philosophy safeguards the genuine validity of human knowledge . Let them (Catholic teachers) strive with every force and effort to further the progress of the sdences which they teach.let them enga'ge in most careful research.". (N.C.W.C. translatibn, p. 13:) The present picture.of Catholic ~ducation in America.is patent proof that religious are making great efforts tb ~realize the educational ideals of the Church. Today we face smaller, threat of the old accu-shtion that Catholic education is not Catholic enough. But the need to implement .fully our understanding of ed[~cation, to "fulfill the tdrm" remains, and this need is identified with the need for higher education. Translated into specific language, i~means the need for an understanding of present day problems of health, labor, govern-ment. and pehce: fdr contact With the realities which condition mod-ern life--pr.!ces, wages, taxes: for common grounds on which reli-" gi~)us can closely contact those whom they would educate: and, above all, for the ialibre of leadership that will focus attention on the potentialities of Catholic education. To meet this need religious communities must supply active members who are thoroughly famil-iar with the directives of the Holy See for a confused world: leaders who have mastered'bbth the theory and prac.tice of Catholic" action: teachers who can recognize ~ind champion truth wherever.it is found, nor confhse tolerance of persons with the tolerance of false principles: scholars who can chart the course of modern science and ,speak the language of .modern art. Higher learning, then. seen in its true nature and 'function. becomes a necemary .religious activity. Not ~gnly is it completely compatible with spiritual grdwth, but it should be a vital factor in such growth. Since God is Infinite Knowledgeand Wisdom, there is reverent,logic in the observation that "nature rightly developed is a condition for and a more fit subject, of elevatlon to the supernatural order and a more precious dedication to God." The lack of proper , adaptation to modern needs has been with justice analyzed as a cur-rent grieoance against religious.life and one cause of its depreciation today. In his allocution to. members of, the First Congress for Reli- 204 " gio~us. (1950),-Pope Pius XII has 'emphasized.repeatedly the vital ,.relation betw~en.religioi~s life and higher learning. As Father Letter has concisely summarized it, the Holy Father points to. per-sonal sanctity as the essential object of religibus vocation, but at the same time underlines the obligation which binds religious in regard to the means of sanctification the avocations of religious life. "In these avocations religious rna~/and muststrive to be as up~to-date a's any of their contemporaries. That way, we may add. the~ will help. to remove a pretext for d~p, reciatinreg h g "l o" u~s' life.". (.REVIEW FOR RELm~OUS, Jan., 1952.) A'sense of precaution alone, might well lead to the same'cohclu-sion. Religious educators concerns&with th~ complex problem of training-new meinbers have been. raising stron.g"voices .against the dangers with which inadequat~ preparation for work ~hreatens reli-gious vocation. We cannot pass over,lightly ~he wa~ning of Sister Madeleva, C.S.C.: "No.group can deteriorate more quickly or, more terribly ~han young girls~of the type that enter our novitiates today without proper and adequate intellectual, cultural'and spiritual chal-lenges;' (NCEA Bulletin. 1950 .255)'. ¯ Granting. then. the vital need of-higher ~d~cation in the active religious life. it is at once-apparent that the adjustment of conflicts , arising from this need rests .primarily with religious superiors and community directors. Such problems may arise in regard to safe-guarding ~egular community life and observance.of rule under aca-demic schedules; the selection of religious for higher~trMning, and most pertinently, in providing adeq~iate religious formation and con-tinued guidance~in: the integration of educational e.xperience. in the' past twenty years religious communities have evidenced a gro.wing awareness of such problems. Some of the solutions sug-gested and attempted have proved highly significant. There has been self-examination and frank admission o~ the stagnation in eduCa-tional woik, which results from community inbreeding. Complete reorganization of educational programs in many communities is demonstrating concretely tl~at adequate syn,thesis, of religious voca-, tion and avocation is possible. Such programs have been tested. analyzed, and evaluated at meetings of the National Catholic Edu-cational Association in recent years. Where attention is seribusly .focused on such synthesis, religious superiors find greatest opportun-iiy to bring ripened experience and intelligent zeal to the aid of the individual religious caught in men~al tensions. Neveriheless, the fact 205 ~ISTER M. BON,~VENTURE Reuiew /:or Religiou}~, remains th~;t it is on the plane of personal, interior integrati'on that the decisive conflicts of religious life are resolved.-No religious, whether in the" active.or in the contemplative life, can escape the basic problem of knowledge: bow to transmute knowledge into wisdom. To keep the balance! T, bat is the goal which spells personal sanctification. On the other hand, it is precisely¯ thee lack of balance that vitiates the relation between higher learning and. religious iife, building up the pressures and conflicts that draw condemnation. And since, for the active religious, contihued growth in knowledge and culture, is progress toward perfection in her state of life,. ~he problem' of proper balance is a perennial one, It faces the matur~ as well as the young religious. There is consensus in the observation that where ~ducational ex-periences are hot properly integrated ~by religious the resulting pres-sures may produce'three types of personality reaction: 1. Worldliness: Loss of spiritual¯ perspective. A shifting of ifocus from God to human activity. The ¯religious is nolonger'a Catholic educator but a mere devotee of science or of art. 2. Scrupulosity: A false dichotomy which constantly demands ¯ choice b~tween prayer and study as two independent activities. The religious finds her spiritual life increasingly cramped and is~ no longer ¯ able to find sahctifying unity in the labor of the laboratory or library and spiritual exercises. 3. Discontent: Unanalyzed pressures, which¯ are not always, the "divine restlessness" of St. Augustine, but which '.drive the religious to seek escape measures .in change of occupation or vocation. The adjustment necessary to prevent such reaction or to resolve" the conflict when it does .occur demands self-knowledge. And though it may seem anomalous, the need of s~If-knowledge may grow~ apace with.higher learning. For the religious with university¯ degrees may still be .the dangerous man of "one book," if the ~legrees. represent a knowl.edge of books alone. A clear knowledge of the im-mediategoal can be a dangerous pressure when not integrated with an equally clear grasp 0f the proper means for reaching the goal. And since we cannot discount ¯human inertia with its tendency to stop at ge, neral principles, instead of making concrete applications, there is reason to review some of the factors essential to adjustment 6r read-justment in religious life. Because the heart of the higher-education problem is conflict, the 'solution ~rests on a¯choice of method and of means. 206. July, 1952 HIGHER EDUCATION Method Conflict grows from disorder. Butorder is the recoghition of ~i definite hierarchy of succession among the parts of a rational entity,. It is established and maintained first, by a proper evaluation of each" part in t~rms of the. whole: then by a complete; integration of these parts-into an organic whole in which'each individual activity is sub-ordinated to the good of the whole organism. Neither the pursuit nor the. results of learning can be allowed a position of dominance. A mastery of s~abject matter must remain always a mastery, a iecoilected control which rules out avidity and passionate intens.ity and the vain, curious study that makes of learning the curiosiiates philosophantiun) denounced by St. Bonaventure. For.the Seraphic Doctor had learned from his master, St. Francis, that all science leads the mind from the consideration of' the creature to the contemplation of the Creator only when it is rightly pursued. Given their proper subsidiary evaluation, the learning activities ---courses and lectures, problems and examlnations--must be con-tinuously integrated into the brganic whole of the interior life. This can be accomplished only through the medium of love, the "unction" of St. Bonaventure. Interior inspiration, the fruit of daily medita-tion and mortification, must inform tile activities of the lecture hall and laboratory. If the arts';ind sciences, as we are told, are "'forever waiting the spiritualizing influence 6f revealed religion," surely the religious cannot forego this apostolate. Nor is it necessary to follow an~ complex formula in order to integrate, empirical knowledge, in-tellectual principles, religious intuition, and emotional response into a meaningful and orderly whole. The means are the staples of reli-gious life: faith, obedience, humility, and love. MeaDs Faith is the basis of integration. Of the religious, who makes learning a ladder of sanctity it may be said in the literal sense, "Thy faith hath made thee whole." We know the threefold object of faith: 1) to enlighten the mind with regard to God; 2) to show us the proper relation of creatures to God; 3) to'direct our'activity towards God. The.religious who ~'xercises dail3; the habit of faith hold~ the unfailing sblvent for every interior conflict. To the eye of faith every person, every situation, every idea is a transparency through which shines the Divine Countenance. Wi~h a living faith it is possible to hear the voice of the Eternal Lawgiver above every 207~ ~ISTER M. BONAVENTURE " Review for ~eligious lecture on history, economics, or politi~s and to read glimpses,of His beauty written large "6r small across the pages of ancient liteiature and modern letters. TO liveby ~faith is to see, ~albeit darkly~ not a threat but a divine wisdom and p!an behind academic sthedules,,and challenging assignments. It is. above all, to have an unfailing source of confidence and courage to face¯ any God-given task in the" knbwl-edge that'the power of heaven is ours. For in .the words of. our Holy Father "we are rich in supernatural assistance through the grace poured out in the floodtides of the' Sacraments and prayer.'.¯ Wh~t room is left for confliCt,in the mind of th~ religious who learns to find under the mate'rial "species" of 1.earn!ng experiences the sacra-mental "substance" of a spirit.ual reality which is a part of her com-plete consecration? No more time, no argu'ment is n.eede~ for the finding. -- Active faith provides the religious with a second 'effective means of integration, a means which is at the same time a gtiarantee against doubt and.mental c6nflict. This gi~aranteeis obedience,-the hinge of religious life,',formulated by the vow.of ~onsdcration and in its full implication t6uching every act of the human will. If the entrance of a religious into the field of higher e~ducation is dictated by vocational need, according to the judgment of superiors, rather than by a desire .for personal achievement, obedience provides firm ground on which every situation can be met with the peace which is the fruit of faith. But to prove the perfe, ct safeguard against con2 flict obedience mus~ rise above passive resignation. It must be the active, personal element ol~ our friendship with God, the beneoolentia of St. Thomas'i by which we will what comes to. us by God's order .because it is the expression ~f His love for us. Through faith, obedi-. ence reveals as the core of each new l~arning experience the recogni-ti6n of a .Divine Provideiice. ¯ The abiding habit of such active obedience, is the foundation of the perfect peace ,recognized by,Dhnte, the peace of a mind relaxed not on the defensive-=therefore, a permeable mind that. absorbs and retains ~ith ~least. effort. TOO frequently well-meanifig,but confused religious, who fear to launch out into the depths of faith and trust, block by feverish activity and fearful tension the very channels' through which God is expected toanswer their pleas for aid, t~eir imagination, memory, understanding'. The r~li~ious who desires in obedience "to be to God what a hand is to a man" will be cdntent to do what G6d indicates as reasonable in any situation, as best-she can, HIGHER I~DUCATION° then without qualm or conflict leave the results to Him, even when. these results affect entire communities. Faith does not' lessen daiiy, responsibilities nor dilute .them with nonchalant optimism. But it does enable the religious scholar to bear the burden lightly, with the detachment and'joy that are the marks of ~ will surrendered tO God. " Perhaps the most subtl~ and least, recognized source of tension f6r the religious .studen~ is personal susceptibility and its tenuous roots of pride. The ignorance of a child reaches out.foi knowledg~ with a'joyous freedom and pliancy. The adult mind can grasp truth safely and without pain qnly by the grace of,humility. ForAearning is~always a' "receiving," ari acknowledgement of need. The mind that is undonsciously'on the defensive against such acknowledgement to superiors.in~tructors, fellow ~tudents, even. to itself is under a psychological pressure that brakes every :lear~aing process. Not only does such pressure pre~clude an open-mind but, more seriously, it is incompatible with recollection and inspiration. " The religious who ~onsi~tently strives for complete ~ integration of all" her activities in the field of higher learning by seeing every ex-. perience with the eyes of faith, recognizing p.eacefully its seal of providential design and accepting it with a humble and open-heart, will find within herself what is at once the fruit and lthe only valid-test of such integration. That fruit is know, ledge transformed into wisdom by the alchemy of love--wisdom which makes love come .full circle iia contemplation. This is the wisdom which, whefi~ com-municated, iadiates, transforming love and is the truth.which makes. men free. " But unless recollection and devotion draw knowledge within .the circumference i3f a personality whos~ center is God, its widest reaches W,ill mdrely parch the soul, leaving 6nly a" hard glittering surface. What is worse, this arid desert of surface knowledge is the soil which ~ fraelasdei lcyo ;npsrcoidenuccee,s sac rhuopslte os,f rfaatlisoen daliiczhaotitoonmsi.e Os'na nthde m oethnetar lh caonndf,l tihctes-: religious who remember'with Maritan,. that "just as. everything which is in the Word is found-once more in tt'ie Sp!rit, .so must 'all that We know pass into our power of affection " by love,", will find .th.a.t. every facet of ~aature on which man may concentrate can be made to yield fuel for the inner life,of re!igious perfection. Only the flafiae thus fed-can dispel the darkness of the cold materialism which sur: rounds "us. Need we hesitate to conclude that prop(r evaluation of educa- 209 NATIONAl; C(~NGRESS Review t~or Religious tional goals and adequate spiritual integration of learning experiences cannot fail to eliminate th~ conflicts and tensions frequently.associ-ated with higher education for religious? Will it not de~pen appre-ciation ~ religious life and underline the tragedy of the loss of voca-tion? Religious thus educated do not merely know more ~hings, but thdy understand the vivifying unity underneath all things and in this understanding taste the peace and joy of "real religion." Such religious respond fully ~o the exhortation of the'Holy Father, which cannot be repeated too freque.ntly: "Be what you are. Let your'live~s bear witness to the reality of rtehheg "lo "u's state, Then' men,within and without the Church, will understand and esteem the state of ~erfection." Nal:ional Congress [EDITOR'S NOTE: Fa~'her Francis J. Connell. C.SS.I~., the executive chairman of the National Congress of Religious Men, kindly sent us the following communica-tion about the Congress to be held at Notre Dame University in August.] The First National Congress of Religious will be held at Notre Dame, Indiana, from August 9th to August 13th this year. Both religious men and women will be present, but 'will hold se)arate meeting~, except for a few meetings in common. It ik hoped that all orders and congregations now having a foundation in the' United States will be ~epresented. Housing facilities for about 1800 will'be available on the campus at Notre Dame University. It has been agreed by those in Charge of the Congress that 800 religious men and 1000 religious women will be invited. , O~ Saturday evening, August 9th, an address will be made.to the assembled religious by the Most Rev. John F. O'Hara, C.S.C., Arch-' bishop of Phila°delpbia. Solemn Benediction of the Mos~ Blessed Sacrament will theft be given, with Father Arcadio Larraona, cele-brant; Father Elio Gambari, S.M.M., deacon; Father Joseph Giam-pietro, S,.J., subdeacon. These of~cials.have been deputed by the Sacred Congregation of Religious to be present at ~he.Congress as re-presentatives .of the said. Congregation. On Sunday morhing the~e will be a Solemn Pontifical Mass after which His Excellency, A. G. 210 dul~l, 1952 ~ QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Cicognani, Archbishop of Laodicea and "Apostolic Delegate t£ the United States, will ~ddress tbe oentire Congress. Undoubtedly .the main purpose of this Congress is to discuss p~obl.ems of. religious life' especially.pertaining to the present-day con-ditions in America. The Holy See isvitally interested in this sub-ject, and beyond doubt, many of the ideas which will be broached at this Congress will be brgugbt to the attention of the Roman au-thorities. The religious in Americi believe that it is possi,ble to main-tain a high standard ofreligious life in the United State~ i:lespite the materialistic and pleasure-loving tendencies of our country. With a view to attaining this objective, papers will be. read by representatives of the Congress on special subjects, e.g.,' stinlulation of vocations to the religious life in the United States; the obligation of superiors to fulfill their duties with p~oper regard for the innate love of indepen-dence of }:he American .people--in itself an admirable trait of charac-ter, and capable of being perfectly conformed to the higher.ideals of religious obedi(nce. Al~o, particular consideration will be given to the contemplative life, the sect~lar institutes, American religious of the Oriental Rites, and similar topics. The.dlosing ceremony" will be a Candlelight Procession to the Grotto of Our Lady at Notre Dame. It is very "evident that only a comparatively small proportion of "r~ligious in our dountry will be able to attend this gathering, but it is firmly boiled by'those in charge of the Congress that all will pray fervently that'God may bless this meeting with abundant fruits, and that Our Blessed Lady, on whose University grounds this first National Congress is being held, will obtain many graces for the par-ticipants and for all those whom they represent. ¯ .Questions and Akiswers 19 Please explain the prescriptions of the Church regarding the chap,fer of faults.in a religious community. " ' . : The chapter° of faults has beenpracticed 'for centuries in som~ form by'the older orders in the Church. As regards modern congre-gatipns, the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars had the following prescriptions in the Norrnae of 1901: . . 211 -- QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religious 1), It is'not necessary, that a congregation, prescri,be the chapter of faults in its constitutions. This does not.meah, howe~rer, thatthe religious is fre~ not t6 attend, if the constitutio'~as'.do prescribe the chapter of faults. (Art. 167.) 2). If it is prescribed, it should not be held oftener than 6nce a wed(. nor less frequently than once a m6nth. (Art. 167.) 3) . The accusation of faults~ which a religious makes to his supe-rior in the .chapter ro6m should be limited to faults and violations Of the constitutions that are external. 4) After-each accusation the superior imposes a penhnce. Obvi- . ously there Should be some pr, oportion~between the fault and the penance, and prudence and discretion should temper the penance ac-cording to persons, and circumstances. (Art. 169.) This exercise of fiumility and penance can be the occasion for the practice of virtue and for stimulating religious to overcome external f~iults to which they are prone. It al~o affords the.opportunity of" repairing th~ scandal (disedifi~ation) given to fell6w r~ligious by the faults. "" In some institute~' custom permits the members of the comr~un-ity to accuse one another of faults that they"have observed. If this practice is not already p.rovided for in the constitutions or book of customs, it should not be introduced without permission. Finally~. the superior may take the occasion of the chapter of faults to admon-ish the.community regarding external faults that aremore-or less common. This method of pate.rnal correction is especia.lly efficacious at the time of the devotional renewal o-f vows. -~-20--- At our novltlatewe have professed, novices, and postulant 'Brothers. who assist at Mass; which is served by novices. And on ~erta;n feast days the Sisters participate. Please cj;ve the cc;rrect order. ;n which Holy Com-munion should be distributed. - The Roman Ritual (tit. IV cap. ~I)- telis us that the priest:dis-tributing Holy Communion should begin with the Mass servers, if the~i Wish to cc;mmunicht~. A decree.bf the Sacred Congregation-of Rites (N. 107~, 3uly 13, 1658) sta'ted that the Mass server was to receivd Holy Communion before the nuns and other persons present. A later decre~ (N. 4271, lj permitted a lab, man serving~Mass,. ,~'though he do not wear the clerical garb, to receive Holy Communion. within the sanctuary, at the plat~orin of the altar. As there was a" '2"12 ¯ " . ' . ~ul~, 195Z .QUE~TION~ AND ANSWERS difference of opinion" in the interpretation-of these prescript{ons, the. Sacred Congregation of Rites gave the following detailed' regulations in a decree dated January 30, 19F5 (AA$, VII 1915, 71-72) : "The term Mass server or server at the altar includes any cleric or layman who serves l~/Iass at the altar.and he is to be preferred to others in the distribution of Holy Communion with the.following precautions: clerics are to be preferred to alayman serving Mass, and. clerics in major orders are to be preferred to cl~rics in~ minor orders , who are serving Mass." Keeping these various presc,~iptions {n mind,- w~ may now answer our question as follows: The Mass server, whether cleric or.layman, recei~res Holy COmo reunion before others ~who may be present, unless some are clerics; all clerics receive Holy Communionbefore a Mass server who is a lay-man: if the server is a cleric, he should receive first in his lank of clerics, precedenc~ being given to clerics 6f higher rank. Lay religious, Brothers and non-cleric~il religious, that is,.r~ligious not yet tonsure.d though destined for the priesthood, as well as Brothers and Sis: ,ters, all.receive Holy Communion after the Mass server, l~e he a cleric or a layman. " Finally,. an exception is made at a NuptialMass, at which the bride and groom may be given Holy Communion before, the. Mas~ server. As to the order of precedence in receiving Holy Communion at the Communion rail 6n the par,t of non-clerical religious, there are no regu'lations. Hence local customs may be observed if the consti~ tutions do not prescribe the precedence. It may be well. to recall here that a reserved instruction by the Sacred Congregation of Religious, December 8, 1938, said there should be no "rigid and quasi-military order" in coming to the Communion rail. Many commentators on ¯ this instruction suggested that the order prevailing in numerous reli-giou~ communities of receiving Communion.in a definite order should be changed. For the text of the instruction se~ Father Bouscaren's Canon'Law .Digest, II, 208 ft. ; ~nd for an article on the instruction, as well as a digest of the text, see REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, III (1944), 252-70. SHALLI START TO DRINK? . . Shall 1 Start to Drink?, by 3ohn C. F6rd~ S:d., p~esents a clear discussion of ¯ the moral and ascetical aspects of total abstinence. A pamphlet; published by The Queen's Work, 31 15 South Grand Boulevard, St. Lohis 18, Missouri. .213 I THE MORNING OFFERINGs. By Thomas ML Moore, S.~. °Pp~ t69. .Ap0stl~shlp.o~f Prayer, New York, '1950. $3.00. 40,000,000 members of. the Apostleship of Prlayer" scattered throughout the world, priests; ~ligious, men and women and chil-dren of every race and clime, recite "The Morning Offering".~laily. This formidable army of prayer is sending up unceasin~ petition to the Throne of God tbrdughout thehours of the day and night that "through the [mmaculate Hdart, of Mary" He may.acdebt their "prayers. works, joys and ~suff_erings of the day for all the int,entions of the Sacred 'Heart. in union with' the Holy. SaCrifice. of the Mass throughout th'e world, in reoaration for sin. for the intentions of all the Associates. and in particular, for all the intehtions"of the Holy Father." ¯ The last half of Father Moore's book .is a detailed expl~natio, n 6f the mo~ning offering. The chapters o'n the Immaculate Heart.of Mary the Comfiaunion of" Reparation.and the /kpostleship of* Suffering d~serve special mention. . o The first half.of the book contains a simple, untechnical expla-nation of the fundamental notions of theology, which underlie the Morning Offerifig': -cre'ati0n, end of man, tlSe love~ of God and of the Sacred Heart for men as.shown in the.redemption, man's free co-opei'atiori in~he work of God. the nature and .efficacy O,f prayer. union with ~hrist, especially in the Eucharistic Saerifice. The history a'nd*development of the Apostleship of"Prayer as well as. itS adapta-tion to-modern times, especially through the S~cred Hear( Radio Pr?grgm, bring the book to a close. - " This bpok is ~arnestly recommended to all religious for their own personal use in order to get-acquainted wi'th the Apostleship,of Prayer if they,are not. members as ye~.and to help' the~rfi spread.the °Ap0stl~ship far an~l wide among the faithful who come under their ¯ influence.' "It i] v/ell suited.: fo~ spiritual reading, either .privately or .in' common.--ADnM C." ELLIS[ S.J. WHAT IS THE iNDEX? By Redmond A. Burki~, C.S.V. Pp. x -k" 130. Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1952. $2.75. . Thislohg needed book gives a brief but'solid expos.ition of the. origin, .nature, and extent of the laws of. the, Church re~arding censorship and~ p.~oh!bition of books. It is. directed not merely to theological students and the pra~.icin~ clergy, b~Jt primar!ly "to, the 214 . BOOK REVIEWS intellige~nt laity, whether Catholic or.no~-Catholic, and it attempts~ to discover th~ effects of e~clesiasti~al regulation~ with 'reference to, the entire world of literature. For this reason the termsare, as far as possible, nontecbnical.'~ After gi,ving the~ historical, background of the Church's .legisla-, tion in chapter.ond. [he author goes on to treat the foliowing sub-~ jects in subsequent chapters:, censorship of books in adyance of pub! lication:0condemfiation of ,publisl~ed books: general classes Of for5 bidden literature: methods of examining books by the Holy Office: I'ndex of forbidden, books: penalties for. violations of book regula-tions: permission to read forbidden books: and promotion of' - re~ding. Perhap.s the most valuable chapter in the book is that in which he treats general classes of forbidden lit~ratu're.' It is. in reality, commentary on canon 1399 of the'Code of Canon Law. Too many Catholics including some priests and religious, labor under the false impressio.~i that as long as a book,is not listed in the Index of For-. bidden Boobs it .may be read w. ith impunity. Most forbidden books are not listed in theIndex. ~Inste, ad. their are t~) be judged by. probi-bition-~ f different classes Of books as determined in canon. 1399. The author gives ~ brief, but satisfactory comm~n,t on each clas~ of books contained in this canon. Of special importance also is the chapter telling.how to bbtain permission to read forbidden books. This .will prove very.helpful for st~udents doing ~esea.rch work, as well as those in professional schools. - In an appendix the aUthor g~ves various listings of books ~n~the Index: 7We are deeply" indebted to him for l~a, ving given us'also Abbd Bethleem's valuable lists of selections of the work of F~ench authors which.may be :read,.in spite ot: the fact that the authors' works.are forbidden in ge'neral. A final app, endix on "The C;reat Book~ Program" completes the work. Af~er,.poi~ating out the,-valu'e of this praisewo'rthy project, the autho~ lis~s the booksbn the pro'gram which'may not be read with-out permission. This excellent book should, be~on thesheJv, es of every Catholic school !ibFfiry beginning with the high school, and on up to college and university lentil. Likewise, every religl6us community .engaged in teaching in secondary schools and co!leges should have a copy in the faculty library. Other religious engaged:in act.ire works will als0 find it useful. ADAM~C. ELLIs. S.O,. 215 BOOK R~VlEWS . . " ". Reoieto for Ret(gious " THE SEMINARIAN AT'HIS PRIE-DIEU. By'Robert.Nash; S.d. Pp. 312. The-Newman Press, We~fmlnster, Md., 1951. $3.50. This is a book of meditations for seminarians. Fr. Nash's thirty-eight meditations are aimed at hdping s~mingrians gr~ow into p, ray-erful priests who will be ready for the!r work in the p,resent world of social unrest, of threatening Communism, of secularism, and the rest. As in histwo previous companion works, The Nun at Her Prie-Dieu and The Priest at His Prie-Dieu, each meditation containsa prepara-tory prayer, the setting or cdmposition of place, the fruit desired, three or four points (each of which the author rightly suggests could serve for one or more meditations), a brief, summary of the points, and a tessera or catchword to be recalledduring the day. Particularly well done is the setting,, which can help a busy'stu-dent cast aside extraneous thoughts and.apply his mind more readily to .the subjec~ matter of the meditation. Though this book cannot remove all the thorns that beset the paths of mental przyer, s~mi-narians, t~erhaps more especially those fresh from the "world," will find in it plentiful material and a good method to follow in their meditation. It could also be u~ed profitably for spiritual reading. JOHN F. MOORE,. S.J. THE CARMELITE DIRECTORY OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. Translated from ~the'Lafln. Pp. xxlv -F~ 575. The Carmelite Press,'.Chlcag.o, II1., 1951. For Carmelites themselves, for their followers, and for students of their spirituality, this directory will be an invaluable and almost inexhaustible gold mine of doctrine. It is official, being introduced and commended by a letter, of the Prior General. It dales not bear the name of any writer or corn'piler, but seems, to be put forth l~y the ~armelite Order itself. It is recent/ the Latin o6ginal being dated 1940. Its purpose is t~ complement 'and implement the Rule ~nd Constitutions. ~ The work consists bf four major parts. Parts one ~ind two, en-titled, respectively,. "Dogmatic Fundamentals of the Spiritual Life" and "Principlesof Religious Life," are of a general and Catholic, ha-. ture and prepare for what is specifically Carmelite. This is presented in tile latter tWO.l~art,s.Of these the third is headed "A Holy Heart~" and deals mostly "i¢ith the conquest of bad habits, the acc~uisition of ¯ the virtues, and the pursuit of perfection. The last part is devoted to ."The Contemplative Life." Some people no doubt will note with surprise how little space is. given.to the m3~stical phase of the spiritual ~ life. (pages 525-551)'. . , 216 July, 1952 . BOOK I~OTICES It is interes'ting to observe, in view of Wl~at certain welJ-known authors on prayer, for instance, Saudreau an~t Arintero, hold, that where "the higher degrees of mental prayer wl~ich can be attained by ordinary grace" are treated, we find the statement that "there are two higherdegrees x~hich today are usually called affective pra~,er and the prayer of simplicity or filso acquired contemplation" (p. 425). Toward'the end of the section on the gifts of the Holy¯ Spirit it is affirmed that persons who cultivate them carefully "may :lawfully expect to_be led day by day to greater perfection and to work great things for the glory of God and*His kingdom" (p. 299). No promise is made of mystical favors. The 'Prior General has a sentence in his letter that is enlightening about the spirit of Carmel: "In this book.will be found fully explained those key principles of Carmel: to give our whole selves to God--to stfi.ve for purity of conscience--to foster intimate union with God" (p. xxiii). Lastly, the delicate problem of the historical connectibns of the Order witch "our Holy Father Elias" is handled devoutly but-Cautiously. ~-~AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD, S.J. BOOK NOTICES Som~ years ago Father Henry Davis, S.J., rendered an invaluable ser'vice~to the English-speaking clhrgy, as well as to theology-minded laity, by publishing a 4-volume work on moral and pastoral the-ology. Before his death at the age of eighty-five, in January of this year, he had increased his measure of service by preparing a 1-volume SUMMARY OF MORAL AND PASTORAL THEOLOGY. The book covers the whole of moral theolpgy: principles: precepts, and sadraments; and it includes much sound pastoral advice. It is a very useful book for priests, libraries, and those 9fthe laity who wofild like t6 become. acquaifited with a standard manual of moral .tl~eology. One' caution might be added for the laity. The treatise on the Sixth Command-ment, since it follows the pattern of the theological textbook, con-tains certain technicalities that might be more confusing than help-ful. The laity'who "irish to read on this subject for their personal benefit would do better to use a book written expressly for them. (New York: Sheed ~3 Ward, 1952. Pp. xxxvi -b 486. .$5.00.), A decidedly readable explanation of the doctrine of the Mys~fical, Bddy of Christ is THE LIVING CHRIST, by John L. Murphy. The t .217 BOOK NOTICES - Revi~ for Religious explana~tion is based o~n Pius XII'~ encyclical." M~/st, ic[ Co?~oris. The author avoids the use of technical terms as much as possil~le and plains those that must be used. The style i~ marked by clarity, simplicity, "ahd. a certain down-to-ear~hnes~ that contributes con-creteness without losing digni

