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Issue 5.1 of the Review for Religious, 1946. ; ~,$ANUARY. 15, I94~ and Catholic Ac~tion. '." ~ .: s from the, Council of Trent . Joseph V. ¯ Augustine Heart of Mary-r. o. ~ ~'ho~as A. O'Conr ~etic Power Of Christ~ : ¯ ¯ ¯ .~- ¯ ~. " Malhchi ,J. ~Donn, 0__f E q_ u ~ ¯ " .~, , ~. ¯ ¯ LOu;s J; . ious Buy ~nd Sell? . ~.m c, Ouesfions .Answered RE 'FOR RELi VOLUME V bANUARY 15, 1946 NUMBER CONTENTS-PIUS X AND CATHOLIC ACTiON o ~seph V, Sommers. S,J . SPIRITUAL READINGS FROM THECOUNCIL OF TRENT--~'IIIm Augustine Klaas. S.J.' . OUR ~ONTRIBUTORS ,o-, . '-, . "WHAT'S A DOMINICAN?" " . . . ¯ 24 THE IMMACULATE'HEART OF MARYmThomas A, O'Connor. S,J, 25 INDEX OF BACK NUMBERS .~. . . ,.- , , 32 THE MAGNETIC POWER OF CHRIST~-~-" Mal~l~i J,D0r.nelly, S2J, ,-. 33 BOOKLETNOTICES . , ; ." .". ~ " " 39 17 24 ~ .) COMMUNICATIONS . - . ., . . . . 40 THE VIRTUE OF EQUITY~L~uis J. Puhl, STJ,~ . 4~3 BOOKS°RECEIVED , . . L , -, ', .- . 49 MAY RELIGIOUS BUY AND SELL?Adam C; Ellis, S,J, " " 50 BOOK' REVIEWS-- . Journey" in the Nighf; The Servant"of God. Mar~ Theresa Led6chowska;. The Heart of Man: The Wool Merchant of Segovia: World Christianity; How the People of Africa Live . . . ¯ . ~ . 66 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS--~- l".'Active and Passive 'Vote or Voice ¯ 70 2. Spiritual Director for "Professed Novices" . . 70 3. Confession before Communiqn 4. Successor,to Deceased Mother A'ssistant . . . . 71 5. Te Deum on Feast of St. Joseph . '. . 71 6. Repair Work On Suffday . 7. Re-election of Mother 'General after Eli, yen Years . 72 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, January, 1946. Vol. V, NO. 1. 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 at the Post Ofl~c'e, Topeka, Kansas, under the act of March 3/1879. Editorial Bgard: Ad.am C. Ellis/S.~., G. Augustine Ellard, S.J., Gerald Kelly, s.J. Editorial Secretaiy: Alfred F. Schneider, S.J~, ~" Copyright, 1946, by Adam C., Ellis'. Pdrmi~sion is hereby granted for quotations of reasonable length~ provided due credit be given this, review and the author. Subseripti6n price: 2 dollars a year. Printed in U.-S. A. "~ Before writing to us, pleaseconsult notice on Inside back cover. ., Review t:or Rel~gio.us Volume V January--December, 1946 PubliShed at THE COLLEGE PRESS Topeka. Kansas Edited by TH'E JESUIT FATHERS SAINT MARY'S'COLLEGE St. Marys, Kansas PiUS X and°Catholic Joseph V£ Sommers, S.J. [INTRODUCTORY NOTE: This article° may lead to a misconception unless it is ¢lea~ly understood from the beginning that Catholic Action as here explained is lim~ ited~to the'thought of Pius_X. He was pope, from 1903 to 1914. Since that time Pius XI an~d. Pi~ul XII have further refined the,notion of Catholic Action. Their - writi'~gs and speeches so far ove'rshadow their predecessor's that.~in many articles . o and books reviewin~ the papal directives. Plus X receives, only passing ieference. His relative position might be made.clearer from this comparison. If all the di~ec, .tires on Catholic Action that have come from the Holy See since "the time of~ L, ed XIII were put into one volume, they would roughly equal a 670 page book. Of these Leo XIII would get the first ten pages:~Pius X the next sixty; 500 page~ would go to Pius XL and the remaining pages to out'present Holy Father. Yet' Pi-us X's thought is of historical importance: He gave Catholic Action its~ first great impetus. Although later popes have written more voluminously, yet~th, ey, repeat much that P~us X already sa~d. It'wdl be ~nterestmg. therefore, to inve.stigate. how the recent pap~al demands for an organized Catholic lay apostolate got started.] , .~ |oSEPH Sarto was Bishop o~ Manti~a wiaen in January~.~. ~,.~,~ 1890, l"ie heard the trumpet call for the~lay apostolate. Pope Leo XlII bad just issued his encyclical on'the .~bYef .Duffes of Christi'a~s as Citizeris. Listed amon~g;the ~obligations of every Catholic layman was an active'share in ~'.defendingand extending the Church (A, 115-8).~ Esp_e-. -,cial'ly in thes~ our-~ays, Leo wrote, the laity must openly profess ~the Catholic doctrines and teach them to the utmost 6f their' ability. They should take upon themselves, .indeed-the office of the pastor, but: the task'of communi-0. ~ating. to others what they. have received, becoming as it were living echoes of their teachers in the faith" (A, 1 16): The faithful, however, would.hot satisfy these du, ti._e~, as it is .fitting they should, were they ~to enter the fight single'-' handed. They must work" together as frained sol~tierd - deplbydd fof battle. In defence and in conquest, they inust ~" ~The present arttcle ~s a condensatton of,'a chapter tn a symposium on the life :ind i ~6rk Of Plus X which Will .be published in book form by St. 'Anthony:s Guild, ~'Tfie books and documdnts cited in the article are listed at the end. References in the text ~ill b~ merely by means of a letter °and number. The letter refers to the book; the fiumber to the,page. UO~EPH V. Sb~MERS " ~- ~ Reoiew for RetigioaF fight.' under the direction of th~ pope and ~he bishOps. Thu~ did'Leo XlII outline' the duty of the lay~aposto- "late: Almost immediately Bishop _Sart% re-e~hbed th~:. 't.~aching of his suprercie pontiff .in a speech on "Obedi~nc.e to the Pope inoCatholic Action." Izater, as-Cardinal Patri-" 7arch~of .Venice, he urged obedience to the popd- as an important motive for engJaging°ir~ this apostolate: "Cater ollc Action has.been c.ommanded by the Pope., who has sig-~ -nified hisown mind in.so many ways, and t~hat is ~nough -for us to be sure that it is the ~ill of God also" (B, 109). ~ Picking a.Name [or the Lay Apostolate Although Pius X did not co~n the title "Ca~tholic A'c-tion,;' yet be ,is certainly the fiist pope to make frequent~ ~ use of this term to dtisigfiate the laity's. ~lhare in the apostolic mission of the Church. Even before he had been elected," ti~ used. th~ eklSression. As Patriarch of Venice, fo.r exgmple, he eml~hasized that "Catholic Action is pro'per to the laity and'n6t to the clergy. " .-Catholic Action is prop- :er!y-lay in character." (B, 108. ) When pope he offi, ciall~i ~, c~ristened this apostolate with a-"distinctive, and.surely-a_ very nobld name: Catholic Action" (A, 192), All in~all,- Piu~ used the term's~veral dozen ti~es: in letters to the - Catholics of Italy, tb. the Hierarchy_of France, to .thd Arch!: ~. bishop of Quebec, and iff writing to the'whole Catholic~ World: Since his pontificate, "Catholic-Acti~ri" has~ remaihed a t~chn~cal term both in papal documents andi~ " " other W.ritings that adhere accurately to-the terminology: of~- .,the popes in this matter.Today "Catl~olic Action"~ erly Si~hifies-both the rnand[~te~d organizations"and~ the ~apostolic activit~r of those Catholic laymen who officially participate i~n the apostolic mission of the hierarchy. . Doc6ments on Catholic Action - : " ¯ Pias X did more than give the- l~y apostolate a Janua(g, 19~6 PlUS X AND CATHOLIC ACTION name. He wrote so, me fifteen thousand words clearly explaining Catholic Action and insistihg that it be accu-rately pu[ into practice. While six main, documents contain his.teaching, yet three of these deserve special men~ tion. The first is a speech.deli.vered in the 1890's (B, .107- 10) ; the second is a sizable part of his first papal encyclical. E su'premi apostolatus (of. C) ; the third, and most impor-tant, is his apostolic letter, II fermo proposi}o (The_ Firm Resolution; c~." D.) In fact, II fermo proposito, published justforty years ago, v~as for its time the 16ngest andmost dethiled 6f all papal pr0n0uncemen.ts on Catholic A~tion. It runs throUgh-tWenty-seven pages of the Acta Sanctad 8edis (The Acts-of the Holy See-) and is one of the rela- (ively few documents fotind there in tw~ languages: the original Italiafi and a Latin translation. A note prefixed to the Latin version gives the reason: although addressed to the Catholics of Italy, its very important teachin~g can be exceedingly profitable to Catholics everywhere (D, 741). The immediate effect of this letter upon the people of Italy was observed by the Roman correspondent-of The Tablet. Writing pack to London just two weeks after it ¯ was.released to thepublic he reports: "Not since the Ency.c-lical Return Novarum, published about fourteen years ago, has a Papal document excited such deep and ~eneral inter-est all through Italy as Pius X's last pronouncement on the Catholic movement" (cf. E). ° The far-reaching result 6f II fermo propos(to can be seen in Pius XI's voluminous writing on his fav6rite subject, where many of its phrases and nearly every one of its ~nain ideas are repeated (cf. F). Let us, therefore, r~view Pius X's teaching on Catholic Action b~rattempting, in some sort of logical order, a simple summary of what he said and firrote. We shall present his six main documents in 6he composite picture. In doing so we shall give.his teaching, as far as possible, in his own 5 JOSEPH V. SOMME.RS ReOieto [or Religious words. This will l~elp assure his views being seen in their own light, And for those familiar with the more recent directives of°Pius XI and Pius XIII it will be,convincing evidefice that many of their ideas have been taken from the words of their zealous predecessor. A Problem and an Answer Let us begin, then, where Plus began, with the pr0b-lem: The issue--as he saw it---concerned the salvation of souls, wh~ lived in a world that was in large part detached from the Church and heedless of the laws of God. Secu-larism was.the chief foe that fought against Plus in Man-tun, Venice, and Rome. In his first official letter as Patri: arch ofVenice, Cardinal Sart0 descril~ed the situation thus:. God is driven out of politics by this theory of the separation of Church and state. He is driven . . . from the laws by a morality which is guided by' the senses alone; from the schools.by the aboli-tion of religious instruction~; from Christian marriage; now deprived of'the grace of the sacrament . "q~re.must fight this great error of modern times, ~the enthronement of:man in the place of-God. (G,~ 46.7.) - Again in his'first encyclical he recalled the problem: "that enormous and detestable wickedness, so characteristic of. ou~ time.