Issue 47.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1988. ; Communal Spirituai ~Cons01ation The Blessing of ~OId Age . . .= =,.~ ;. ::. -. : ~ - = :"~ i~',~,~ . Love and !~Apostolate Volume 47 Number 6 Nov./Dec. 1988 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The edito-rial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO. 63108-3393. REWEW FOR RELiGiOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. ©1988 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Single copies $3.00. Subscriptions: U.S.A. $12.00 a year; $22.00 for two years. Other countries: for surface mail, add $5.00 per year; for airmail, add $20.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read M. Anne Maskey, O.S.F. Acting Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors Nov./Dec. 1988 Volume 47 Number 6 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to Rv.wv.w Fon RvaotGmus; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave.; Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from Rv.wv.w FOR REt.mtous; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints ar~ available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. Consciousness Examen: Becoming God's Heart for the World George A. Aschenbrenner, S.J. Father Aschenbrenn~r, well known to almost all of our readers, returns to our pages,. His article was first published in the April-June 1988 special edition of Prayer and Service (Rome). He is the director of the Spiritual-formation program at North Ameri-can College; 00120 Vatican City State; Europe. To live contemplativeiy. Ind~ed', ~o become Whom we contempl.at~: this is the invi~gorating experience, the hallmark enterprise and adventure that human existence is all about that for which every human heart is long-ing. The magnetic appeal of~tl~e wholly beloved invites our hearts to a transformation which is never e~isy. But it is so intimately renewing as to be almost irresistible. It is the very heart 9f love. Lovers in their mu~- tual ~0ntemplation are not always explicitly aware of this process of self-transformation into which the~y ~are being swept up. But c,ertain claalleng'- ing momen, ts can starkly reveal the risky loss of self that is involved. And yet the very attractiveness of the beloved provides conviction and moti-vation t6 embrace this risk. in that magnetic moment, love seems an op-portunity not to be m'isse'd. B/at love's opportunity "and risk are also costly--and lovers finally know this. Indeed, the cost involved in the con-templation of lovers strikes to the profound level of self, id.entity. But cost what it may, the belove.d~s attractiveness lures the lover on to surpris-ingly new depths. The beloved in our reflection here is Christ Jesus, our God and Lord, our Brother and, finally, all our sisters and brothers, especially the most suffering ones across all time and space (see Mt 25:31-46). And contem-plative transformation into .this beloved is the fundamental process .in-volved in, indeed it is, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. It 801 [102 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 is also the process with which examination of conscience is concerned. And there we have at once the premise and the product of this reflec-tion. Both devotion to the Sacred Heart and examination of conscience have a long history in the Ignatian tradition. But they have rarely, if ever, been viewed in relationship to each other. In this article I will try to show how regular examination of conscience facilitates a transforming expe-rience of one's own heart into the beloved of one's heart, the Sacred Heart of God in Jesus Christ. After a brief summary of the contempo-rary renewed understanding of the examen, I will make use especially of some of the graces prayed for in the First Week Of the Spiritual Exer-cises, in order to describe the continuing conversion involved in a regu-lar practice of examen. Finally, in support of the claim that the examen can convert our hearts into devotion to the Sacred Heart of God, I will describe a little of the apostolic power~ the ardent love and thirst for jus-tice, of such a growing and ongoing conversion. Ongoing: for we are never done with love. In recent years there have been attempts, both within the Jesuit heri-tage and within the whole Church, to renew the understanding and prac-tice of examination of conscience and of devotion to the Sacred Heart. Examination of conscienc~ is now more of(en called consciousness ex-amen or awareness examen. ~ In its renewed form the examen continues to bless and sensitize the hearts of many busy believers to the loving pres-ence of God in all of daily life. And while much work has been done in developing a contemporary theological understanding of devotion to the Sacred Heart,2 perhaps the a~tual practice of the devotion is not so widespread as that of consciousness examen, or at least is not widespread among those who frequently make use of consciousness examen. This article, finally, though its central point is to relate the two practices, is concerned more with the personal effects of regular examen than it is with the details of traditional or recent developments in devotion to the Sacred Heart. Renewed Understanding of Examen In the renewed understanding of the examen, two insights are key. First, a much more positive perspective has corrected a past view that often deteriorated into an overly negative, moralistic misunderstanding. Rather than highlighting the bad actions of a day, the examen gives pri-mary concern to what is primary: God's revelation, a steadfast love in Christ Jesus always inviting and invigorating our consciousness. Formal examen sensitizes our hearts to the presence of this love in the ordinary Becoming God's Heart / 803 details of every day. Whenever this love is recognized and responded to, our hearts simply must c9~me aliw~ with joy and gratitude. So gratitude is the major element in the actual time of examen-prayer, as it should also be in our daily lives of faith. And this gratefulness for the wonder of God's love stirs hearts to action. And so gratitude becomes the chief motive from which all ministry pours. As the examen begins to make our hearts more aware of God's .per-during Io.ve, we also begin to recognize flow often and how easily we can b~ oblivious to that love, or how subtly, yet quite stubbornly, we can refuse response to love. This realization, when faced honestly and not rationalized away, can, whether rudely or quietly, awaken our hearts with healthy guilt, with sorrow and repentance. As this article will de-velop later, this, experience of guilt and sorrow is anything but pleasant; yet, as an experience of God's love, it does purify us, it does transform us. And the effect of that can only be a bolder, freer, more wide-ranging apostolic service. Mature faith and discipleship cannot happen without this painful transformation in the humiliating experience of guilt and sorrow. As the repentant sinner encounters God's forgiveness in Je-sus, sorrow is transformed into hopeful, vigorous gratitude--and a burn-ing zeal to serve God's loving justice in our world. In this way, thanks-giving-- the central driving force in the heart of any mature disciple of Jesus Christ--dominates the dailyexamen and fuels its impulse toward loving action. A second insight that renews our understanding.of the examen is the importance of the informal examen, as distinguished from, though obvi-ously not unrelated to, the formal examen.3 The formal examen is a spe, cific time and style of prayer:. In a previous article I described the five traditional elements of such prayer.4 Never meant as an end in itself, this formal practice of examen should gradually .spill over and infiltrate it-self, as a special faith,sensitivity, into a person's daily ,life. And so we come upon the informal examen:a way of living. The informal examen is more a matter of who we.are and who we are becoming, whereas the formal examen is a specifid prayer we regularly practice. Thus a .regular practice of examen can lead to that self-transformation which make pos-sible a genuine faith-sensitivity of heart, a dynamic connaturality with the Beloved, which we are calling here informal examen. This dynamic development of formal examen into informal, into a pervasive faith-sensitivity of heart, is crucial--crucial both to a proper understanding of examen itself and to its role in the human heart's deeply desired experi-ence of love: our becoming whom we contemplate. Review for Religious, November-December 1988 Daily Conversion in Faith Jesus' ministry erupts publicly among the peopl(-inoa great sense of urgency: a wholly new revelation of God's love and the need for reform of mind and heart, if One is to recognize and respond~to that love. It is so clear at the beginning of Mark and in the synagogue-scene of chapter four in Luke. This radical personal conversion of faith is often described in the Scriptures as a matter of repentance. As a conx~ersion that will cost a whole lifetime, 'it continually involves the risking and sacrificing of a temptingly attractive but false, illusory self while radically true and ra-diantly new creation is born in a person's daily response to the quiet ur-genc~ of God's love. But no experience of merely passing excitement will suffice for this. Nor ~can such repentance and radical change of outlook ever be re-duced simply~ tb our own planning and control. A strategy of clear-sighted tactics and of fierce determination will always prove futile all by itself. In fact, if not properly motivated and accompanied by grace, it can actually corrupt the very adventure of faith into something"unwhole-some and unholy. With0ut,a genuin(rexperience of the wonder of God's love, the Gospel call, the call by grace and favor to radical change, can-not be heard, and healthy repentance cannot happen.5 It is the attractive beauty and power of God's love which reveals the inadequacy and sin-fulness of our condition and unlooseris in our hearts a desire to be much more than what we now may be. It is in this way that the w~onder of God's love reveals our sinfulness. And this profound truth, so capable of being misunderstoOd, is always the bedrock of mature spiritual life. God alone sees our sinfulness most clearly for what it truly is: a choice against love. And it is this God who calls us to intimacy in the beautiful revelation of Jesus come among us as forgiveness. Every detail of Je-sus' life, most especially his dramatic experience on Calvary, stretches and stirs 6ur hearts in hope for a new creation, a new life, a whole new self. But repentance, with its'purifying pain and.suffering, is the only way to this urgently longed-for newness. ¯ ~An ,honest repentant.acknowledgment of sinfulness.in the face of such love is neither'obxiious nor easy, because it cuts Our consciousness in humiliation. 'The guilt and shame and the embarrassment that come in the wake of such~an acknowledgment sting and. singe our conscious-ness. In the presence of such love, they make our spirits blush. The pain and hurt will, most often ,~" and quite spontaneouslyl make us wary and seel~ to activate d~fense mechanisms such'~ as the rationalizations of de-nial and the distractions,~not of joy, but of pleasure. These are moments Becoming God's Heart / 805 for careful discernment in the life of any believer, For the humiliating pain of acknowledged sin, as intended here, is not the result of some overly scrupulous conscience. Nor is it the unhealthy guilt of self-hatred. Rather it is the purifying consolation--not desolation, but con-solation~ however scouring--the consoling experience of God calling us to greater love and life and faith. Despite the pain, therefore, this repen-tant blush of heart is a grace not to be rejected. It is essential to any ma-ture faith, to any measured zeal for God's world, to any discipleship that hopes.to brave the road's full distance. The guilt that introduces our embarrassed, repentant response to God'.s great, tender love requires a brief description here. Much past ex-p. eoence of unhealthy guilt has understandably provoked the over-reaction against, even to the l~oint of a dangerous disregar.d, of, ~all guilt as if all guilt were unhealthy. Though unhealthy guilt can surely plague and disi~eart~n.us, yet there is a guilt born of God. A'nd it ~;tings. But for the lover, it also signals the Beloved's presence, a very active pres-ence, a redemptive consciousness, inoviting great~er intimacy in faith with God. Urihealthy guilt is always anxious, wo~:rie~ aboiat self, in excessive fear of punishment, preoccupied with failure, at tim6s verging on despair in the face of some unrealistic pe~rfectionism. But healthy, consoling guilt is always the result of an interpersonal Iov,e .relationship. And it focuses the heart beyond the self, on the Beloved, in painful so~:row for the wound one's lack of love has caused. Healthy .guilt does not despair, nor does it disrupt the deepest peace of the soul. The reason for this is that healthy guilt is always intimately and very positively related to encoun-ter, a repentant sinner's encounter with God's forgiveness revealed and available now in a crucified Son's intransigent love. In the Dying, a New Life But in the tense struggle'of this inner guilt, shame, and sorrow, we usually become aware of the risk and high stakes involved. A self, or some aspect of a self with which we have been enamored, perhaps for a long time, must be let go of, Something must die if the new is to be born. It is a mortifying experience, but, as it is not a mortification sim-ply of our own making, neither can the outcome of it be clearly grasped in advance, It is a moment of perceived high risk. And the helplessness of such a moment, when we are on the verge of letting go of what used to be and are. not yet in possession of what will be, can profoundly daunt and agitate our spirit. Furthermore, it is in no way simply our own power and ingenuity that will create a different future. In the helpless and sor-rowful awareness of our sinfulness, it is only an 'act of trusting abandon- Review for Religious, November-December 1988 ment of self, sometimes done in the dark aloneness of faith, that will al-low the Beloved to gift us with God's holiness, our only true human fu-ture. A process of conversion that has begun in love leads now to even greater love as a beloved God, in that faithful promise which is the risen Jesus, defies all darkness and rejects absurdity and pain as the final word, whether about this world or the next. The heart of God revealed in"Jesus excites our hearts with the invi-tation to a new and brighter future. But only a heart scoured clean in the humiliation of repentance can respond to that invitatiofi. The issue is as profound as self-transformation and as hopeful as a wholly new c?eation. But without a mortified, response to God's loving invitation and without a risky letting go of self, such a future remains simply tantalizing, cheap grace, illusion. The forgiving love of God ~brings th~ process of repentance to a con-clusion o~ lively gratitude, profound joy, and enthusiastic zeal for min-istry. The sorrow of a forgiven sinner is not depressing, however pain-fully purifying. Neither is this sorrow obliterated by the joyous gratitude and zeal for servic~ that realized forgiveness brings. Rather, the humility of a saved sinner, while not destructively focused on the past, neve'r sim-ply forgets the sorrowful memory of forgiven sin. One cannot help but wonder whether Peter in the maturi~ty of his joy, during his after-breakfast walk with the risen Jesus, did not once again find his eyes well up with tears as three awkward questions burned his soul with his own lonely truth, but burned it precisely for the sake of fidelity, the journey in companionship, and, yes, for the great holiness of Peter that lay ahead (Jn 21:15-19). The new self created in God's fo¢giveness is always strongly char-acterized by a profound, joyful thanksgiving for a deed neither deserved nor capable of accomplishment on one's own. This deed of forgiveness and the hope of a new and better future resonate strongly in the repen-tarot sinner's heart, now riveted on the challenging beauty of God's for-giving love, found fleshed forever in Jesus on the cross. And so the whole dynamic of the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises propels a per-son to confrontation, to enlightenment and encouragement before this pas-sionate experience of Jesus on Calvary. Having taken upon himself the sins of all, this Son, anguished in an olive grove over the agonizing pros-pect of a humiliating death, is able to renew that trusting abandonment of self which allows himoto find once again, as always, not previous to, but in the very abandonment of dying, his dear Father. And his beloyed Father blesses this anguished abandonment with a future of absolute full- Becoming God's Heart ness in resurrection. In the face of such enlivening abandonment on Je-sus' part, we can find the graceful encouragement needed for that sur-render of self which repentance always demands. It is at this moment that the graces of fidelity and perseverance take root in the forgiven sinner's experience. And so Jesus' death into the fu-ture of resurrection stands faithfully, for all ages, as God's forgiveness. It gives graceful encouragement to all repentant sinners in this risky and humiliating process of self-transformation. The persevering faithfulness of this new creation, this new heart, will always depend on how pro-foundly, how pervasively transformed the repentant sinner is in the en-counter with God's Word of forgiveness. As we gaze on God's forgiveness in Jesus crucified, besides a lively gratitude and profound joy, our heart knows the expansiveness of a great desire for God in Jesus--an apostolic desire to give ourselves as Jesus did in the ministry of God's forgiving justice. This desire at the end of the First Week continues to expand as the attractiveness of God's love in Jesus is revealed through the remaining weeks of the Exercises. God's Spirit and kingdom revealed so compellingly in Jesus become our whole-hearted desire. To live in daily imitation of Jesus, to serve as an apostle in whatever way God desires, becomes the very energy of our hearts. And yet, as the experience continues, this desire can stretch our hearts still further: we may be so transformed, we may, in such transformation, be so intimately identified with Jesus, that we become and, in the thor-oughly real way the mysticism of baptism and Eucharist accomplish in us, we may be Jesus in and for our world. And so ttie joyous thanksgiv-ing of a forgiven sinner, so much more than .a mere devotional satisfac-tion, sets our hearts afire with such desire for new identity in Christ Je-sus that we become mystical activists, heralds everywhere of the good news of God's transforming forgiveness. This reflection offers the view that consciousness examen may play a role of special importance in facilitating such a process of radical con-version. The profundity and pervasiveness of the transformation spoken of will depend in large measure on a regular practice of examen. And rather than putting a clear conclusion to the process of radical conver-sion, the Exercises provide enlightening direction for the further and con-tinual deepening of desire for this daily identification with Jesus. For this reason, as the formal Exercises conclude and move to become daily life, we are always left with an even greater need than before for regular ex-amen, that we may continue the daily discernment of God's love con-verting us steadily into Christ Jesus our Lord. Review for Religious, November-December 1988 Goal of Examen: Devotion to the Sacred Heart of God ,in Jesus Long after the retreat experience of the Exercises is finished, regu-lar examen keeps our heart sensitive and responsive to the attractiveness of the Sacred Heart of God: ifi Jesus.As we have already seen, thanks-giving and sorrow are the two chief affections in faith of the examen-- and the sorrow itself, as we~have also seen, finds its fulfillment in thanks-giving.~ And so it is in. and through its term of thanksgiving that regular cxamen mediates our conversion and growth into Christ Jesus. Through the basic thrust of the ex.amcn, each believer becomes a concrete embodi, merit here and now of the Sacred Heart of God in Jesus. Consciousness examen, therefore, by facilitating the transformation whereby.a serious believer and disciple becomes devoted to the Sacred Heart,is profoundly related tothat same,,devotion.For in this sens~e of the word, devotion re-fers to the fundamental shape and orientation of a believing heart to the Heart of God in Christ Jesus. And this sense of devotion cuts far be-neath-- it does not necessarily deny but rather must root--any specific, traditional devotional details and practices. .~o ¯ The transformation of self whereby our hearts radically become de-votion to the Sacred Heart accomplishes some perceptible results in our lives. Growing integrity of heart, wholeheartedness, Ignatian magnanim-ity gradually centers, unites, and identifies our whole person and pres-ence in the world. A white inner stillness, fanned to burning flame in God's own creative love, radiates an. energy bf, recollection~a collect= edness--that can meld our often fragmentary faith into the Strong, live organism of a life decisively for God. Such wholeheartedness first gives enlightenment, then courage, to-wards a fundamental desire and choice in the direction of the "heav-enly" things of consolation and away from the "earthly" things of deso-lation. These desolate "earthly" things live in our flesh as the seven capi-tal, selfish impulses toward sin that the Christian tradition ~has known so well for centuries; whereas the "heavenly" things of God's consoling love are the opposite impulses which also live in our consciousness where the Spirit of Jesus invites and breathes their confirmation, their development in us, as virtues, as the very shape of our .heart. In the in-terweaving complexity and tangle of our daily consciousness, we dis-cover that the tempting experience of these capital impulses to sin is pre-cisely the battlefield upon which the fidelity of our commitment and de-votion to the virtuous heart of God. in Christ is tested and strengthened. And so it is usually by standing strong against the tempting intensity of lust that the virtue of chastity grows. It is by decisively acknowledging Becoming God's Heart .and carefully standing against the violence of desolate rage that the ten-sile strength of nonviolent gentleness is forged. And so of all the per, sonal and community motions of spirit that impel us towards or away from the justice of the Reign of God. The examen is.daily involvement in this process of transforming the impulsive desolations of our conscious-ness into the deep, consoling devotion and virtue of God's Sacred Heart. Once again, as described earlier in this article, we notice that it is pre-cisely in the dying that the new is born.And what is newly born through these mortifying struggles on the inner battlefield of our heart--the heart of each of us and the communal, societal heart of each group, each so-cial structure--always affects apostolic presence in the world, always af-fects decisively actions for or against God's justice as revealed in the lov-ing Heart of Jesus. Fifially, this conversion into the Sacred Heart of God in Jesus, this process of our becoming devotion to the Sacred Heart, does not displace offr weakness ~vith an arrogant sense of ~Sur own stren~gth. No~, just the o'ppo~site! Maturity in faith is always growth t0 grateful realization both of our weakness and of our dependence on God's love for everything. A steadfast belief in God's love does not r.eplace human weakness. Rather, it helps us patiently to wait upon the Lord and recognize arid cele-brate God's love bringing strength into our weakness. For God's power is at its best in our weakness (se.e 2 Co 12:7-10). It is a power that is needed, for becoming whom we contemplate takes courage, even as it brings energy for it. It is high adventure, with a promised wage of per-secution, to enter and be taken up into the affectivity of Jesus, God's coun-tercultural heart for the world. Consciousness examen, then, is not a way to greater, self-reliant strength. But as its daily practice transforms us into the Sacred Heart, we may become whom we contemplate and so stand in this world as liv-ing witnesses, agents of love, inviting others into God's Heart in Christ Jesus: "Come to me, all you who are weary and over-burdened, and I will give you rest! Put on my yoke and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light"(Mt 11:28-30). And one more time we listen to the Beloved, becoming whom we contemplate: "This text is being fulfilled, today, even as you listen . . . 'The spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free, to proclaim the Lord's year of favor' " (Lk 4:16-21). I~10 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 Through a companionship with Jesus made intimate and tender, strong and apostolically peremptory, through days and years of fidelity to the examen of consciousness, and through the dynamic energy con-tinually released in the experience of forgiven sinfulness, we may come to the apostolic gift which the fidelity of the friends of God can know. In becoming whom we contemplate, we may devoutly, reverently, boldly, and with his thirst for justice become, each of us and together, in the Holy Spirit, God's own heart for the world. NOTES t George Aschenbrenner, S.J., "Consciousness Examen," R~.v~Ew ~oR REt.IG~ot~s 3 I (1972): 14-21. See also the lengthy, very helpful article of David Keith Townsend, S.J., "The Examen Re-Examined," CIS 18, 2 (1987): 11-64. 2 Annice Callahan, R.S.C.J., Karl Rahner's Spirituality of the Pierced Heart: A Re-interpretation of Devotion to the ~a~'red Heart (New York: University Press of Amer-ica, 1985). This book contains references to the essential texts of Rahner on this sub-ject. 3 George Aschenbrenner, S.J., "A Check on Our Availability: The Examen," Rw~w ~oR RE~.~o~ot~s 39 (1980): 321-324. '~ Art. cit., R~vl~.w ~oR R~.~G~ot~s 31 (1972): 14-21. 5 See my article "Forgiveness," Sisters Today 45 (1973): 185-192. Clustering Thomas More Page, C.F.X. Brother Thomas More has written for us before, most recently in our issue of March/ April 1986: "Centering Prayer: A Flight to Reality." He lives at Mission Santa Bar-bara; 2201 Laguna Street; Santa Barbara, California 93105. Three years ago our provincial asked if the members of the province would be willing to commit themselves to form prayer cluster gr.oups dur-ing th~ course of the coming.year. The clusters would be small, six to eight people, voluntary, and would pledge themselves to meet at least twice a year over a long weekend. The timing of the formation of these clusters was just right, for by this time in our history a spirit of trust had ,been developed among the brothers, largely as the result of several provincial gatherings which were organized along different lines from provincial chapters. Provincial chap-ters consisted of a number of elected delegates who deliberated in a for-mal and businesslike manner over a prepared agenda, generally using par-liamentary procedures or "processes" for handling this agenda. The "gatherings," on the other hand, were open to all members and were constructed around themes which were meant to evoke a personal and communal faith-response within the ambience of prayer, personal and communal, with emphasis on our commonality as brothers. Within this framework we related our struggles and successes, recalled our sinful and graceful history, and spent blocks of time in prayerful reflection. Along with appropriate communal prayers composed around the theme of the gatherings, there were carefully prepared liturgies. Some unexpected results came from these new ways of meeting. There was a power released in many that had a healing effect. The prov-ince had experienced a deep division that had a traumatic effect upon the 811 812 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 members, leaving many wounds and a feeling of alienation, along with an unsettling disorientation. Then, also, there was a disturbing loss of identity. But here at these gatherings we were learning to speak a new language--that of faith speaking from lived experience. We spoke from the deepest levels of our lives. We spoke also of who we were. And we listened. In speaking and listening and praying we built up a new rela-tionship with one another andbegan the process of healing and more im-portantly, of refounding and celebrating our identity as brothers. With this healing and rediscovery, the level of trust rose proportionately. Also, an energizing power once more flowed through the province. Having thus rediscovered our identity within the healing and fraternal gatherings, we were ready for the proposal to take the next step of form.ing prayer clusters. The method used to form.the first experimental clusters, three in all, was simple, yet somewhat complicated. We were asked to jot down the names of those brothers with whom we would feel comfortable in such an intimate setting, along with the names of those with whom we would not feel comfortable. The provincial turned the names over to a brother-sociologist, who, after a long Struggle with the assignment, canoe up with three group'ings, ~,hich, ~after some further adjustments, were refined'. The members of the three groups were then asked to begin the process: Some brothers bypassed this process and began on their own. The group I was in has met three°times over the last year and a half. One person had volunteered to prepare th6 agenda for the first session; another, to find a suitable place where the f~icilities were such that they guaranteed the kind of atmosphere needed for this type of meeting. We had agreed that finances should not be an obstacle towards attendance and that, if anyone needed assistance, the group would come to his aid. To dat~, we have met in such diverse places as Loretto, Kentucky; St. Louis, Missouri; and Santa Barbara Mission, California. Our three ma-jor themes were: (.1) Make a review of your life. Isolate one'incident where you had to make a radical decision. How did you resolve it? (2) What has been your experience of God? How has your prayer life devel-oped over the years? (3) What significant things have happened to yot] since our last meeting? Relate an incident of injustice you have experi-enced. How did you handle it? Rather than further describing the mechanics of the prayer-cluster ex-perience, I prefer now to become more personal and isolate three major movements I saw take place. The most singular and overarching move-ment that tied the sessions together was what I would call spiritual inti- Clustering macy, which John Dunne describes as "the heart's desire." 'I had not expected that this would happen, and so it came as a surprise a grace. I was led into the most secret chambers of my brothers' minds and hearts--places that had hitherto been in darkness and inaccessible to oth-ers. To be drawn into a brother's faith experience; to walk with him as he tells me, in language uncluttered by grammatical rubrics, about his personal history--to be drawn into such an intimate circle was to become a witness to how his journey shaped, and molded him. It was to become a companion, a friend, a brother, who has been made aware and has made him aware of the sacredness of his history. He would no longer be alone to those to whom he had opened a clearing where the heart spoke without caution or~embarrassment. Released from the fenced area of private prayer and buried thoughts, each brother opened up the land, scape of his soul, where what was once unspoken, silent, became sto-ries that were, in the words of John Shea, "witnesses to grace, ~tutter-ing accounts, at times,,of,the God whose ways are unknown to us." And after each account, there was a zone of silence more reverent and expec-tant than the hushed, silence that follows upon the last plucked strings of Segovia's guitar. And thus it was that each brother, within the intimate circle of fra-ternal shari.ng, was able to speak without fear,about those things in his life he believed in, knowing that he could do this becau_se he had the sup~ port and trust of his listeners. This spiritual intimacy led to the second movement: a new sense of ideiatity. Each brother spoke in,what Robert Bella calls the "language of the heart," where one is caught up in the restless, flux of thought un-tethered by grammatical ,rubrics. When one heart speaks and another lis-tens, each is .drawn closer together in the bonds of fellowship. The ex-perience of spiritual intimacy made each ,brother feel he was participating in a fellowship in which his identity as a person and a brother was re-captured, maybe even rediscovered. When we were drawn into the feeling level of the brothers as they told their story, there was a shift that brought all the hearers into one com-mon community with common roots. What was experienced was the joy of belonging, with the discovery that "joy is deeper than agony" (Nietzsche). This kind of interchange is what J. A. Appleyard, S.J., would call "agonistic" in the "best sense of the word: it struggles to articulate primary experience, and in doing so it creates an intersUbjec-tive reality, sets relationships of cordialit~y and professionalism on a new basis of experienced faith." Through this deep experience of sharing 1~14 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 their faith, the. brothers broke through the polite slogans by which they once related and placed their newly found relationship on a personal level where their faith journeys converged towards the two poles necessary for a humanly growth-producing state: a deep relationship with God and a deep feeling of brotherhood. This senSe of personal and communal identity, this joy of belong-ing, is not something entirely emotional. It is something more than that. Its merit is that it drew the group into the beguiling and dreaming air of what brotherhood can become, where brother relates to brother. As Bishop Tutu once wrote, "You blossom among those who keep affirm-ing." The third movement was the awareness on the part of the brothers that this experience of spiritual intimacy and the rediscovery of their iden-tity' as brothers was not done within a vacuum, but was fashioned from the agenda of the world from which they temporarily withdrew. If one listened closely to their stories, one became acutely conscious that the brothers came to the cluster to gain strength and support to become even more prayerful men of faith who want to'develop a spirituality for jus-tice and equality which is nonviolent, hopeful, courageous, and collabo-rative. They came from their deep involvement in such ministries as: chemical dependency; professional involvement in heavy ethical and medi-cal questions; inner-city and upper-level-income schools; directors of re-newal programs for clergy and religious; organizers of immigrants from Central America. Against this varied background, they spoke of their call and their efforts toward a radical commitment to be voices for the voice-less, prophets in today's Church and world. They spoke of how they might effectively be involved in the women's movement and how they could be brother to them in their struggles; of the issues and the injus-tices which cry out for their voice; of how they might clarify and articu-late a response to the needs of the Church and of society; of how they can speak out and act individually and collectively regarding specific in-justices they see within the Church; of.how they might be able to speak out about the clericalism within the Church and religious orders; of how they can instill in students values opposed to a consumer society and a vision of the universality of the human family. Clustering, then, has been for the brothers a powerful force for sustaining them.in their involvement in the issues paramount in our society and Church. Without this aware-ness, they realize, the clusters could become a cozy and self-~fulfilling affair, hardly any different from social gatherings or an evening of ca-maraderie. ., ~, Clustering What has been the effect of these clusters on the membership? The question is best answered by the provincial who initiated the effort. In a very recent letter, he wrote as follows: "It is clearly evident that the Lord has been blessing us in a particular way over these last years. Our numbers may be decreasing and most of us may be aging; still we are at a depth of commitment and a level of true fraternal sharing that I per-sonally had never experienced before in my years as a Xaverian. I have lived over forty years of very happy times--of real mutual fraternal as-sistance and good-natured camaraderie. However, it is, I believe, only in these later years that we have begun to share what is deepest in our lives, in our thoughts and feelings. It is only recently that we have be-gun to share what happens to us in our prayers, to open ourselves to each other at the depths of our intimate private prayer. The mutual understand-ing, encouragement, and joy that this. sharing has produced in us is evi-dent every time we gather together: it is vibrant, palpable, and promotes further joy. It is true spiritual happiness, a real spiritual consolation." The Sanctuary Lamp Amid the silence of the night the waxen sentinels do not their vigil keep but one lone beacon stirs the midnight air. The flame, so silent her voice yet so dauntless the strength gathered in the surgings of light defying darkness. How hidden the strain of solitude's demands to give with gentle grace life's unseen gift of gold while others bask in daylight's sweet caress. Barbara Ann Opfer 2027 Campbell, B-8 Sandusky, Ohio 44870 TheMirror in the Field Joseph A. Tetlow, S.J. . , Father Tetlow has worked in the religious formation of junior religious and of theol-ogy students. He is currently spiritual director to the cle~rgy of th, e Diocese of Aus-tin, facilitator of the spirituality program in the Central Texas Pastoral Centel, and tertian director of~the New Orleans Province of the Soc'iety 6f Jesus. He liveg at Xavier Hall; 907 Lydia Street; Austin, Texas 78702. Fvery literate American can rattle off the list of major flaws in the Ameri-can psyche: workaholism, negative self-image, inability to make com-mitments, perfectionism, and so on. We absorb the list from psycho-babble, but we do not accept that these flaw~':are mere personality quirks, "just the way we are." On the contrary, we have the vague but persis-tent sense that not being able not to work, or living continually down on self, or failing in seriously made commitments, and so on, represents some kind of moral or religious wrong. W6' do not, however, know the name of the wrong. I make an attempt here to name that wrong and to diagnose the spiri-tual sickness lurking under workaholism and the rest. Why do business-men who really trust God nonetheless work themselves into coronary care? Why do mature Christians feel that'their prayer is trivial because they do not focus on divine things the way a computer focuses on its data? How can a woman go through a long preparation, soberly take mar-riage vows, and walk away from her Spouse two years later? What would make holy old religious consider themselves worthless? I will contend, first, that a single, serious spiritual failing commonly underlies these spiritual sicknesses. The failing is that we do not believe in and attend to the passionate love of God continually creating each hu-man self. Very likely, many have not even made an adult commitment to a principal foundational truth of revelation: God continues at every mo- 816 The Mirror in the Field ment the Creator even of the free human self. I will argue, secondly, that we have honorable reasons for finding it hard to keep this truth in mind. I will list five. However, thirdly, even if our reasons are honorable, we suffer a good deal because of this unmindfulness. Specifically, we suffer a syn-drome of problems that constantly show 'up in spiritual direction and re-treats, beginning with the perfectionism, negative self-imaging, and workaholism already mentioned and including others. I will list another five that I have observed. These problems, I will insist, have specifically psychological moments, but when we escape our psychological suffer-ing from, say, negative self-imaging, we then face a specifically spiri-tual issue of appropriate self-love. It is the root spiritual problem I am interested in here. To analyze it, fourthly, I. will return to and expand on my first point. For I find the root of this whole range of problems in our refusal to accept God's crea-tive loving not in the abstract (we all give notional assent to God the Crea-tor every Sunday), but in the concrete. I mean that we reject God's cre-ating when we choose to dislike, hate, or repudiate the concrete gifts that I am given and .the whole gift that I am. This radical refusal strains or even breaks an appropriate relationship with the self and with God. Finally, I will suggest that in some measure the cure for all of these problems lies in a wholehearted, living yes to the concrete realities in my history, in my life, and in the self that emerges within them. Forgetting the Constantly Creating God. As children we answered the question "Who made me?" with the belief ~'God made me." Now adults, we need to know that the question cannot read who made, but who is making me. l~or we know that it is not the case that G~)d made me in an historical event done with and over. It is the case that God, who is at every moment Maker, keeps on making me. In the fullest sense, my Maker keeps~3n shaping me as a human per-son and as a self. As a child I imagihed that God creates the w,ay rain fills a. vessel" It rains. The rain fills the vessel. The rain stops. The vessel remains filled. So God made me and now I am. This is an infantile conviction we need to grow out of. If I choose adult belief, I must imagine that God creates the way the sun illumines a mirror standing in a field. The sun's light fills the mirror and the mirror shines back. Did the sun stop. shin-ing, the mirror would go blank; as long as the sun shines, the mirror it-self radiates, light. So, as long as God's creating love burns in me, I am coming to be: Did he stop loving me right now--per impossibile, we like Review for Religious, November-December 1988 to think--I would stop right now coming to be. I would go blank. Why go back over these simple truths? Most feel that, put this baldly, they are too obvious to need saying. Indeed they are obvious, so obvious that we let them fade from functional beliefs to mere formali-ties in our faith-life. For God is so faithful and steadfast that we simply and unreflectively take for granted, not only his love, but even more his creating. Indeed, when men and women turn to God today (as at the be-ginning of a retreat, or in the middle of a life crisis), we gladly accept our divine parent cherishing us and we find deep consolation.and mean-ing in the Lord of all things loving us personally. We are by no means so quick to know our God as our constantly acting, all-powerful creator. I do not mean that the indifferent and sinful among us forget God creating. My experience in spiritual direction and retreat-giving leads me to contend that even people who pray regularly live unmindful of God's actiTe creating. Many who make the thirty-day lgnatian Exercises learn at the beginning to bask in God's steadfast love for them, but never ac-quiesce in the principal foundational truth: that what God wants must pene-trate my whole life and my whole self simply because God the Origin keeps on as the First Maker even of the human self as I keep emerging. We have learned in recent decades to take comfort in the thought that I am not yet complete, not yet finished; but we limit the meaning of that to not being finished making my own self, not mindful of the Other who has not yet finished, either. Perhaps we are not mindful of God's making because we get con-founded by trying to figure out how God's freedom and my personal free-dom fit together. We do indeed face some tremendous Speculative diffi-culties in fitting together human and divine freedom, and some people may suffer spiritual problems because of their speculations. But I have only very rarely met the person who labors under a kind of Luciferian aloneness before God, strapped into spiritual inertia by metaphysical co-nundrums. Most commonly, people live unmindful of God creating for deeply personal and experiential reasons, rooted in our current perception of our self and in our appreciation (or lack of it) of our concrete, per-sonal gifts. Honorable Reasons We are not to believe, however, that we fail to live mindful of the passionately making God from dishonest anger or sinful defiance~ On the contrary, I believe that we fail for several honorable reasons. The first, I think, comes from the way we now perceive the self. John Donne has argued that in the twentieth century we think of the self The Mirror in the Field as a reality that each of us brings forth. I am producing, I am making, myself. Our conviction sh6ws up in the way we talk: I have to do my own thing. I gotta be me. I have to be true to myself. I want to be authen-tic. In earlier ages people perceived the self differently. For instance, when Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord," she was perceiving her "self" as the sum total of her human experience. When she said, "The Lord has done great things in me," she was not talking about her little life right then. She was talking about the entire range of her little life history, all of the beginning, middle, and end. When Jesus asked, "What would a man gain if he got the whole world and lost his self?" he was not making an obscure point about some mysterious essence; he was making an obvious point about the man's entire life, his whole his-tory, his full being. Everyone can understand the point that nothing could reward a man for trashing that. We do not think that way. When we talk about our self, we .are talk-ing about something much more circumscribed, and still in process. We feel engaged in that process in every one of our initiatives and responses. We sense that we are bringing forth who I am moment by moment out of our experience, out of our history. So where does God fit in? We find it much easier to think of God as the Maker of things that are finished, and the Maker of things of which I am not the maker. We find it diffi-cult to keep in touch with the God who keeps engaged in making my whole self. The second reason why we find it: hard to keep mindful of this pas-sionately creating Love in us comes out of our relatively new knowledge of depth psychology. We can easily believe, as any child might, that God once created a self whole and intact, on whom others subsequently wreaked havoc. But we find it hard to believe two things: that God could create a self hag-ridden by an unconscious full of horrors and an id ooz-ing unresolved conflicts. And then, that God could actively continue cre-ating a self that learns lusts, neuroses, compulsions, phobias, and addic-tions before it is intelligently free or while it must choose under ruinous constraints. Does God make the self that craves alcohol which destroys that self? In what way can God be responsible for a self compelled to break out in shingles instead of breaking out of an insufferable situation? How is any god involved in creating that self? How could God be creat-ing a lesbian whose unchosen, vehement sexual desires clash shatteringly with her own cherished conscience? Both speculatively and experien-tially, we have trouble finding God's creating love inside the post- 820 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 Freudian human personality. Thirdly, I think that we find it hard t~ believe that God actively shapes the self because we are so aware of sin structured into our world and of our own introjection of those structured sins. Unavoidably in my society, I feel certain racial prejudices. I came to understand only as an adult how much I am driven b~ sexism. Again with my society, I am com-ing to comprehend the blindnesses of ageism. Ev.ery day, we Americans feel the weight of the world's wealth, which so inequitably divides hu-mankind. Thus, in vague but poignant ways, we feel responsible for struc-tured sin and guilty for our part in it; and yet we feel quite helpless to change things. Why would a good God be creating oa feckless, con-founded self like mine? Fourthly, we face this business of a negative self-image. I find this ugly self-disvaluing hard to define or describe, but great numbers of pop-psychology books suggest that it is very strong. In books like Theodore Isaac Rubin's Compassion and Self-Hate and M. Scott Peck's People of the Lie, psychiatrists contend that distrust and despising of the self poi-sons the American psyche the way radioactive wastes poison: AmeriCan watertables. And noting the tide of seminars on assertiveness and self-improvement and all the Esalen Institutes around, we are forced to con-clude that something is going on in the self-evaluation of postmodern hu-mankind, and it is not positive. We are all members of David Riesman's "lonely crowd." Just recently we celebrated an anniversary and listened again to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." We resonated again to the Beatles' famous line: "All the lonely people, where do they all come from?" Indeed; where do they come from? We find it hard to keep mindful that all these listless folk are the current achievement of a pas-sionately loving God. Fifthly and finally, our difficulties are intensified hourly by the ad-vertisers and taste-makers. They persuade us of the self that we "ought" to,be. During the 1930s, practitioners came to believe that advertising could go far beyond merely extolling the virtues of a product. They de-cided that real advertising should make people feel that we truly need what is being advertised, that we cannot hope to live as fulfilled persons unless we are supported by that product. Ever since, that is how adver-tising works~---and it really does work--teaching us to feel out of it, apart~ not fulfilled, without an infinite number of products and services. Since we are effectively made to feel the need of something new just about every week~ we ~.ever can come to feel that we really belong, are included, are coming to fulfillment. So where is the passionately loving The Mirror in the Field God who is said to be at the core of my--empty-feeling, craving-to-be-filled-- self? There are the five honorable reasons why we find it difficult to stay mindful of God creating us right now and to live attuned to the passion, ate love of God burning in our hearts. Of course, even~if theseoreasons are honorable, they do not make it impossible for us to be responsible for our relationships to our self and to our God. The Sin of Our Age And even if they are honorable reasons, we suffer on account of them. We might have good reason for runn~ing' a car off the road, and still fracture our skull. For these five fractured insight~ into the self give us a badly distorted vision of it and make it easy for us to suffer an inap-propriate self-lov6. That inappropriate self-love, I believe, is the root sin of our age and it produces the whole syndrome of spiritual problems that I will come to i'n the next set of paragraphs. We stand under the commandment "Love your neighbor as your-self." We are thereby under a spiritual obligatioh of ultimate conse-quence,~ since the Last Judgmerit will be made in terms of how well w~ have loved our neighbor. And yet we pay almost no attention to that as yourself and we do not know how to love ourselves well. We give our-selves to many fake wa'ys: self-indulgence in drugs and'sensuous living, the narcissisms of body-building and dieting and fashion, the willful search for the perfect mate, and so ow. But Christlike self-love, or wise and fully human self-love? We hardly ~omprehend what it is: : And yet the spiritual success of appropriate self-love has been de-scribed for us iri wh'ole shelves of books. Their distilled wisdom can be put this way: Appropriate self-love begins in approving and growing to like the divine good in myself--the gifts that I have and the gift that0I am. I approve of my gifts in the concrete, not in the abstract, so that I enjoy (as possible instances) my yen to bevice-president or my daily three-mile run or my .hit-and-miss spelling, and I like the self underly-ing all ttiat. I approve of my gifts in ~the actual contexts of my living, both time and place. In particular; I approve the concrete qualities about myself and realities in my life over which I never did have ~ say, which began and perhaps remain outside my personal, free control. So I might have to approve of having Hispanic parents or growing up in Chicago or being male. Every one of us begins appropriate self-love .with this yes. Martin Luther King did not choose to have a minister for a father, or to grow up in the tradition of American black preaching. Geraldine Ferraro did ~122 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 not choose to be born a woman with a swift, articulate intelligence at a time when such a woman could be invited to enter public life. John F. Kennedy did not choose to be born Irish-American Catholic, of ambi-tious and effective parents. Each of these three faced a series of radical choices that added up to saying yes to their concrete gifts, Had King re-pudiated his tradition of preaching, he could have accomplished little. Had Ferraro feared her intelligence, she could not have made history. Had Kennedy ignored his parents, he might well have spent his life in a dinghy off Hyannis Port collecting sunburn. Certainly, he could not have been elected the first Catholic president. God creates and keeps creating each of us in this and that concre-teness, passionately loving us into this human limitation and that particu-lar share of his infinite self. Whai tasks fall to me, then? First of all, the task of loving myself. But if I love myself, then I love a concrete self, a self that God now creates and now loves into being as I am. Plainly, I cannot love what about me is unlovable--my sins and ugly failings. But neither can I allow my sins and failings to make me hate or even dis-like the self that commits them. (Parenthetically, within this discussion the distinction between love and like cannot separate what.is one thing, and covers a rotten lie.) For if I have learned anything at all from the Word of God, I have learned that God has chosen beforehand to love me, a sin-filled self. If I choose to despise and repudiate what God loves, do I not try to make myself better than God? To look at my own case, then, I had to approve of, appreciate, and grow to like an American born as the Great Depression began, of par-ents utterly impoverished by that cataclysm. I had to come to say yes to much else: male and first child; father a champion athlete and mother lu-minously religious; Southern boy and raised in New Orleans with its Mardi Gras mentality; Catholic and nephew of a Jesuit metaphysician. I had learned to hate "Japs" and to admire soldiers when only a child, and also to consider blacks lazy and Protestants strange. I grew in sex-ual orientation, too, before choosing, and in a hankering for books, in a home where mother and father remained lifelong lovers and all the adults were readers. Of course, I have made many choices that modify all that. But none of those choices was wise that did not begin where each of us must be-gin. First to say yes, I am a gift, and then to say yes in the concrete to each of the gifts that I am. Am I tall? Thank God I am tall. Am I short? That is my gift. If I am angry at standing short--at whom am I angry? Who keeps making me short? If I cannot believe that God wants me The Mirror in the Field / 823 short, then I have made my faith fall short, and I will have to believe in a mythical The Force or in Carl Sagan's demiurge, Chance. Again, am I very, very bright? Would I rather not be very, very bright, °and do I talk and act like a dolt to veil my brightness? Whom am I insulting then, but the One who keeps making me very, very bright? Tile most ba_sic truth emerges: In the most radical ways, I am not my own maker. I.~never was and am not now. We all know Isaiah 45:9: "Does the clay say to its fashioner, 'What are you making?' " But we tend to forget, deny, or repudiate the truth that we are still on the wheel and the Potter's hands are still shaping us. "Does the pot say to the pot-ter, 'You have no skill?' " Well, each of us, insofar as we do not say yes to the gifts that we have and are, are telling our Potter that he does not know what he is doing. We enact this repudiation in a number of ways, but we suffer one spiritual illness from the repudiation itself, no matter how we act it out. When any of us rejects God's passionate love, we diminish joy in our lives. Thomas Aquinas felt that anyone who rancorously repudiated God's concrete gifts in the self would lose all spiritual joy. For we do not make our joy; we find it. Joy is like the brilliance of the sun. I al-ways think of it as whet happens to a mirror when it faces towards the sun. SUddenly the sun's light fills the mirror and in instant consequences the mirror radiates abrilliance all around. In the same way, God's pas-sionate loving continually flows in us or we would not be, and the first consequence of saying yes to God's concrete gifting is radiant joy. How the Refusal Branches Out In this atmosphere of diminished joy, the radical failure or refusal to approve of my concrete gifts as comihg from God commonly gives rise to several gpiritual problems. How do I live if I do not feel that I have all that I need or really want? Or take a worse case: Suppose that I live afraid that I do not have the gifts I need, that I am spiritually in-adequate and just not "good enough." Or worst of all: Suppose that I am angry at life and~at God over concrete realities in my life. How would I show that? How would I live that out? I would suggest the following ways. Each way increases in intensity as a person goes from lack of trust in, to.fear of, and finally to disgust with his or her concrete gifts and self. First: laziness. Any of several causes may underlie a given person's laziness. But if people do not feel themselves worth much, or worthy of anything special, they might well act that out by doing little or nothing. Thus, if a high school girl acts lazy in algebra class, she almost certainly 824 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 believes that, being a girl, she could learn little"about it. And the sin-cere and hard-working parish priest who never gets to the prayer he truly would like to make almost surely feels unequal to the'requirements of prayer or unfit to profit from it. Lazy people accomplish nothing because they try nothing; and they try nothing because they. live' with the sense of having no adequate or relevant resources within themselves. Not~ here that some might appreciate tli~eir own personal gifts but think little of the good things of the earth or"Of human artifice. Some, for instffnce, do not see gifts in food and housing. They have all they need and want, but they take it'all for graiited, implicitly, declaring it slight and unimportant. Conseque'ntly, they simply do not feel the hu-man weight of the hunger and homelessness all around them. They are simply lazy in these matters of justice, and that laziness roots deeply in their despising the good things of the e~arth. Second: ineffectualness. If la~zy people attempt nb~t~ing, ineffectual people attempt things but accomplish nothing. They do n6t trust their own gifts enough to create, to produce, to bring forth. I kne~, an artist onEe, a~ European. 'ffho brought all kinds of material into his studio but put nothing out of it. He fooled around wit~ a~t I~ut 'made. little or ~oth-iflg. As it turned out, I~E lived ineffectuhl because he feared that his gifts as an artist had unbreakable ties'to his sexual orientation. He feared that being a successful artist would n.e~essarily'elicit~plJblicly his hcimosexu-ality, which he fehred and hated. More accurately, he hated himself for having homosexual feelings. After he came to live easy and chastely within his sexual orientation, he began producing the art work o~f which he had all alpng been ~capable. And most of us know devout Christians who get on.e spiritual book after another from thei~ Spiritual Book Club and never~ get beyond a. few pages in any of them. Many people ~dopt this way.0f living out their inadequate se!~f-lov~ or their self-loathing ineffectualness who~cannot be on time, or get an article,finished, or per-forum their jobs the way their talents and .intelligence pl~ainly allow. ,Third: negative self-image. So many suffer this~that it;can reason-ably be called the most common, psychological suffering in our culture. Sometimes it see~s as though the whole population were seeking help tow~ard self-affirmation in institutes, workshops, and popular paperback books with titles like Be Your Own Best Friend. Psychologists are be-ginning to see the roots of most addic.tions and compulsions in self-hatred. ~ Note carefully, however, that this psychological problem can and probably does mask a spiritual problem. Once I have outgrown my in- The Mirror in the Field fantile self-distrust or my adolescent self-loathing, and have come to an adult self-possession and self-approval, I am then free in facing ,relig-ious and spiritu~il reality. Can I--who have found it so easy to feel down on myself--give active approval to my whole history, to the life I now lead, and to myself as God has been and continues to shape me? Thus the problem of a negative self-image transmutes from a psychological problem to a spiritual problem. What do I personally believe about God's creating me? DQ.I feel hope about myself and abgut humankind even in the rush~and torrent of our limitations ands failures? Do I .like the person. God is making me? Can I rejoice in the personalities who burrow into my.eg .o:--or do I insist on more "impr~essivei' friends? Can I approve of and rejoice in those persons whom God has given me to live with and work with? and in "the vast throng of. people" on earth? Probably all of us know some psychologically balanced people who deliberately choose to dislike¢ reject, or despise their history, life, and self. I know'one woman who periodically feels the need to denounce in Savage terms the dedicated women who taught her in grade school. We all know ~men who consider their (quite ordinary and honorable) jobs a degradation. Some see flaws, in the self and vaguely dislike the whole self as a consequen6e--flaws as trivial as fat'hips or shyness or a quick lip. A woman blurted out recently, "I hate myself when I do that." The "that" was a genuinely trivial failing, but she spoke a weighty truth: She does indeed hate herself, and regularly takes the occasion of trivial failing to reassert her hatred. Some even see strengths in the self and hate the strengths and, in them, ,the self. I remember one man feeling,bad about himself becausehe, could "only run three miles a day," and he had passed fifty. The. truth.is that a "negative~seif-image" is one dis, guise that we borrow from our culture in Order to mask our distrust or disapproval of how and what.God is.~.creating us. It is a commonplace'.among us that most of. us find it hard to acknowl-edge our virtues and our strengths. We ,also find it easy to get depressed by our failings. I often.suggest for a period of prayer at the beginning of a retreat the exercise of going over'personal gifts of every .kind, pre-cisely to say yes to God creating me. I find the vast majority of re-treatants unable to stay with this exercise. Why is this? Are these lapses of appropriate self-love mere, ly "psychological" in the sense,that they function less than consciously in the personality? I believe that they are more than that. I believe that they grow from an ongoing option or deci-sion: "I am not much. I am not very good. ! am a nothing." This fun-damental option fractures or even ruptures a person's relationship with Review for Religious, November-December 1988 the self and with the Maker.of the self. It is an offense against, the love of God concretely burning in myself. The option can actually become a repudiation of that creating love. I am afraid it did in'the life of a ex-seminarian who had tried all the drugs and all the sex, and who con-cluded several hours of sharing with the despairing remark, "God made me a piece of junk." Fourth: bitterness and rancor. Some prideful and arrogant people lash out bitterly and destructively when they cannot impose their will on events. But others who live bitter and rancorous lives see everything from the underside. On their tongues every taste of life is bitter; in their eyes every living scene unfolds under a shadow. They aggressively scan events and people for material to "bitch" about. ThEy seem to live to heap up more and more evidence that the'ir world and everyone in it are no good. One ex-priest, for instance, offered to the president of his uni-versity this odd praise about a just-completed.building: "Even I can find nothing to complain about." That man had known for decades that he lived a bitter life, and all he would do about it was to wear a mask of sardonic drollery over his emptiness. His friends all connived in his bit-terness, too, laughing at his lunges and unable to name what made him so rancorous. Yet it was plain: he gave himself to disgust at God's lov-ing creating---of his own artistic gifts, of his self, of the motley collec-tion of men and women around him. A recovering alcoholic, a woman whose children have grown and gone, has decided to live without drink, but has also decided to live feel-ing cheated and shortchanged by her disease. She is what Alcoholics Anonymous calls a "dry alcoholic." She bitterly protests'that she can-not take a drink as can nonalcholics. She demands to be able to take a casual drink and hates that she cannot. Her conversation--on whatever topic--roils with rancor. She certainly does not say yes to a self troub-led by her disease. She plainly repudiates that part of herself and dark-ens her whole life with her refusals. But who creates her alcoholic genes? Who makes a gift of each day she lives? Whom does she offend by re-fusing to rejoice in each of her living days-.'? The bitter and rancorous may seem to hate everyone around them, and may indeed do so, But as "char-ity begins at home," so does hatred. Fifth: workaholism. A lot of holy people work Ioiag, hard days out of sense that their own time is precious and their own gifts needed by God's people. They work in inner freedom. A lot of others fling them-selves into some special work because they truly love and exult in what they are doing. But very many people work and work and work and do The Mirror in the Field / 827 nothing else. They cannot not work. Their work makes up their life and their self. They do not have the freedom to take true leisure--to enjoy, as we say very accurately, themselves. The truth is that they do not en-joy their selves. They do even not approve of themselves, except a little bit when they are exhausting themselves at work. Henri Nouwen tells of a priest who would not, could not, take time in his day to be still and pray and who finally came to admit why: "I am afraid of what I will find in myself." Precisely. Real workaholics fear their selves. They keep producing and producingbecause they do not really believe they are worth anything apart from what they produce. One religious who had badly burned her-self out in twelve years of administration asked, "What am I trying to prove?" She was trying to prove what she did not need to prove, but only to accept: "You are precious in my eyes, and I love you" (see Is 54). The mere attempt to prove that I am worthy of God's creating love stands in direct opposition to acknowledging that his love comes first and humbly acceptipg it. Three other ways that we live out inadequate self-love show up often enough to merit mention, and several minor ways can just be listed. Sixth: perfectionism. Some of us continually place impossibly high goals for ourselves, which "proves" how much we think of ourselves. Then, as a matter of course, we fail toreach those goals, and that "proves" that we are not really what we like to think we are but in fact ~ire not worth much. For the perfectionist, nothing ordinary serves; he or she needs to aim only for the perfect. As an instance: A truly fat man in the.South decided that a man like himself, ought to look like a Califor-nia beach boy. So he.set out to diet by eating only one thousand calories a day, a caloric intake unlikely even for a scarecrow. Within seventy-two hours he found himself back to eating a thousand calories before noon, and, of course, to this day he lumbers around no less large. He does, however, feel more convinced than ever that he is weakwilled and worthless. Why cannot this man simply eat more rationally? Many rea-sons operate, perhaps; but one leadifig reason is that he cannot see him-self simply as a normally rational person. He demands that his mind have despotic sway over his whole self and particularly over his appetite for food. He demands that the physical shape that would emerge from the fat resemble--not an ordinary, regular-sized American male moving to the downside of middle age--but a bronze statue of Hercules by Phidias. He will be perfect! The tr.uth is that with that demand he covers a fear that he can have no kind of reasonable sway over his self and his appe- Review for Religious, November-December 1988 tites. He hides that self-deprecating belief under a cover of perfection-ism. A lot of good,'praying people do the same. One mature and experi-enced nun who ha~l pray~ faithfrilly for years could not shake the feel-ing that'her prayer was "not very good." Her prayer was fine, in my opinioh; what needed spiritual insight and God's gracing was her demand that she pray like Teresa of Avila. This woman had not really been will-ing to approve wholeheartedly her own way of praying, and that unwill-ingness by itself had kept her off center and vaguely unhappy for years. Seventh: lust for experience. We need to note first that~today Ameri-cans place, tremendous trust ih our own experiences and feel keen dis-trust of any "truth" not-arrived at experientially. Further, we can be per-suaded rather readily to try anything, from a drink' or a drug to a new kind of prayer. We tend to subscribe to the pseudomoral dictum that, ~if you are able to, then yowought to expei'ience everything. We :are all in some measure like the'New York woman in analysis who reported her exhaustion to her doctor--too much sex, drugs, dancing, eating,° not enough sleep. The doctor asked her why she' did it,~and the woman bolted up and blurted out, "You mean I don't have to do everything I want to do?" She was in analysis because she was not doing what she wanted to do, but.,what her social group made her feel she ought to want to do. She felt ~compelled to experience whatever the group moved into. 'That compulsivity and obsessiveness grows out of an empty~ center. She did not really know what she, herself, wanted todo in,the depths of her.self; she feared the depths of her self. ~, Many of us give ourselves to experiences that diminish our human dignity or diminish our freedom, as~did the woman in analysis. I know. one couple whose children, now beginning to move into their own ca-reers, have. submitted to eve~ry kind of religious :experience, from CCD at home to charismatic~weekends and the permanent diaconate, because the parents hankered after spiritual"experience, not because the children required anything. Some Catholics roam from liturgy to liturgy,oseeking the ritual that,w.ill fill their "needs"~as though Sunday Mass does not rise out of fullness, 'bUt fills an emptiness. In them, actually, it is made to, occasionally and briefly. Eighth: inability to make commitments. Why have so many failed to make firm, long-range commitments? Among the many reasons, Cas-sian pointed out one very basic reason when he described the gyrovagus, the wandering monk who always came to feel that the'monastery over the next.~hill had a better religious life than the monastery he.live~t in. The Mirror in the Field / 829 So he wandered to the next and the next monastery, hoping to become a better monk. Fundamentally, the monk's problem lies not in his mon-astery; his problem lies in his own self. He does not like the monk he is. He does not approve of the monk he is. Or if he does, he does not want to grow into the man that this monastery, with these monks, at this time, will shape him into. So he moves on again and again, unable to make the crucial permanent commitment. A young Texan turned into a living gyrovagus when he went from a diocesan seminary to a congregation's novitiate to taking vows in an order and then to another diocesan seminary. His disapproval of the way he lived in those places seemed to be of those "monasteries"; actually, it reached deep into his own self. I would not expect ordination to fill his emptiness, and if he does accept ordination, his parishes (a succes-sion of them, surely) will have an impossible time making him under-stand that they appreciate him. Another example of the inability to make lasting commitments: A gifted psychological therapist changed cities several times and kept ac-quiring new skills. He even absorbed thorough training in spirituality and spiritual direction. When he was about thirty-five and weary of starting over again and again, he came to understand that he had never really felt the weight ,and value of his very considerable talents. As he let himself appreciate them withoutguilt, and particularly as he consciously built friendships with highly intelligent and success'ful peers, he felt more and more grateful for his own gifts and freer to rejoice in using them with-out having to feel that he was required to. He also felt himself more and more deeply committed--to his profession, to his faith, to his friends, and to the city where he had settled. Then there is the marriage commitment. We can leave aside cases of psychological dysfunctioning, like the California twenty-year-old who left his often drugged wife three months to the day after the church wed-ding, muttering that he had not known whom he was marrying. He had known, actually, and so had his friends and his parents. His actual spiri-tual problem had been that he had not known that he was punishing him-self by marrying her. Among the sane and whole, every spouse faces bone-deep challenges in living out the marriage commitment. For, once married, each feels invited to be a new person by union and communion with this special spouse who invites him or her. She will at times ask herself vehemently, "Why did I ever marry him?" At those times she will be feeling the stress of still becoming and changing in ways intimate to her marriage that she cannot control. She cannot design to make her Review for Religious, November-December 1988 spouse another person than he is, even though as he is he will give shape to herself. If she truly loves herself as a married woman, she will wel-come those new ways of becoming and growing along with him, saying her yes to her emerging self. In the same way, if a husband deeply ap-proves of himself as husband and likes the man who is this woman's hus-band, he will hardly insulate himself from the summons to grow and change that emanate from this woman as she lives and becomes, even though he has no mastery over the ways he feels summoned to grow and inexorably will at times keenly resent them. So monk and professional and married person all either say yes to an emerging self whose emergence none controls all alone, or say no. Our primordial task as creatures remains intact in and through all our free decisions: to praise God for what we are becoming, reverence his creat-ing, and serve him by following where the Spirit of Life leads us--in the concrete. To this list of eight larger flawed realizations of self-love, various writers add other specific ones. Cassian adds monkish indolence, acedia. St. Thomas adds garrulity, prying curiosity, and true malice. He also lists religious diffidence, which means the refusal to grow in the interior life. Could he speak right now, he might add integralism to that, because the rock-bound conservative often clings to externals like Latin rites or neoscholastic formulations to defend himself against a deep fear that his own faith-commitment and believing would not stand up to current chal-lenges. Some centuries later SCren Kierkegaard explored the "despair from weakness" of those who finally cannot let themselves trust the self that God is creating in them. In their turns, Josef Pieper dwells on one grave inability of those who do not approve of who God makes them to be: the inability to take true leisure. And Sebastian Moore shows that those who feel unlovable do not love anyone or anything very much. All their desiring is pallid, so consistently that he names their condition a spiritual disease: erosthenia, a flaccidity of passion. This makes an impressive list of spiritual problems: laziness, inef-fectualness, negative self-image, bitterness, workaholism, perfectionism, the insatiable lust for experience, the inability to make lasting commit-ments, and also acedia, garrulity, prying curiosity, malice, integralism, the despair of weakness, the inability to take leisure, and erosthenia. Plainly, they arise from many different life experiences and in varied life circumstances. Just as plainly, they have many causes and motivations. But in our own day and time, they all readily grow as it were in vitro, from a hollow self, flooded with the nourishing medium of pitiful self- The Mirror in the Field / 831 disapproval or arrogant self-hatred. This unwillingness to accept the self I am coming to be, which can ripen into a disgust with who I am and even a resentful hatred of myself, very possibly makes up the deepest root of sin in our day and time. The Wholehearted Life In the face of such a list of spiritual problems, any talk about solu-tions would show extravagant optimism. Fortunately, I am not discuss-ing here the solutions of many problems, but the escape from or avoid-ance of a single problem: the radical spiritual one of refusing to accept, in concrete particulars, whom God is making me. But even then I intend not to list all the saving activities we might throw ourselves into to solve that single problem, because that would tend to confirm the very mis-taken conviction that underlies the problem, that our own activity comes first in our salvation. Instead, in this last section, I will sketch briefly and from living mod-els how those people live who are very successfully avoiding or escap-ing this foundational problem. I experience them as, and name them, wholehearted. Not that their hearts beat totally integral and without the murmur of human flaws and failings. Rather, they live out of their whole hearts--their selves--just as they find them in this minute. The whole-hearted might twang like an old player piano, but with every note and chord they give God and the world around them all the music they can pour out. I will speak first about the inner life of the wholehearted and then about its external manifestations. What goes on in their spirit from day to day? First, they say yes to this day, to the gift of it and the gifts in it. They not only "live in the present moment"; they approve of the present moment as of a gift. And in that yes they are approving of their personal history and the life they now lead. More, they choose to live glad to be what they now are and to be doing what they are doing (unless, of course, they have come to a time of decision, which they will perceive more as opportunity than as termination). When they think larger, they do not feel guilty about the plenty and the privilege in which they live. To start, they feel grateful for the earth, and for humankind, and for the universe. They feel desires of many kinds, some of them strong. Among them all, they try to keep their de-sire for God in Christ in first place. For the rest of their desires, they take responsibility as well as they can, enacting those they think authentic Review for Religious, November-December 1988 with courage and with equal courage suppressing those they recognize as drawn from unworthy sources (the Spirit of Darkness or of unruly flesh). In all desiring, what they want keeps them connected with the peo-ple around them and in some appropriate measure with current, affairs~ All in all, their desiring shapes up into a great desire to make things all right for the world and for every single person now in it; but their hop-ing does not depend on immediate success in the eriterprise. The wholehearted live in appropriate autonomy. As teenagers, for in-stance, still coming to be individuals they depend heavily on peer'opin-ion. As young adults, vindicating their uniqueness; they live carefully independent of "popular opinion;" particularly about the moral cruxes in interpersonal relations. As spouses, they give and take in thorough in-terdependence. All along, precisely because they like themselves, they are able to stabilize affective relationships. This liking of themselves gives rise in them to what is sometimes called a'democratic personality structure. Negatively, this means that their personality is not bound down by one need or drive or ideology. The spiritually wholehearted are not broadly compulsive; on the con-trary, they live and move in relative interior freedom. I do not mean that they never have some dominant desire or great enterprise in their lives. Some live outof a profound, specific desire. Neither do I mean that the wholehearted do not sin, ev.en seriously. I have known some who did. They sinned wholeheartedly, and if they repented, they repented whole-heartedly-- hating rather the thing they did than the one who did it. A married man high in a bloated corporation gave himself a year or two of lascivious fornication. When he heard the Spirit (his words) summon him back, he submitted himself to astonishing inconveniences and physi-cal discomforts suggested to him as (a long) penance. Put positively, all of the wholehearted can hold some priority and or-dering in what they want to get accomplished, gladly getting at one goal while postponing others without guilt. They can also respond readily to surprise demands, able to set aside their own agenda when they see that as appropriate and not feeling put upon about it. We need to take care here. In my experience, some of us suffer from one or other addiction or compulsion (neatnik, chocolate maniac, or some less acceptable culturally) and yet live truly wholehearted lives. This is a mystery to me, that we can find ourselves broken and power-less to heal the break and yet lead wonderfully wholehearted lives. I take this as truly suffering from the Original Sin and from all those sins vis-ited .upon us without our approval or connivance, or with our forced co- The Mirror in the Field / 833 operation, by alcoholic parents, sexually addicted elders, neurotic supe-riors, viciously selfish peers, and on and on. Somehow we are sum-moned within the pockmarked life that all of us lead to give our yes to God's passionate loving in us. I do not see that holiness is wholeness. Most of us find ourselves with neuroses, mild or severe, temporary or lifelong. If we can, for all that, love what we find and the One who is making it, then we have begun to live holy lives. There is much more to this, but we cannot ignore addictions and com-pulsions and the yes that those of us who suffer them must say to the self that God is making us. For very many of us find ourselves in this excru-ciating