--the substitution, of man fbr God" (C, 8). This evil was directly opposed to his own firm resolve to restore all.things in Chris(. While still Cardinal he stated plainly th~ connection between secularism and the lay apostolate, between the problem and the solution: Catholic ACtion [he said] is properly lay in character for another reason . At one time the rights of Jesus Christ, of the Chflrch and "of the Pope entered into th.e, legis!ation of all ChriStian states . Now it is no longer so. The Church, the Pope, are no longer recog-nised as such and no longgr form part of the social organism;-they . are relegated to the sphere of.common rights; nay, they.ar~ even con~ sidered as enemies . Since these things are so; who is it that must danuar~l, 1946 PlUS X AND (~ATHOLICoACTION "~ stir himself to defend the violated rights'of . . . tl~e P6pe, lbe Church and the Bishops? In otl~er times it was the P01~es and the Bishops who intervenedin defence Of "their children. ; today it mustibe, the children wh6 will rise up in defence of their father, the laity .in ' defence of the Hierarchy: . . . (B, 108.) " ' In his first encyclical he outlined the means necessary to restore all things in christ. Urging ~:he bishops first to have as their.chief care the formation of their seminarians and priests to holiness and truth, Plus then exhorted them to instruct their people in the faith and to attract ~inful hearts "tO Christ by conspicuous charity. Finally, as -though reaching a climax; the new Pope pleadedfor the lay apostolate. He expanded this call till it filled one-eighth of his whole encyclical. He speaks to the.bishops of the world: ~. In this arduous task of the restoration of thi~ huma~ race in Christ neitl~er you nor your clergy should exclude all assistance, We know that God-recommended every:o~ne to have a care for his neighbor (Eccli. 17 : 12). For it is not priests alone, but all the faithful with-out exception, who must concern themselves with the intei'ests of God and souls not,'0f course, acco~rding to their own views; but always under the direction and orders of the bishops. ". (C, 12-3. Italics are ins~erted.) ' Here then is the world problem and a papal solutionl .In [t~ modern organized form Catholic Action has been developed as an integral part of the Church's answer to the " ~chief modern i~roblem. If God's laws arein great part dis-placed from politics, from public education, from the civil " marriage contract and the average home,, from big business and smart entertainment, then °the Church in her. efforts to restore all things in Christ will make special use of laymen. Who else ar~ better situated to re-Christianize labor and business, family life and entertainment? It is precisely the " [aity's place in the world that puts them-in a strategic posi-tibn to influence the reconstruction of these phases of life JOSEPH V. SOMMERS Reoiew 1o~ Religibus according: to the Christian pattern. Hence. the Pope's insistence ihat the laity collabor.ate in the ¯work for, God and souls. , ' - Explaining the Answer Already we have seen in broad.outline what Plus X .mteaecahnisn gb ym Coraet h loglsiecl yA.'c Wtiohnat. aIct croermdianign tso thoi mex ias mthien aei mhis ¯ of .Catholic Action? W~at are the methods it should employ?- What relation has Catholic. Action to the pope, the bishops, and priests? What are the effects to be looked fort Finally, what is the importance of Catholic Action in the eyes of Pius X? These are the main qi~estk;ns to be considered. 'Others of a secondary natu.re will be treated more briefly. ", In explaining the lay apostolat~ Plus, first and last, -~alled for ACTION. These are perhaps his str0nges.t words: - Catholic Action will not please certain timid souls, who thougl~ go~d living, are so attached to their habitual quiet ahd so afraid of every innovation that they believe that it is quite sufficient to pray, because God knows b~st how to defend the faith, humiliate His ene-mies, and make the Church triumphant. But these good people, whom I would call optimists, will' wait in vain for society to re-Christianize itself simply by tthe.prayers 6f the°good. Prayer is absolutely necessary because in the ordinary economy of salvation God does not concede graces "except to him who prays, but India and Japan would never have been converted by.tlSe prayers alone of Xa~rier: the.Apostles would never have conquered the world, if the~ .had not done the work of heroes and martyrs. It is necessary; there-gore, to join pr~iyer with hction,~' : There are others [he continues] who in order to justify .their inertia, give the worid up for lost, since~ they see in it.so many evil~!. ¯ Tl"ies~ people, whom I would call pessimists," say that it is so much wasted time to talk of Committees, of Circles, of SocietieS,~that they . will never :accomplish anything. It is sufficient' to remin~ these wearied and dispirit.ed souls that this kind of work of Catholic Action: danuarg,-1946 PIUS X AND" ~(THOLIC~ AC:'TION hag bee~ commanded by the Pope . (B, 1"09.) ¯ Up to the prese.nt, [he remarks] we have been like rabbits, too frightened" of everything and everyone to institute the Parochial Committee [local unit of Catholic Action], in order not to give offence. To whom could the Committee give offence? .To two cl;isses of people only: to the bad, and if we gave way. to them .we would. have ~0'stop all good wo.rks; and to those good people who shrink f~0m innovations. We must tell these last clearly and distinctly that these i~{novations~are both beautiful and good; that as the ba~d uhite; so also must the good: that if they are innovations they ar~ desired by the Vicar ofJesus Christ, and that he wh~o does not obey th~ Pope does not obey God.(B, 110.) Good Example a Prerequisite for LayApQstles- But as Words, and energetic hction [the Pope adds elsewhere] are' of no avail unless . . . accompan~i, ed . byexample, the necessary characteristic which should shine~ forth intall the members of e.very Catholic association is that of openly manifesting their faith by the holiness of ~their lives . . . and by ~he exact observance o'f the laws Of G0d~and 6f the Church. (H, 10.) Ifthe soul is not thus regulated [Pius observes] it will be diffi- Cult to stir others °to go6d, and, strength will fail for bearing perse-veriiagly th~ weariness Which every apost61ate brings with it: the calumnies of efiemies, the'coldness and want of he!p from men good in themselves, and sometimes the jealousy of~friends and fellow-- workers-~--excusable, doubtless, on account of the weakness 6f human nat.ure, but very harmful, and a cause of discord, offence, and quar-rels. (A,'193.) Good example, "therefore, and the solid virtue under-lying it are necessary if Catholik Action is to attain its end. With this in miffd the Holy Father remarks: .To carry it out rightly; we.mus~ have divine grace, and~the apostle receives none if he is not united to Christ. Only when we have formed Jesus Christ within.ourselves shall we more easily~ be able, to ,g!ve Him back ~o the family and to society. (A, 193.) The Aims o~ Catholic Action , ~ .~ C:~tholic A~tion is a~lay apostolate to restore allthings in Christ. In It [ermo proposito Plus adds further: 9 Reuiewfor RHigiou~ It is plainly necess.ary that every one take pa.rt i'n a work so impor-tant, not only,for the sanctification of his 'own soul,' but also i'n order ~o spread and more fully extend the Kingdom of God in individuals, in families and in society---each one working according to his own strength for his neighbor's good . (A, 189-90.) Ou~ pre.d.ecessor Leo XIII . pointed out . . . in the famous encyclical Return Novarum and in later documents the object, to which Catholic Actign should be specially devoted, namely, the prac-tical solution of the social question according to Christian principles. (A, 194-5.) Here the italics are in the text---one of the few instances in his apostolic letter on Catholic Action where Plus X thus undersdored his own words. He wished this last sentence to point like a spotlight at what he Considered the most impo.rtant work for the organ.ized lay apostolate of his day. He goes on to e~plain-his point: You see well what support is given to the Church by those chosen bands of Catholics whose aim is to unite all their forces in order to c6mbat anti-Christian civilization by every just and lawful means . : to reinstate Jesus Christ in the family, the school, and society: to re-establish the principle that human authority, represents that of God; to take intimately to heart the interests of the .people, especially those of the working and agricultural classes, not only by the inculcation of r.el!gion . but also by striving . . . to soothe theii sufferings, and by wise measures to improve their economic con-dition: to endeavour, consequently, to make public laws conf0rmhble to justice, to amend or suppress those' which are not so: finally, with a true Catholic spirit," to defend and support .the rights of God in everything, and the no less sacred rights of the Church. All'these works, of which Catholi~ laymen are the principal sup-po~. ters and promoters . . . constitute what is generally known by a distinctive, and surely a very noble name: Catholic Action . °(A, 191-2.) Re-Christianized in its civic, social, and ~conomic life, Civilization will then pr6vide a wholesome environment for those phases of individual and group life tl"iat are spe~ cifically and direcdy religious andmoral. It was the wis- 10 danuarg, 1946 PIUS X AND CATHOEIC ACTION - dom of Plus X to realize~that to Christianize individuals, a quick and sure way is to Christianize their surroundin'gs which unremittingly exert an influence for good or evil¯ For it is the environment which largely forms or deforms the individual, Christianizes or de-Christianizes him. On ~his account Pius repeatedly insiste~l that the Catholic laity help to establish and extend the Kifigdom of Christ not 8nly in individuals but also in families and in ,society. The Means to This Christian Restoration ;'The diffusion of revealed truth, the exercise of Chris-tian. virtue, and the spiritual and corporal works of mercy" (A, 190) are thegeneral means recommended to effect this restoration. 