condition. All of us need to remember that at the core of every addicted and every compulsive self--the phobic, the masturbator, the child-beater, even the rapist--the passionate loving of God burns on crea-tively. But each of them stands on the brink of an apparently impassable chasm. For no one can be in touch with that creating love who does not love the self within whom it burns, and such a staggering number of us are taught, subtly.and powerfully and with enormous precision, to dis-like or to hate ourselves. The fact is, social psychologists are beginning to discover, addictions and compulsions normally grow out of an inade-quate appreciation of the self or out of self-hatred. Then how are com~ pulsive people or addicts to think of this? The way all of us think: As I say my yes to God's creating love, I will know that I am humbly truth-ful and wholehearted when I rejoice even while I suffer what I am and what is. I am heroically wholehearted when I can set aside any demand on my self that I myself or any other persons or things be as I think they "ought" to be and can take all as I find it. We all do what Paul did af-ter he had prayed three times and the thorn still rankled. The thorn just kept rankling, and Paul just kept on sinning (by his own testimony); but we have no evidence that he got down on himself for that or any other reason. Paul certainly knew his worth, and that is a great, great virtue. This brings me, second, to the ways a wholehearted yes to the Lord manifests itself externally. The first sign is joy. Let the light bulb accept electric current. In-stantly it is full of light and instantly it radiates that light to all around. In just that way, the wholehearted radiate joy. Even when they find in-justice and disorder, they are filled rather with a sorrow that leads to com-passion that leads to action--than with a sadness that leads to pity that leads to self-absorption. This joy gives the wholehearted a definite, in-viting presence. They like who they are and therefore feel no need to hide or wear masks. They are simply present, shyly if they are shy, brightly Review for Religious, November-December 1988 if they are bright, brashly if they are young enough. Moreover, the wholehearted live an effective life, by which I mean they make things happen. They live content that God is giving them this or that job or task to do, and simply do it. And at the same time, the wholehearted usually have a lively sense of duty and of obligation. They seem to trust their own consciences, and they clearly trust that God is ordering all things sweetly from end to end. So the wholehearted tend to rejoice that they are required to do something or to omit something. They do not have time to regret what they might miss; they are too busy enjoying what they hit upon. Their attitude toward authority shows itself wholehearted, too. Here is a hugely complex business, but let me just say that any who like who they are and what God is making of the world really perceive the work-ing of authority in the world and actually accept the consequences into themselves. They feel the pull of authority where it actually appears, let-ting it instruct their understanding and warm their motivation. They also sense its absence even when someone is throwing his weight around, and if they conform when pressed by raw power, they do it while maintain-ing their sense of self-worth. As the wholehearted grow more and more mature, they can calibrate more and more subtly the weight of authority and their own response to it. I could list a number of other external signs of a wholehearted yes to God's passionate loving. The wholehearted, for instance, show a true love for creation and prefer to honor their environment. The whole-hearted seem able to show benevolence all around, not threatened by the rich or pressured by the poor, gracious to the bright and to the doltish. They tend to learn compassion early in their lives, and empathy, too. They approve of their culture even while rejecting values in it that con-tradict their own. Speaking of Americans, they live very grateful to be called to life in a rich, free, exuberantly creative land, and they show their gratitude not by badmouthing the nation, but by doing what they can to leave it somewhat better than they found it. But let me end by pointing out a nearly infallible sign of a whole-hearted yes to God's creating love: the wholehearted can take true lei-sure. What is true leisure? I find the experts--Karl Rahner and Josef Pieper, for instance--hard-pressed to define leisure, but they are clear that people at leisure are out from under production goals and rigid work-schedules and that whatever activities they might engage in do not pro-duce food and clothing and other things necessary to human life. Nei-ther do those at true leisure lie in passive numbness, their imaginations The Mirror in the Field / 835 blank and their energies depleted. Rather, they typically play or muse or commune with friends or create. In general, leisure means the free en-actment of our whole humanness simply out of joy that we live--in this or that way, here, in this place, among these folk. We take leisure while all our regular tasks wait to be looked after, feeling sure that One watches while we let them go. We evoke leisure, not theoretically, but from the concrete gifts we choose to act grateful for, sensed as rising from the pas-sionate original gift of God's creating love. Those who pray and wor-ship God take the truest of true leisure. The Last Reflection And those who have thought these thoughts about inappropriate self-loathing and appropriate self-love, and felt all these convictions about saying yes to God's creative love burning in the core of their life and their self, have given themselves to true leisure. In the measure that they feel consoled by them, and in the measure that they feel joy rising through them, they are giving themselves wholeheartedly to the passion-ate love of God burning in the center of their selves. They are mirroring back to him the blazing love he radiates to them and in them. They are becoming the mirror in the field. Standing on a Wooden Bridge It creaks now more than it used to . seems I left myself standing here only to meet me farther on here. The swirling water carries my frail leaf far beyond the viewing point. Refulgent water, flow me forth unto the Son! Barbara Ann Opfer 2027 Campbell, B-8 Sandusky, Ohio 44870 The Addicted/Dependent Minister Thomas D. Noesen, O.P. Father Noesen was a diocesan priest for eleven years before entering the Order of Preachers. He may be addressed at Aquinas Institute; 3642 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. "that our affections kill us not--nor dye" (John Donne) It is no secret that stress and burnout are high among professional minis-ters. Priests, religious, and lay professionals need at times to get out of ministry for their own well-being and to get in touch with their own de-pendencies. Priests are in the top listings of professionals with alcoholic addiction. The present-day minister struggles with human dependencies and addictions which bring persons to a dysfunctional level of service. Henri Nouwen says that we are wounded healers and that sometimes the minister is more wounded than healer. "Physician, heal thyself" is whis-pered by some of the confused congregation, but greater numbers in the assembly empathize with a more human condition. Men and women are getting professional help in residential treatment centers, private coun-seling, and support groups. Dependency and addiction are commonplace for today's ministers. C. S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves says that the problem with ministers is that they treat the people they minister to as "other." This failure is making ministry less workable. The minis-ter need not be a barefoot cobbler. This paper will look at addictions and the minister. (In this text I use the words dependency and addiction interchangeably; this will become more obvious to the reader as the behavioral dynamics are explored.) Granted that we are part of an addiction culture, the minister falls prey to it more often. The men and women in ministry are people-oriented per-sons; some of the most perceptive and insightful members of the popu- 836 The Addicted/Dependent Minister lation are in ministry: They are insightful and perceptive not only of oth-ers and themselves but of life itself. This latter visionary quality can cause much anxiety and insecurity. The primal angst of life's meaning can bring great stress to the ministry professions. Teaching and preach-' ing daily, these people live what many people would only think of at times of birth, death, or personal crisis. This type of stress and iniensity makes ministers prime targets of addiction. The minister is granted trust by many to know their secrets, deepest feelings, and hidden thoughts. Because of intirfi~acy, the minister carries the confidences of hundreds all at one time. It is rather easy for the minister to meet the needs of the oth-ers and to neglect his or her own. Ministers can become victims to their own intensities. Four terms are used in this paper talking of addiction. They are in-dependent, dependent, codependent, and interdependent. Independency and codependency are both unhealthy. The reader needs to know that any-one can be part of all four at once. The healthiest movement is always toward chosen dependency and interdependency. Codependency Many times the minister comes from a codependent background and unknowingly continues the dynamics in ministry. Adult children of al-coholics are common codependents. The traits of codependents are closely connected with the minister. The codependent is: I. usually a very good person, valuable to society, and often ends up in the helping professions. (One study shows 83% of nurses were from alcoholic homes and the oldest children.) Codependents are nice and likeable people. 2. a victim of low self-esteem and self-worth and makes himself or herself indispensable to others. (In counseling, the codependent coun-selor gets angry at the dependent spouse rescuing the addicted spouse. That adds up to three dysfunctional addicts--thi~ two spouses and the counselor.) 3. a good sufferer. These people make "good" Christians, martyrs, and so forth. The unspoken script of the codependent is "I'm good be-cause I suffer so much." 4. the first to volunteer; always wanting (actually needing) to be of service; always wanting it to be noticed that they are exhausted. 5. selfless to the point of hurting himself or herself. Psychosomatic illness is common in the codepeqdent. Life becomes a pain in the anat-omy. There is a need for aspirin, Bufferin, Preparation H, and so forth, in the beginning, and it can build to major medical care over years. Review for Religious, November-December 1988 Thes-~'five points can define a messiah complex in a nonreligious ter-minology. A codependent is anyone out of a dysfunctional home; so this term codependent is generic: an embarrassing spouse, children, extended-family members. Codependency even links emotional disabilities to un-known ancestors. So what is the codependent's payoff? The people with whom the codependent interacts become dependent on the codependent; this way the codependent feels needed. Naming the Addictions/Dependencies Since ministers teach the gospel statement that the ff~uth will set one free, denial of addictions should have little space to survive. But nam-ing, claiming, and taming dependencies is very difficult because the de-pendencies are cunning, baffling, and powerful. There are two types of addictions: substance addiction and process addiction. Substance addic-tion is an element that can be and should be totally removed. Process ad-diction is something that will always be present, but needs to be lived with constructively and not destructively. This latter addiction is the thorn in the side of most ministers. Addiction is an exaggerated pattern. Rigorous honesty is the key in reading the following lists. Twelve-step programs use the rigorous-honesty term, and this honesty often needs to come from outside the de-pendent. Until honesty is present, the dependent is a victim. Some common substance addictions/dependencies are: alcohol / sex (cas-ual or recreational) / caffeine / chocolate / nicotine / cocaine/heroin / refined sugar / gambling / marijuana / counter drugs / prescription drugs. Some common process addictions/dependencies are: work or busy-ness / sex (casual or recreational) / negative memories / "prayer" and worry / eating disorders (boulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating) / religious fanaticism / sports (spectator or participant)/"collecting" de-pendent people / exclusive friendships/the Peter Pan syndrome / the Wendy complex / exercise /reading / attention-rejection-exhaustion / greed (compulsive spending) / control-powe'r~manipulation / success-failure- competition / TV ! sleep / anger-guilt-depression / self-pity and co-pity / anger-denial-control. Ministers are often addicted to ministry itself because they are so needed. To be human is to be dependent, but there is a healthy balance which ministers have an obligation to discern. All helping professionals have a responsibility to get their good feelings somewhere other than their clients. Ministers must know their dependencies well in order to min-ister effectively. It is so easy for ministers to project what they them-selves need onto someone else. Really soon--because of the ministers' The Addicted/Dependent Minister addiction bent--feelings get very muddled and quality ministry is endan-gered. Ministers are constantly dealing with others' feelings and can stuff their own. These stuffed feelings can come out as body illness or inap-propriately elsewhere. For example, for ministers to get charged up in anger with the clie ~nt, or with the client's oppressor, or the client's anger at the Church, or the client's anger at government, and so forth, is eas-ier for them than claiming their own inner anger, guilt, or whatever. Granted that these feelings of the client may be very real, still the "dance" of the dependent minister may be to a different tune than the client is trying to play. It is as if one is fox-trotting and the other is do-ing the waltz. Choosing Our Addictions/Dependencies Dependencies are a given to our human condition. Ministers should be model addicts by example; this is where the newer holistic spiritual-ity models can be most helpful. Ministers need to choose daily, healthy dependencies. To list a few: time alone, prayer, reflection, physical ex-ercise, support groups, non-ministry-oriented hobbies and/or friends, and nonprofessional reading. Healthy ministers continually expand and deepen throughout life--this is an integrating process. Unhealthy minis-ters fragment and splinter themselves to meet their needs of dependency and take a flock of disciples along. Healthy ministers need both to mas-ter and be mastered; unhealthy ministers either master totally or become totally mastered. Remember, extremes mark the unhealthy dependent per-sonality. Often unhealthy ministers want to be appreciated (needed) for their wealth of knowledge, fund raising, generosity, cleverness, organiza-tional skills, virtue, leadership, and so forth. None of these qualities can be considered intrinsically wrong, but the ministers' control of them can take away even God's freedom of their use. This is not to say that good is not accomplished by addi~:tive ministers; it is. The problem usually is the unhappiness of the ministers and not always the results of their min-istry. In our Church many of the most rewarded ministers are the most unhe~ilthy addicts. The Codependent Cast of Characters The alcoholic home has taught us much about unhealthy dependen-cies and the roles the members fall into. The minister may often come from a dysfunctional home that is not necessarily alcoholic. The family characters are listed in their usual order. Often the minister is one or 1140 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 more of these characters. Maybe the minister played out one role as a child, a different one as an adult, and maybe even a different role in his/ her professional life. When there is a dependency in a home, the whole family system is dysfunctional. No one escapes and everyone is affected. Those various persons may be described as follows: The dependent(usually a spouse) is the one using the substance around which the whole family unit rearranges itself. The family's individual needs and feelings are not met because of°denial, guilt, and anger. The enabler (usually a spouse) feels responsible for everyone's feel-ings. The enabler usually tries to keep peace, save face, and guard the family secret. The enabler makes ends meet financially and emotionally. The enabler needs to control and needs to be needed. This person thrives on exhaustion. The hero (usually the oldest) tries to keep the family secret by look-ing good at school, work, and so forth. This can be in sports, honor so-cieties, and so forth. The hero is organized, responsibl~, and mature to extremes. The hero is a doer-~cannot stop doing. The hero suffers from fear, loneliness, and stifled anger. The scapegoat (often the second child) is prickly and hard to get along with; he or she appears to be the family problem. The scapegoat often chooses wild friends, gets pregnant in teen years, breaks the law, and gets into substance addiction. Traits of the scapegoat are very diffi-cult and frequently impossible to understand. The lost child (usually the third in birth) often uses isolation for self-protection; lives in fantasy, quietness, and distance; wants to please at all costs; tries to be good but feels bad; has no opinions or feelings to speak of; never causes problems. The mascot (often the youngest) laughs on the outside and cries on the inside; is clumsy, whimsical, and so forth, while trying to focus off the substance; is the clown trying to make the sad family better. This person is hyper, but lonely and scared. He or she is the family medicine man. As ministers try to bring care to a family, the trap may snap and they can easily be caught and overwhelmed. Ministers must therefore have some knowledge of basic dependency dynamics, but, more than that, they should have a keen awareness of their own inner feelings and de-pendencies. They must know their own limitations and be able to say no and to judge when to refer clients. At such times they minister to them-selves. If they do not take care to function at their best, they will be caught in self-pity and/or co-pity games. The minister may say "this whole thing is absurd," "too much The Addicted/Dependent Minister / ~141 analysis," "my past is my past," and so forth. Perhaps the minister is clean and emotionally balanced; that does not mean the parish staff, re-ligious community, and/or office staff share that same wellness. Today more and more ministers are looking hard and long before taking a posi-tion. By the same norms, the employing staffs are screening more be-fore hiring. Many parish staffs are dysfunctional because they are clos-eting one or more unhealthy dependencies. Clinebell (Pastoral Care and Counseling) says that "spiritual vitality and health are contagious; it is caught more than it is taught." Ministers look more and more for an en-vironment of wellness if they themselves are well. The Rocking-Chair Minister Rocking-chair ministers are not on the porch waiting for someone to come and seek help; on the contrary, they are twice as busy as other min-isters trying to get the gospel spread. "Rocking chair' '--because interi-orly they go back and forth like a rocking chair; their feelings and ac-tions are all fuzzy and confused. Nevertheless, they are sometimes bla-tantly forceful people. There are several cycles of feelings and behavior that dovetail together. The following are some specifics of the "proc-ess addiction" mentioned above: Unhealthy Process Healthy Process worry/' 'prayer" anger/guilt/depression attention/rejection/ exhaustion anger/denial/control self-pity/co-pity affirmation/ownership/ integration/letting go anger/ownership/expres-sion/ letting go control/ministry assess-ment/ service/letting go delegation saying no In the following stories, theologies or ministry models vary. But that is not the issue. The issue is the ministers' inner world; that is, the min-isters are not ministering to themselves even though, otherwise, they are very effective ministers. Story A Father Jones worries about his people because they are so poor. They are doing better than they were before he came, and many of them tell him how much they appreciate his concern. He prays that God take care of this poverty and abolish it. Soon he finds himself an-gry at God for not curing the problem, angry at the insensitive bishop and at those in their posh offices for not prioritizing this; he is angry at 1142 / Review for Religious; November-December 1988 the richer members of the parish because they are not removing the pov-erty from their own parish. Burdened with guilt for attacking God, the Church, and his parishioners, Father Jones turns inward; depression and dullness set in and the cycle begins all over again. Father Jones is from a good small-business family that has been reputable in the community for generations. The cycle here is worry, prayer, anger, guilt, depres-sion. Story B Millie is in social-outreach ministry. She started a parish pro-gram and became deanery coordinator in this same area. Now she has founded the diocesan office for reaching out to teenage single mothers, runaways, and abused children. She holds a high profile with the me-dia. It gets money for the project. She loves the attention and limelight, and she feels it is all for Jesus. When given Church honors and civic ac-claim, she rejects it all. Miilie is torn inside between wanting to be no-ticed and disowning the recognition. She has been taking medicine for what her doctor calls exhaustion. Millie has tried to explain to her doc-tor that he is indispensable at this time; she will back off later when the time is right, Millie's dad was an alcoholic, but he has been sober since she was in the first grade. The unhealthy cycle here is attention, rejec-tion, and exhaustion. Story C Tyler is one of those rare, always smiling ministers who do very well with youth. One of his personal goals for youth is sacred space. In both parishes where he has been, he had small, multipurpose rooms that served for recreation and worship space. In the one parish there was a room with a large wooden carved crucifix before the youth took it over; in the other parish, a family had donated a large crucifix in memory of their daughter, killed in a summer outing. In both places Tyler went rounds over the crucifix issue. Always pleasant, he demanded a risen Christ figure. He said we are about resurrection and not all tfiis pain. "I believe it is Easter we are to remember; let's not make our kids hold on to Good Friday." Tyler escalated these issues to maximum polarization; the people became divided. Tyler had theologized his anger, stuffing it away, and used Christ to deny it; using his charism and position, he con-trolled the environment and won out. Tyler had been adopted at two months of age. His birth mother had neglected and abused him. He was raised in a healthy (functional) family since three months of age. Story D Deacon Bernard loves to minister. He would be a priest, but he wanted a wife and family and left seminary in college. Bernard is very well liked by the people because he is so filled with empathy. Recently he has had several counseling sessions with Phyllis. At twen(y-five years The Addicted/Dependent Minister of age, Phyllis has finished two M.A. degrees--one in counseling and the other in theology. Phyllis is very angry with the Church about not being able to be a priest. During many sessions she has talked about how victimized she felt. Bernard shares her feelings; he has felt put off by the Church because he got married. Being ordained a deacon is okay, but he feels victimized also. Bernard and Phyllis are now in their sixth session. In counseling they talk about equal amounts of time on their feel-ings toward the Church. They both agree worship has become harder and harder. They feel they have been good for each other because they share so many of the same hurts. Bernard's homelife is healthy and functional; Phyllis is from a gifted and wealthy family that seems equally healthy. The cycle here is one of self-pity/co-pity. The theologies in these stories are issues, but not as much as the pain and hell these ministers are causing to others. The rocking-chair process addiction is not a matter of standing still; though moving, it is going no-where. All these ministers are gifted and likeable people. These depend-ency stories are more subtle than that of the staggering drunk pastor or the power-hungry director of religious education, but their subtlety serves as a reflection on the movement out of addiction/dependent be-havior. These stories show some common process dependencies, but there are many more. The addict wants to be happy and unconsciously creates a world of "happiness" in which to survive. There are dependency proc-esses not mentioned here peculiar to perhaps one person. The choices and combinations of dependencies are nearly infinite. Ministers are always in need of insight into themselves lest they run the risk of projecting their feelings and dependencies on the client. Minister on the Mend Ministers need to choose not rocking-chair but journey addictions. As they learn from and depend on healthy processes, they become peace-ful within and freer to hear the true struggles of Jesus. The healthy proc-esses that are most easily seen are to say no and to delegate. Both re-quire much tact and articulation if everyone is to remain free. Sometimes the ministry can more easily be done alone; often other factors enter-- such as community, collaboration, and identity--which should be con-sidered and pondered. In any case, ministry always means community. Three more models are listed earlier under the Healthy Process column. Each of these ends in letting go. A common slogan in twelve-step programs is "Let go--let God." Any healthy process will end in letting go. Jesus is clearly the model 844 / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 here. To let go (presuming the preceding steps are gone through), much reflection and healthy prayer time is needed. Ministers need time to di-gest each experience. This includes some time alone and some quality dialogue with what is commonly called theological reflection. A good minister has the ability to stand still. The old statement that moved many a minister was "an idle mind is the devil's workshop." Well, the same idle mind is also God's workshop. Each minister holds the key to the workshop door. When one's whole being is idle, the minister is able to again open himself or herself to caring for others. This means that the minister is caring for himself or herself as the first one to be ministered to. Jesus the Dependent? Jesus was human like us in all ways but sin; yet he was dependent on a home for being raised, dependent on scrolls and on people for his learning, and dependent on the elements of survival like food, warmth, sleep, and friendship. The desert fast was Jesus pulling away from food and people to experience more. Jesus was definitely dependent on the human condition. "He emptied himself" as Philippians says; and yet, without abandoning his divinity, Jesus became enslaved to our human condition of dependency. He became all those things that take each of us to the threshold of addiction and dependency. Jesus became fear, doubt, loneliness, anxiety, and anger. These are not sins but feelings. It is in feelings that one touches the threshold of dependency. Jesus con-tinually emptying himself is the movement from addiction. He did not fill himself with any substance to extreme. Jesus chose his dependencies. From the gospels those chosen dependencies seem to be friendship, the (Jewish) word of God, prayer, and telling the story (parable) plus living the story. So Jesus' dependencies are on a deeply human level but always more. Jesus was empowered with the Spirit and worked miracles of heal-ing, but still had to experience emotional suffering and ultimately death. The addiction of power and control Jesus declined over and over. He did not want to be a king, a religious leader, or a political leader. He emp-tied himself; addicts try to fill themselves. Jesus holistically emptied him-self. Flesh and bones like us, he did not even overly depend on his hu-manity. He lived and believed in his human condition and more, Jesus has the same faith in us for he was one like us. Jesus was dependent on "one day at a time." This was living the model of the Father; for him being open and dependent upon the Father became a daily reality. The "daily bread" Jesus talks of is the daily por- The Addicted/Dependent Minister tion of human and divine needs. Childlike Jesus was dependent on the human condition. True addicts/dependents become blind and their world gets ever smaller. Jesus is not blind but tries to ever open us to the larger world that he called the "reign of God." Jesus is the model for the ad-dict in the way he lived the serenity prayer: "God, grant me the seren-ity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Three Areas of Interdependence for the Minister 1. The minister in a support system A support system means to have a world of peers. Being able to talk honestly and needfully, the minister opens up, allowing himself or her-self to be the recipient of ministry. Ministry by its nature is a parent role. Therefore to be able to step out of that role into a peer relationship is crucial for wellness. To seek support ministers cannot deny or toy with their dependen-cies. They need to be able to say "I need," "I hurt," "I'm angry," and so forth. Even though these "confessions" need be made at times with clients, here it is a perspective of care for the minister. Here minis-ters make their addictions known in trust. Unhealthily dependent persons function under three unwritten rules: (1) Do not talk about the depend-ency; (2) do not trust anyone because in the long run they will hurt you; and (3) do not feel because feelings can only cause trouble or pain. With such a support system, ministers can appear arrogant or even pious. In a support system that offers freedom to talk and an environment of trust for articulation of feelings, ministers minister to themselves. Any aloof-ness starts to subside in the therapy of the support system. This is a form of interdependence. Interdependence is very difficult to accomplish because it must be scheduled on a regular basis and it must seek a quality rapport with one or more persons. So many relationships (addictions/dependencies) are codependent: "You fix me and I'll fix you." In interdependence the de-pendent lives "rent free" (as AA says) of guilt, manipulation, and shame. Once the dependency is named and claimed, some of the twelve-step programs might be appropriate. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), nar-cotics anonymous (NA), sexaholics anonymous (SA), and adult children of alcoholics (ACOA) are support groups that meet regularly and are very good. For ministers with any of these addictions, weekly contact with the relevant group would be appropriate. Meeting less often than this is Review for Religious, November-December 1988 a form of denial to a given addiction. Other support systems like clinical counseling might be in order. See-ing a counselor can help one to look at addictive behavior. Again, a weekly meeting would be appropriate for the same reasons of denial. A spiritual director can also be helpful. It is important that the spiritual di-rector also be in spiritual direction. For the minister to ask for direction would be most helpful. If the spiritual director is not in direction, he or she is probably not conscious of personal dependencies in process ad-diction. Diocesan priests can have a support system in "Jesu Caritas" or "Emmaus" groups. The interdependence support area affords intimacy that is construc-tive and articulate. There must be a constant (weekly) point where min-isters are vulnerable, candid, and open. Ministers need intimacy more than most people; they need to have their own needs met. The more pas-toral responsibilities they have, the more difficult will be the problem of a support system that will work. Not finding such a system drives one right back into unhealthy dependency/addiction. This support system pre-sumes skills of great openness, and it demands qualified supporters who are themselves in touch with their own dependencies. God will be part of this because "where two or more are gathered, I am there"; this gath-ering of support will be the human condition laid open, and this sharing leads to the divine. Christianity itself is a support system not in theory only but in expe-rienced reality. To be Christian is to be community. Ministers model Christian living at its best as they acquire ministry to themselves. There will need to be many subcommunities like support groups within the sup-port system. For example, the substance-abuse minister may be in a "non-Christian" twelve-step program; still, the very dynamic is intrin-sically Christian by the fruits that are produced. The support system keeps (or even makes) the minister docile. Our Christian model of support is that the Master is always with us; no disci-ple ever becomes the master in Christianity. Christians are dependent on the Master. The minister lives this posture of the support system with a life of prayer. Prayer must be meditative and routine. Prayer must be daily. The minister will address Christ with "now I feel . . ." and be naked of all dependencies in his presence. 2. The Minister Using Humor as Healing Somewhere in the ritual of each day, the call to play must come. Just as "Let us pray" is ritualized, so must "let us play" be said and done. Ministers take themselves too seriously. To have a sense of humor is to The Addicted/Dependent Minister / 1~47 have a sense of healing. For some a sense of humor can get rough, laugh-ing at another's expense. Even if someone encourages being laughed at, discernment of the healing or hurting nature of humor is needed. Not all humor is healing. The virtue that comes with levity is gentleness. If ministers can laugh at themselves in a gentle and affectionate way, the humor is healing. So often caught in addiction/dependency, ministers may smile at their short-comings and say to themselves, "I'm not a saint yet," and move on with life. Humor does not mean telling jokes or developing talks (homilies) that are funny or entertaining. Humor simply brings us to reality away from our world of illusion. Substance and process addictions do produce a world of illusion. Just watching TV commercials shows us illusions, humor, and addiction. The problem with much in the media is that truth is not the main product being sold. Humor has truth at its core, and per-haps an exaggeration of that truth in humor can make a point of healing. An example of this might be telling a workaholic who is exhausted that you see no reason for him to sleep tonight: "I don't know why you can't work all night writing a major address for that group--you'd do it better than anyone else." Humor brings us to gentleness and reality; another quality is that of forgiveness. Sometimes in the healing of humor more forgiveness can take place than in more formal settings. A wink or kind facial expres-sion can be the forgiving gesture of gentleness that a given moment may need. Humor is a way of recycling the minister in a very healthy way. 3. The Minister and a Sense of Adventure This need of interdependence is seen more readily in retired minis-ters, but it needs to be present all along the journey of development. Min-isters in retirement can be the personifie~ wisdom of God even (or espe-cially) in their decrepit physical condition, or they can be Scrooge-like "humbug" people holding tightly to the past. The sense of adventure always is looking at the present and the future. Ministers can feel that "they owe me after all that I've done for them." Addicted ministers often will want to cause their own early retirement (or death). In aged ministers it is still the world of extremes if addiction is present. In a sense of adventure there is a sense of tomorrow. Ever changing by an open-ness to grace, ministers can keep looking forward to more in their life. The life of unhealthy addiction/dependency always seduces one to be-come fixated. In the interdependence of adventure, ministers respond to and embrace the limited world of themselves and the limited world of their environment. Using personal creativity, ministers can become eter- 1~41~ / Review for Religious, November-December 1988 nal students of life itself. Healthy ministers can be recognized here, with their level of interests always expanding. Self-improvement and educa-tion become an ever present sense of direction for them. They have a zest for life and a loving interest in others. Unhealthy ministers often scorn and condemn the life they see in healthy ministers. This can manifest it-self in competition or gossip or both. Ministers often live in their own professional world, a world no larger than the client's care and working for the community. "All work and no play makes John a dull boy." John is not only a dull minister but an addicted minister. There is a flatness and pity that emerge when the sense of adventure is not maintained on a regular level. Some say that a minister should always be reading a secular novel (and that does not necessarily mean of the Andrew Greeley variety). Friends and hobbies that have nothing to do with religion are excellent for the minister. The priests' poker club does not meet this need because "business" will al-ways creep into the conversation. Ministers can feel lost when not known in some place for who they are or what they are--this is a good chal-lenge to the minister. Ministers who are able to change through self-experimentation, self-denial, and self-ministry will find themselves flex-ible enough to grow in wisdom, age, and grace to the very point of death. Conclusion St. Augustine tells us that we are restless until we rest in God. There are many resting places on the journey of the minister that are anything but peaceful; these rest stops are often addictions. Satiated, confused, and disoriented, the minister quickly becomes less a minister than he or she would wish to be. These pages have looked at some cultural handi-caps in order to help ministers to be more free of them. Ministers living their faith are likely to feel some anxiety and insecurity. In a highly pos-session- oriented society that measures life by production and consump-tion, ministers become models of freedom by living a simple, unattached lifestyle. The "product" is freedom in Jesus himself. Thus, even though most ministers are addicted, they have a world of choice in their depend-encies. Those choices determine their personal happiness and effective-ness. Communal Spiritual Consolation John English, S.J. Many of our readers know at least some of Father English's writings on spirituality. In this article he discusses the significance of communal spiritual consolation for com-munal spirituality. He may be addressed at Ignatius College; P.O. Box 1238; Guelph, Ontario; N IH 6N6 Canada. The understanding and practice of spirituality has tended to focus on an individual person's experience and aspirations, but the individual needs to realize that spirituality is always in a communal context. If spiritual-ity focuses on the experiences the individual has in, through, and of com-munity, there is less danger of an individualistic spirituality. Consider the many examples in the Old Testament and the whole "Body of Chr

Issue 5.4 of the Review for Religious, 1946. ; RE VOLUME V / J,ULY 15. 1946 " Nu~BE~,~- ' , , CONTENTs "ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCATION~Cyril VSIlert. S.J. " " 21,7 A TIMELY PAMPHLET . ¢ -.'. . , .' , 228 ~CONCE~NING DISTRACTIONS~ha'rles F. Donovan, S.J, ~ 2;29 IN CASE YOU DON'T KNOW IT~ * 232 "SAINT APPEARED TWICE"--CIem~t J. McNaspy, S.J . 233 ~ PLAN OF SELF-DENIAL WITHIN THE 'REACH OF ALL ~ "Robert B. Eitem S.J . " 239 gP~LS ~ORVOCAT~ONS ., . ~,.~ 2~ SPEAKING' OF NAMES--Claude Kean.O.F.M . DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE . ,249 OUR CONTRIBUTORS " . . TWO HE~RTS--W. H. Hingston S.J '. ~ 251 ANN~N~EMENT . - . ~. ~_. ~-25~ RECEPTION OF SEMINARIANS INTO RELIGIOUS INSTI~UTES~, Adam C, Ellis, S.J . :BOOKS RECEIVED . ' ~ ' 263 /QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ' ,~ 22. Permission to Use G~ld Watch . 23.,Number of Delegates for General Chapter: Soliciting Votes 26~' 24. Use of Income from Special Fees '. . ~. 26~ 25. Religious Candidate Whose Parents Have,Bad Reputation 266~ ~ 26. Going to Confession in Order of Seniority . . ~ . 266 27. Communion Sundays ahd Contests to Promote Frequent Communion 267 28. Order of Precedence in Mdther House " " 268 BOOK REVIEWS-- ' , ~,~ The Mystical Life; Meditatio~ on the Passion: The Catholic Centre: Mission for Samaritans: Forming a Christian Mentality; How to Medi-tate; The Mystical Baldy of Christ: La ~iete Eucharistique: John Henr~ , , . Newman: Centenary Essays; The T h"ird Day Mano'logy: Mast'er and~ - Model: Dove Flights: Kyrie Elei~on:XTh~ P~ychology of Liturgical MU- " sic; The Life,of Father Pro 271 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. ~uly, 1946. Vol. V. No. 4. Pu~lisfied bi-monthly; January, March:May. July, September. and November at the C011ege.Press,4 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas. *by-St. Mary's College. St. Marys, ,~ansas, . with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered' as second class ~atter/~anuar), ~'15, "1942. at the Post O~ce, Topeka, ~Kansas. under the act of March 3:. 1879. EditgrlaL Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.J. G, Augustine Ellard. S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J. Editorial Secretary: Alfred F. Schneider. S.J. " Copyright, 1946, by Adam C. ElliS, Permission is hereby. ~ra~n t e d for- quota't m:"n ~s. of reasonable length, provided due credit "be given this review and the auth6r.' Subscription price:, 2 dollars a year. Printed*ifi ~. Before writln~ to us,,please consult notice on inside 'back over~ ¯ ~' Or~gin~°l ~in ~nd Educa :ion Cyril Vollert, S.J. ~OST OF US who try to keep up with educational ~V~ controversies and discussions have~ become some-what surfeited with reiterated assurances that the one hope of salvaging this creaking world, so near the shoals of disaster, is education. We are told that education can save democracy, resolve the .c~lass struggle~ and confer on man. the good life.- " The striking t~I-iing is, much of this is true. But to realize'these great expectations education must be rightly conceived and rightly directed. It must be true education for man as he actually is; and it must be aimed at the right goal. Most of the. arguing about education is futile, and therefore fruitless, ' because those whd contribute the never~e.nding stream of articles, addresses, and books about education are so'often, unrealisticAn their view of the p.er~son who is to b~educate~d.or are wrong in t~eir idea.of t~e~upshot ofthe educational process. They are trying to stee~la rudderless sh~p throagh an uncharted sea to an unknown port. unless[we are right.in our notion of~the objec-tive to be a.t~ta[ned and of the~p.erson wh9 is to be educated, we are scarcely,.in a position to decide what the ~educational process ought to ~e. , . I,n this article.I s~all not pr3sume to fix the ~ltimate goal of education. Readers of this periodical know very. ~well what it is: ,God, whom we are to possess in the eternal happiness of the beatific vision. Nor shall I rashly attempt to outline an educational program. My purpose will be to describe the beneficiarydr" such a program and to indicate 217 CYRIL VOLLERT ' Reoiew /or t~elipiotts the proximate end to be achieved. The artist cannot pro-duce a masterpiece unless he knows the material he has to work on. Neither can the teacher succeed in transforming an uneducated person into an educated person unless he understands man as he actually is. The raw material of the educational' process is a boy or girl born in original sin, and still suffering the results'~ of original sin. This statement is not naive. It is not a bogy of a bygone day. It is true today and Will remain true for all time. Such a view is the only realistic view. Any other notion is false, or at least inadequate. But even tki'e truth that the person to be educated began life in original sin and still staggers under the burden of the consequences Of origi-nal sin may be distorted. To see the truth, two extremes have to be avoided: a vapid optimism and a groundless pessimism. Clear vision is n~eded, unobstructed either by rose-colored lenses or by smoked glass. The optimistic vie.w, credited by romanticists to the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau but "actually as old as Pel~ag~us in the fifth century and his iritellectual ancestors, is that every man at his origin is wholly good. Let him alone; do not hamper or misdirect the natural play of his thought-processes and appetites; and he is capable of 'ifidefinite growth ingoodnegs. Signs of the break-up of the "electiv~ System" point to th~gradual abandonment of this view. But many. educators still do not know wh~t is to replace this shallow optimism. Rousseau and Eliot are no longer the .leaders to the promised land. Nevertheless the typical modern educator remains a Pelagian. /] The pessimistic view is also hoary with antiquity. Its crudest form, Manichaeism, regards all matter as evil. Therefore man, so far as he is a corporeal being, is evil. He is hopeless till he. gets out of his Body. A less irrational 218 1946 ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCATION variety of this pessimism is the notion, characteristic of uncontaminated early Lutheranism and Protestantism generally, that original sin intrinsically corrupted man, l'eft him forever a sinner ihcapable "of morally good actions, and destroyed his free will. Nothing can really correct the depravity of Lutheran.man. His defilement can be covered up byChrist's merits, but he himself stays a sinful wretch, utterly corrupt. A trace of this idea of man, greatly diluted, is found sometimes among Catholics, even amdng educated Cath-olics and religious. They may have a notion, not very-pre-cisely formulated, that man's nature, though not wholly corrupted by original sin, was inwardly wounded so that his understanding, considered on the purely natural _level, is now intrinsically darkened and his will is intrinsically weakened. Those who harbor such an idea of man may have been Subjected to defective instruction On this point; or they may have failed rightly to grasp what was correctly taught; or they may have had teachers who repre-- se, nted a very small, and practically unimportant,-minority opinion tfiat man actually was thus injured by original sin. But there is no sound theological basis for this per: suasion. The truth is that man, coniidered simply as natural man, is as whole today, in intellect and will, as was man regarded in his purely natural endowment when he came from the creative hand of God. In other words orig-inal sin left man in no worse condition, on the purely human level of his mind and will, than he was before Adam cast his momentous decision against God. What is true in all that we hear about the disastrous effects of Adam's sin is this: the first man deliberately renounced God and thereby lost the supernatura! endow-ments which God had conferred on him for the whole 219 CYRIL VOLLER~. 'human~ race. Adam was created not Reoiew for Religious only in'a state~ of ¯ na.tural:perfecti0n, but .was elevated to.the~sonship of God by sanc._tifying grace,. Mor9o,ver,, to~ complement th!s~divine -gift and to enable Adam to preserve it for0himself and .the entire human family, God added other remarkable.gifts, notably, t_he.~gift of.integrity whereby all hispowers affd faculties were perfectly~subordinated to his. reason and.~.wi11., and the gift of immortality whereby his. body.~asi~sub~, 'jected to his~soul so that it was liberated from the necessity of fa!ling into corruption and death. These inconceivably .great bounties, all of ,,them beyond ,the capacities ,of human na°ture, Adam. received for himselt and for all his,~descend- By:_sinning Adam lost~them all~. He lost originals, jus-tice for himseff 'and fo~ his posteri.ty., His children and his children's children down to the end of time (with the unique)exception, ofo.th~ Bles'sed V4rgin'Mary).were begot-ten in.a-sta:te,.of estrangement from God. Instead' of.being ,bOrn sons. and daughters of God in sancti£ying grace: the,y. were,born.%without that relation to God,,,.the-only Fight relation.to God once God bad,elevated mankind i(in. Ada_m). to:the,supernatural level:~ ~They were born ~in,:the stat&of . ~ ~W.ith the sin inherited from" Adamgo theieffects.of, the sin:loss'[0f,the othe'r accompanying 'gifts, integrity, and im-morgality.:,,. ThereforeAdam's~children,are worse off ~ihan-he~-~ as.,.~ Forthey all come into°the,W.ofld withbut.-the grage of di,v, ine~sonship,, without integrit~y, without immottalit, y: ,Adam s,mn £change mankind for the wors~, ifi!,soul and.in :,, --But Adam's~ sin ,did not wreck his. human nature as. such.' We are no w6rse Off now than we ~oul'd have been if God had never elevated Adam to be His ~ad0pted son, with this exception: we ought to be biafn with sanctifying 220 July, 1946 ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCATION grace, and we are not; find so we are born in a state dis-pleasing to.God, a state of sin. ~l~rue, if we ~compare ourselves with .A'dam as he actually was in Paradis'e, we are far .inferior,,. We are deprived'of the supernatural and.preternatural Preroga~tives¯ that. made him so extraordinarily perfe~t~a man. P~i0r fo baptism we lack the divine sonship he had; and so we come into the world as sinners. And even though.we-.recover tl~e . grace of divine sonshil3 in baptism, we lack the gift of integrity: and so we find in otirselves an unruly mass of conflicting .powers, the 10w~r at odds with the higheL th6 body unsubservient to the soul. We lack the gift of immor-tality,. and so we succumb to illness, wounds, gradual cor-ruption, and death. But if we regard only Adam's nature itself unperfected by any of these gifts, oar own natures ar'e just the same. Adam's-nature, left to itself, ,had the sameelements and equipment as otirs. If he had not had the gift of integrity-he. too w.ould, even without any sin, have experienced the same conflict among his faculties. His senses would have sought their own pro~er objects just as gtubbornly as ours do,-against the will's consent. 'His body .would have been exposed to illness, decant, and death. All this appears, quite reasonable. Our first pgrents, as ,they .actually were, with God's supernatur.al and preter- ' natural gifots added to" their natural make~up, were clearly superior to .tis. Bui if we disregard Whatever is preter-n~ atural arid supernatural, we headily seb th~at they .had the same nature as we their children have. : Only one thought, nagging at our memories of what We have heard and read, keeps thrusting forward an objdc-tion; we have been taught that, as a result.of original sin, ourintellects have been darkened and our wills have been weakened. This ii :the very statement in the elementary 221 (~YRIL VOLLERT Re~oiew for Religious catechis~ most 6f us have studied: "Our natur~ was cor-rupted by tl~e ~in of our fi~st parents, which darkened our understanding, weake.ned our will,.and left in us a strong inclination :to evil." ' ' This brings us to the heart of our discussion:, just what this statement means. It means that, without the gifts of original justice,'-particularly integrity and immortality, our minds are less able to acquir~e truth and our willsare less firm in pursuing good th.a.n if we had those, gifts. I~ does not mean that original sin has .intrinsically harmed our minds and wills so that their natural power to khow and ¯ will has b~en destroyed or i~apaired, ~ The doctrine taught by the familiar catechism of our childhood is of course true. But the trUth.admits of better wording; and the recent revision of this catechism puts the matter more clearly: "The chief punishments of Adam which we inherit through original sin are: death, .suffe)ing, ignorance, and a" strong inclination to sin." What~ever is taught by the ~.hurch about t.h~ darkening of the intellect and the weakenirig of. the~will can be under-stood, and actually is understood by .all great theologians;, in .the sense of a deterioration as compared .with the mind and will of man in the state of c;riginaljustice. .This is easily perceived, in .the °casfi of the will. God ~en~riche, d Adam;s nature, with the'gift of integrity, which lined up .all his powers and passions under, the control of his reason and will so that his animal appetites could not take the initiative in attracting ~him toward evil and could no~ prevail .against the command of'his will., In punish~ ment for his sin, Ad,am lost thisomarvelous gift for him-self and for all of us. We do not possess the gift of integ~ rity, and'so *there is lacking in us the perfect order among. our various powers ~and appetites which that~ gift would have proc~ured. In. other words, we are subject to unruly 222 dulq, 1946. ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCATION c'oncupiscence, which means simply that each of our .appe-tites seeks its own good heedless of the good. of the whole person. When an attractive object confronts any of our senses, that sense can immediately reach out for the object quite independently of. the will's.consent, and even against the will's command. By that very fact our will is weakened. Concupiscence pulls us toward the tempting object even though we realize that taking it involves sin. We .may "already have reached out to seize it before the mind adverts to what we are doing: And even after the mind does take notice, the enticement still persists, the tug is still felt. We are much less able to resist the allurement than if the Senses were fully under our cohtrol. The will may say, "No!" Sense appetite says, "Yes!" And both will and sense appe- .,.rites. are mine. I am being torn between a higher and a lower good. I can resist, because :my will is still in charge. But often I give up; especially if, the battle is a long one. My will does not resist; I surrender, satisfy my lower craving at the expense of moral good, and so I sin. Adam in the state of original justice would have under-gone no such struggle. His will could simply have said, "No!" The sense appetite would, have straightway obeyed. Indeed, the sense appetite could not have been attracted to the object in the first place without the assent of the will. Therefore'my will is weaker than his; but only because.of the pull of concupiscence. My will, as a natural faculty just in itself, is in no way weakened by original sin. The same is the case with our intellect. Adam had a preternatural gift of infused knowledge. We have not. Therefore our understanding is dark as compared with his, for .his was bathed with divine light. If Adam had not ~inned, he would not have handed on his special, infused gift of knowledge to his descendants. For this knowledge 223 CYRIL VOLLERT Review [or Religious was a personal gift with-vc~ich God eciUipped the~fii~st-man, created.aS he Wasin adulthood in intimate communion with God and with a special office as teacher of the children.he was to beget. ~: ~ ._ ,. ~ - ~ :,~,.- ,~ Adam had, yev other endow, menfs~perfecdnghis intel-lect, Alohg with. the sanctifying grace that~ele~ated him to dupernatural heights went the infused'~virtues, theological and moral. Among these are faith and prudence,., which resided, in his intellect. These'he would h~ve~transmitted: But. he sinhed,~and,so could not. transmit sgnctifying grace and, all 'the:accompanying.gifts. We,~ born without.~sanc-tifying~, grace, begin life deprived of the infused virtues, .includidg " those ,.which would have.equipped ~our minds With a habitual~aptitude for higher truths, In this respect, too, our. minds are defective as com#ared with his before the Eall: . _ ~Bu~-here we must'consider another factor, which is :sel~ dora,well,brought out. In sinning, Adam~ lost, 'besi~h sanctifying grace>~ith its cortege of infused.'virtues, ,th~ preternatural~ gif~s~: of,integrity and immortality. with:~heqos£of, immortality~w_¢nt the loss of impassibility, 6r :immuflitw,.to~sfl.ffering, disease, and death~.,~:~His body was no longer.perfectl~ subject;to his sou.L: ~ ~ From' Adam.weinherit ~bgdies ~bereff of these~ gifts. .Not bnly are we sfibject to 'conCupiscence,~ b6t me-have .,bodies unprot&ted, from ~harm-bythe -g "~ "f t~s~ .:.o.~lm~"m -ortahty and impassibility.,. Ou~. souls are immorthl, ~but tEey ha.re not the' pow&~to i~part., i~mortality to bur bodies. ~us.left ,their nat6ral ~eakness; our bodies easily giveAn, to f~tig~e, .to a thousand different, diseases,',to, the decrepitude of advancing age, .and~:.to dissolution. All. this,,has weighty ~consequences for ~0ur ~no~ledg~ and our (apacity to learn. Obviously~ ,the,pull 0f-c6ncu~iscence,is a tremendous obstacle to the acquisition~of knowledge. Web.have a kin~ 224 ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCATION ship for the concrete, the. sensible. Higher truths, especially the truths of theology, ,religion, and metaphysics, hav~ -little charm for most people. They waht to know and experience what is pleasant and easy. Whatever has a sur-face interest excites them. The clang of the fire-engine bell~ upsets the class; not only children in third grade but university students, and the professor himself, feel the urge fo rush to the window. Philosophy is hard put to it to rdsist the seduction of the radio. Mathematics runs a poor ~second to.movies. A game of ball in the nearby playground is. more fun than geography or arithmetic. Shakespeare. and Thackeray have less appeal than the funnies. Another important consideration, is the fatigue that goes with thinking. Continuity is essential to study. But the brain soon wearies and seeks distraction. Even under -the most favorable circumstances, sudh as absolute quidt. freedom from interruption, and robust health, mental con- ¯ centration is extremely hard work. We know how right Aristotle was When he remarked, "Learning is'accompanied by pain[" The experience of students is well formulat,ed in a wise man's saying that has passed into a p~overb.: "Knowledge maketh a bloody entrance." But ideal circumstances are rarely granted to us. Leisure for thinking is a luxury. The very necessity of caring for the bbdy's needs takes up the most valuable portion of our time and eneigies. The majority of mankind must spend half or more of each working day in sheer toil for bread~ What leisure is left is without the freshness of mind required for acti,~e thought. -Even when a person has leisure and opportunityfor learning, his bodily condition is often a deterrent to efficient °study. The eye too soon grows dim, and reading has to be rationed. Hayfeve-r, sinus infection, a cdld in the head, the hundrei:l ills that plague mankind, all. militate against the ¯- 225~ CYRIL VOLLERT ~ Revietu /or Religious attention, correlation, and penetration required for ¯ rained.thinking and for the mastery of but a single province of human kno,wledge. ~f~to such bodily distresses we add the emodonal~bias that s~ems froni concupiscence and ,impedes the disinter-ested pursuit of truth, if we take account of the environ-. mental restrictions that, as in Soviet Russia', block access to th~ sources of truth, and if with allthis we mix in the lying propaganda, rooted in selfishness or in bigotry,, that not only closes off truth but teaches error, we can go very far in explaining the darkening of our under~tandin.g that is a result of original sire , Truly, our ability to gain knowl-edge is grievo.usly inferior to that of Adam when, before he rejected God's grace, he was shielded from all these evils by his preternatural gifts of immunity to concupiscence, suf-f~ iing, and bodily dissolution. But our natural faculty of intellect was in no way intrinsically injured by original sin. Our intellect and our will are the same now, considered as purely natural perfec.-' tions, as they would have been if Adam had handed down to-us original justice instead, of original sin. Our intellec-trialand volitional inferiority results from our lack of the preternatural gifts that would have removed all obstacles to their perfect functioning. Such is the teaching of all front, rank theologians, a teaching based on their study of revelation. The punish-ment of original sin, St. Thomas notes, is restricted to the withholding of the supernatur;il goods gi:anted by God to. our first father-for transmission to his posterity.1 ~ Su;irez agrees with Aquinas: The common and true doctrine is that the powers of man or of his free will, rhgarded from the standpoint of the perfection they would ha~,e had in the state of pure nature, were not diminished in iCompendium Theologiae, 1 226 Julg, 1946 ORIGINAL SIN AND EDUCXTION fallen nature by original sin; they are inferior only when compare~' wxth the strength and integrity conferred on them by original jus-rice. -~ - St. Robert Bellarmine teaches the same doctrine: The corruption of nature resulted not from the lack of any natural gift, nor from the presence of any" evil quality, but from the . sole loss, owing to Ada~'s~sin, Bf the supernatural endowment.8 Thus the raw material of our educational endeavors is ~the boy or girl, the young, man or woman, with intelle'ct and will essentially unimpaired on the natural plaiae. Our aim in education should be to develop this goo,d natural equipment and to transfigure it with all the super-h~ itural ,goods Christ has given to the Church for t.he benefit of His brethren. Revelation, the Church, the sacraments, ~sanctifying grace,'the infused virtues and. actual graces and all that the Church_disp0ses of for building up the body of Christ must raise and0perfect the souli of men together with their" faculties, xspecially their powers of inteIlect and wiff. The proximate purpose of our educational work must be to train.the youth entrusted to us so to master thdmselves that, within ~he. supernatu0ral sphdre to which they have been re-elevated by Christ, they may pumue the Truth which is God, and embrace the Good, which is also God. The closest possible approxim:ition to the original in.tegrity must be the goal to which we lead our limping, students. This is no mean ambition for those whose life'long voca-tion lies in the classroom and on the campus. The same goal.is the one we religious propose to reach in our own self,education. But in addition to the bottom-less treasury of graces open to all Catholics, we enjoy,'in" our ascetical striv~ings, certain freedoms that can bring us much closer to the original freedom Adam had. Our privi-lege js brought home to us by the matchless,champion who ~DO gratia, prol. 4, c. 8, n. 5. 8De gratia primi hominis, . 5. 227 CYRIl., VOLLERT -upheld t~ae greatness of the religiot~s state against pertly attackers of his day~ ¯ The exercise of perfection requires that a person 'd6 away witl~ whate~'er can impede him from directing his affections wholly to God; ¯ for in~this consists the perfection of charity. There are'three obstacles of this sort. T14e first is the desire for external good£ This' is removed by the vow of poverty. The"second is the proclivity for pleasures of sense, among which lustful delight isthe keenest., This is surmounted by the vow ol~ chastity, The third obstacle is the deordination of th~ human will. And this.is corrected by,the,vow of " obedience.4 Thus with intellect and will intrinsically good and unspoiled in their natural soundness by original sin, we C~n with Ggd's grace'overc0me all hindrances and eventually make ou~r .own, in limited degree, the perfection of tl~e sec-. ond Ad:;m, J~sus Christ. We cannot, indeed, ever in this" life attain to the integrity of original justice; Christ did0not ~ restore that extraordinary privilege to redeemed man: ~ BuS as brothers and sisters of the God-man, or truer still, as living members of His body, we can get closer to the second ~dam, and therefore closer to God, 'than the first Adam was ~ in his primeval innocence. And so our last state can .be better ~han the first. ~ '~St.'Thomas, 8umraa, II-Ilae, q. 186, a. 7. A TIMELY PAMPHLET~ ':The Guide Posts of the Almighty to Perma~ient Industrial,Peace" presents a "plea for .the Ten Commandments as the only solid basis for lasting peace, industrial and international. The section which describes the rights and dutie~ of 'labor and management is particularly"excellent. Every emp!oyer and every laborer might well read this with profit. The pamphlet is from the pen of the Most Rev. Richard J. Cushin.g, D.D., Archbishop og Boston, and is published by the Radio Re151ies Press, St. Paul, ,Minnesota. Price: I0 cents. ~ 228 Concerning Dis :ra t:ions Charles F~ Donovan, S.d. THERE is an aspiration which I should like torecom-mend; yet I fear it might be misunderstood. It is: "Jesus, be my distraction." Now distractions are bad, they are sappers of spiritual energy, things to be avoided. And obviouslq we' do not intend to couple the name of Jesus with anything evil. But. there are certain characteristics of distractions which would be worthwhile if transferred to the thought of Our Lord, namely, their persistence, their fascination,.and their seeming ubiquity. It is these qual{- ties ofdistractions I have in mind when I say, '"3esus, be my distraction," which is a brief way of saying, ",lesus, be the magnet of my mind, the channel of my thoughts, the theme of my day from task ~o'task; when dut.y of any sort commands the center of the stage, lurk in the wings of my heart, and the moment I pause, the moment I am free ~et the spotlight of my soul rest on You alone." Every day at Ma~s the priest exhorts us, "'Sursttm corda'" (Lift up your hearts). And we respond,"Habemus ad Dorninurn'" (We have them lifted up to the. Lord). This lifting we reaflifm daily is not our passive elevation by God to the state of grace. When we receive grace,~Christ stoops and does the lifting. Yet even with grace we may remair~ earth-bound and inert. The lifting w~e profess when we say. "'Sursurn corda'" is an active elevation, our cooperation with Christ, an ~ffort to use His grace to meet Him on His own level. As Dora Augustine Baker puts it in the 'vigorous English of Shakespeare's time, we mean the "forced but very facile elevations of the will, that bluntly or blindly heaves itself up towards God." We-heave ourselves in spirit 229 CHARLES F. DONOVAN Review for Religious towards God in hope and love and joy. A distraction-, therefore, is truly a fail--not necessariI~ a fall in the sense of sin, btit a descent from the heights of communion with Christ. If we are habitually distracted we really should answer the priest, "'Habemus ad humum'" (Our hearts are fixed on the earth, on dust, on our own level). There is a fervor, a preoccupation with God which in the face of a present and pressing tluty, like signing checks or making out report cards, could be called a distraction. Some of the saints have been "bothered" by such distrac-tions. Saint Ignatius, 'for instance, sometimes had to be dispensed' from reading the Office because during it he would experience ecstasy and thus be kept from other daily business. Saint Teresa was often afraid to think of God, lest she experience some divine visitation that wquld interfere ~vith her work or embarrass her in public. BUt most of us need have no worry about such piotis distrac-tions. It is not often the thought 6t? God-that makes us' shabby workers. Our trouble is generally not that prayer keeps us from mundane things but that mundane things keep us from prayer. Our mind-wandering tends to be from God to creatures, the kind of distraction to wh{cb that religious referred who complained, with healthy self-criticism, that his new superior conducted-such prolonged ~zisits at chapel after meals that he ran out of distractions and had to' pi~ay. Now if we really have .our hearts lifted ad Dominum, if our habitual tendency and spontaneous impulse is to think of Jesus, then distraction in prayer becomes not impossible, but at least unpleasant and of slight Spiritual d~nger, like a ¯ fly buzzing around our prie-dieu. There are also distractions whicb occur all day !ong even in non-prayer time, but which don't actually keep us from our work. These are, therefore, rather potential thah 230 July, 1946 CONCERNING DIS, TRACTIONSj real distractions. Theyare our worries, our enthusiasms, our pet interests, the things which are just outside the. focus of our attention or just below the surface of consciousness, to whichthe mind tends to revert over and over dttring the day. If these concerns, these potential distractions,-are intense, the person who has them is said to be preoccupied or to "have something on the mind." Wouldn't it be won-derful if we were so intimate with Our Lord that we could be said to have Jesus on our mind? Of course, that is the ambition of all religious, to be so in love with Our Lord that He is our dominfint interest, our hobby, the object of . our ardent enthusiasm, our companion day and l~ight. Finally, there are the distractions which we seek, favor-ire" topics to which we let: our mind lazily turn in moments of relaxation, familiar themes which we find congenial and. particularly helpful when we are trying to get to sleep. The subjects that we choose for such distractions are indicative of our spiritual health. _The old saying, "Tell me~ whom you, go with and I'll tell you what you are," is applicable to mental as well as to persgnal companions. If wespon-taneously- turn to worldly thoughts, then we a.r.e very probabl); worldly ourselves. If our favorite reveries are spiritual, our character is most likely spiritual. Habitual 'and sought distractions, the recurrent musings of our idle moments, can be of tremendous influehce in our - spiritual lives. They not only indicate character; they also form character and spiritual taste. Wl~at we think ofand enjoy thinking of~when we are free, when the rule is not directing us, and the choice of mental occupation is up to ourselves, both manifests and shapes the inner self., These chosen reveries can be the occasion when temptation is most .likely to assail us. They can be little secret escapes from the cloister and from the spirit of religious life. Therefore it is of first importance that we cultivate lofty and holy 231 CH'ARLES F. DONOVAN mental companionships so that our idle moments will be in keeping with the tone of our religi0,us profession and will strengthen rather than dissipate our religious spirit. As ~ Kempis says (Bk.iii, ch.58)~ "That cometh in'to my mind which by custom pleaseth me best to think upon: and where my thought is accustomed to be, there is that which'~I love." What nobler~ theme, what~holief com-panion gould we have for our unpres~ribed and effortless meditations than Our Lord Jesus Christ? Wouldn:t we be in a blissful state of spiritual perfection if~. during the day's work we looked forward eagerly to those moments of rest, especially the moments ~ before sleep, when-we would be able to think easily and lovingly of. ,lesus, and say with the poetess, "I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart?" In Case You Donq: Know It-- The Catechetical Guild Educational Society publishes a first-class magazine entitled Catholic Youth. $1.50 per year, for ten issues: 15" cents pet"copy; quantity rates to ~chools and churches on r~quest. Write to: CatholicLYouth, 128 E. Tenth Street, Saint Paul. I" Min-nesota. Another Catechetical Guild project is Post-Reporter, Catholic Youth's own newspaper. It is published every second Monday during the school year. $1.00 for full school year; 5 cents for single copies: bulk rates on application. ¯ Address, as above. The Dominicari Fathers~'of the Province of St. Albert tile Great publish The Young Dominican for the benefit of young men~ho aspire, to become Dominican students. The paper is attractive and informative. Copies are sent.on request. Address requests to Brother Bede's Mail Box, Dominican House of Studies, River Forest, Illinois. The Missignar~r 'Sisters of Mother of God recently began publi-cation of The.Ark, "a. monthly periodica, l devdted to ecclesiastical and' cultural affairs, p~rticulaidy Of Eastern Rites." "Subscription: $2.00 per year; 25 cents per copy. 232 Sain : Appeared Clement J. McNaspy, S.J, AM WRITING this just after giving Holy Commumon in.one.0f the.'most favored and sacred spots in our coun-try. It is the nearby convent infirmary. .The com-municant was a lay sister of the Religious of the Sacre'~d Heart. I don't know her name. The convent is .really c~alled the College of the Sacred Heart; it is located in Grind Coteau, Louisiana. If you have never heard of Grand Coteau, let me assure you.that it is one ~f the least worldly villages anywhere. T.here is no motion picture in town. There is not even a chamber of commerce. A stranger would probably~call it a "sleepy" town. Yet few towns in the United States have known such spiritual activity. For one. thing, Grand Coteau boasts a retreat house where the spiritual, exercises are made almost weekly by sizable groups of laymen. There is too a desuit-novitiate within the city limith; and no ridigious need be tol~l that a novitiate can hardly be called a "sleepy" place, especially at recreation time. But Grand ,Cot ea 'u s c.laim to. veneratioo goes far .beyond this. o As you ~drive'along Louisiana. Highway No; 5 toward the. outskirts of the village of Sunset, you are sta~rtled by a garish-(fortunately, somewhat fadi'ng) 'placard: National Shrine, Saint A15peared Twice." ~An'd the sign points to Grand Coteau.,Jhidden beneath pines and oaks and moss, one mile north of the highway. -l~his gives away Grand Coteau's secret. One of the very few first-class miracles performed in the United Sta~es and officially accei0ted by the Church took place th.ere, in ¯ that very infirmary where I w.as just privileged to gi~re 233 CLEMENT J. MCNASPY Review for Religious Holy Communion. No, the miracle didn't happen yester-day. Yet o'nly a few weeks a~o we buried ninety-six year old "Tante Yomme," who when in school at'the convent had been a witness of the miracle, the last surviving wit-ness. Besides, private archives have a way of annihilatink even decades of years; and the kindness of Reverend Mother Superior of th~ College of the Sacred Heart has put into my hands these treasured documents, original affidavits and first hand descriptions. It is engaging to read among them Sister Mary Wil-son's personal account: how she was cured of~a disease diagnosed as incurable. There glo.w warmth and imme-diacy in the young novice'-s story. She hurries along, ingenuously, simply, impatient of conventional syntax and punctuation, not even careful to sound completely consist-ent. Here are her own words, as copied from the document heretofore unpub!ished.1 Tie very next day (December 10, 1866) I was worse than I had ever been before up to that time, all hope of getting better abandoned me; I felt getting weaker and my sufferings were so intolerable that it seemed to me that it was impossible to bear them long--Given up by the Doctor I disposed myself to receive the.Holy Viaticum this was oix the 10th of December and on the llth the Father gave me the - last Plenary Ifidulgence. One of our dear Mothers brought me a picture of Blessed Berch-marts on~the 6th and said that the community was going to make another Novena to Blessed BerchmansI looked at Mother and in my incredulity asked her, if there was any other saint left that they had not already importuned; for my dear Mothers and Sisters had already made so many novenas that I thought neither God nor the Saints were willing to confer any favor upon me ". I do not think I had eaten an, ounce of food for about forty days, during that time I had taken nothing but a little Coffee or ,tea which" for a week before I recovered, I could no longer take; and for two weeks no medicines had been administered--the Doctor said 1To facilitate reading, dashes have been inserted in the text. 1946 "SAINT APPEARED TW~rCE'' it was useless 'to torture me more so he stopped giving me any; the last two days I was unable to swallow even a drop of water . ¯ Owing to the condition of my mouth and fongue it was greatly feared I would not be able to swallow the Sacred Host--the Father therefore gave me but a sm~ill particle~it was with great difficulty that I could receive even this; the Father perceiving it remained b~; my bed,side with ciborium in hand until he had the perfect assurance that I had swallowed it,~this however could only be affected by means of a teaspoonful of water, and attended by. intense palm Being Unable to speak I said in my heart: "Lord, Thou who seest how much I suffer if it .be for your honor and glory, and the salvation of my soul I ask through the intercession of Blessed Berch-mans a little relief and health, otherwise give me patience to suffer to the end, I am resigned"--then placing the. image of Blessed Berch-mans on my mouth, I said: "if it be true that you can work miracles, I wish you would do something for r~e,--if not I will not believe in you. ~I can say without s~cruple or fear of offen'ding God, I heard a voice whisper: '~Open your mouth." I do so as well as I felt some one put as it were their finger on my tongue and immed~ ately I was re|ieved. "I then heard a voice say in a distinct and loud tone: "Sister, you will get the desired habit, be faithful, have confi-dence, fear not!" I had not yet opened my eyes, I did not know who was by my bedside I turned around and said aloud: "but Mother Moran I am well"--then standing by my bedside I saw a figure he held in his hand a cup, and there was some lights burning near him--at this beautiful sight I was afraid--I closed my eyes and asked: "is it Blessed Berchmans", He answered: "Yes, I come by the order of God, your sufferings are over, fear not !" I opened my eyes but he was gone. The Sister infirmarian had gone down to the chapel to receive Holy Communion. I sat up in the bed I felt no pain. I was afraid it was an illusion and that my cure was not real--I turned over and over in the bed but without pain--I then exclaimed: "It is true, Blessed Berchmans has cured me." , The Sister infirmarian soon returned from the Chapel and made her'act of thanksgiving before a little altar in the, infirmary. I did not speak to her: in about three quarters of an hour Mother Superior came in to see me, fearing at the same time to find me in the agonies of death,--but what was not her great surprise when she met my eyes which had not been opened for six days and heard me wish 235 CLEMEN'T J. MCNASPY Review ?or Religious her good morning. Mother