'Especially in his encyclical, Acerbo Nimis (On the Teaching of Christian Doctrine; I, 623), did Plus X insist upon the diffusion of revealed truth as a neces-sary means to restore men's minds and actions to Christ. Here too, he stressed the.need of the laity sharing in the edu-catibnal work of the hierarchy by his command that the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine be established in everv parish.in the world. Pihs likewise u.rged Christian charity. But the charity be wished to see exercised was not conniving and short-sighted tolerance. ¯ . . The first duty of charity [he says] does not lie in the toleration of erroneous convictions, however sincere they may bd~ nor in theo- - retical ok practical indifference for "the errors or vices in which we s~e our fellow-men plungdd, but in zeal for their inkellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being. (d, 404.) Catholic Action as an organization is not a political party; .it has npthing to do with party politics. But its members as individual Catholics, Plus pointed, ou't, must use their civic right to vote and to hold office in order to pro-mote justice and truth. This section of I1 [ermo propgsito had particular appl.ication to the political situation in Italy JOSEPI~I V. SOMMERS ~ " ¯ "Review/:or Religious durir~g the ~first decade of this century. ~ Tile.wish of. the ~ Pope, howevei, extends to allCatholic citizens and direct~ them to use,, wherever possible, the democratic processes of government to bifild civil society according to the Christian .blueprint. . Other :means recommended by Pius, becau~e of their usefulness to bring about coope.ration and to arouse.enthu-siasm, were regional, and national congresses of 'the Cath-olic lay movements. These are his own.words: " ¯ . . In order to renew and increase in all Catholic undertakings the necessary enthusiasm, to give to.their "promoters and n~mbers an o~portunity ~o'f ~eeing and becoming atquainted with each other,.to draw ever more closely the bonds.of brotherly love, to enkindle in one another a more.~burning zeal for e~cient action, ,a.nd to provide, for the better establishmefit and,sp'.rea.d of the same works, a wonde~ful help .will be found in the meeting from time to time, according.to the Jules already; given by the Holy See, of general or local Con-gresses of. Catholics; and they ought to be a soler~n manifestati6n of Catholic faith, and a common festival of harm6ny and peace. (A, 198.) ~ : Relation of Catholic Action to the Clergg "It remains for us to treat of another point of the highest importance, namely the relation. which all the w6rks of Catholic Action should, bear to ecclesiastical authority" (A, 198). Those works immediately con-nec, ted' with '.the spiritual .and pastoral ministry of the Church,, having a religious a~m intended directly for the good of souls, should submit in every smallest particular to the authority of th~ bishops. But other works of Cath- 61ic Action de.signed .chiefly to restore and promote in iZhrist true Christian civilization have greater freedom, although the.y too are dependent on the advice and direction of ecclesiastical authority, inasmuch as they must conform to the principles of Christian faith and morality, . Although Catholic Action is proper to the laity and danuarg, 1946 PlUS X AND C/~THOLIC ACTION not tO the clergy, yet priests have the duty of guiding and encouraging its de.velopment. The Pope's ideals are rather high. He advised the French. bishops to choose from among their priests . ~. men who are active and level-headed, possessing the degrees of doct6r ¯ in philosophy and theology, and a thorough knowledge of the history of-ancient and modern civilization, and apply them to the less ele-. vated and more practical study of social science, in order that at.the "right time they may be put at the head of your Catholic Action. (d, 407). To the Italian bishops, he says: - . The co-.operation of the clergy in the works of Catholic .Act.i0n has a deeply religious end: it will never become a hindrance, but will be a help to their spiritual ministry by enlarging its sphere and mul-tii~ lying its fruits. ('A, 200). Results o[ Catholic Action; Its imp'ortance The good example given by a great army of.soldiers of Christ will be of mu~ch greater avail in attracting and per-. suading men than words and learned dissertations. In Our First Encyclical to the Bishops of the World, in which We echo all that Our glorious Predecessors had laid ~town c~ncerning the Catholic-Action df the laity, We d~clared that this action was. deserving of'the highest praise, and was indeed necess;iry in tile rpres-. ent condition of the Church and of society (H; 3). Speaking t~ the whole Catholic world in his encyclical on - St. Charles Borromeo, the Pope again praised that "Cath-olic Action which We have frequently recommended': as. most efficacious for the well-being of civil society (K, 246). Witl~ these public statements as a backdrop we can bet~ ter appraise.an incident narrated by Abb~ Chautard in The Soul of the Apostolate. Happening to be one day'amidst a group of Cardinals, the Holy Father sai'~ to them :" "What is the thing most necessary at the present, time to save society ?~' "Buikl Catholic schools," said one. 13 JOSEPH V. SOMMERS "Review,,for Religious "No." "Multiply churches," replied another. "No aga~." "~ncrease the recruiting of the clergy," said a third. ~ "No, no," replied the Pope; "what is most necessary at the pres-ent time, is to have in each parish a .qroup of fat.linen at the same time virtuous, well=instructed, determined and reallg apostolic.'" (L, 161- Not All Lay Organizations Are Catholic Action " After having gi~ren a lengthy explanation of the fu!l, meaning of C~itholic Action, Plus concludes, "such are the 'characteristics, aims, and conditions of Catholic0Action~" ¯ And he adds: This does not exclude the favoring and promotion of other works bf diverse.kinds and varied organizations, all equally aiming at this or that particular good of society and of the people, and at the revival of Christian civilization under various aspects. (A, 197~ The special and particular aim of these other organizations is what first distinguishes them from Catholic Action, the aim of Which is co~bxtensive with ~hat of th~ Church, The Pope goes on to add two further pbi~ts of differbncel' '.'The~e works arise, for the most part from the zeal of individuals; they are spread throughout separate dioceses and are "sometimes united in more extended federations" (A, 198), C~tholic Action, on the other hand, arises out of obedience to the pdp~,; in design it is world-wide. -. Were his directions being followed? In Italy, Catholic Action had developed-into four national organizations, each independent of the others. In Belgium the Catholic Association for Belgian Youth was coming into being, while in France a Similar organization was fairly well established. Even the Far East felt the influence of Plus X's apostolic i~ff0rt. In 1912 the Union of Chines~ Catholic Action had ,. been begui~. ' " 14 danuaq¢, 1946 PlUS X ANDCATHOLIC ACTION Cathoiic.Action l~s a C-bristian Tradition Pius. X's teaching on Catholic Action is but one chapter in the.long history~of the.lay apostolate. For~.Cath01ic Action is not an innovation of our day.Catholic Action is "more than an answer to a modern.problem; it is the°return to a Christian tradition. It~wa~ the practice of many of the faithful at~the time ofSt. Paul. It was re¢ommende.dby St. Augustine, St. Thomas !~quinas, and the Fathers of the Vatican Council. ¯ .In Pius X's.own words:: "It has always come to thi~ aid-of the Church; and the Chu~ch.:has always -welcomed~ and -blessed it, although it has acted, dn: various ways in accordance v,)ith the age" :(A, 19 2 ). " ":" _.~ Pius X in resgoring this . Christiai~ tradition gav~ detailed instructions on the lay apostolate that' far exceeded the known Writings of .any previous pope, In ~Snclusion:, however, it.wou!d be wall to note that .~he CatholicACt~ofi which Pius X had so carefully nu}tured was to develop even~ mbre. during the".p0ntificate of Pius XI. For itl was left to.this latter Pontiff to define~moreexactlY the-many details which now Characterize! official Catholic ~Action .(~cf. M). Yet despite these new qualifications, at.least-two-thirds of all his teaching can be found substantiall.y in the writing of Pius X. These_then are Pius X's contributions. He marked the way:-by restricting the term Catholic Action ~o the laity's share in the apostolic mission of the hierarchy; by setting the tinivershl aim for Catholic Action to establish, defend, and fully extend the Kingdom of Christ in. indi-viduals, in families, and in the whole, of society; by stressing its spedal necessity in our times; by giving it pre-eminence among the means recommended for the recon-struction of the social order according to a Christian pat-tern: by basing the obligation of Catholic Action on mem-bership in the Mystical Body, on the-law of charity, and. :~IoSEPH V. SOMMER~ -. obedience, to the pope; by outlining its subordination tO the direction of the hierarchy; and by., recalling t~) priests their obligation to gui~le and encourage this apostolic organiza-tion among the laity~ REFERENCES (A) The Pope and the People. Select letters and addresses on socia.I questions Popes Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, and Plus XI. The Catholic Truth Society~ London~ 1943¯ (B) Rest.oring All Things, by ,John Fitzsimons .and Paul McGuire. Sheed,and Ward, New york, 1938. Quotations are used here with the per.mission of the publishers. (.C) The Catholic Mind, I: "Encyclical Letter of.Our Hoiy Father Pius~X." (For the original text see Acta Sanctae Sedis, XXXVI, 129,139.) .(D) "'ll fermo proposito,'" in Acta Sanctae Sedis, XXXVII, 741-767. (See also The Pope and The People, 189-201, for an English translation of most of this apostolic letter.) .(E) The Tablet, CVI, 17~ "Correspondence: Rome." (F) A Manu.al oi Catholic Action, by Luigi Civardi. Translated by C. C. Mar-tindale, S.J. Sheed and Ward, New York, 1943. (See pages 12-45 .for a cursory-view of Pius X's in.fluence on the later development of Catholic Ac-tion.) ~(G)" Life of ~itts'X, by F. A. Forbes. Kenedy, New Y~rk, 1918. (Quotation i~ used here with the permission of the publishers.) (I'I) The Catbollc Mind, II, 3-10: "Popular Catholic Action.". (See also Acta Sanctae Sedis, XXXVII~ 339~345.) (I) "'Acecbo Nimis'" in the Acta 8anctae Sediso XXXVII. (d) .The Tablet, CXVI, 402-7: "The Pope and 'Le Sillon.' "''(See also Acta Apostolicae Sedis, II, 607.-33.)- (K) The Catholic. Mind, VIII: Encyclical.on St. Charles Borromeo. (L) "The Soul of the Apostolate., by~ J. B. Chautard. Translated by 3. A. Mo~ ran, S.M. The Mission Press, Techny, I11., 1945. (The quotation is used here with the permission of the Abbey of Gethsemani.) (M) What Does'the Pope Say About Catholic Action? Pellegri~i, Sydney,' Aus-tralia, 1937. See also Fundamental Pci~ciples of Catholic ACtion, by Fer-na~ nd Lelotte, S.2. Translated by ,J. P. Kelly. Australian National Sect. of Catholic Action, Melbourne. (This lafter book is soon to be published by The Ap0stolate Press, South Bend, Ind.)' 16 Splri :ual Readings rom :he Council Tren!:--II!* Augustine Klaas, S.J. Sacrament of Penance: Necessitg~ and Institution ~F IN ALL thos~ regenerated such gratitude were given toGod that they constantly safeguarded the justice received in baptism by His bounty,.: and grace, there would have been no need for another sacrament beiides that of baptism to be instituted for the remission of sins. But since God, rich in merc~l (117), knoweth our frame (118). He has a remedy of life even to those v~ho may after baptism have delive'red themselves up to the s~rvitude of sin and the power of the devil, namely, the sacrament of penance, by which the benefit of Christ's death is applied to those who have fallen after b.aptism. Penance was indeed, necessary.at all times for all nien who had stained themselves by mortal sin, even for those who desired to be cleansed by" the sacrament of baptism, in order to obtain grace and justice; so that their wickedness being renounced and amended, they might with a hatred of.sin and a Sincere sorrow of heart detest so great an offense against God. Wherefore the Prophet says: Be converted and do penance for all gout "iniquities, and iniquity shall not be gout ruin. (.119) The Lord also said: Except you do penance, you shall all likewise perish (120); and Peter the Prince of the Apostles, recom-mending penance to sinners about to receive baptism, said: Do pen- ¯ ance and be baptized every one of you. (121) Moreover, neither before the coming of Christ was penan.ce a sacrament nor is it such since His coming to an~rone before baptism. But the Lord then espe-cially instituted the sacrament of penafice when, after being risen from the dead, He breathed upon His disciples, and said: Receive ge the ']-Ioly Ghost, whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. (122) The con-sensu~ of all the Fathers has always acknowledged that by this,action so sublime and words so clear the power of forgiving and retaining 117) Ephesians 2:4 119) E~echiel 18:30 121) Acts2:38. 118) Psalms 102:14 120) Luke 13:5 122) John 20.:22 f *Selected from H. J. Schroe_der, O.P., Canons and Decrees of the Council of T~ent, (St. Louis, Herder, 1.94 I). 17 AUGUSTINE KLAAS sins was gi-v.en to the Apostles and their lawful successors for recon-ciling the faithful who have fallen after baptism, and the Catholic Church with goo.d reason repudiated and condemned as heretics the Novi~tians, who of old stubbornly denied that power of forgiving. (123) Penance Differs from Baptism ¯ Besides, it is clear: that this sacrament is in many respects different from baptism, For apar~ from the fact that in matter and form, which constitute the essence of a. sacrament, it differs very widely, it is beyond question that the minister of baptism need not be a judge, since the Church exercises judgment on no on~ who has not entered it through the gate of baptism. For what have I'to do, says St. Paul, to judge them that are without? (124) It is o~herwise with regard to those who are of th~ household of the faith, whom Christ the Lord has once by the laver of,baptism made members of His own body. (125). For these, if they should.afterward have defiled themselves by some crime, He wished not to have cleansed by the repetition of bap-tism, since that is in no manner lawful in" the Catholic Church, but to be placed as culprits before-this tribunal that by the sentence of the priests they may be absolved, not only once but as oft}n a~s, r~pentant of the sins'committed, they should turn themselves thereto. More-over, the.fruit of baptism is one thing, that c~fpenance another~ For By baptism we put on Christ ~126) and are made in Him an entirely new creatu're, receiving a full and complete remission of all sins; to which newness and integrity, however, we aie by no means able to arrive by the sacrament of penance without many tears~and labors on our part, divine justice demanding this, so that penance has rightly .been called by the Holy Fathers a laborious kind of baptism. This sacr~iment of penance is for those who have fallen after baptism neces-sary for salvation, as baptism is for those who have not yet been regenerated. Forms and Fruits of the" Sacrament The holy council teaches further,more, that the form of the sacra-ment of penance, in which its efficacy chiefl.y consists, are those words of'the minister: I absolve thee, etc., to which are indeed laudably added certain prayers according to the custom of holy Church, which, 123) Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., VI, c. 43 124)"See I Corinthians 5:12 125) I Corinthians i2:13 126) Galatians 3:27 JanuaGI, 1946 READINGS FROMTRENT however, do not ~)y any means belong to the essence of the form nor are they necessary for the administration of the sacrament.But th~ acts of the penitent himself, namely, contrition, confession and satis-faction, constitute the matter of this sacrament, which acts, inasmuch as. they are by God's institution required in the pe.nitent for the integrity o'f the sacrament and-for the full and complete remission of sins, are for this reason called the parts of penance.~ B~ut that Which is signified and produced by this sacrament is, so far as its force and efficacy are concerned, reconciliation with God, which sometimes,.in persons who are pious andwho receive this ~acrament with devotion, is wont to be followed by peace and serenity of conscience with an exceedingly great consolation of spirit. ' Contrition Contrition, which holds the first place ~mong the aforesaid' acts of the penitent, is a sorrow of mind and a detestation for sin com-mitted with the purpose of not sinning in the future. This feeling of contrition was at all times necessary for obtaining the forgiveness of sins and thus indeed it prepares one who has failen after baptism'for the remission of sins, if it is united .with" confidence in the divine mercy and with the desire to perform the other things that are reqtiired to receive this sacrament in the proper manner. The holy council declares therefore, that-this contrition implies not only an abstention from sin and the res61ution and beginning of a new life, but also a hatred of the old, ac~:ording to the statement: Cast away from yo.u all your transgressions by which you have transgressed, and make to yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. (127) And certainly l~e who has pondered those lamentatiohs of the saints: To ~thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee (128) ; I have labored.in my groanfngs,'everg night I will washmg bed (129); I will recount to thee all rny years in the bitterness of my soul (I 30), and others of this kind, will easily understand that they issued from an overwhelming hatred of their past life and from a profound detestation of sins., The council teaches furthermore, that though it happens sometimes that this contrition is perfect through charity and reconciles man to God before this sacrament is actually, received, this recon.ciliation, nevertheless, is not to be ascribed to the contrition 127) Ezechiel 18:31 128) Psalms 50:6. 13:0) lsaias 38:15 129) Psalms 6:7 19 AUGUSTINE KLAA8 Revie~v [or Religious itself, without a desire of the sacrament, which desire is included in it. As to imperfect contrition, which is called attrition, since it com-monly arises either from the consideration of the heinousness of sin or from tile fear of, hell and of punishment, the council declares that if it renounces the desire tO sinand hopes for pardon, i~ not only does not make one a hypocrite and a greater sinner, but is even a gift of God and an impulse of the Holy Ghost, not indeed as already , dwelling ~n the p.enitent, but only moving him, with which assistance the_peditent prepares a way for himself unto justice. And though with.out the sacrament of penance it cannot per se lead the sinner to justification, it does, howev.er, dispose ~im to obtain the grace of God in the sacrament of penance. For, struck salutarily by .this fear, the Nini¢ites, moved by the dreadful preaching of Jonas,-did penance and o" obtained mercy fro~m the Lord. (131) F~lsely therefore do some accuse Catholic writers,, as if they maintain that the sacrament .of penance confers grace without any pious exertion on the part of those receiving it, something that the Church of God has never taught br ever accepted. Falsely also do their assert that contrition is extorted and forced, and notfree and voluntary. Confession From the institution of the sacrament of penance as already explained, the universal Church has always understood that the complete, confession of sins was also instituted by the Lord and is divine law 'necessary for all who have, fallen after baptism (132): because our Lord Jesus Christ, when about to ascend from earth to heaven, left behind Him'priests, His own vicars (133), as rulers and judges, to whom all the mortal sins into which the faithful of Christ may have fallen should be brought