in utter amazement drew back and exclaimed: "and what, those eyes!" then s~eing my mouth perfectly healed.she added: "that mouth!" On and on, page after page, Sister Mary Wilson details her dreadful illness, how the doctors had given .up ,hope, and the aftermath of her cure. Equally impressive, also in these archives, are the sworn accounts of D~octors James G. Campbell and Edward Millard, both.of whom certify, in stolid.professional language, to the miraculo~us cure. Dr. Millard concludes in these words: N(~t being able to discoveb any marks of convalescence, but an immediate r'eturr~ to health from a most sever~ and painful illness, I am unable to explain the transition by any ordinary natural laws. I hereby declare under the sanctity of.my oath that the above state-ment, according to the~best of my knowledge and belief is entirely true. (Sig1~ed) Ed. M. Millard. M.D., Grand Coteau, La., Feb. 4th, 1867. Sister Wilson's close friend, Mother Moran, has for-tunately also left ah eyewitness account. Her sisterly sympathy for the young postulant so .eager to receive the habit is felt as we read along: ' Wednesday evening, Miss Wilson asked me if it was night; for her eyes being continually closed, she could not distinguish' between night and day.On hearing my answer, she rejoined: "I never more expect to see the l.ight of day. I cannot pbssibly endure such suffering much longer." - She then with perfect composure gave me several commissions, requesting me t~ attend to their execution after her death; she expressed her lfiappiness in dying at the Sacred Heart (Convent), and entrusted me with the expressing of her thanks for all her Mothers and Sisters from whom, she said, she had received so many p~oofs of affection and tender charity. Her weakness was so great, that-her voice was scarcely audible, and she spoke with such difficulty that it required over an hour to articulate these few" words. Next morning I was surprised to fintl her still living: this day, Thursday,. certainly surpassed all that had preceded, in the intensity-of pain; her half opened mouth displaying a tongue swollen, inflamed and raw, gums and teeth all 'clotted with black corrupted 'blood, 236 "SAINT APPEARED TWICE" excited an involuntary sensation of horror followed by a deeper ,senti-ment of the most. tender compassion in every one. who saw her in this condition. Mother Moran goes on to tell how exulta~ntly Sister Wilson leaped from what was thought her deathbed, and she reports the physician's reaction when he ~ame to visit his dying patient: Not being able to assign any natural ~ause capable of producing such an effect, .he several times repeated: '~Really, Miss Mary, I can-not understand it! But one thing is certain, if you recover, it is cer-tainly' not to medicine or to my care that you are to attribute your cure." - Among other interesting documents from the convent archives are the-sworn testimonies of Fathers Nachon, Benausse, and Serra, all from th~ nearby. Jesuit college, who had assisted the postulan.t with the last sacraments. Each of these Fathers writes in his own hand, in a personal way, with distinct individual touches. As you read along you wonder if they thofight it odd of Blessed John Berchmans to by-pass his own brethren's house to appear in a neigh-bo~ ing community. If they felt sensitive on this point they surely show no-indication of it: in fact, they seem almost proud that the Blessed had chosen one of their spir-itual charges to work perhaps his greatest miracle. More arresting, probalSly because less technical and formal, is a letter from Father Na~hon to a. Miss M~ry Perry, who would seem to be a non-Catholic. Writing enthusiastically just four dfiys filter the miracle, the~Father tells ~f tlqe fl~ry ~tirred up fill around Grarld Coteau~ ~The moral that he draws is~ possibly .l~ss significant in ourbwn. claywhen Loubdes and Fatima are so widely talked about. He writes: You see, child, that the time of miracles is not entirely passed away. There is nothing astonishing for us Catholics, since we know that~the saints are powerf.ul with God and that nothing is impos- 237 CLEMENT J. MCNASPY sible to God. We may rejoice it has happened amongst us because it excites us to devotion, and contributes to. animate our faith. No wonder that the Archbishop of New Orleans immediately started canonical proceedings to investigate the miracle.' Rome moves proverbially slowly, l~ut after tire-less probing and cross-examination the Church was at length satisfied and set its seal of approval on 'the mirac~- lous healing. It was officially accepted for the canonization of the young Blessed; who henceforth is' thought of as peculiarly belonging to Grand Coteau. For generations now the citizens of the little village have simply taken their privilege for granted. They are not at ali surprised that Heaven should have chosen Grand Coteau to break through to earth. And visitors usually make just that comment. For there are visitors to Grand Coteau, even though no one pushes publicity. Thereare the devoted alumnae who return to dear "Coteau" to see favorit~e old teachers or justthe hallowed, tastily land-scaped grounds. Students of the modern college, and academy attract relatives'and friends. And often enough devotees of azaleas, live-oaks, or Acadian lore are drawn to Grand Coteau. All these, quite naturally, spend some time in prayer in the infirmary. Periodically a .group of" retreatants from the retreat house will also come, and once a year the Jesuit novices and scholastics pay a pilgrimage of homage to their young con-frere. "The small room where the apparition took place has been cony6rted iiato a tiny chapel dedicated to St. John Berchmans. Onl~ two quiet mu~al~ and a notice placed where.the Saint stood remind one that this is one of Ameri-ca's treasUred shrines. "° " ,238 , A Pla°n of.Sei -denial Wi!:hin :he Reach of All Robert B. Eiten, S.J~ ~N ~CATHOLIC LIFE the principle of self-denial holds ~an important place. Yet it is a fact known to all that in i?his~ matter of self-denial there is danger of going to extremes--of failing either by defect or by excess. Those :who are too ,easy on themselves practically exclude the likelihood or even the possibility Of their reaching high perfection.; they go against the injunctions of Our Lo~d and the Chur.ch, and they oppose the common teaching .of ascetic writers. On the other hand, those who overstep their powers and go to the other extreme run the risk of broken health, shattered nerves, and even the loss of vocation. These latte} try to follow a special path without a special c,all; with only ordinary g.races at their dispoiaI they try to follow a way of life that is possible only with .e~xtraordinary grace. There havd tJeen, and there are, souls who have a special vocation to continuous heroic mortifica-tion and even vOluntarily-sought sufferings. These souls need" particular guidance; what we say here is not for them. But concerning those souls--whether priests, religious, or lay peoplemwho Seek high perfection with the aid, at least normally, of only ordinary graces, one might ask.: What~measure "of self~denial and mortification is to be expected of~ them? The answer to this question is~ con-tained in the following program. 1. To begin with, a large number of acts qf-self, abnega,ti0n and mortification can be practiced by ca?~fullg observing the Commandments, thelaws of the Church, and 239 ROBERT B. EITEN for Religious the duties of our state of life includiag the rules and customs of_our religious institute; and by patientl~l bearing those sufferings which a life of carff, ul and reasonable fidelity to grace imposes on us. This does not mean that one will never slip here and there;, for to observe peffectt~l over a long period of time the rules of at least some religious insti-tutes requires special graces over and above the ordinar!l or~es.~, It is well for religious to remember that this is no small program; for a careful observance of the rules makes. great demands in the matter.of self-effacement and morti-fication. St. 3ohn Berchmans declared that the common life was his greatest mortification. 2. Many sufferings, hardships, sorrows, and denials come to us in the ordinary pro.vidence of God. Some~times Divine Providence makes great demands. This was the case during Wokld War II when many, besides sufferingth~ loss of dear ones, had to er~dure such things as destruction of property, poor wages, nearly impossible rationing limi-tations, and so on. It is clearly the will of God that we bear such sufferings at least without complaint, and patiently. Sufferings of this kind may come to us from queer, sorts of cau.ses, cond.itions,, a~nd occasions. They~ .m~,ay come from superiqrs.,I from e~quals,, o.r frominferio, rs; from.t,he i~justice and frqm the justic~e of. others; from ,the sins, o.r.even from the generous but tastl~ss cha~rit, y of°others; or from inani-mate. creation, as~ ~n, othe cas~ "of bad Weather, t~ornadoes, floods, and so fbrth. 3: The, well-estab!ish.e~l and reasonable c.onventions, of polite society which make for proper refinement;~etiquette, ci~lture, neatness, and general social decency, algo provide 1Obviously the fact that we might be assisted only by ordinary graces should never be a pretext for carelessness in observing our rules. Thus we must seriously apply ourselves to their observance as far as we can and ask.God for the h~elp needed tO observe them perfectly. 240 _ '." ~JuJv, 194~5 ~ ~ ~ A PLAi~I OF.SELF-DENIAL~ ~ ~_ ~mucb material for self-abnegation and restraint. We, ought -~to respect these conventions" i'n a spirit of love" of the neigh-bor for the love :of,God since-these things make'life more ~ livable. Theie is r;o reason why their observance cannot-be ~upernaturali~ed. Included here are, such-things as table _ .manners, which should be exquisitely delicate but Without _.affectation; deanlinehs and neatness about our person,. office,- and room; .proper restraint in both the quality and.~ oquant~tg of' food; proper deference shown towards certain /persons.by reason of their age, sex, and rank;~ politeness and the avoidance of all vulg~arity; and, in general,, restraint in our conversation. "- Here it is well to include the mortification involved correcting deflects of disposition" and character. These -('&fects make Us deficient and negligent in the performance . our,duties and their are annoying to others. Slipshod .work, absent-mindedness, failure to return things, frequent boast" fulness, sarcastic language, a ~failure to keep appointments, "all are examples of the defects here referred to. In brief, we should always be and act the perfect, cultured Christian~ gentleman. We may well keep in mind St. Anthony'.s saying_that a saint would be-at home in any society. Such. deportment too (to dwell on another point casually) would be an effective means of fostering and getting voca, tions, oY°Ung people would be fascinated by what they. see -in us and would want to share with us that life which seems _to bring with oit, as it should, such refinement, culture, and fine iense .of propriety. ~ 4. Besides the foregoing instances of the cross which, ° wd~might say, are imposed upon us, there still remain mor~ ~tificati0ns and sufferings which we freely impose on our-~ Selves. ~ In other words they are entirety-voluntary, ~vith-" ' out° any obligation of i~recept or necessity~ All founders ROBERT B. EITEN ~-°-~ " ' Reti~ew for Religious; -of tel.i~i6us orders and all great spiritual~ writers, agree that voluntary penances are in some way an essential element of serious" tending towgrds perfection. Besides-the exercise humility and the cross, these v~oluntar~r penances prsvide,.~ for the.exercise of other virtues. o True, these voluntary mortifications must be practiced° prudently .and under the directi6n of the superior or of a goqd spiritua~l director. Norm.ally we should not, orat least need not; wait for them to propose what v61untary mortifications are to be practiced. Usually such things as ¯-spiritual attractions, reading, the insi)irations of gra~e, and~ so forth will suggest to us what might be done. After thiriking over the matter seriously, we propose, to .our. superiors or spiritual directors what vol~untary mortifica~ tions we .would like to practice. We then follow out their directions. This obedience will protect us against excesses ",in ~ith~r direction. Of course.no one needs permission to practice any of the mortifications mentioned or suggested under No. 3~ above.~ In spite of all the safeguards provided,by consulting,, and following the advice of superiors and spiritual diiectors in this matter, there remain sd,me obscurity and uncertainty - as to what and bow much voluntary mortifica.tion should ¯ be undertakenl An excellent practice might be, perhaps~. to,ask God to. send us in His providence those physical and , mental sufferings which are proper to help us reach.tl'iat~ d~gree o~ perfection to which He has called us. Such a request, if it is sincere, includes the firm resolve to conform ~ourselv~s to His will in all sufferings and hardships__w~hich He-may fiend us. ' 5. Fi~nally, it is not too much to expect fervent souls to, have at least the desire to .desire affronts, humiliationk re~'roaches, misunderstandings, and so forth. A better, dis- positidn:wouldbe to d~slre, tolong for, and to love thes~;~: ver~ things just to be like Qbrist and to help Him mo~e~" ~ffectively in the great workof the redemption. : However . ~ofi"hcco~nt of human misery and frailt~ a soul might.not these ~eneroOs dispositions. If' one has, howeqer, the'desire_to desire these things, he is by that very .disp0si-tion ~rep.aring himself for an actual desir~ and love of. :~ffronts, humiii~tions, and.so on. 7 " Here we might add that souls ought to try to mairftain a ~pi~i~ of cheerfulness in all circumstances of life; whether -'these be e'asy to bear Or very tr~ring. S. uch a spirivadds much, me~it ~and abnegation to mortifications alrea'dy practi, ced. 'A~nd how such a c6nstaht cheerfulness impresses others f, or. the better! To be cheerful at all times're~u~ires gr.eat abne-gation- anal perhaps at times a special grace.Well mi.ght We, ask,God to give us this .grace. ,,:o ~ The t~oreg~ing program of self-denied seems to be pos-sible for all. No one-will ~oncede that- it is an easy one; ~and, yet no' one can Say that it is impossible. It is sweetly: r_easonablg, not violent; yet it will make us like Christ ~Crfi~ified and will make us active collaborators with Him in the g.reat work of the redemption. '~?' P~erh£ps someone, may ask why nothing has been said~ ,.~bout gictim souls, that is, souls who offer themselves and their whole lives with all the sufferings, ti:ials, humilia-tions, mortifications, and so forth contained:therein to Gbd ::.~":jus~ as Christ did upon His entrance into the~ world °-(.~f: Hebrews 10: 5-10.) By. way of reply we may say that: souls who feel themselves supernaturally" urged to ~:his kind of offering, may follow si~ch an urge. Obviously tl~e motive for so doin~ may vary. ,It might, for example be to offer self for the' same intentions that .Christ had; or tb fill':up in one own s flesh~ what is wanting in C.hnstos ¯ o - . 243 ~ROBERT B,~ EI~TEN = ,~, ~ pfission~ fOr"~the Church.-- f.~Colos~sians 1 : 24~ 5 : Thi~--- ~victim-life, th~s.3pds(Slgte-of the cross and suffe)~ag; i~ ¯ grand:vocation., It does not, however, n~cessarilg in~olve~. any more moriifica~ions tha~ tBose~ we have ~mentioned,butT only gives special force to the ~o~i)e f6~ beating them:. _ If however there is question of a victim-sohl in the limited sensd that is, of one who_ ~sks for exceptional ~uffe)i.ng, what should be done? .No~ally,~one should~ not ~.permitt~d to makesuch'a request for-sufferi~g,~asq~ -may show a lack of humility and can emily lead to illu- ~s~ons( But if it is clear that an-individaal-has a special vocation for this type of life, then such a one should fi~stbe thoroughly,t~sted. After suNcient p~oof of the call to such a l'ife of ~uffering, the soul may offer itself to God in this very cult vocation. ~ ' "' " Let us hope that the abov~ Pr9grhm wiil clarify -'t}rs,fo~ us and that we.may "by the mercy of God"~present :our '"~odies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto"God; ~0fir] re~sonable service" (Romans 12;, 1).= . ~I am 'much indebted to De Smedt (NOtre vie surnaturelle, volume 2, "pp.~472 252) not only for much of the ~aterial- found here but also in some wag fdi~the i~spiiation to write this article. ~ -~ .APP[AL5 FOR VOCATIONS ~ .~ ~he following vocation folders and pamphlets rely chiefly on excelle~t and well cffosen photographs to make their appeal: Modern Samaritans, from the NoVitiate "df~ the Alexian Brothers. Clayto~. Missouri: How about gou? (an appeal t~pros~ pective ~riest candidates) and Co~e In (an appeal for fay. Brothers), b6th from "~th~ Dominican House of Studies. River Forest, Illinois:'A Life to Give, from th~ Sisters of St. Casimir, 26.01 W. Marquette Road, Chicagq 29, Illinois: Dominican Sisters: St. Marg o~ the Springs, from the Novitiate.-St. Mary 6f tile Springs, Columbus 3. Ohio;Whg a Hospital Sister? by Rev. Dr. L. Rumble. M.S.C., fiom Radio Reply Press, St. Paul, Minnesota. * Our Ladg's Fz, ends, by Rev. Ju~ Senieur, O.F.M.Cap., describes the work t~e R~gina ~leri Society for the spiritual and financial suppprt of priestly and reli-'~ gious vocations. It. is .published by the Catholic Uni4ersity Cofiference of-Clerics and Religmus. C.S.M.G,, Cathohc Umverslty, Washmgtqn 17, D. C.~ . :~ '-- " 244 - "~,HE visitor,~a gray-hai~ed alumnlus of th~ college~, ~was [~, movifi~ about the° crowded recreation room o[ the faculty" friars, greetirig old acquaintances and ~aking new ones. He approached a card table where, over unfin-ish~ ed pinochle, three.~ unfamiliar friars stood awaiting him. "Tom Casey, class of '13," he ~smiled brgadly, hand extended. "Onesimus," .smiled back the first. "Eleuthe[ rius," smiled back the second. "Symphorianus, smiled the third. And albeit no stranger to Franciscan-phenomena. Tom Casey, class of '13, blinked hard and made a que4~r frog-like noise in°theback of his throat. "Where do you peo131e[get those names?'" he dazedly wondered. Here were names not found.~ven in his prayey-book Litany of the~Saints-though .surely there are enough odd ones in that long list! NOr had he ever, iffal[his long years and his wide travels, encountered those names among the living. If~the~y reminded him~of anything~subsolar at all, it:wa~ of Pullman sleeping cars---or of the Latin play in hi~:.4ophbfiiore year:~or of just" plain "printer's pie:' '~ What a downright shame, his meditation concluded, that nbr~ m~il"youhg men, oprobably christened :John, Wflham, Pat-rick; should now have to confront mankind as Oneslmus, "Eleutherlus, Symphorianus! -~ ~" Undoubtedly,~the religious n~mes of many of~us~d6 ~starfli~ the si~cular eai. They may at first hav~ ~tarfiede v~e ~n our ~own. Wi~: i~robably had "h.oped for something, con[ ventio~al; but the superior, with the finality"~of Z~icl-Jar~, siinply ~declared, "This is hi~ (or her)" r/am'e," and uttered bizarre syllables. A'ndothat was'that. Or, if permitted to CLAUDE KEAN Review for Religious choose our names, we probably found the community's nomenclature as depleted as Kresge counters at closing time on Christmas Eve; and what we got was what all earlier customers hadjudiciously foregone. So the names that many ,of us bear are admittedly unusual. Are they, therefore, absurd? Or may it not be that, compared with the proper names of many layfolk (names which were selected from unrestricted possibilities), our abnormal names are actually quite normal? or oub apparently mean-ingless names are at least relatively, fraught with remark-ab, le significance? From stray evidence now and then I have long sus-pected that the answer lies in our favor. From a half-hour of recent research, I now know for certain that it does. The "research" consisted in a mere scanning of proper names in the.telephone book of a representative eastern clty of the United States. Under the A alone, I found a hundred proper names, male and female, much morfi extravagant than any ever imparted to friar or monk or Sister¯ or Brother. ' To be specific, who. of us, even though destine~dot9 teach geography, is named Maryland, .or Virginia,; 6r,Columbia, or Dallas; or St,aten, or~ Reno? O~who of u~, e,ve ~n~th0.u.gh a ngt,ed nature-lover,. ~ . .bears the. name of Fern,~.~,or,Ivy, or Myrtle, or Reed, or. Violet, or, Daisy,~ or Pansy?., ~ Or ,who of .us, e.ven,thgugh avowedly interested in the classic, long,ago," wears toga-like the name of Homer, or Ca.to, or ~.~Virgil, or Caesar, or th~ myrtle-laden name of Phoebe, or Penelope, or Vesta? Or what choleric character among us is openly known as'Hasty?--what phlegmatic as Tranqu.ilisim~?-- what cynical as Burr?mwhat loquacious as Verba or Vow, els? Yet, as the telephone book plainly attests, laymen who possess these given names do walk and breathe, 246 SPEAKING OF NAMES A few names that occur-under theosame letter A savor of surrealism: Bushrod,.Hedgecomb, Hunk, Whip. Others would seem to suggest endearment: A1icebelle, Birdie, Bowie, Dernie, Goldie, Hommey,-Libby," Shorey, Sibbie, Trudie, Wadie. A sizeable percentage looks yearningly,- though uncertainly, towards the glory that,was Rome and the grandeur that was Greece: Aetha, Al"eathea, Cleora, C1evius, Euna, Iola, Lathena, Lesbia, Nova, Orpha, Thea. Several others walk in veiled oriental mystery: Arsinoe, Bayan, Desma, Zelma, Zetta. There is something of a faded Elizabethan charm in Clift, Bourne, Dell, Teare; and something suggestive Of remote constellations yet undiscovered in Arie, Angrous, Elsir, Louv~enia, Norment, Ord, Sigrid. The rest, howeyer symbolic, are not ~iuite clear in their allusions, and must be listed as mere vocables: Alonda, Armeita, Awillda, Beekman, Belva; Buxton," Demleta, Ena, Grice, Kermit, Lola, Lona, Lora, Ponten-ciano, Reta, Rulloda, Velma, Wilda, Worth. Now, it is no concern of mine--apart from the admin-istration of baptismmwhat names people bestow upon 'their offspring. In the exercise' of American freedom of expression, they may even, if they so wish, prefer numbers to names. (Ripley discovered not long ago anAmerican youth with the proper name of "Eleven."). Nor-do I in the least imply that odd names denote odd characters, that "that which we do call a rose by any other word would" not "smell as sweet." My sole contention is that, as mere~ alphabetization, the secular nomenclature equals in singu-larity, and .frequently even excels, the religious. And ~he Bell Telephgn¢ Company is. my star witness. But names are more than vocables: they are symbols. And the modern secular trend in names indicates the com-plete secularization of modern thought. Gone now are 247 CUAUDE KEAN Review/:or .Religious the.days~when~ the-names of~_men-=:as well as of the,ships they° sailed,and the ,new lands they discovered--were drawn from the rich vocabulary ~of Catholk,Faith. Gone,~ too, for the most part, are the days when devout Protestants turned to their Bibes in search of worthy nami~s for their newborn. In an age turned materialistic, men are more and mor'e taking ~their names not from God's great, but~from the:world;s great: from poets and philosophers of, a~cient Rome and Greece;. from~literati~urs of later eras (my tele: phone~ list includes Milton, Addison, Scott, Emerson, Haw-thorne~) ; from .modern scientists, like Burbaiak and Edison, and modern statesmen, like Roose~celt and Churchill. ° In even'.m6re articulate expressionof, th~ materlahstlc spirit if has now b~6m~ th~a~epted prhctice tona~e pkr-s6ns fiot¢.Mte~ other persons~ but affei things hft~r flbra . and:fauna,~ and geograpb~cal~it~s; and '~vefi mechanical objects.~ -This~ ph~ndmenbfi wOuld, to~do:i~'.ju~tlce~ ~req~i~ a Chesterton's~afysis: :.~ut,ev~n'on tge gu~face~ ~4t, to c~!l,~a.gifl ~'Petunia;,)'.;~or a;boy "Ohio", or '~Derrick":. '(and theg~ does.~,exist, a.[.b~y with: that name), is2 nbt]perceptibly ~ny;~more~?ra.tio~al.~,than. to. call ~a ~favorite .p.etuma.~ . Ger-tr~ fle,:5,or~.the stxte of OhiO~"Harold,'' or a~derrick,,,on 4be property', , "~ rl' .~1,~,- .".d" " , ¯ '~ '~ -,-~ ~. - :~ ~TBa'~: be ,to,hea~n, ~he~.figm?s" that we~rehg~ous-bear ar~,the -names obpersons. , ~nd" at"that,~ no ord~narF per-sgns: -Pe~ha~s~hose'p~rs6nshv~d m~the fat-off ~ast. "Per-ha~ little' i~'kfiooh Oaboot-them~x~pt ,tfi~t "a ~N~o or'3 Tr/j~h~r'~fi ,Diocletiah ~Ut th~ to death:; W~rid has not e~n th~"vag~egt memory 6f~the~.~-'rYet~they are the truly gr~at"~of"the 'h6~an race;.and ~God knows them~well., In their :flames ~we have inherited a, lustrous lggacy~ of honor, ~ special tide-to: protection and~aid. And in-.those names~ we h~ve~,6ur~inspiration fovholy living and DECISIONS OI/: THE HoLY SEE. dying--as :Ruskin .words it; . l~ifting hol.y hands without-wraith, and sinking to blessed ~sle~p.withoht fear." So what 6dds if ~the lay-w0rld pities 0r plllor,es us fdr ohr names? 0 What odds if not one person in ten cab pro~ nounc~e those, names fl~uently, and~,,not one in twenty can ~spell them correctly? We know the inner worth of those flames. And as to their ,outward form, well, an occasional glance at the telephone book will afford us unfailing peace hnd satisfaction. ~ .~o~yember'21, 1945:o The Sac~'d P~nite£tiary announced th~/t His " Holiness Pope'Pius XI~i in ari audience granted to the Cardiri~l Pen[- . tenfiary M~jdr ~n Ndve~ber 8, 1~45, h~d gracio~s~ grafit~d t~al indulgence o~ fifty days to the f~thful who devoutly,k~ss the ring of a p~efect apostohc. Th~s ~s t~ same indulgence which the faithful may gain by devoutly k~ss~ng the r~ng of an archbishop or bishop (Pr~es et Pta O~era, n. ~}0). Prefects apostohc are prelates'in m~s~ slon countries who govern a t~rr~tory call~ a prefecture apostohc. Usua!ly they. are not b~s~ops: h~fi~ the special ~r~nt recbunt~d 'abd~. Pemtent,ary answered ~ree questions regarding the p~ous exerc,se of the Way qf the Cross: I. According "to a decred.,dated August 6, 1757, it~ is~provided that for the pious exercise~0f the Way df the Cross, when otherwise a disturbance might be daused, a~priest and two clerics or cantors may ~ake the rounds, pausing at each station and reciting the accustomed prayers, while the faithful ie~ai~ing ia' their places give the responses. Question: Does this de~i~e.~ hold~ .only fgi, th~ ~.bublic~, exercise~ of the Way of the Cross made in a church, o~ does it hold ~hefi this exer-cise is m~de~by religious in their chapels?. - Answer: In the a~rmative to the first part, in the ndgative to the second. II. Questior~: Whether under the circumstances-mentioned in the decrees of Februa~'y 27, 1901, and of May 7, 1902 namely, when 2~49 DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE all the religious cannot go in a body from station to station in their chapel without causing a disturbance be~cause of the smallness of the place they can gain the indulgences connected with the i~ious.exer-cise of~the Way Of the Cros~ i'f only one re, ligious (B~roiher or Sister) makes the rounds f~om station to station and reads aloud ~the accus-tomeffprayers, while'rthe rest remaining in their places rise and genu-flect there.for each station? Answer: In the affirmative. " III. Question: Whether in the same circumstances already de-scribed for religious and following the same method, the faithful who live a common life, as mentioned in canon 929 of the Code of Canbn Law, can gain the indulgences attached to the pious exercise of the Way of the Cross if one man or woman, respectively, makes the rounds of the stations of the Wa.y of the Cross and recites the cus-tomary prayers? Answer: In the affirmative. Questions I and II tell us that in a religious community chapel it is not necessary to have the priest recite the prayers for the Way of the Cross; it suffices for one of the religious, Brother or Sister, to make .the rounds from station to station and to recite the customary pray-ers. ~ This has be~n explained before in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (I, 1942, p. 424; IV, 1945, p. 61). Question III extends the same privilege to communities of the faithful living a common lifb, for instance, nurses in/training in a h~pital, old folks living in a home, orphans, studehts at a boarding school, an~ so forth, so that the group may gai.n the indulgence in the chapel if one of their number, man or woman, makes the round of the stations and says the accus-tomed prayers, while the rest remaining in their places answer the prayers and rise and genuflect at each station. OUR~CONTRIBUTORS o ~LAUDE KEAN is on the faculty of Holy. Name College~ the Franciscan house of studies, Washington. D. ~C. He formerly taught at St. Bonaventure College anc~ served as spiritual director of the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn. W.H. HING-STON is spiritual director at ~lesuit Seminary, Toronto. CHARLES F. DONOVAN has just completed a year of ascetical study at St. Robert's Hall. Pomfret Center, Connecticut. CLEMENT ~1. MCNASPY is a professor of classical languages at St. Charles College, Grand Coteau. Louisiana. ROBERT B. EITEN, a professor at the University of Detroit, is much interested in ascetical subjects. CYRIL VOLLERT and ADaM C. ELLIS are members of the theological faculty at St. Mary's College, St. Marys, K~nsas. 250 Two I-[eart:s* W. H. Hingston, S.J. IN HIS RADIO address at the close of the Fatima jubilee (October 31, 1942) Pope Pius XII consecrated the wsrld to the Immadulate Heart of Mary. In the same year, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, he pub- -licly repeated this. consecration and ordered that, as a per-petual memory of this solemn consecration, the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary should be celebrated annually in the universal Church. In obedience to this, order the Sacred Congregation ' of Rites had a new Office and Mass com-pose& and these were presented .to the Holy Father for approval on December 10, 1943. A decree of the Congre-gation of Rites, dated May 4, 1944, which incorporated the text of the new Mass and Office, ordered that the feast 15e celebrated annually on the Octave day of the Assump-tion, August 22. ' Despite the fact that the decree promulgating the feast was issued two years ago, this year may be the first Oppor-tunity for many of us to make,~use of the new Mass and Office~. The occasioh seems an apt one for recalling some of the basic thoughtspertinent to the devotion to the Immacu-late Heart of Mary, and particularly for considering the relation of thii devotion to theworship of the Sac'ted Heart of Jes~us. Obviously there is an intimate link between the devo-tion to Mary's Heart and tha(which we render to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The same saint was employed by Provi-dence to initiate simultan, eously both devotions. No hearts *This article appeared in slightly different form-in The Canadian Messenger of the Sacred Heart, December. 1945, pp. 778-782. It is reprinted here with permission. 251 .W.~ H. HINGSTON Review [or Religious were ever so united by resemblance and by affection as those of .Jesus and~ Mary. The very flesh of Jesus came from Mary alone through the power of the Holy Ghost. Yet under,the outward likeness of the two beautiful devotions there are fundamental differences; and it is the purp.ose of this a~rticleto set forth briefly the resemblances and the dif2 ferences as a help toward an und~rst~indirlg piety. ¯ There is an essential 'difference to b~ observed from~the oai'set between the Form fff devotion paid to the Sac}ed Heart of Jesus and that paid ~o the Heart of HiS Moth'~r, .be.cause of the fact that in one instance veneration is ren- "d~red tO a divine Person and in the other t0a human son. Since all devotioh goes to the person whom we invoke or honor, it is e¢ident that there must be an infinite distance in this regard between the cultus of the Heart of the God- ¯ man and the cultus of the Heart of .Mary; between honor shown to God_and that shown to a creature no matter how highly favored. ~ To mark t~is essential distinction it seems pre, ferab, le, when speaking of the~ heart ofMary alone and'apart from the heart of Jesus, to use .the words H61y Heart. 0f.Mary, or Immaculate Heart, or Most"Pure Heart of Mary: rati~r than '"Sacred'" Heart ofeM~ry. That i~s whhtthe~Church d6es. Sh~ employa the.title Sacred Heaitof M~ry onl~ in the combified "title of ihe Sacred "Hearts of 5es~s and Mary. Apart°from t'h!s~ preliminary consideration, which.is of a general nature and recalls that first and most essential dis~ tinction which is never lost sight ofo by Catholics but is s~mply taken for granted, there ale other .important dis-tinctions to be made. They relate to the-three chief way~ in which we can co sider a~ay°devo~iofi, or:t0 tde t fire leading aspects under which a dev6t~on may be stud~ed. These are: i'ts ma.,terial object, its f6~mal obje~ct, it.s sp~dia.l 252 appeal~:-i'Th,ough these.wolds ~ay~ ~ound a bit 'technica),~: ~:.-x.~_~;tlSey-~ire very Useful :and '~ccurate;~ and we have all ::.(~li~rized ~ith them thrs~gh~the explanatiSns ~whidh-~e ~a~e Often~h~eafdof the de~otion to the.S'acred Hea;t Jesus. Now on each of these three fundamental ~eadings, ~;~Which together sum up a devotion, the differences between_ "~he~cultus of the Heart of Jesus and that of the H~art Mary are mgmficant and p~ofound. ¯ ~ -~irst~ then, as to the material object. In both devotigns .~a humafi heard.of flesh is presented forour veneration. Yet " ~t Once,we note a profound difference. ~The hea?t of Jesu.s :~" isin ~tself an object of ~doration. It is adorable because ~ is g~a~t.Bf that ihdividual human gature which the Divine :~ ",W0rd" mbec~0 m"m g " ~ncarnate took to H"~ m s~elf and" made Hi_s .Very own.~ It' is part of Him. Though a created object, ~-t~gfigh-a mgtenal thing, ~hough Buman flesh, .~t ~s ~he.heart ~f the Son of God madeMan. The honor, we kh~w /'~ m~s~inciude ad;ratiom "In contrast to this; iff the --,:~ 2~i~n ~to .the heart of Mary such ~eneration i~ refid~fed as~" ~ay~ be paid to a 5feature, b~t nothing o~ the adoration. ~ t~at belongs to God Mone. - N~vertheless, adoration is not the .principal act in th~ ~Tdevotion ~,t~ .the Sacred Heart. The human h~art.of the ;~Sa~ior is:~resented to us nbt primarily.that, we may r~nder ~-~,adoration~ bui because of what it stands for, the hu~" -heart:being the natural symbol of human love.~ T. he_~ight 6f the heart of Jesus spontaneously calls to mind His human -i~ l~ve,for His Father and for us. Uoiversally the he~r(is ~.,. looked upon .as the organ, or at least the symbol-of,ldve. ~So fiatural_a symbol of love is it, that in every lan~uhge the h~art.of a ~an is taken for his inward dispositions.--Aman" ~:. <" .- who - is generous, kind, sympathetic is spoken o~" as big--. ~,'hearted, ~tender-hearted, and so f~rth; or else; if he m~ni- 253 ,W H HINGSTON , ~ ,7~ * ~ ~Reoteto for Reltgtous ,, fegt no such pleasant~characterlstlcs,~ he is spoken of as hard-., h_eart~d, cold-hearted, heartless.~ - --~ N~w that thes~e preliminary observations .have beeri ~ade, we daft completeour statement regarding the materml - j,obj~ct i~ the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus~an'd,say' F_hat it-is His heart of flesh taken as the natural symbol Of " His hhman lo;¢e. The natural sy.mbolism of the heart p.la~cs a large pii,~t in the devotion, which would not be underitandablewith-.-. out'~t. In the devdtion to Maryls Heart on the contrary, the symbolism of the heart is faint and not at all empha-. sized, ,th~ reason being that it i~ not.so much her~love as her pUrit~y and her fidelity that we consider. Our attentibr; ~alled far more to the purity, htimility: and. Other vir~ue~ of ithat most faithful heart than to the~ qualities of its love., It ts~ riot hard to discover the reason why in the,devotion to t~he Heart of Jesus such emphasis is placed on the natural sym-b01ism of the heart, and why such emphasis, is lacking, from, "the'~correspbn.ding devotion to the Heart of His Mother. This will become still more apparent when we consider the_ ,f, ormal object of each devotion. A first difference between. "the t~vo devotions is thus found evenin the matefial object; which in both devotions is the heart of flesh, but in ~ach t~e~ ~ l~eartfis viewed under a somewhat different asp, ect. ~A setond and more pronounced diffe~rence lies ifi tl'ie~ - .formal object of. each,, d~voti6n. - The formal object of the devotion to Jesus' Heart is His human love for m~n. ,-,, Note in'the first place t.hat it is His human love which is stressed: -~a'ther 'than His divine love. Coeterrial with the FatheY~' '/he Wor& the~Second Person of the m6st adorable,_Trini_ty~, ,has known from ~everlasting and has loved witff an eteriaal love,each one of us. Yet it is not this eternal lovebelonging -to His divine n~ature that we c~nsider in His Sacred Heart:,,~ ~, ' dul~l, 19~ 6 "~ ~ ' ' TWO HEART~. . .