in order that ~hey may, in virtue "of the power of the keys, pronounce the sentence of remission or retention of sins. For it is evident that priests could not have cised this judgment without.a knowledge of the matter, nor could they have observed justice in imposing, penalties, had the faithful declared their sins in general only and not specifically and one .by one. From whi.ch it is clear that all mortal sins of which they have kno.wl-e. dge after a diligent self-examinatiom must be enumerated by .the penitents in confession, even though they are most secret and have 131) Jonas 3:5; Mat-thew 12":41 : Luke l 1:32 132) Luke 5:14; 17:14; Idohnl:9 133) Matthew 16:19: John 20:23 Januar~l, 1946 READINGS FROM TRENT been cohamitted 0nly.against the last two precepts of the Deca-logue (i34); which sins sometimes injur~ the soul more grievously arid are more dangerous than those.that are committed openly. Venial sins, on the other band, by which we are not excluded from the grace of God and into which we fall more frequently, though the~ may be rightly and profitably and without any presumption declared in con-fission, as the practice of pious people evinces, may, nevertheless, be omitted without guilt and can be. expiated by many other remedies. But since all mortal sins, even those of thought, mak~ men children ot: wrath ('135) and enemies of God, it is necessary t6 seek pardon of all of them from God by an open and humble confession. While. therefore the faithful of Christ strive to confess all sins that come to their memory, they no doubt lay all of them before the divine mercy for forgiveness; while those'v~ho do otherwise and knowingly con-ceal certain ones, lay nothing before the divine goodness to be for-given through the priest; for if one sick be ashamed to make known his wound to the physician, the .latter does not remedy what he does not know. It is evident furthermore, that.thbse circumstances that change the species of the sin 5re also to be explained in-confession, for without }hem the sins themselves are neither integrally set forth by the p~nitent nor are they known to the judges, and it would be imtSossible for tfiem to estimate rightly the grievousness o~'the crimes. and to impose the "punishment due to the penitents on account of them. Hence it is unreasonable to teach that these circumstances have been devised by idle men, or that one circumstance only is to be con-fessed, namely, to have sinned against another. It is also malicious to say that ,confession, commanded to be made in this manner, is impos-sible, or to call it a torture of consciences: for it is known that in the Church nothing else is required of penitents than that each one, after he has diligently examined himself' and searched all the folds and corners of his conscience, confess those sins by which he remem-bers to have mo~tally offended his Lord and God; while,the other sins of which he has after diligent thought no recbllection, are unde~- stood to bein a general way included in the same confession; for which sins we confidently say with the Prophet: From rag secret sins cleanse me, 0 Lord. (136) But the difficulty of such a confession and the shame of disclosing the sins might indeed appear a burden-some matter, if it were not lightened by so many and so great advan- 134) Deuter_onomy 5:21 135) Ephesians 2:3 136) Psalms 18:13 AUGUSTINE KEAAS Review for Religious rages and consolations, 'which are most certainly bestowed by abso-lution upon all who approach this sacrament worthily. Moreover, as regards the manner of confessing secretly to a priest alone, although Christ has not forbidden that one may in expiation for his crimes and for his own humiliation, for an example to others as well ~ts for the edification of the Church thus scandalized, confess his offenses pub-licly, yet this is not commanded by divine.precept; nor would it be very prudent to enjoin by human law that offenses, especially ~ecret ones, should be divulged by a public confession. Wherefore, sifice secret sacramental confession, which holy Church has used from the beginning and still uses, has always been recommended by the.most holy and ancient Fathers with great and unanimous agreement, the empty calumny of those who do not fear to teach that it is foreign to the divine command, is of "human origin and owes its existence to the Fathers assembled in the Lateran Council, is convincingly disproved. For the Church did not through the~Lateran: Council decree that the faithful "of Christ should confess a thing that she recognized as of divine law and necessary, but that the precept of confession should be complied with by each and all at least once a year when they have attained the age of discretion. Hence the salutary custom of con- .re[sing during that sacred and most acceptable period of Lent is now observed in the whole Church to the great benefit of the souls of the faithful, which custom this holy council completely indorses and sanctions as pious and worthy of retention. Satisfaction Finally, in regard to satisfaction, which of all the parts of pen-ance, just as it is that which has at all times been recommended to the Christian people by our Fathers, so" it is the one which chiefly in our age is under the high-sounding pretext of piety assailed by those who ~ave an appearance, of piety, but have denied the power thereof (137), ~he holy council ~leclares that is absolutely false and contrary to the'word of God, that the guilt is never remitted by the Lord' without the entire punishment being remitteff also. For clear and outstanding ex.amples.are found in the "sacred writings (138), by which, besides divine tradition, this error is refuted in the plainest manner. Indeed the nature of divine justice seems to demand that 137) See II Timothy 138) Genesis 3:16 f; 20:11 f; II Kings 3:5 Numbers 12:14 f; 12:13 f 22 January, 1946 READINGS FROM TREN~T those who throhgh ignorance have sinned before baptism 1~ received into grace in one manner, and in another those who, after having been liberated from the servitude of sin. and of the devil, and after having received the gift of theHoly Ghost, have not feared knowingly to violate °the ¯temple of God" (139) and to grieve the Holy Spirit. (140) And it is :in keeping with divine clemency that sins be not. thus pardoned us without any satisfaction, lest seizing the occasion and considering sins as trivial and offering insult and affront to the. Holy Spirit (141) we should fall into graver ones. treaguring up to ourseloes wrath against the day of wrath.-(142) For without doubt, these satisfactions greatly restrain from sin, check as it were with a b.it, and make penitents more cautious and vigilant in the future; they also remove remnants of sin, and by acts of the opposite " - ' virtues destroy habits acquired by evil living. Neither was there ever in the Church of God any way held more certain to ward off °impending chastisement by the Lord than that men perform with true sorrow of mind these works of penance. (43) Add to this, that" while We by making satisfaction suffer for "our sins, we are made con-formable to Christ Jesus who satisfied for our sins (144). from whom is all our sufficiency (145), having thence also a most certain ~ledge, that if we suffer .with fiiro, we shall also be gloriI~ed with him. (1.46) Neither is this satisfaction which we discharge for our sins so our own as not to be through Christ Jesus: for we who can do nothing of ourselves as of ourselves, can do all things with the . cooperation of Him who strengthens us. (147) Thus man has not wherein to glory, but all our glorying is in Christ (148), in wl~om we live (149), in whom we merit, in whom. we make satisfaction, bringing forth fruits worthy of penance (150), which have their efficacy from Him, by Him are offered to the Eather, and through Him are a~ccepted by the Father. .The priests of the Lord must therefore, so far as reason and prudence suggest, impose s~lutary and suitable satisfactions, in keeping with the nature of the crimes and tBe ability of the penitent; o_therwise, if they should connive at sins and deal too leniently with penitents, imposing certain very light 139) See I Corinthians 3:17 140) Ephesians 4:30 141) Hebrews 10:29 142) Romans 2:5: James 5:3 143) Matthew 3:2. ~: 4:17; 11:21 144) Romans 5:10 ¯ 145) See II Corinthians 3:5 146) Romans 8:17 147) See II Corinthians 3:5 ; Philippians 4."13 148) See I Corinthians 1:31 ; II Corin-thians 10:17: Galatians 6 : 14 149) Acts 17:28 150) Matthew 3:8: Luke 3:8 AUGUSTINE KLAAS works for very grave offenses, they might° become partakers in the sins of others. But let them bear in mind that the satisfaction they impose be not only for the protection, of a new life and a remedy against infirmity, but also for the atonement and punishment of past sins; for the early Fathers al~o believed and taug.ht that the keys of the priests were bestowed not to loose only but also to bind. (151) . It.was riot°their understanding, moreover, that the sacrament, of pen-ance is a tribunal of wrath or of punishments, as no Catholic ever understood that through our satisfactions the efficacy of the merit and satisfaction of our.Lord Jesus Christ is either obscured 0r in any way diminished; but since the innovators wish to understand it sd, they teach, in ~rder to destroythe efficacy and use of satisfaction, that a new life is the best penance. It (the council) teaches furthermore that the liberality of .the divine munificence is so great that we are .able through Jesus Christ to make satisfaction to God the Father not only by punishments .vo!untarily undertaken by ourselves to atone for-sins, or by those imposed by t~e¯ judgment of the priest according to the measure of our offense, but also, and this is the greatest proof of love, by the temporal afflictions imposed by God and borne patiently by us. 151) Matthew 16:19; John 20:23 OUR CONTRIBUTORS LOUIS J. PUHL is professor of" ascetical theolbgy at the Pontifical College ,Josephinum, Worthington, Ohio. AUGUSTINE KLAAS is professor of sacramental theology; THOMAS A. O'CONNOR, of sacred oratory; MALACHI ,J. DONNELLY~, of dogmatic theology;¯and ADAM C. ELLIS, of canon law at St. Mary's College; St. Marys,~Kansas. ,JOSEPH V.SOMMERS is completing his course of theology at St. Mary's College. "WHAT'S A DOMINICAN?" ¯ Original, attractive, well-illustrated, this vocation booklet should have a wide. appeal among boys in the uppper grades and in the first years of ~high school. It will surely help many to "better know and love [the] sons of St. Dominic . [and] aspire to join their ranks." For co1~ies address Brother Bede's~ Mailbox, Dominican House of Studies, River Forest, Illinois. Irnrnaculat:e I-lead: o[ h~ary Thomas A. O'Connorl S.J. ItTHERE ~ill be peace if: . ." " - | " Th~ Queen of Peace, the M6ther of God, is speaking. The scene is a rocky, barren cove out-side a small town, sixty miles north of Lisbon in Portugal. It is ~July 13, 1917. Three shepherd children, aged ten, nine, and seven, wide-eyed in wonderrrient, are listening to a beautiful Lady who has appeared to them. She is con-fiding a great secret to them: the secret of the world's peace. It is the message of Fatima. Marg's Message God wishes to establish in the wbrld devotion-to my Immacu-- late Heart. "If people do whatI have told you, many souls will be saved and will find peace. The war [World War I] is going to end, but if people do not cease to offend God. not much time Will el~ps~, and precisely during the next Pontificate. another and more te,rrible war [Wo, rld War II] will commence. When a night illhmined by an unknown light is seen, know that it is the signal which God gives you that the chastisement of the world for its many transgressions is at hand through war, famine. and persecution, of the Church and Of the Holy Father. "To avoid this, I ask for the consecration ot:" the world to mg Immaculate Heart, and Communion in reparation on the tirst Satur-dag of each month. If my requests are h~ard, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. Otherwise, great errors will be spread throughout the world, giving rise to wars and persecutions against the Church. The gobd will suffer much. Different nations will be destroyed; but in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me; Russia will be converted, and an era of peace will be granted to humanity. Thus spoke Our Blessed Mother. It was ari answer to ¯, 25 THOMAS A. O'CONNOR Review for Religious the Catholic w~;rld's petition for peace. After all human efforts to secure peace had failed, Pope Benedict XV instructed the bishops of the world to communicate to all his ardent desire "that recourse be made to the, Heart of Jesus, Throne of grace, and to this Throne recourse be made .through Mary . To Mary, then,, who is the M6ther of Mercy and omnipotent by grace, let loving, and devout appeal go up from every corner of the earth." ~n her honor he had ~dded to the Litany of Loretto the title "Queen of Peace." Eight days after the Holy Father had made this request, Mary appeared to the children at Fatima. There will be peace if. there is established through-. out the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. No matter what happens, in the end the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumpfi. B~t the establishment and propagation of the devotion to the 'Immaculate Heart of Mary now can spare the world future.wars, suffering, and persecution. Tile Holy Father Fulfills Her Wishes On th~ 31st of October, 1942, Pope Pius XII conse-crated the world and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. These are his words: To thee, to thy Immaculate Heart in this, humanity's tragic'hour, we consign and consecrate ou'rselves in tinion not onl~r with the Mys-tical Body of ~thy Son, Holy Mother Church, now in such suffeiing and agony in so many places and sorely tried in so many ways, but also witti the entire world, torn by fierce strife, consumed in a fire of hate, victim of its own wickedness . "Give peace to the peoples separated by error or by discord, and espdcia!ly to those who profess such singular devotion to thee and in whose homes an honored place was ever accorded thy venerated icon (today perhaps often kept hidden to await better days): biing them° back to the one fold of Christ under the one true shepherd. The Holy Fatl~er has spokeh. He has consecrated the 26 January, 1946 ~ . IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY world and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. ' Now ¯ nations and cities, dioceses and parishes, families and indi-viduals have but to follow the lead of the Supreme Pontiff and to consecrate themselves to Mary's ImmacUlate Heart. "All the evil in the "world flows from the ignoring of God's, infinite Majesty and the complete neglect of His ¯ divine commands," Pope Pius XII once stated. The way back to God is through sinlessness and purity of life. Mary, the Immaculate One, is the way. She "our life, our ~weet-ness and our hope" is the. way to peace. The Hearts of Jesus and Mary Of all ,hearts, the most intimately united to and most closely identified with the,Sacred Heart .of Christ is the . Most Pure Heart of Mary, His Mother. It is not strange, then, that the devotion tO the Immaculate Heart of M~iry is very similar to devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. ¯ - As the physical Heart of Christ, the symbol of His love, is the object of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, so in a Simila~ manner the object to which this devotion is directed is the physical Heart of'Mary considered as the symbol of her love for God and for man. In honoring Christ's heart, we honor His divine person; and in honoring Mary's Heart, we 'honor her whole person, sifice her Heart .but symbolizes the love which motivated her whole being in every action of her life. Finally, like devotion to the Sa~red Heart, devo. ¯ tion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary expresses itself, first . in the specific practices of acts of consecration and rep~ra.-" tion, and secondly in the more generic practices 6f prayer and love and imitation of her virtues. ¯ Consecrqtton In 1899 Pope L.eo XIII, performing what .he termed ' ¯ "theogreatest act" of hi~ pontifica~e,~consecrated the whole world to the Sacred Heart. - 27 TH~31~AS A. O'CONNOR ~ . . Reoieto/or Religious' Just as when the.n.ew.ly born Church lay.helpless under the yoke of .the Ca~'sars, there ~ppeated in~ the heavens a cross, at once the sign and cause of the marvellous victory that was soon to 'follow, so today before o.ur very eyes there appears another most happy and holy sign, "the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, crowned by a brilliant cross set amid raging flames. In this Sacred" Heart. we shall place all our hopes; .from it, too, we ask and await salvatio~i. (Annum Sacrum.) The:purpose of that consecration was.to acknowledge God's supreme dominion over the whole "v(.orld and over the hearts of men. ~ndividuals consecrating themselves to the Sacred Heart voluntarily~professed this sovereignty over :¯themselves. In r~evealing this devotion to St. Marga~)et Mary, the Sacred Heart insisted more on "the immense love which He has borne to us than on His:fights over us" (Pius XI; Miserentissimus). Father Putz, S.J., says, As His dominion is one 6f lo~e and He wants submission out of love, the consecration is made to the Sacred Heart, the symbol of His love., 'Being consecrated to Him, we belong to Him in a special manner, we are placed under His special protection, we are sure of His special help 'and care. The s~me may be said; in as far as it is @plicable, of consecrating Ourselves to the Immaculate Heart Of Mary. LiKewise we may say that there has now appeareda new sign in the he~ivens. It is the radiantly beautiful, spotlessly pure, Immaculate Heart of~ Mary-~-the way to individual and world peace. The confident hope is that the whole world and each individual will consecrate himself to her Immaculate Heart and thus accomplish the purpose of theworld's consecra-tion tothe Sacred Heart, namely, that the "whole ~orld¯ will submit joyfully and willingly to th~ easy. yoke Of ':~hrist the King," and that the "fruits of,,the consecration will be to °bind With Chriatian love in the communion of pe, ace all peoples to the heart of the Ki~g, of Kings and danuar~, 1946 " " IMM~CULA'I:EHEART OF MARY SOvereign iof Sovereigns':~ (Miserentissimus). " : ' That this i~the purpose of the consecration of the world tO the Immacul~ate Heart'0f Maryis best expressedby Pope Pius XII: , As the Church andthe entire human r~ce oweie-cohse~fated to th~ Sacred Heart of Jesus.so that in ~eposing all hope in Him, H~might become for them the sign and pledge of victory and salvation; so we in like manner¯ consecrate burselves forever ~Iso to thee and. to. thy Immaculate Heart, Our Mother and Queen, that thy love and patron-age may hasten the triumph of the Kingdom of God and that all nations, at.peace With one another and with God, m~iy proclaim thee blessed an'd with thee may raise their voices to resound from pole t6 pole in the chant of the everlasting Magnificat of glory, l~sve and gratitude to the Heart of Jesus, .where alone they can find truth, and peace. -Pope Plus XII first consecrated-the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mar'y on October" 31, 1942. That same year, on the Feast of the Immaculate Con.c.eptioni he pubiicly repeated the Act of Consecration in.St. Peter's l~asilica. The official English translation of.the" Act of Consecration was 15ublished in the REVIEW FOR RELICdOU$ in 1943, p. 71. For the private consecration Of individuals ¯ any suitable form of words sufficest Reparation Reparation is an integ~al part of the devotion, to the. Sacre'd Heart. If in the act of consecration the intention t~ exchange, as it were, for the love of tl~ Creator the love of us creatures stands out most prominently, ther~ follgws almost naturally from this another fact. namely, that if this same Uncreated I~ove has either been passed ove~ through forgetfulness .or saddened by reason of our sins, then~ we ~should repair such outrages.