~ We~ read-therein His huma~-10k~e. The symbolism of the heartdna.kes this perfectly clear, for tl~ heart i~ the symbol ~ of h~uman love, no~of divine love._ Besides, the love'of ['Jesus is presented to us as a suffering love, andonly the" .human in Him can suffer. " We venerate the human love b_y .which a divine Person loves us. Yet Christ's eternal love 5, belonging to His divine nature, though it is not and cannot properly be symbolized by any .natural symbol," is by no, ,means excluded from this°devotion. -After all, we love that ,Person Himself who loves us and suffers for u , and Him as He is, whole and entire Hisvery self, .the~ one living principle of a lov~ that is both human'and divine. The.Woid having been made flesh, having becorhe P0S- - sessed of a human °nature like ours, now loves-with a love that began only at His Incarnation, that is truly .human,- -xhat is ~harged with all the emotions of man's spiritual will -*and is colored with all those feelings that have their roots -., in- the sensitive part "of man's bodily make-up. Christ, though~a divine Person and not a human person, loves even ¯ in the, manner that human p~rsons love. He experiences, 'tOo, the consequences of human love, even to the suffering ~ Which unrequited love entails. The greater the capacity_ ~-~ .for loving, the greater the capacity for. suffering. The more -. rintense and unselfish theaffection, the ,greater the anguish-when such affection, goes unrecognized .and is not returned: Note in th~ sed6nd place' that it is Jesus" human love ° ~or. men that. is .the formal object, rather than His htiman 10re for His Father. Undoubtedly Christ, in the-human" nature that He had made His own, loved FIis Father with a,_ll the strength Of His human will; yet it is not this lmre -for His.Father that is dwelt upon, but His love for mdn_. '-"Behold the Heart which has so,'loved men," were His words to St. Margaret Mary. In contrast to this we find that in the devotion to the" Most Pure Heart.of Mary the formal object,, insofar ~is it ¯ is love and not fideli.ty, is love for her 3esus and for her _G~d, not her love for ma'nkind, at least not primarily her 10re for.mankind. We do not positively exclude from our-~ thoughts in this devotion the motherly ,love that she bears to all mankind; but our attentiofi is focused on something ¯ ~lse, rlamely, on the complete and unique absence of all self-love, on the absolute fidelity to grace, on the devotedness of-- M~ry's heart to God. . " Thirdly, there is the special appeal to be considered in each of .these two devotions, outwardly so alike. ,Here the contrast is most marked. In the devotion to_ His Sacred Heart, 3esus makes an appeal to us by His very love for to love Him i[~ return. He opens His breast, bares-His'heart - to us, reveals it afire with love for. us, bleeding for us, ~giving itself to uS without holding back anything, even t~o the Cross, even to the Eucharist; He even humbles Himself before us and shows us the wounds thiit our indifference and -. coldness have inflicted upon Him, piercing His v.ery heart. His fs a suffering love, arld.there is an awful pathos in'His hOpeal, t-he appeal of the~ Son of God begging of His crea~ tures the favor of being loved in return. Our Savior appea~l~. ~strongly to our feelings; but it would be a grave mistake 6n_ our.part and a complete misunderstanding of His plea were we to content ourselve~ with~ giving Him in answ~er mere;. ~ pious sentiments. He ga~e us deeds! He pleads for real reparation, exercised not so much in the way that at6nemen~ ~ is usually exercised, ~amely, by works of pe~nance, bfit° rather by works~ of love, especially through the ever more ,perf~ect doing of His Father's will and the perform~ance of acts ofde~votion towards Himself in the Eucharist. In "the devotion to the Most Pure Heart of Mary~ there" duly, 1946 " Two HEART~ -is also an appeal, of course, but it is not an impassioned appeal, nor are we besought to love her. She does not show us the love of her heart for us, as 2esus does, and beg us to love her in return. Unquestionably Mary has loved and actually does love us much, incomparably more than any one, save only her Son, has loved us; but there is nd allusion ~o this in her appeal. Mary's love is also like her Son's, a suffering love; and it is significant that those sufferings by which she shared in the Passion to such an extent that she is deservedly styled Queen of Martyrs were all endured in her sinless heart; for of bodily sufferings we bare no record. It is furthermore a historical fact that c6mpassion for the broken-hearted Mother--so bravely standing beside the.Cross, as St. 2ohn presents her, or with the torn and lifeless-form across he/ lap, as Christian piety has long depicted her first led the faithful into the sanctuary of Mary's suffering, heart. Nevertheless the sorrows 0f Mary form the object of a distinct.and much more ancient devo-tion in the Church; and in the devotion to the Most Pure Heart the thought of compassion is not prominent. The heart of Mary° is usually depicted encircled with fragrant roses to denote the flowers of many virtues, with~ which it is adolried, not with,thorns. The specia! appeal in this devo-tion is reilly a .very ge.ntle and very sweet and persuasiv.e invit~ition to highdr ~hings. ~ It is a call to .lead an interior life and to imitate the Blessed Virgin by purity of,life, ,by perfect.chastity~ of;th~ affectigns .which are to be. dlrect~ed ~ avcay"~ro, m°creatures,wl~oliy tO G~d, by the practice' of all those wrtues that are particularly dear to her Son. 2esus, because He is God, draws us by the cords of Adam to himself, to the Divinity. Mary because she is a creature draws us, not to herself but directly to her Son, to .her God, to Him who is in truth her child, born of her, yet 25.7 W. H. HINGSTON Review for Religious who can say of Himself: "I and the Father are one'.' (John 10:30). "Amen I say'to you, before Abraham was made, I am" (John 8:58). "Philip, he that seeth Me, seeth the Father also" (John 14:9) " The two.devotions closelycorrespondwith'one another, yet each in its own sphere. They are not on the same footing. Devotion to the Heart of Mary is really a beau-tiful pendant to the devotion to the Heart of Jesus. Her heart is, after His, the most beautiful thing in all creation, because in every way the most perfect copy of His. Upon such beauty the angels gaze in rapture. To portray it is beyond the reach of words. Yet in contemplating Mary's loveliness let us guard against the mistake of far~cying that her very greatness keeps her aloof, a sublime but ethereal beauty far removed from us, dwelling above all angels and saints in the court of the Most High. The symbolism of ~tie heart ought to save us frdm. this baneful illusior~ and should impress' upon us that Mary's is a warm and comfbrting loveliness, tender ~and sweet, and constant and motherly. The tho~ught of this should .fill us~ With confidence rather than with awe. Shh can be approached in all our needs and in our every mood. She can comfort as.none other can, for the heart of the Virgin Mother has experienced sorrow of e;cery kind and has ,known such depths of human v~oe tha~ all other anguish compared to hers must seem bearable and light. But, far and above all, tile heart of Mary overflows with joy; and no one can approach her in thought and no( feel happier for it. She takes her children by the hand and leads them straight to the Sacred Heart of Jesus along the way of encduragement, and hopefulness, and holy joy. The resemblanees between the two devotions are man, r and obvious. Reflection and meditation bring out the differences, and with clearer knowledge comes a deeper 258 July, 194i5 TWo HEARTS understanding of both these lovely devotions centered upon two human hearts that beat in unison. What does the devotion to the Most Pure Heart of Mary add to our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus? It supplies an additional motive for trust in Him. Mary is so approachable, so understanding, so near to us! She is just one of ourselves. 'And withal how close she is to Christ! How dear to His Heart! How worthy by her stainless purity to plead the cause of us poor sinners with Him, who is the fruit of her womb, and to lead us to Him. Besides, a'better realization of the fundamental differ-ences thatexist between the two devotions brings out cer-tain aspects of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of desus which otherwise might never have been so clearly under-stood. In'this sense devotion toMary's Heart is seen to be a complement to the devotion to the Sacred Heart, which ii itself rooted in the mystery of the Incarnation, with which Mary was so intimately associated in the divine plan. But, best of all, there is the encouragement given us by Mary's life to lead an inner life. The attractiveness of . Mary's example is .best studied in its source, her heart. There we can appreciate the exquisiteness of her every action, feel the warmth of her tender affection, and breathe in the entrancing fragrance of her purity, which rises like incense in a pure white cloud from the selfless sanctuary of her immaculate heart. ANNOUNCEMENT It is even more ditScult to get pap~,r now than it was during the war. For this reason we are reducing the size of the REVIEW from seventy-two pages to sixty-four pages. The amount of matter in each number ~ri!l be about the same as we are using more small type than usual. .We shall return to the 72-page issue just as soon as we can get some guarantee of a regular supply of paper. 259 Recept:ion of Seminarians int:o Religious.lnst:it:ut:es Adam C. Ellis, S.3. ON JULY 25:194 l,.the Sacred Congregations of Religious and of Seminaries issued a joint decree regarding the reception of ex-seminarians into a religious institute and the admission of ex-religious into a seminary. This decision was duly" publi.shed in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (1, 1942, p. 71), as was also a private an-swe~ regarding the same given on May 11, 1942 (III, 1944, p: 67). A number of problems have arisen regarding this decree. Recently we received copies of Commehtarium pro Retigiosis which had been delayed by the war. One of these (XXIII, 1942, pp. 226-237) contains an interesting commentary on this decree written by His Eminence, Cardinal La Puma, then Prefect of the S. Congregation of Religious, who died in 1943. Although the Cardinal did not intend to give.an authentic interpretation of the decree but me.rely a pr!vate or doctrinal interpretation, as he himself tells i~s, yet since he was co:author of the decree there is no other person better qualified.to explain it to us; and we are happy to give our readers the substance of his commentary. We shall omit those parts which pertain to the reception of an ex-religious into a seminary, and confine ourselves to the parts which are of interest to-religious the reception of an ex-seminarian into a religious institute. For a better understhnding of the matter, we repeat here that part of the decree which pertains to our special subject: ~ "Likewise, before those who for ahy reason whatever have left a,semlna[y are a'd-miffed fo a religious family, the religious superiors shall have recourse to the S. Con-gregation of Religious, which will inform them of their opinion (;ud;clum) after having cons;dared all the circumstances of the case." The fact that the document issued by both Congregations jointl~r is called a decree should not be_overstressed, since-it provides little more than.a caution and a necessary re~medy to secure the faithful observancd of certain important prescriptions of t_he Codewhich have been treated too lightly. Much less is this document to b'e considered as a general decree, or new law, since it was not prepared in a plenary session, and it was not approved in focma speci~ica by the Holy Father. 260 SEMINARIANS RECEIVED INTO RELIGION The decree does not establish a new impediment to entrance-lnto' religion or into a seminary; nor is previous permission, properly so-called, to be asked from the SS. Congregations to admit a person into a seminary or into a religious institute since this is left to the proper superiors. The SS. Congregations are to be consulted; and after con-sider~ ng tl~e case,, they will give their opinion (iudicium) ; but thereby they'will neither admit nor impede admission, nor defer it, nor render it more difficult. The SS. Congregations had no thought or intention of. granting to Ordinaries, even indirectly, the faculty to oppose the flee entrance of' seminarians into religion except in the cases explicitly mentioned in the Code--that is, in the case of seminarians and other clerics in sa~red orders and even for these only within the strict and well considered circumstances mentioned in canon 542, 2°, first case: Let us now explain the terms of the instruction quoted above. By seminarg is meant an ecclesiastical.college in which those who aspire to the clerical state are,prepared according to the prescriptions of the law, even though a few lay students are admitted. ;A college to which both clerical and lay students are admitted almost indis-criminately chnnot be called a.seminary. To admit to a seminary means to receive a person as a seminarian; to be dismissed from or to leave a seminary supposes that one who has been a seminarian ceases to be an aspirant to the clerical state by reason of dismissal or voluntary withdrawal. To adn~it to a religious f~mitg means to admit one as a true member, that is "to the novitiate, of a religious institute in which pub-lic vows. are taken, but not to a society of men living in common without public vowS. The words "those who for any reason whatever have left ~a seminary" apply to those who are dismissed from a seminary by superiors as well as to those who leave voluntarily, thereby bidding farewell to their vocation to the clerical state, even though they do so unwillingly because of pressure brought to bear upon them from without. The phrase in question does n_ot apply to those who have completed their studies in a seminary and await ordination outside; "nor does it apply to those who have left a seminary in order to fulfill their, military service but intend to return afterwards, and thus do not renounce their vocation. What about those who Ieave a seminary because theg wish to enter religion? An authentic reply of the S. Congrega6on of Religious given to the question on June-25, 1942 says that "the decree does not 261 ADAM (2, ELLIS affect those who leave a seminary or college in order to embrace the life of religious perfection in some religious institute since these are provided for in'canon 544, § 3." Another class of seminarians who are not subject to the decre'e are those who~though they have truly left a seminary, either by reason of dismissal on account of a lack of talent required, for st6dies, or because they thought they were not called to the clerical state now ask to be admitted to the class of lay brothers in a clerical institute or as lag religious in a non-clerical institute. This means that an ex-seminarian in the strict sense of the term may not be admitted to a religious institute as an aspirant to the priesthood. He may, however, be received as a candidate for the lay brotherhood in a clerical insti-tute, or as a Brother in any non-clerical institute. There are some non-clerical institutes in which a few members are promoted to the priesthood while the majority are Brothers. In this case the ex-seminarian could be received as a Brother, but not as a candidate for the priesthood. If a religious superior wishes to receive an ex-seminarian in the strict sense, that is ohe who has been dismissed from a seminary or who has given up his vocation to the priesthood of his own accord, he must have recourse to the S. Congregation of Religious for its opinion on the case before he can admit him to the novitiate as a can-didate ~:or the priesthood. Meanwhile, however, provfded the superior has re~ceived ttie necessary testimonial letters and is morally certain that no impediments exist, he may admit the ex-seminarian in ques-tion to the postulancy or first probation preceding the novitiate while he awaits the opinion of the S. Congregation regarding his admission to the novitiate. In order to avoid useless delay, which may be harmful to voca-tions, the S. Congregation requires the following documents and tes-timonial letters, written or at least signed by the rector of the semi-nary: (1) testimony regarding the moral and intellectual.qualities of the ex-seminarian; (2) testimonials regarding studies made, as well as progress i~i them, and grades obtained in examinations; (3) tes-timony or opinion about the inclination or propensity of the aspirant towards the religious state; (4) finally, testimony regarding the reasons why the candidate left the seminary and the manner of his doing so, namely, whether he was dismissed or left of his own accord, and whether he left after finishing his studies at the end of the scho-lastic year. These dbcuments should accompany the petition of the 262 duly, 1946 '- BOOKS RECEIVED candidate and should be sent to the S. Congregation of Religious by the religious superior together with any other information which may be judged opportune, either in confirmation, or by way of example, or; finally, as a possible refutation of the statements of the rector of the seminary. Books Received (ApriL20 .to June 20) THE NEWMAN BOOK SHOP, Westminster, Ma~iyland. The Sacred Ceremonies of I2ow Mass. 'By Rev: Felix Zualdi. C.M. $2.00, More About' Fatima and the Immacidate Heart of Mary. By Rev. V. Montes de Oca, C.S.Sp. (No price given.) Life of St~ Stephen Harding. By J. B. Dalgairns: $2.50. A Mystic Under Arms. By' Ft. M:-Eugene Boylan, O.Cist.R. (No price given.) The Spirit of Christ. By Father James, O.F.M.Cap. $2.50. Counsels to Confessors. By St. Leonard of Port Maurice. $1.50. FREDERICK PUSTET COMPANY, New York and Cincinnati. Spirit in Darkness. By Rev. Fr. Brice, C.P. $3.50. H. DESSAIN, Malines, Belgium. Caeremoniale: Pars Altera: De Celebrante. Auctc;r~ J. F. Van Der Stappen. (No price given.) THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, Milwaukee. Wisdom /or Welfare. By Sister M. Dolorita, S.S.N.D. mentls in Genere. By Emmanuel Doronzo, O;M.I. $3.75. Shoulder.- By Rev. Thomas J. Hosty. $1.50. $2.00. De Sacra- Straight from the THE MARIAN FOUNDATION, San Antonio. The Golden Thread of Netoman. By ReV. William R. Lamm, S.M. (Paper). $.50 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, New York. St. Paul: Apostle and Martyr. By' Iglno Giordani. $2.50. B. HERDER BOOK ~OMPANY, 'St. Louis. The Mysteries of Christianity. By M. J. Scheeben. $7.50. Christianity: An Outline of Dogmatic Theology for Laymen. By Joseph H. Fichter, S.J. $2.50, JOSEPH F. "WAGNER, INC., New York, Scriptural References for the Baltimore Catechism. By G. H. Guyot, C.M. (No price given.) (No price given.) THE DECLAN X. MCMULLEN COMPANY, New York. Most Worthy of All Praise. By Vincent P. McCorry, S.J. ST. ANTHONY GUILD PRESS, Paterson, New Jersey. Frances Schervier: Mother of.the 'Poor. By Sister Pauline. 263 May a superior grant a Sister with simple vows permls~ion~ fO use a gold watch? A moderate use of an article made of gold is not. in itself, con-trary to the vow of poverty. This is evident from the fact ,that some constitutions approved by" the~HolY See prescribe the wearing of a gold ring. Frequently the constitutions or legitimate custom forbid the use of articles m_ade of gold. In such cases the superior dould not grant permission for the use of a gold watch. But if there is no such prohibition, the, superior may grant the permission, provided that the watch is not so expensive as to cause surprise to the faithful who see th~ religious wearing_it. This element depends upon. local circum. stances and customs. A possible solution for the 'problem involved might be'to have the watch removed from its gold case and put into one of less precious material. ~ 23 Accordln9 to canon law how many delegates are necessary to make up a general chapter representing a community of one thousand Sisters? May delecjafes of the general chapter of a religious communlfy induce other members o{ the chapter, before the election of the mo÷her general has taken place, to vote for a certain group of Sisters whom they wish have fpr council members? Canon 507, § to tells us that "in elections which are made by chapters, the universal.law as set forth in canons 160-182 shall be obsdrved, as well as the constitutions of the institute which are not contrary to this universal lawJ' The Code leaves th.e organization of general chapters of religious institutes entirely to the constitutions. Constitutions approved by the Holy See. usually provide that every house of twelve or more members is represented in the general chapter by the local superior and by at least one delegat~ elected by the mem-bers of the local community. Smaller houses are grouped together to form a unit of from twelve to eighteen members. This group then elects one delegate from among the local superiors and one from amdng the subjects. If the institute requests it, the S. ~ongregation of Religious will allow large communities one delegate for every twelve Sisters. Thus a community of fifty Sisters would be entitled 264 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS to elect four delegates from that community. Paragraph two of canon 507 states explicitly: "All must abstain from seeking votes either directly or indirectly for themselves or for others." This law is dear and needs no explanation. Howe:oct, the constitutions frequently allow the members of the chapter to seek information from other chapter members regarding the qualifications of certain individuals well-known to them. Insuch a case the mem-bers bf the chapter ~hould give the information required, but should abstain from positively urging any member to vote for another mem-ber. Their ~duty should be confined to giving the information requested~ according to the best of their knowledge, in all charity and sincerity. It may be well to note i~ere that 'the delegates elected by the indi-vidual communities sh0uld not be instructed regarding persons to be voted for. This would clearly be contrary to the canon quoted above: The community must have confidence in the good judgment of the delegates ,whom they elect. --24--- A college has regular tuition and board and room charges. Over and above these charges_there are fees in various departments for certain courses, for instance in home economics for food, interior decoration, and s6 forth; in the music department, for the use of musical instruments. In a~ word, these fees are for things used, for materials, instruments, and the llke. Tl~e sum total of fees charged in any department make up the budget of that department. Must such fees be used only as described or may they also be used for the general cjood of the department, for instance to buy supplies, such as records, in the music department; to give the students of that particular department an. outing; to finance a student's trip to-a con-ventlon as a representative of that department? As long as the fees charged to make up the budget of any si'ngle department are used in that dep~rtment~ both justice and Canon Law ate satisfied. ~:~he purchasing Of instruments and stipplies needed for -the laboratory experiments of the department are certainly for the benefit :of the students, and the same inay be said regarding the travel-ing expensesof a representative of the department who is sent to a .convention. And it is perfectly in keeping with the law of,'the Church to use any balance left over at the end of the year to give the students of that department an outing or some other entertainment " to which, payment of the fee for board and tuition gives them no right or cl:aim. 265 QUESTIONS AND ~NSWERS Review for.Religious ' m2Sm, Our constitutions havi~ the following provision regarding candidates for admission: "Their parents must have borne a good reputation; and should these have been under repute of any enormous crime, or have been condemned in any criminal court, the aspirants cannot be received." Does this artlcle of our constitutions oblige us 1o reject an aspirant whose par-enfs are divorced and remarried? Since the constitutions seem to have in mind a crime against the civil law and a condemnation in a civil criminal court, divorce and "remarriage would not come under the prohibition of the constitu-tions. The requirem'ent of a good reputation on the part of the par-ents looks to the edification of th.e faithful. One may say that the parents have lost their good reput~ition if the faithful would be scan-dalized by the admission of their daughter into a religious commun-ity. Hence in our practical case, if the divorce and remarriage are things "of the past, forgotten by most people, there would be no diffi-culty in receiving the aspirant. If they are recent events,, p~udence must dictate whether the reception of the candidate into religion would cause disedification or not. It may be well to note that the constitutions do not positively forbid the reception of the daughter of parents who have a bad reputation, as is the case in the second part of the article quoted. Hence it seems that such a candidate could be admitted even though her parents are divorced and remarried provided her reception would not cause scandal to the faithful. In some instances at least, it might be a cause of great edification: for instance, if it became known that the daughter was entering religion to aton~ for the sins of her parents. --26-- I heard recently of a community of Sisters in ~vhlch custom demands that they go to confession in seniority. Do you know if such a cu'sfom really exists? Would it not be against canon law? It seems to me that confes-sors' might easily recognize their penitents in such circumstances. It is not clear just what is meant here by going to confession "in seniority." If it means "according to seniority groups"---e.g. senior professed, then junior professed, then novices there seems to be nothing particularly harmful about the custom. This arrangement according to groups would simply facilitate good order and could hardl~r be a source of embarrassment to individuals. Very likely our correspondent refers to a case in which indi- 266 Julg, 1946 QUES'~IONS AND ANSWERS Oiduals go according to sepiority. 'We t6o have heard of such a custom, although we do not know of any definite pl_ace where it exists. Strictly speaking, this custom is not against the l'etter of canon law; at, least, we are not aware of any provision of law which forbids it." It'seems to us, however, that such a custom is not in accord with the spirit of canon law. For one thing--as our corre-spondent points Out" it makes it very easy for confes'sors to recog: nize ~oenitents, for if the confessor knows the community at all he will. very likely know something of the order of seniority. This is often embarrassing t6 a confessor and it.is also an obstacle to the perfect liberty of spirit enjoyed by a penitent. At least, many penitents can confess more freely when they are not recognized as individuals. An added inconvenience for the penitent, if individual seniority is insisted on, is the fact. that those who immediately follow her will always know ju,st howlong her confession takes. Also, if she does wish to take a long time, she may be embarrassed at the thought of delaying the others. m27-- What is the mind of the Church on such matters as havln9 contests between 9fades to have the most Communions in a week, and on havln9 compulsory Communion Sundays under those circumstances where the-external pressure on an individual to receive Communion is very 9rear2 The principle for solving questions like this was clearly formu-lated in a reserved instruction issued by. the Congregation of the Sacraments on December 8. 1938. The text of this instruction may be found in The Canon Law Dfgest, II, p. 208. A synopsis of the instruction was printed in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, III, p. 268. The same number of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (III, p. 252) contained the translation of a very thor6ugh commentary on this instruction by Father Emile Bergh, S.3. For an adequate discussion of this impor-tant matter we refer our c~)rrespondent to the text of the instruction and to Father Bergh's article. Answering the question very briefly, we should say: Any prac-tice which induces pressure to receive Holy Communion is wrong and should be changed without delay. If '!spiritual treasuries," contests between classes, Communion Sundays, and so forth, are had at all, they should be conducted in such a way that all indi;ciduals will feel perfect freedom to abstain from Communion if they wish. 267 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Revleto ~or Religious According to our constitutions, .the order of precedenc6 among .the Sisters is as follows: The .superior general always and everywhere precedes all the Sisters including local superiors. Then come: the general council- Ior~ accorcfing to the order of'thelr election; .the secretary general; ~the treasurer general: former superiors general in the mother house (in other houses they follow the local superior); the mistress of novices'. Is this order of precedence to be interpreted as ¯follows? (I) All general officers taEe -precedence over the local superior in pres;ding over the assemblies of~ the mother house community. In other words, in the event .that the superior cjeneral is not i~resent, who presides over the assemblies and exercises of the mother house community? (2) Just what rank and authority, does the Io~al s~perlor of the mother house hold in the mother house? (3) If the mistress of novices is a councillor and the local superior is not, does that fact dispense the mistress of novices from being subject ~o the local supe-rior and excuse her from a chapter presided over by the local superior? (4) Does a councillor stationed in any house other than the m~)ther house take precedence over the local superior? Before answering the specific questions asked above, it may be helpfial to analyze the concept of precedence. Precedence is a sign of g~e~ater honor because of greater e~cellence. It consists in the right to occupy a more honorable place i~a church, in processions, or in assemblies; or in the right to act before others. for instance, to cast a vote ahead of others. This right of precedence supposes-in the person who enjoys it a certain excellence or dignity which places on others the obligation of reverence or obedience to them. Among religious the right of precedence is conferred upon an indi-vidual religious because of th~ office which he holds. Such.an office may or may not have authority over others attached to it. Thus superiors in a religious institute (whether they be general, provincial; or local superiors) have precedence over their subjects by reason of their authority to govern them (canon° 106, 2°). Other officials such as councillors, secretaries, bursars, mistresses of novices, enjoy the right of precedence because of the dignity of their office .even though it does not carry with it any authority over other professed r.eligious. .From the foregoing' it is evident that in assemblies in which no authority is exercised, such as the presence Of a religious community in chapel for the recitation of the office or of othe~ prayers in com-mon, or attendance at meals in the common refectory, it is quite 268 1946 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS r~asonable that-some officials enjoy" pre.cedence over the local superior', even though they-be subject to her in the external discipline of ._the house. They would rank higher in the order of preced.ence~ and would take.a higher.placein the chapel or in the dining room: but .they would not exercise" any, act of authoritg in either place: Such acts "of authority in general:assemMie's belong to superiors only, not to officials who do not enjoy authority over others by reason of their- - office. . The order of precedence in any particular institute is determined by t'he constitutions and by the customs of that institut~e (canon 105, 5°). The common law contains no provisions governing precedence of officials within a .particular institute. According to the present practice Of the S. Congregation,of.Reli-gious, precedence in religious congregations ,is as follows: (1) The superior general precedes all superiors, provincial as well as local, always anti everywhere. (2) The general councillors come next, in the. order, of their election, then the secretary .general and the treasurer general, but only in .the general mother house' in other houses they take their places after the local superior. (3) Former supe~riors gen- ¯ eral come after the treasurer_general, but only in the mother house. Some constitutions give precedence over local s.uperiors to the ~general councillors and to the secretary and treasurer general. Such provisions~ of older con'stitutions would prevail over the piesent practice of the S. Congregation. Any doubts, especially with regard to recently approved constitutions, should be solved according to the pr.esent practice of the S. Congregation. (4) The provincial superior has precedence in all the houses of his province; i~rovincial councillors, provincial secretary and treasurer take precedence but in the provinr cial house only: in other, houses they come after the local sup~erior. Regarding the local superior of the mother house: (1) She gov-erns the community of the mother house just as a local superior ggv-erns a local~ house, that is, in all things pertaining to the community as such,'but subject to (he limitation put upon local superiors by the law of the Church'and by the constitutions. (2) Evidently the superior general takes precedence over the local superior everywhere and at all times; she is not subject to the local S.uperior of the mother house. (3). Unless the constitutions or legitimate "custom~ have exempted higher officers and have made them-directly depend.ent on the superior general, the general councillors, secretary and treasurer ¯ general, exTsuperiors and so forth, are all subject'to the local, s.uperior 269 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS even thotfgh in public assemblies they take a higher place. (4) So,me constitutions provide that the first councillor or any one of the coun-cillors appointed by the superiqb general~ shall be local superior of the mother house. ' The mistress ot: novices and the novices are subject to the local Superior in all matters pertaining to the general discipline of the house (canon 561, § I). The fact that the mistress of novices is also a general couricillor would not change her relations to the local supe-rior of the mother house unless the constitutions or legitimate custom place her direct.ly and immediately under the superior general. In this latter case ~i distinction would have' to be made. In her official capacity as mistress of novices, she would still be under the general authority of the lo.cal superior together.with her novices by reason of the legisla-tion- of the Code; but in her private capacity ~s a general councillor she'would n6t, but: would be directly finder the authority of the. supe-rior general. We are ready- now to answer the questions asked above:. 1. In the absence of the superior general, the local superior of. the mother house presides over .all assemblies of the mother house com-munity. Officials--such as general councillors, the secretary general, the treasurer general--may precede th~ local superior in such assem-blies, that is they may occupy a higher place of honor; bfit they do not fireside, tl'iat is they do not exercise any authority, ianless legiti-mate custom gives them the right so to do. 2. The local superior~ of "the,mother house exercises the same authority over the community as such as does any other local superior over her community. All Officials, the superior genera.1 alone excepted, are subject to her regarding the general discipline of the house, unless -the constitutions or "legitimate custom have exempted higher officials from her authority and have made them subject to the superior gen-eral alone. If the mistress of novices is a councillor and the local superioress. is not, the former wo~uld still :be subject to the local superior in. the chapter of faults presidedover by the local superior, unless the coun-cillors have be~n~explicitly excused from such s.ubjection either by the constitutions or by legitimate custom. , 4. NormaIly a general councillor stationed in another house wh{ch is not the mother house does not take precedence over the.local superior unless the constitutions or legitimate custom explicitly so declare. 270 THE MYSTICAL'LIFE. By Pascal P. Parente, S.T.D., Ph.D., ~J.C.B,.A, s' s o "c,ate Professor of Ascetical Theology,. Catholic University of America. Pp. x ~- 272. B. Herder Boo~( Company, St. Louis, 1946. $2.50. This is the companion volume to the same author's The ~tscet[cat Life, which appear.ed two years ago and contained an announcement of this work. With it Father Parente completes his systematic sur-vey of the spiritual life, and gives us the first study of the kind to ema'nate from an American theologian. Thus it possesses a certain histo'ric~l distinction. In content it is just about what one would expect in a brief intro-duction to mysticism. The first part of it is entitled "General Aspects and Basic Elements of Mysticism," the. second "Mystical State~ in Particular," and the third "Mystical Phenomena."' The last chapter discusses the practical questions of direction for mystics, the perusal of mystical literature, the vocation to the mystical life, °and desire for it: Without saying much about the controversies which have enlivened mystical theology i~i recent years, Father Parente generally steers a middle course between the doctrines of the" extreme schools. \ He is a strong advocate for the distinction between acquired and infused ~onteinplatlon. Rather singularly and originally he pro-poses that the difference is neither specific nor one of degree,-bu.t one of iaianner, of the way in which contemplation comes to one. It is highly uncertain whether St. Teresa, for instance, and others who ha~e experier~ed the diversity, would agree that there is not a greater distinction. In describing the prayer of quiet, the first of the "infra-ecstatic states~,'' the author writes: "As a matter of fact, God by reason of His omnipresence does not enter but simply makes Himself known to the soul" (page 121). Is there any such perception or . experience in" acquired Eontemplation? The vocation to mystical graces is not universal, but, at least practically, restricted to a limited number ofsouls. 'It is rather characteristic of this ~rork that it opens with an inter[ esting account of the ancient pagan mystery cults. It contains rela-tively much from Scripture and also from the Fathers Of the Chfirch that illustrates or supplies analogues to mystical phenomena. The cases botfi of Teresa Neumann and of Padre Pio of Pietralcina, the 271 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Relioious first stigmatized priest, are .treated professedly. ~-G. AuG. ELL/~RD, 8.2. MEDITATION ON THE PASSION. Compiled from Varlou~ Sources, with an Introduction" by the Reverend Reginald Walsh, O.P: Pp. rift ~ 305. The Newman Bookshop, Westm. lnsfer, Maryland, 3946. $3.'/5. "Reaction to a meditation book, especially t'o a book on the P~is-sion, is aft'extremely personal thing. What strikes a responsive chord in one person may prove dull finduninspiring to another. Yet, in spite of the uncertain personal factor; this book is .likely to please and to be helpful to almost anyone who sincer.ely wishes good meditation matter on the Passion. The various chapters treat of the entire Pas-sion'with thoroughness, yet without that meticulousness that makes one nod drearilywhile preparing his meditation. The. points are well planned and gasiiy fixed in the mind. The reflections are sound and agreeably warm. The colloquies--well, it seems that in affy meditation book colloquies have to be taken as "the bitter with the sweet." At least, this reviewer (behold :the personal element!) would be well pleased: if all meditation books dis.pensed with the Ohs .and Abs that give colloquies the fingernail-on:the-blackboard effect. But it is only fair to say ~hat if you like colloquies, you will likethese; and if you do not like them, you can. easily skip them, for they are clearly labeled. The meditations were composed originally by a ~ister who was mistress of novicek for thirty years. The editor has omittedthe parts that applied to ieligious women as such; hence the present edition is useful (decidedly so) to ~ill.--G. KELLY, S.3. THE CATHOLIC CENTRE. By Edward Ingram_ Watkln.Pp. 261. Sheed' and Ward, New YorE, 1945. $3.00.- The republishing of this book Six years after its first appearance is subely, due as much to the book's intrinsic merits as to the fact that Mr. Watkin's more recent Catholic Art and Culture has made his name and w(~rth known to a greater number of readers. This earlier work takes its name from the fact that "Since Catholic Christianity is the supreme :and most complete revelation of religious truth, and the philosophy which it implies the most.balanced and comprehen-sive i.nt~rpretation of human experience, we shall expect to find Catholicism and the philosophy it demands occupying a central position between all extremes and one,sided excesses, reconciling and 272 dulg, 1946 ~ BOOK, REVIEWS balancing[them,by m~aintfiining the p~ositive truth they'contain'~aiad rejecting their~exce~ses and exclusions." The detailed exposition of the ways in which Catholicism is central,~ complemented realistically by the fa~t, that "As. actually~ practiced and understoo& ho.wever, Catholicism is not the perfect oia media, nor do.es .it occupy the exact centre of. human thought and action" because of~human 1.imi-" tations "gives, the author materi:~l for a skillfully integrated., bogk. He~outli~es the ideal, searches out and b~ings under a very uncom~ .plimentary spotlight remediable defections from the ideal; and pro-poses various readjustments by .way of constructive criticism: The attentive reader will not always agree with Mr. Watkin, but he cad hardly fail. to-be,prodded into serious thinkihg oi~ fundamental .questions.