-. We call this duty reparation. . Therefore we must add to the act of consecration. , . an act of expia-tion, b~" means of which all our faults are blotted out (Miserentissi- When Out'Lord a~peared to St, Margaret Mary, He 29 THOM/~S A. O'CONNOR Reolew for "Religious .asked that ~he Feasf of the Sacred Heart be established in .reparation for the sin~ of men, and t~ practice Of the nine -First Fridays .followed from the twelfth of His promises. Similarly in the devotion to the .Immaculate Heart Of Mary, reparation is an integral part. When Our Blessed Mother appeared ~.to the shepherd children, she s~iid: "I ask'f0r.the consecration of the world to my immaculate Heart, and Communion in reparation ono the first, Saturday of each month." Sister Lucy of.Jesus, one of the shepherd children to. whom Our Lady api~eared, gives the words Our Blessed Mother used: ~ - My. child, behold my Heart all pierced with thorns which the blasphemies and ingratitude of men drive deeper ~t every moment. Do thou, at least try to console me, and make known to men that I promise to assist at the hour of death with the gracqs necessary for salvation all those who,. on the first Saturday of. five.consecutive months, .go to confession, receive Holy Communion, say the Rosary, and spend a quarter of an hour with me in meditating .on the fifteen mysteries of tl~e Rosary, with the object of making reparation to me. On the 13th of May, 1939, the Bishop.of Fatima caused the following to be pfiblished: "It is Our Blessed Lady Her-self Who in our tim~ has deigned to teach us this devotion to the Five First Saturdays, the object of which is to make reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for all offences and outrages committed against. her by ungrateful men." Pra~ter and Penance ~In his encyclical, Caritate Christi Computsi, Pope Pius,XI urged upon all the Spirit of prayer and-penitential reparationas the ex.tra.ordin~ry ~emedy for the e:~tr.aordi-nary needs Of the times. Our Lady in her appearanceh to the. shepherd children recommended 'prayer and pemince. "Pray, pray very much,"' she said on August 19, "and make sacrifices for sinners~. for. many souls, go to bell because there ~0 danuar~l, 1"946 , IMMACULATE HEART OF MARk' is no one to make sacrifices for them." H(r message'in October .was similar. "She said that she was Our Lady of the Rosary," the children testified, "and their we must repent of our sins, "change our lives, and no longer offend Our Lord, who-is so much offende!!" The prayer she recomme.fided most was the Rosary. Pope Plus XII, in his radio address to Portugal, dwelt on the same needs. After recalling that it is proper to have confidence in Mary, he added: But, lest this confidence,be presumpt~uous, it is necessary . . . for us to listen to the maternal advice she g;~ve at the wedding of Cana and do everything that, Jesus tells us to do. And He tells us all to do penance . to amend our lives, and to flee from sin, which is the principal cause of the terrible punishments with which Eternal Jus-tice is afflicting the world . [He bids us] to be the salt that~pre2 serves and,the light that iilumines, to cultivate purity and to show forth in our manner of life the austerity of the Gospel . More still, [He tells us] . to diffuse around us, near and far, the perfume of Christ, and by constant prayer --- especially the daily Rosary--as well as by such sacrifices as zeal inspires, to win for sinful souls the life of grace and eternal happiness . Sorrowful in her foresight of th'~s great misfortune with which the Justice of God is punishing the world, Mary has pointed out that the way to save the world is by prayer and penance . Martj Omnipotent by Grace¯ We should be most eager and fervent in our devotio~ to the Immaculate Heart of Mary because, as the Mother of God and our Mother, all graces, gifts, and favors come to us from G~d through Mary¯ She is the Mediatrix of all graces. She is omnipotent by grace. Hence it was that Benedict XV wrote on May 5, 1917: Because all graces which the Author of every good deigns to distributg ¯ . . are., dispersed by the hands of the most holy V~irgin, we ~;ish the petitions of her most afflicted children to be directed with lively confidence., to the great Mother'of God . . . To Mary, then, who .31 THOMAS A. O'CONNOR is the Mother of Mercy and omnipotent .by~ grace, let loving and devout appeal go up from every corner of the earth." Pope .Pius ~XI, concluded his encyclical Miserer~tissirnus with an act of confidence "in her intercession with ~lesus . . . who wished to associate His own Mother with Himself as the advocate of sinner~, as the dispenser and mediatrix of grace." This same note of confidence in Mary was expressed by Pope Plus XII in his radio address to the people of Portugal, in which he consecrated the wo~rld to the Immaculate Heart of Mary: .Toda~-, . . there remains to us only confidence in God and, as in intermediary before "the divine throne, in her whom one of our prede.cess0rs during the first world war invoked as the Queen of Pefidd. " Letus invdke her again, for she alone can help us! . . . " Queen 0f'the Most Holy Rosary, Hell0 o~ Christians, .Refuge of the~Human Race, Victress in all God's battles, we humbly prostrate Oursdves before thy thron~, confident,that we shall obtain mercy, and- ~eceive grace and bountiful 'assista'fice 'and protection in the present chlamity, not fhrough ou, r own inadequate merits, but solely' through ith.e, great go0dfiess of thy Maternal heart . Queen of Peace, pray for us. and give to the world at war the peace for which all people are longing, peace in thetruth, justice, and charity of Christ. Give peace to the warring; nations and'to the souls of men, that in the tranquillity of order the Kingdom of God may prevail. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us! INDEX OF BAC~K NUMBERS REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is indexe~l in the CATHOLIC PERIODICAL "INDEX. Con-tent~ of previous issues can be found by consulting the Readers' Gu.ide in your library. 32 The Magnetic Power 0t: Chris!: Malachi ~l.Donnelly, S.J, AS CHILDREN we .all played with an iron magne.t, and later, when we studied physics in high school, we perfdrmed experiments with the magnet. It was ", put under a piece of paper and upon the surface of this paper were scattered particles of iron dust. As we tapped the paper gently, we saw the tiny bits of iron arrange them selves in a definite pattern around the poles of the magne.t. We learned that between all the particlesthere was an inter~ play and exchange of magnetic power. Hence, they were not isolated units, bu.t closely interrelated and continually receiving and exercising magnetic influence. Further, all the power they had of influencing the.surrounding iron - particles all this came from the central magnet, their only. power-source. Finally, the-power of each tiny.iron filing depended on (1) its nearness to the.magnet, as source_of power; and'(2) its freedom from base alloys, which might render the iron particle less susceptible to the magnetic influence of the central source. With this illustration ~well in mind, let us consider briefly the religious life and especially ,the influence which every religious should exert on the world about him. Above all, the religious should realize the source of his power and what he must do that this power be his in the highest degree possible. This realization is of the greatest importance today, when everyone is talking, about post-war reconstruction and when even secular leaders are beginning to recognize the l~act that a material rebuilding will be of MALACHI J. DONNELLY " Reoiew [or Religigus little avail v~ithout a renewal of spiritual forces. Religious. .must,. and can,-play a major part in this post-war spiritual recopstruction, as we hope that the following, paragraphs " 'will illustrate. The life of _religious is not a fleeing from life. Nor, again, is it a mere repression of powerful life-tendencies. And, finally, it is not an utter abandonment of the world of human beings 6utkide the cloistered wall. Rathdr, the religious life is truly a fleeing towards, life, towards 'that source of all life, 3esud Christ, who has said of Himself, :"I am. the Life." Far from. repressing vital instincts, " the~teligious'life assures, thoiigh in a higher Spherel their full development. The religious life must mean a love-seeking, a love-search, but for God and men in God. This means that all true life-tendencies, tlhouglhts, will-acts (.yes, ~motions, too)--the whole human being must be 'vitally ~oncerned with this loving quest of God. ., From the psychological pc~int of view, such a life should never resultS in "crabbiness," neuroses of various kinds, or crippling inhibitions. The religious do~s not live a vacuum L life. He me~ely takes one ointment (indeed, good in itself) . frorfi the e:~rthly ~¢essel that it may be replaced by a" more precious perfume. True, if it does not attain its posit.ive p~rfection, such a life might well rest~lt in mere inhibitions and a consequent unwholesome, if not downright neurotic, frame:of mind. With regard to women in particular, this is well expressed in an excellent modern study: If we religio~s women fail to cultivate love on the high level of the supernatural, if we permit our love to center in self, we shall deteriorate in our spiritual .life and become objects o~f disedification within and without our convent wails. In the married state, as Wife and m~ther,a woman unfolds love, tenderness and co~apassion. In. " religious life, the sources of natural de, velopment are closed to her.She is" expected to-unfold love ori a supernatural level love for her , Divine Spouse and for the members of His Mystical Body. danuary~ 1946 MAGNETId POWER OF CHRIST If sh~ fai|S to cultivate this love; she be¢0m~s devoid of-all love, excepting self-love, which expresses itself in seeking morbid .h.um~an affections. She sinks into a condition that is not proper to her nature. The-finer qualities of he~ being dry up for want of fost.ering care. She becomes uhnatural in hard and exclusive selfishness.I But,.if lived as a positive, full-s6uled (-and ffill-hea~ted)i seard~i.ng f~r God, t~e hidden" l~i~e of the religious can never be.other thana fuller perfe~ti0n anti more complete dev~l~ opmentof human nature, of soul and of body, of the entire man. With attention now drav)n to the positive side of the religious life,.let us see what'eff~ct a relig!ous life WellAived can have on the world about us. Perhaps tile answer may be found in a consideration Of the religious and the Mystical Body of Christ. As we all know, the Mystical Body is truly liying and organic: Bodily life. is the power-of perfective, self-movement in an organism. It depends on nourishment 'from outside the living body, on food which through assimilation becomes part of the body and .supplies .the power by. which the living organism" directs itself in organic movement towards a definite end. Again, an o~ganism is made up of.heterogeneous parts. different in shape, and function, each of .which finds own perfection in working t~wards the good of the Whole .bqdy. And througho_ut the individual organs there flows the common life of the complete body. The life of the Mystical. Body is sanctifying grace, that divine life shared by men and poured forth into our souls by the Holy S~irit who is given to us. From the Holy Spirit, who is breathed forth into our souls by Father and " Son, ~omes our created Share of that same diC, ine life which 1Two Sisters of Notre Dame, Soul Clinic (New York and Chicago: Pustet. 