--C. DE MUTH, S.,J. MISSION FOR SAMARIT.AN$. By Anna Dengel, M.D. I~p. x -[- 126. The ~,:~ Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1945. $1.75. Medical rriissions is" a,live subject,in the Catholic' mind. Here we hav~.~short .bier-comprehensive treatment from the pen of a pioneer in the movement. The doctor'and the religious in Mother Dengel speak on every page. Not only is she a skilled practitioner,~but she hfis~studied ~he;history °bf:her :field thoroughly. Her statements,~are carefully~ weighed anff sulS~orted; by c0nvincing~evidence. ceeds in stirring the heart to an.appreciation for her ideal,~the win_ning 6fpagan souls for,Christ by~supplyin~ them with.the expert medical ~a~?e of religious .doctor~ and.nurses. Christ is responsible; :for the Catholic attitude~'towards the s!~ck: He first healed men's bodies and.then won their~souls: Mother Dengel has it ~thiit one purpose of His coming was to. renew the weak.ened h~man"body for.the sake of thesoul. She~ puts before us the response ofthe Church tboChrist's~example and precept. ~ Universal care ,of the si~k and°diseased'has flourished wherever~Christ's Church has~ reache& The lat~er half~ of the book is of intriguing'interest. ~ The medi-c~ il situation of mosto of,our mission~fields, includingeven the,,Negroe.s and white vagrants of America, i~ briefly but chpably described. Tbe picture is indeed pathetic, all the more so because ignorance, super-station, and~lack of facilities i~ccount for so much needless suffering. Mother De_ngel shows us ou~ opportunity: if with complete unselfish-ness we devbte ourselve~to the restoration of pain-wracked bodies, we can be sure that the grace of Christ, working through us,¯will take care of their souls. R.D. HUBER. S.J. ,.273 BOOK REVIEWS FORMING A CHRISTIAN MENTALITY. By the Reverend Killan J. HennHch, O.F.M.Cap. Pp. xll -t- 288. Joseph F. Wagner, Inc., New York, 1945. (No price g~ven.) This book, designed as a companion volume to the :author's Youth Guidance, was written to aid priests, teachers, and parents in their direction of'young people. The work is divided into two parts. The aim of the first is to promote the spirttuahzatlon of individuals in their preparation for married life. The second part continues this project with a description of the Christianization of the famil,~ through the liturgy. Father Hennrich's qualifications for this task are attested by his many years of experience in dealing with'adolescents and by th6 dozen or more books he has written in the past several decades-on various phases of Catholic social activities. The exposition is rather abstract and impersonal, almost wholly unrelieved by graces of style, variety, or sprightliness. But preachers and educators who study the book perseveringly will find that it outlines a sound program for the instruction and religious guidance of young men and women. C. VOLLER'I', S.~I. HOW TO MEDITATE.BY Rev. John P. Roothaan, S.J. Translated by Rev. Louis J. Puhl, S.J. Pp. viii + 72. The Newman Bookshop, Westminster, Maryland, 1945. $1.25. First published in 1837, Father Roothaan's little treatise De Ratione Meditandi has become the classic exposition of the so-called "Ignatian Method'" of prayer. Not that St. Ignatius ever intended that religious and other pious persons should confine themselyes to this.rigidly methodical form of prayer for the rest of their lives. He himself "suggests bther forms in his Spiritual Exercises; but he intended it to serve as an introduction to and foundation for a life of prayer. Hence the translator tells us in his introductory note: "It is an undeniable fact that here even the most unlettered beginner will find a clear, easy, fruitful method of meditation that can easily be adapted., to personal needs and dispositions." Normally the religious who has seriously practiced this funda-mental method of prayer, as explained by Father Roothaan, will in due time pass on to the practice of affective prayer: but even he will find it helpful if not necessary to fall back occasionally upon the method d~scribed by the author. It is always a safe refuge in time of spiritual dryness and affliction. ¯ 274 July, 1946 ,~ BOOK REVIEWS Thi~ little book should b~ in the hands of every novice. Older ¯ religious will 6nd it u~eful reading "to spu'r them on to greater dill-gence in practical .and fruitful prayer, and zeal in the pursuit of per-fection." This reviewer .regrets exceedingly that this English version of Father Rootbaan's classic was not publ.ished ~n pamphlet form so as t6 give it a wider distribution.--A.C. ELLIS, S.J. THE MYSTICAL BODY OF, CHRIST. By Frledrlch Ji~rgensmeler, D.D. Transl,,fed by H. Gardner Curtis. Pp. :~09. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, J945. $3,00. The first section of this book discusses the biblical doctrine.and offers an excellent presentation of the importance and place of the Mystical Body in the divine plan of salvation. The second part develops the author's conviction that this ~ys~ery is the fun~amental~ principle of asceticism. /, The translation from ~bicb this photographic reproduction was ma'de is yery disappointing. After comparing several sections of the book, sections of ten to fifteen pages in length, with the original German, this reviewer was astounded at the many inaccuracies found in the translation. Furthermorel ~t times, phrases, clauses (in fact, sometimes' whole sentences) have been~ omitted. For example, we. read (p. 64) : "The Second Person of the. Godhead u, nited mankind to Himself in a hypostatic union." And, again (p. 81) : "Christ is distinguished from the Father and the Holy~ Ghost by the circum-stance .of His human, existence." .Needless to say, the original Ger-man does not have such ambiguous-(to say.the very least)~ doctrine. The last paragraphs of pages 65~.~66, and sections of pages 69 and 70 are very inaccurately translated. In general, religibus who have not studied theol0gy will find this book too ponderous. Sections, especially the treatment of the Mys: .tical. Body in the ascetical life, will be .helpful. But we cannot ,. recommend the English translation.--M. LA PIETE EUCH,~RISTIOUE By J. F.Ber~ube, s.s.s. Pp. 151. La Libr'-'qrle Eucharls÷ique, 514,.avenue Monf-Royal Est, M<;nfreal 34, 1945. (No '" prlce-given,) The source,, the means, ~nd the end of a11 our life of grace is 2esus Christ. The Holy Eticharist, ~because it c6ntains the whole Christ, must therefore be the source, the means, and.the end of .our spiritual 275 BOOK REVIEWS R~oieto [oF Religidus life. How the Eucharistic Christ, in the ~acrifice of the' Mi~ss, in Holy Communion, in the Real Presence, is the all and all of our tioliness, and fl0w we should respond to these profound truths-- .l~his is the book's important message to the faithful. It is followe.d by two eloquent~ inspiring pronoi~ncements of Pius XII

1.Introduzione Nel 2014, nell'ambito dell'Agenzia Europea Frontex, prese avvio l'operazione Triton, coordinata dall'Italia. Da quel momento e fino al 2018, tutte le persone soccorse in mare dovevano essere portate in salvo sulle coste italiane. Una volta arrivate sul territorio, queste persone dovevano essere messe nella condizione di potere avanzare una richiesta di asilo o di protezione internazionale. Il già esistente sistema di accoglienza dedicato alle persone richiedenti asilo (SPRAR) si basava sulla disponibilità volontaria degli enti locali e non era in grado di gestire l'elevato numero di persone in arrivo. Furono per questa ragione istituiti (art. 11 Dlgs. n.142/2015) i Centri di Accoglienza Straordinaria (CAS) sotto la diretta gestione degli Uffici Territoriali del Governo (Prefetture). I CAS erano quindi pensati come strutture temporanee ed emergenziali. Le azioni messe in atto dai CAS dovevano, innanzitutto, rispondere ai bisogni primari delle persone accolte, in termini di vitto, alloggio e assistenza sanitaria. Ma, a dispetto del loro carattere temporaneo, e alla stregua dello SPRAR, i CAS avevano l'obbligo di svolgere attività (apprendimento della lingua italiana, istruzione, formazione, inserimento nel mondo del lavoro e nel territorio, assistenza legale e psicosociale) finalizzate all'acquisizione di strumenti di base per favorire i migranti accolti nei processi di integrazione, di autonomia e di acquisizione di una cittadinanza consapevole. 1.1 I richiedenti asilo: L'accoglienza in Italia e una possibile traiettoria resiliente La maggior parte dei richiedenti asilo proveniva dall'Africa subsahariana o dall'Asia Meridionale (Afghanistan e Bangladesh e Pakistan) e aveva alle spalle un lungo viaggio di cui la traversata mortifera via mare o attraverso i Balcani o il Caucaso era solo l'ultima tappa. La durata media del viaggio dal paese di origine era di venti mesi, che si svolgevano quasi sempre al limite della soglia di sopravvivenza. È ormai ben documentato il fatto che la privazione di cibo, di ripari, l'affaticamento estremo, il senso di minaccia, i maltrattamenti ripetuti, i lutti dovuti alla perdita di persone care durante gli spostamenti sono condizioni che accomunavano tutti questi percorsi migratori. A queste, si aggiungeva, per la maggior parte di loro, un periodo di reclusione, che poteva superare l'anno, nei centri di detenzione della Libia dove le condizioni disumane, la pratica sistematica della tortura e della violenza sessuale sono state rese note e denunciate dalle principali organizzazioni internazionali, come Medici Senza Frontiere e Amnesty International (Fondazione Migrantes, 2018). Inoltre, l'alto potenziale traumatico di queste esperienze si aggiunge a vissuti altrettanto tragici legati alle circostanze di vita nel paese di partenza che aumentano la vulnerabilità dei migranti. Infatti, questi sono il più delle volte costretti a scappare da condizioni di instabilità politica, di gravi conflitti interni civili e di estrema povertà. È per quanto fin qui descritto che si può affermare che le persone in arrivo nei CAS sono portatrici di storie potenzialmente traumatiche e ad alta complessità psicosociale che richiedono un'attenzione particolare. Le pratiche d'accoglienza che vengono messe in atto nei centri devono tenere conto di tale complessità nel rispondere ai bisogni di ogni persona, sia nella dimensione psicologica sia in quella sociale. In questo modo, nel cercare di raggiungere l'obiettivo ultimo dell'integrazione dei richiedenti accolti, i progetti d'accoglienza potrebbero favorire la definizione di un loro processo di resilienza che li porti a vivere una condizione socialmente accettabile e di benessere. Il concetto di resilienza ha suscitato molto interesse in letteratura negli ultimi decenni. Un primo dato storico nell'evoluzione della teorizzazione di questo concetto (Cicchetti & Garmezy,1993) è lo spostamento dell'interesse dalla patologia e dalla vulnerabilità alla resilienza, che si può ricondurre alla diffusione di una prospettiva positiva e salutogena nella ricerca e nella pratica clinica e psicosociale (Bonanno & Diminitch, 2013; Bonanno, Westphal, & Mancini, 2011; Cicchetti, 2013; Cyrulnik & Malaguti,2015; Walsh, 2016). Negli anni il concetto di resilienza è stato indagato a partire da diversi approcci. Da alcuni autori (Costa & McRae, 1980) è stato studiato come un tratto di personalità, stabile e fisso, da altri (Wagnild & Young, 1993) come l'abilità di fronteggiare e adattarsi positivamente a eventi stressanti o avversivi. Cicchetti (2013), concettualizzando la resilienza come un processo, ha concentrato l'attenzione sui fattori che lo determinano, con particolare interesse a quelli genetici e neurali. Bonanno e Diminitch (2013) si sono, invece, concentrati su quei fattori di rischio o quelle condizioni esistenziali potenzialmente vulnerabili che possono determinare il processo e che gli autori (Bonanno et al., 2011) definiscono come eventi potenzialmente traumatici (EPT). Rutter (2012), da parte sua, ha teorizzato la resilienza come un concetto dinamico dato dalla continua interazione tra i fattori protettivi e di rischio, portando all'attenzione l'influenza ambientale. Tuttavia, sebbene l'autore (Rutter, 2012) abbia messo in luce la funzione dell'ambiente nel processo di resilienza, sono gli approcci più ecologici e sociali (Anaut, 2005; Cyrulnik, 2001; Cyrulnik & Malaguti, 2015; Malaguti, 2012; Walsh, 2016) che hanno enfatizzato e dato maggiore importanza ai fattori contestuali, sociali, familiari e relazionali nella definizione del processo di resilienza. In particolare, secondo Cyrulnik (2001), posti i fattori di protezione, il processo non può avvenire che nell'ambito di relazioni significative. Nello specifico, l'autore distingue tre elementi fondamentali che rendono conto, nell'insieme, del processo: 1- le esperienze pregresse nell'infanzia e nella storia personale dell'individuo, la qualità dei legami di attaccamento e la capacità di mentalizzazione; 2- il trauma e le sue caratteristiche (strutturali, contingenti ed emotive e sociali); 3- la possibilità di risignificare la tragedia avvenuta attraverso il sostegno affettivo e la relazione d'aiuto, descritta, genericamente come l'incontro con l'Altro. Secondo l'autore, la persona costruisce nel proprio passato, in particolar modo durante l'infanzia, attraverso il legame di attaccamento sufficientemente sicuro, le risorse e la capacità di mentalizzazione utili per affrontare e risignificare il trauma. È in questo spazio relazionale quindi che la persona forma una rappresentazione di Sé come persona amabile, capace di affidarsi e di costruire relazioni forti e significative anche in futuro. La capacità e la possibilità di costruire queste relazioni sono viste come le condizioni che possono aiutare la persona a riconoscere le risorse da attivare per superare la profonda ferita incisa dall'esperienza traumatica e per ristabilire un equilibrio nella propria esistenza. Nell'ultima fase della sua teoria l'autore specifica l'importanza di una figura che chiama tutore di sviluppo o di resilienza, le cui caratteristiche e funzioni sono approfonditamente delineate nella pubblicazione di Lighezzolo, Marchal, & Theis (2003). Secondo gli autori, il tutore di resilienza deve favorire un processo di autonomia e ri-strutturazione del sé, trasmettere sapere, fornire esempi e modelli che permettano e legittimino l'errore; non deve quindi ricoprire un ruolo insostituibile e onnipotente. Il tutore di resilienza, sia esso una persona adulta informale o una figura istituzionalizzata nel sistema di cura e presa in carico della persona, è una risorsa esterna che coadiuva nel processo di resilienza. In questo ultimo caso, la formazione e la definizione del ruolo dell'operatore nel processo di presa in carico contribuiranno alla costruzione di un efficace intervento sociale e clinico per la promozione della resilienza nell'assistito (Manciaux, 2001). Negli ultimi anni, una serie di rassegne internazionali (Agaibi & Wilson, 2005; Siriwardhana, Ali, Roberts, & Stewart, 2014; Sleijpen, Boeije, Kleber, & Mooren. 2016) e in Italia (Tessitore & Margherita, 2017), hanno tentato di sistematizzare i risultati degli studi sul processo di resilienza nell'esperienza potenzialmente pluritraumatica della migrazione, con particolare attenzione alla condizione esistenziale di rifugiato. I risultati evidenziano e si concentrano, soprattutto, sui principali fattori di rischio e quelli protettivi che possono intervenire nel processo di resilienza a seguito di queste esperienze pluritraumatiche. In questi lavori emerge, tuttavia, la necessità per la ricerca di individuare strategie e procedure per interventi e pratiche mirati ed efficaci a promuovere il processo di resilienza nei contesti dell'accoglienza. In particolare, rispetto al contesto italiano si riscontra che sono stati svolti pochi studi sul tema, ancora da approfondire (Tessitore & Margherita, 2017). L'analisi approfondita delle pratiche costruite e messe in atto nell'ambito dell'accoglienza negli ultimi anni in Italia risulta rilevante per una sistematizzazione di conoscenze e competenze e utili per la progettazione di interventi psicosociali efficaci. La presente ricerca si poneva l'obiettivo di studiare, se e in che misura, le pratiche dell'accoglienza e le strategie di intervento messe in atto nel sistema CAS di Parma e Provincia abbiano favorito un processo di resilienza nei richiedenti asilo accolti. Inoltre, si poneva l'obiettivo di comprendere se e in che modo l'operatore dell'accoglienza potesse svolgere una funzione di tutore di resilienza. Poiché basandosi sulla teorizzazione di Cyrulnik (2001), l'esito del processo di resilienza è dato dall'interazione dei fattori protettivi individuali, dalla qualità/intensità del trauma e/o comunque delle situazioni avverse e dall'incontro con i possibili tutori di resilienza, il progetto si è sviluppato in due fasi e ha tenuto conto sia dell'esperienza dei richiedenti asilo sia di quella degli operatori. Rispettivamente, nella prima fase l'obiettivo della ricerca si proponeva di individuare le risorse/vincoli personali presenti nella biografia dei richiedenti asilo, i vissuti emotivi e la qualità dei legami stabiliti nel passato, di individuare le risorse/vincoli messe in gioco durante il viaggio e, infine, di individuare le risorse/vincoli con funzione protettiva dal momento dell'arrivo in Italia e in particolare nel CAS di residenza e nella relazione con gli operatori. Nella seconda fase, la ricerca mirava a individuare le risorse e le competenze, rintracciabili nelle biografie degli operatori dei CAS messe in gioco nella pratica professionale e di conoscere le loro motivazioni alla base della scelta professionale, e a comprendere il significato e l'uso consapevole della relazione con i richiedenti asilo nella loro pratica professionale e, infine, a valutare la qualità della loro vita professionale tenendo conto del forte carico emotivo dovuto alla relazione con i richiedenti asilo e il loro vissuti traumatici. 2. Migrazione ed Europa: Una revisione sistematica sulla promozione della resilienza dei richiedenti asilo negli Stati membri dell'Unione Europea. La migrazione è un fenomeno complesso determinato dall'interazione di fattori di espulsione e di attrazione. L'Europa ha sempre svolto un ruolo di attrazione nei flussi migratori. Negli ultimi anni, le direttive per gli Stati membri hanno mirato a promuovere il benessere dei richiedenti asilo. È importante sviluppare la resilienza per raggiungere il benessere delle persone. L'obiettivo della revisione sistematica è stato quello di esplorare come viene studiata la resilienza nei richiedenti asilo nei paesi dell'UE. Sono stati consultati i database internazionali PsycINFO, PubMed, Web of science, Scopus, MEDLINE, Psychology e behavioural collection. Gli articoli sono stati analizzati secondo i criteri PRISMA. Sono stati ottenuti 12 articoli. Dall'analisi qualitativa sono emersi tre approcci principali e quattro principi teorici fondamentali che potrebbero guidare lo studio della resilienza in contesti migratori. Lo studio della resilienza può essere orientato verso un approccio clinico, clinico e sociale o psicosociale. Inoltre, la ricerca ha tenuto conto della necessità di costruire una nuova narrazione di sé e della propria storia nei richiedenti asilo, di restituire agency ai richiedenti asilo, di valorizzare il proprio contesto culturale e quello del paese ospitante e di promuovere una democratizzazione del sistema istituzionale di accoglienza. Si suggeriscono implicazioni per le politiche degli Stati membri dell'UE coinvolti in prima linea nella gestione dell'accoglienza in Europa. Data la limitata letteratura sull'argomento, questa rassegna suggerisce una nuova e originale visione di presa in carico dei richiedenti asilo attraverso una maggiore implementazione di interventi focalizzati sull'individuo e sulle sue risorse. 3. Promozione della salute psicosociale nei migranti: una revisione sistematica della ricerca e degli interventi sulla resilienza nei contesti migratori. La resilienza è identificata come una capacità chiave per prosperare di fronte a esperienze avverse e dolorose e raggiungere un buono stato di salute psicosociale equilibrato. Questa revisione mirava ad indagare come la resilienza è intesa nel contesto della ricerca sul benessere dei migranti e come gli interventi psicosociali sono progettati per migliorare la resilienza dei migranti. Le domande della ricerca hanno riguardato la concettualizzazione della resilienza, le conseguenti scelte metodologiche e quali programmi di intervento sono stati indirizzati ai migranti. Nei 63 articoli inclusi, è emersa una classica dicotomia tra la resilienza concettualizzata come capacità individuale o come risultato di un processo dinamico. È anche emerso che l'importanza delle diverse esperienze migratorie non è adeguatamente considerata nella selezione dei partecipanti. Gli interventi hanno descritto la procedura ma meno la misura della loro efficacia. 4. Il sistema d'accoglienza straordinaria di Parma e provincia: soddisfazione e benessere percepito dai migranti accolti. I servizi e le progettualità messi in atto nei CAS mirano a favorire integrazione, autonomia e benessere. Questi obiettivi si strutturano sull'attivazione e promozione di risorse dei richiedenti asilo. Nello specifico, vanno ad innestarsi sulle loro abilità, sulle conoscenze, sulle competenze, sulla loro agency e sulla capacità di proiettarsi verso un futuro. Poiché i richiedenti asilo sono i principali attori e fruitori di questi servizi, la valutazione di efficacia e di raggiungimento degli obiettivi preposti deve tenere conto necessariamente del loro punto di vista. I richiedenti asilo che hanno partecipato allo studio erano circa il 20% della popolazione dei richiedenti asilo adulti presenti nel territorio di Parma e provincia. Per la stratificazione del campione si è tenuto conto della variabile del paese di origine, della collocazione sul territorio provinciale (distretto) e il tempo di permanenza nel sistema CAS. È stato costruito un questionario ad hoc che mirava ad indagare la percezione di autonomia, di benessere personale, di soddisfazione verso sé stesso, la percezione di essere rispettato nelle proprie tradizioni culturali e la soddisfazione verso il servizio. Il questionario constava di una parte introduttiva, che forniva una breve descrizione al partecipante delle finalità d'indagine, e di diverse sezioni, che indagavano e approfondivano specifiche aree (temi) di interesse. Le prime due aree hanno rilevato i dati socio-anagrafici e il viaggio dei richiedenti asilo. La terza e la quarta area hanno indagato l'accoglienza nel centro e la struttura in cui risiedeva il beneficiario. Le altre aree si sono concentrate sui servizi primari (beni e servizi di prima necessità, assistenza medica) e servizi secondari (assistenza legale, lingua italiana, sostegno psicosociale, lavoro, mediazione culturale, orientamento al territorio e tempo libero) che gli venivano offerti. Le ultime sezioni si focalizzavano sul rapporto con gli operatori, sul progetto individualizzato e sui propri piani futuri. Alla fine del questionario vi era una breve sezione che mirava ad indagare la soddisfazione generale verso l'intero processo di accoglienza in Italia e la specifica esperienza nel territorio di Parma e provincia. Sono state effettuate delle analisi ed elaborazioni statistiche descrittive tramite il software SPSS. Dal questionario è emerso un quadro complessivo dei servizi offerti e una mappatura delle pratiche messe in atto all'interno delle strutture a partire dal punto di vista dei richiedenti asilo. Questi hanno espresso una generale soddisfazione del sistema accoglienza in Italia e in particolare di quella ricevuta a Parma. Hanno riportato un senso di protezione e sicurezza e una generale percezione di capacità e autonomia raggiunta in molti dei servizi e ambiti della quotidianità. Le aree più critiche sono risultate essere l'assistenza legale, l'avviamento lavorativo, la creazione di relazioni sociali con italiani nel tempo libero, la progettazione individualizzata e in particolare il sostegno psicosociale e, infine, la progettazione futura. In queste aree i richiedenti asilo hanno espresso una bassa soddisfazione verso il servizio di sostegno ricevuto, una scarsa consapevolezza di sé e delle proprie capacità e una bassa percezione di un'autonomia conquistata dal singolo servizio e, più in generale, dalla struttura d'accoglienza. 5. Vissuti, fattori di protezione e fattori di rischio nelle biografie dei richiedenti asilo: la definizione di traiettorie di resilienza nei Centri d'Accoglienza Straordinaria. I richiedenti asilo sono portatori di storie potenzialmente traumatiche a seguito delle quali possono vivere distress psicologico e PTSD nel paese d'accoglienza. Qui vengono inseriti in programmi che mirano a favorire benessere psicologico e integrazione. Tale processo è definito resilienza, La resilienza è un processo che vede le persone impegnate a guarire da esperienze dolorose, a prendersi cura della propria vita per continuare a svilupparsi positivamente in modo socialmente accettabile. Il presente studio mira a comprendere i fattori di protezione e le risorse personali e sociali che possono favorire il superamento dei traumi e un processo di resilienza nei richiedenti asilo. Sono stati somministrati 29 test CORE-10 e questionari costruiti ad hoc per il sostegno sociale percepito e condotte altrettante interviste in profondità. Con risultati moderati e gravi di distress psicologico nei partecipanti, sono emersi fattori protettivi e risorse già nella fase pre-migratoria. I legami di accudimento sembrano svolgere una funzione protettiva anche durante l'accoglienza, favorendo la costruzione di rapporti di fiducia. Il supporto sociale della comunità d'accoglienza e quello degli operatori nei centri possono influenzare la definizione di traiettorie resilienti. Lo studio solleva implicazioni di tipo clinico e sociale. Nei suoi limiti lo studio vuole essere un'apertura a nuovi approfondimenti di ricerca. 6. La qualità della vita professionale di chi lavora con i richiedenti asilo: Compassion Staisfaction, Burnout e Secondary Traumatic Stress negli operatori dell'accoglienza In Italia negli ultimi anni sono stati strutturati Centri di Accoglienza Straordinaria per rispondere ai bisogni primari e secondari dei richiedenti asilo approdati sulle coste mediterranee. A seguito dell'apertura dei CAS, sul territorio nazionale si è formato un nuovo corpo professionale, i professionisti dell'accoglienza. Poiché inizialmente non è stata richiesta una formazione specifica in base al contesto e agli obiettivi posti, il loro profilo professionale derivava tendenzialmente dai diversi percorsi formativi e lavorativi precedenti. Considerando il mandato istituzionale del loro lavoro, quale favorire l'accoglienza e una completa presa in carico dei richiedenti asilo, i professionisti dell'accoglienza sono quotidianamente coinvolti nella relazione con gli accolti ed esposti ai racconti traumatici o ai sintomi agiti di questi. Infatti, i richiedenti asilo sono persone spesso profondamente traumatizzate dalle esperienze passate, dal viaggio, ma anche disorientate e impreparate per la complessa esperienza dell'accoglienza e dell'integrazione. Questo aspetto del lavoro con i richiedenti asilo può influenzare il clima e la qualità della vita professionale dei professionisti dell'accoglienza. Infatti, come nelle altre professioni d'aiuto continuamente esposte a eventi stressanti o traumatici, anche nel lavoro di cura e accoglienza dei richiedenti asilo è alto il rischio di sviluppare i sintomi negativi associati al burnout e al trauma vicario. Sebbene, negli ultimi venti anni, la qualità della vita professionale sia stata ampiamente approfondita in diversi settori, non risultano studi che esplorino questo tema tra i professionisti del settore dell'accoglienza. In questo studio è stato sottoposto il questionario ProQOL 5 ai professionisti dell'accoglienza dei Centri di Accoglienza Straordinaria di Parma e provincia, attivamente coinvolti nella relazione d'aiuto con i richiedenti asilo, con lo scopo di definire lo stato di benessere psicosociale rispetto alla loro qualità di vita professionale. Anche se si è dimostrato che mediamente i professionisti dell'accoglienza riportano una buona soddisfazione nello svolgere il proprio lavoro, sono emersi tre profili. Il primo gruppo sembra esprimere soprattutto Burnout, il secondo gruppo una maggiore Compassion Satisfaction e il terzo gruppo un malessere evidente sia per il Burnout che per il Secondary Traumatic Stress. I dati ottenuti permettono di colmare parzialmente un vuoto nella letteratura di settore. Inoltre, la rilevanza dei dati spinge alla riflessione sulla possibilità di incoraggiare interventi efficaci di prevenzione e management delle organizzazioni, al fine di favorire il benessere psicosociale di questo corpo professionale emergente. 7. Essere professionisti dell'accoglienza: l'importanza di un uso consapevole del Se' nella relazione d'aiuto e la funzione del tutore di resilienza. All'interno dei CAS sono stati impiegati professionisti di differenti background formativi ed esperienziali. Appannaggio degli operatori è l'attivazione dei servizi interni ed esterni e il monitoraggio di tutte le fasi del progetto di accoglienza. La presa in carico si configurerebbe come una relazione d'aiuto possibile attraverso la compresenza di diversi aspetti di Sé. Chi lavora con i richiedenti asilo deve affrontare e gestire vissuti potenzialmente traumatici che influenzano il buon esito dell'intervento clinico-sociale. Nel favorire benessere psicologico nei beneficiari, gli operatori svolgono funzioni che richiamano quelle del tutore di resilienza. In questo studio si è esplorata la rappresentazione dei professionisti dell'accoglienza e la consapevolezza di Sé a partire dal loro punto di vista. Sono stati condotti tre focus group e le trascrizioni verbatim sono state analizzate secondo l'approccio IPA. Sono emersi tre aspetti del Sé (Sé personale, Sé professionale e Sé burocrate). Il Tempo e il Contesto sociale sono risultate possibili variabili che influenzano la relazione d'aiuto. Lo studio propone implicazioni di ricerche future e di policy. 8. Conclusioni Negli anni il sistema italiano dell'accoglienza si era ormai rodato e formalizzato su due principali dispositivi: il sistema SPRAR e i cosiddetti Centri di Accoglienza Straordinaria (CAS). Tuttavia, negli ultimi due anni, con il cosiddetto decreto Salvini (D.lg. 4/19/2018 n° 113), si è assistito ad un graduale ridimensionamento dei numeri degli accolti e ad una conseguente chiusura di strutture del sistema CAS. Pertanto, assume rilevanza e importanza capitalizzare le esperienze di accoglienza e comprenderne maggiormente le potenzialità e i limiti. Con la presente ricerca e le analisi delle pratiche d'accoglienza e delle progettualità messe in atto all'interno del sistema CAS sono emersi due risultati principali. Il primo risultato emerso è che i richiedenti asilo accolti abbiano consapevolezza delle risorse e dei fattori protettivi che hanno acquisito nell'arco di vita. Inoltre, si è evidenziata una forte e imprescindibile interdipendenza tra i vissuti psicologici, i bisogni e le risorse dei richiedenti asilo e la funzione relazionale dell'operatore dell'accoglienza. Dalla ricerca è emerso che il valore di tale interdipendenza, non essendo riconosciuto formalmente e quindi esplicitamente richiamato nelle norme e regolamentazioni, era dipeso da un reciproco riconoscimento dei richiedenti asilo accolti e degli operatori. Tuttavia, questa relazione, se opportunamente strutturata e formalizzata, può favorire la definizione di traiettorie di resilienza e il raggiungimento degli obiettivi di integrazione, autonomia e benessere psicosociale. Al momento in cui è stata condotta la ricerca, questi obiettivi erano parzialmente raggiunti. Infatti, sebbene nel sistema d'accoglienza i richiedenti asilo abbiano percepito di essere in un luogo sicuro e protetto e fossero generalmente soddisfatti dei servizi offerti, hanno riportato livelli medio-alti di disagio psicologico. Il valore traumatico delle loro esperienze di vita è stato esplorato e compreso nella sua diacronicità, in quanto i vissuti traumatici sono rintracciabili non solo durante il viaggio ma già nelle esperienze pre-migratorie. Le biografie dei richiedenti asilo sono segnate da profonde ferite, che spesso risalgono a perdite, lutti o tradimenti da parte delle figure significative dell'infanzia o della comunità allargata, fino a sentirsi espulsi dalle politiche disattente degli Stati d'appartenenza. Anche l'arrivo in Italia e l'inserimento nel sistema d'accoglienza comportano sfide esistenziali, che in alcuni casi arrivano a reiterare esperienze traumatiche passate. Nonostante questo, i richiedenti asilo hanno mostrato consapevolezza delle proprie risorse e dei fattori di protezione acquisiti già durante l'infanzia, attraverso le relazioni significative e di accudimento. Queste risorse hanno svolto una funzione di protezione e sostegno nel loro sforzo psicologico di fronteggiare e sopravvivere alle avversità incontrate in tutto l'arco di vita. Nonostante la loro consapevolezza e tenuto conto della permanenza relativamente lunga nel sistema d'accoglienza, è risultato che le esperienze traumatiche non trovano uno spazio adeguato di ascolto e di ri-significazione una volta inseriti nei progetti di accoglienza. Le caratteristiche strutturali e organizzative del sistema non sembrano favorire quell'incontro con l'Altro che può garantire la rielaborazione delle esperienze passate e riattribuire senso e agency alla propria vita, anche nella quotidianità. Al contrario, i richiedenti asilo sono consapevoli di ritrovarsi in una posizione di svantaggio rispetto al potere decisionale sui loro progetti di vita. Non sono coinvolti nelle scelte progettuali e non percepiscono una crescita personale nelle competenze e nelle capacità necessarie per rendersi autonomi. Tuttavia, i richiedenti asilo riconoscono negli operatori degli interlocutori diretti che svolgono un ruolo di congiunzione con la società ospitante. Nello svolgimento del proprio ruolo, gli operatori possono aprirsi ad un ascolto attivo di tutte le parti della biografia dei richiedenti asilo per costruire un rapporto di fiducia. Al fine di favorire la costruzione di tale rapporto, è importante che gli operatori nella loro pratica quotidiana mirino a riattribuire agency ai richiedenti asilo, coinvolgendoli nella progettazione individualizzata. Ciò favorirebbe la valorizzazione e l'attivazione delle risorse dei richiedenti asilo, l'instaurarsi di relazioni di fiducia che consentano la ricostruzione di significato delle proprie esperienze traumatiche di vita e la restituzione di una rappresentazione di Sé attiva e agente. In generale, si otterrebbe una maggiore adesione al progetto d'accoglienza. Inoltre, la valorizzazione della funzione relazionale degli operatori dell'accoglienza favorirebbe una maggiore qualità di vita professionale. I professionisti avrebbero così la possibilità di riconoscere e far riconoscere il proprio ruolo, che è stato profondamente messo in discussione dalla comunità e dalle politiche degli ultimi anni. Quindi, l'ascolto attivo, la riattribuzione di agency e l'esempio nella quotidianità da parte degli operatori favorirebbero il riconoscimento del loro ruolo come tutori di resilienza e promuoverebbero la definizione di traiettorie di resilienza. In questo modo si faciliterebbe il raggiungimento di uno stato di salute psicosociale nei richiedenti asilo. La legittimazione del ruolo funzionale della relazione tra i richiedenti asilo e gli operatori dell'accoglienza da parte del contesto sociale e istituzionale diventa un fattore necessario allo sviluppo di buone pratiche d'accoglienza e alla promozione di traiettorie di resilienza. 9. 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Issue 4.3 of the Review for Religious, 1945. ; MAy !'5, 1945"' ' ",, ris in rl÷|ncjs~ ampere " ~ ~v~ ~ '~ f~ -";~ ,~ ¯ 7ESUS CHEST IN ~THE WRITINGS OF R~MI~RE--.~" ~,7- '-~ "~ Dominic U~ger,.6.F.M~Cap: . ~. sMEDITATION, . BOOK~ , FOR MINOR~. ~S~MINAKIES Vo1. IV, No~ .3~ ~'/Publish~d 3~onthl¢; Jan~arg, Mar~h,'Mag July'September~and No~ember a~ ~h~ Cdlieg~iPres~ 606 H~ms~n Street, T~peka K~ns~s ~b~ St. Mar7 s College St. M~gs w~th ecclesiastical approbatton. Entered as~second class matter-Januar~ 15 1942 . at thvPost O~ce Topeka Kansas underthe act of ~arch 3+ 1879~' ~'~ *~ . ?"Edit0rih1.Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.J., G. Au~usfifie Ellaid,. S.J., Getaid"Kelly, S J.~: Editorial-Secretary. Alfred F. Scfine~der S J ~ . : Coplright 19~ b7 Adam,C. Ellis: permission is hereb7 grantld for quotations 3"~" of reasonableTl¢ngth,, provided due credit, ,be given this review" and the' author. -("Subscription price: 2 'dollars a,year . ,? . . ~ " ~ ~rmte~ m.U.S;t~; .- ~ . . J' / 89)~.~, ~' Our deification is as certain ds the dogma of the divinity ~;, . bf Christ/of which it is the complement. oit is novmereiy "for itself-that ~l~e:'holy Hiamanity of Jesu.s" has ~e~ei~;ed, tfie ,,_ ~f-ul:nessof the di~Jinity through the personal union with the °~.~ -Wbrd,, bu~ als0.to make all humanity divine b~ granting'a :ihareiof Hii plenitude to all whowish to receige, His ~' ~ 'muni~tion. ~ Wh.en God ~redestined His own Son to be the :i'~7 ._ ¯ S0~a 0[ l~a~ry, "He p~e ~destined us t,o become His ~ad0pfed:sons ,b~y' union~with His onb/-begotten Son. (Ephes!gns~l:5). In becoming incarnate the" W;~d "of Gbd communk~(ed ¯ ~H.is di~iinity inca very personal manner to one soul and one ~ ,body in Christ. But his limitless love, embracing th~ whol~ _ world, mad~ it poss!ble for all,o .men toshare in-tha.tpartici- , . patton of the divine¯life. "His (Christ's) InCarnation ~a~ , -- no other end or aim, than to c6mmunicate His divine" life. ~ - to us: , ,~ . - But if-the'fulness 6f the diyinity!belongs.~shbstantially to.Jesus .- ~ Christ gl0ne (C01. 2:9), all who are united to Him by holy ba'ptis~rri .~'becoNe parta~kers in this fulness each according to his measure (John- ~ ~1:16),.: .-.,Ali o~iaer individual -natures belonging, to o~hd ia~e ~.~ Adaha shall be called, to unite themselve~ to-tBi~ privilqged nature, and to recei~'e by t'his union a very real communication,of its divine~iife. ¯ There shall be but one only, Go~d-Man: but" all men who. shal1~ be ~DOMINIC- UNGER~ Son of the~Heayenly :~E~th~r; but~all those.,who shall be willing-t~ receive~ thii~only Son shall becomethereby thd adopted sons of His Ffither add shall adqfiire - ,g s~rjct, right to share in H)s heavenly inhe/i(affce. "-(Tbe" Ap6stlesbip oLPr~g~r,,~p. 138: and The Laws o~ Prodidence, p. 90.)- ~ . ,"L It is possible for Christ to b~ the Head ~f all men and to i m~ke'~hem divine becahse.He is personally' unit~d"with Go~ ahd because He possesses the fulness of divine life. which He " fofcef~!y stated b~.Father Ram~{rd:- ~ . ~ Jesfis Christ is, therefore,.3n a ver~ real sense, the Head of huma~ ity ~nd of tile w~ole spiritual creation: .for from Him alone~do~s thd 'divine li~e ~our itself forth on angels and men, as really as animal lif~? ~s~reags' fr6m'the h~ad into every ~a[t pf our body." From Himhnd ~'flom Him alon~ proceed all supernatural acts which are d~ne 'io-heaven arid earth. We capnot acquire the least ;merit, do the least ~c~i'on,.conceive the least" thought,pronounce the least w~rd. in the supernatural order, if these different ~mov¢ments are not in-~ur hearts. *~througb~ an ~mpul~e'of His Divine~ Heart. This adorable ~art is 'for: all h~manity, in the order of grace, what ~he sun,.in ~fie physical okder, is for the earth and th~ 6ther planets which'gravitate~around it. - ~- The fact that Christ h~s, made it possibld --;_re~el~eHls o~n Bo'dyafid Blood in~the Eucfiari~t is ~an?- argument that He ifitend~d usto be divine. This union of -man~ith