1943). pp. 10-11. For a review of this excellent book. confer REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, II. p, 130. 35 MALACHI'J. DONNELLY " Reoieto /or Religious the three.divine Persons possess as identified, with theirown Persons. " - The life-movement of the Mystical Body is nourished by the in-take and assimilation of thi~ Christ-life, divine grace. Gra~e perfects the individual member and then, like the color of health,radiates out through the entire Mystical .Body and brings with it a health-restoring, or, as the case may be, a life-perfecting power. The movement of the members, or organs, of the Body will be an organic, hence corpo.rate movement towards God, the final end, the highest .good of the entire Body. As !.iving members of the Mystical, Body, we religious are, like ir0n-filings With respect to the central ma.gnet, grouped around Christ, our source of spiritual power. All the sup.ernatural efficiency we ba.v.e comes from Him, the uhique source. As members of Christ's Body, we receive and give off power, spiritual power received fro~ Christ the Head of the Body. Our sup,e.rnatural power .and efficiency depend on two things; (1) our nearness to Christ the sourcd of this power, and (2) the absence of base alloy in o~r sduls, that is, self-love and pridemin a word, the absence of worldliness, which implies a most subtle blending o.f pride and sensuality. ~ The communication of this divine lif~ to men is not a blind, necessary process. Christ does not force His life upon men. If men are to receive the life that ~lesus Christ came into the world .to give, they must freely respond to the, life-call. And here it is that we must look for the part played by the religious in post~war reconstruction. ~lust as iron-filings .far removed from the central .mag-net get magnetic'power only t~rough the intervening par- , ticles of iron which are closer to the magnet, so, too, in the ordinary,ways of God with men, the divine life, sanctifying grace, is given to men through the aid of other human January, 1946 MAGNETIC .POWER OF' CHRIST beings. ¯ This does not~mean that'men actually, give grace to others. But it doesmean that, ordinarily, the interior soul;life', divine grace, is given largely in'dependence upon external graces-offered directly through a fellow human being. How does this take place? In exa~t proportion as you keep close to 3esus Christ, your Source, will you get power~ and~ life. You know that worldliness is the, only real obstacle that can keep the divine life f~m flooding the inmo'st parts of. your soul. You know that,,by destroying self-love, by loving Chris~, by being, ambitious df the last place .in your Community to be in the first place i~ear~st Christ--you know that 'it is thus that y.ou Open the flood-gates for the rush of the divine life that is surging agalnst your soul. Add a real spirit of praye~ and what results? ~ Simply this: life floods.your souL. t~ut not to remain damm.ed up there.- No, like a riv~er in springtime," this life will overflow and flood all around you. Fill~d with ~this diyine life, you will benign to renew the face 'of the earth. You will bring one~essary external graces to a world hun-gering for divine life. Certainiy~, as even the unbeliever, George Bernhrd Shaw, maintained, the most powerful force in the world is personal example. And when this personal .example is the .overflo.w from intense love "of God, what must not its force be! Your own transformed life will bring to others, however faintly, the Very beauty of'Christ's own life, And there is-noth!ng that so wins.even the heart of the most hardened sinner as seeing Christ reflected .in a fellow human being of flesh and blood. The religious does not lead an in~sulated life, like a moth in a cocoon. If one rfiay Use a homely expbession, the ~reli-gious does not ride to heaven in an enclosed compartment. NO, he ride~ the coaches; and they aie crowded with fellow travelers hungeriiag for the life which you can give them. MALACHI J. E)ONiqEI~L~! ReoieW fo~ Reli0iou,~ TO "each person with whom you comeAn contact an infl'u.- - ence'goes forth from'y0u. And the real wortlawhileness o'f tha~.:infltience~, its spiritual value, is p~oportined to "your nearness to Christ." " 7~g.ain, it is well to remember that our workois the york of~Christ operating through us., We are really instruments in His hands. And, we all know that ~he effect produced by an instrument depends not .only 'on the dignit~y of the one ,using the instrument. " In order-to write well. the pen mus,t baste a good point, the ink mu~st notbe muddy. : Otherwise scratching and blottingappear. :'In similar mannevChrist ~ will not work ~ffectively th.rough the religious, if he as a f011o.wer of Christ does not condition and prepare himself to bi~ a good instrument in the hands of Christl Many there are, perhal3s. Who, in the eternM designs ~f God' will" ~r~directly owe their salvation' to you i*nd to you alon~. If you'rende.r yourselffit ?orpassing on the divine .life' in your own soul to others, then yo.u w~ll really save-souls. " : Surely, then, it is true that the-religious close to Christ will do much ~in the post-war reconstruction. Fbr brick ahd ste.el, bombs arid ta'nks are not what this world needs ~to insure a lasting peace.- What the world needs is a spiritual catharsis, a'complete soul-purging. And only the gra~e ~f " God can do this. That is the one and only all-out essential for mankind. And the one who can best.secure and apply this specific, this healer of the wounds of the world, is the fervent religious. Through the Christ,loving r~ligi6us. through the religious in close contact with Our Lo'rd, the" Christ-lif~ goes out to men. " In the classroom, the pupils will ,see in thkir instructor not just a human teacher, but rather one who,reflects Christ. And not only will the power of the religious teacher be increased, but the students will be impelled to seek after the- 38" January, 1946 MAGNETIC POWER OF CHRIST source bf the beautiful power that shines forth from their instructor. ' ° ~ In the hospital, the patients,~ Staff"members, arid ififei~nS, ~he o.r~lerlies,, the kitch~en help, and the janitors all will See in the religious, ' not .just a nurse, but a mirror ofChrist Who healed bodies ithat men might¯ v~ith this renewed healthalso get new life for their souls. Everywhere, then, in orphanages, in homes¯ for the a~ged7 eveffin the hidden life of¯the kitchen,-~his Christ-life must be.found pulsatirig in the soul of the religious. And from the religious this life must go forth to the world.For this Christ-life alone can renew the face of the. world, alone can effect a lasting reconstruction and a lasting peace among men. BOOKLET.NOTICES FIELD AFAR PRESS, 121 East 39th Street, New York, N. Y. Mar~.tknoll Mission Letters. Volume II, 1945. 50 cents. This ~dition of .the .Mission Letters¯ includes the-Mgryknoli Superior General's_ report on his recent visitation of the missions in China, a letter describing the . life and work of Father Rauschenbach. and the eulogy preached at the funeral Mass for Father Cummings---originator of "There are no atheists in fox-holes." Besides there are the usual interesting and informative letters from Maryknollers in China, the Philippines, and Ceniral and South America. THE NEWMAN BOOKSHOP, Westminster, Maryland. The Catholic Doctor and Catholics on the Police Force. both by Francis J. Con-nell, C.S.S.R. (Brief ~xplanations of the-moral obligations of doctors and policemen respectively). 15 cents each. GRAYMOOR PRESS, Peekskill, New York, Tale o: a Troubador. by Samuel Cummings, S.A. (A brief life of St. Francis of Assisi'). I0 cents. MONASTERY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD, 54thStreet and Fort Hamilton Parkway, Brooklyn 19, New York. Fighting Our Spiritual Enemies, 10 cents; O~w Warfare on the Spiritual Front, 5 cents. Both by a Sister of the Pre.cious, Blood. (The first of these booklets is intended for religious only; the second for lay people). " , THE CAMPION PRESS. 1184 Phillips Place, Montreal, Canada. Rosaries [or Russia: Little Meditations on the Rosary, by Magnus Seng. I 0 cents. "'PROSVITA-ENLIGHTENMENT'.' 61 I- Sinclair Street. McKeesport, Penna., and "AMER. RUSSKY VIESTNIK" Greek Catholic Union Bldg., Munhall, Penna. The Major Holy-Days (Greek Rite.). by the Reverend 3ulifis Gi-igaisy, D.D., and the Reverend Stephen Loya. N6price given. ¯ ommun ¢a!: ons - [NOTE: With regard'to communications published, the only" r~sponsibility ¯assumed by the editors, is to see that the letters contain nothing contrary to the approved teaching of the Church in matters of faith and morals. The opinions expressed in the communications should be judged on their own merits.] Reverend Fathers: You said you would welcome communications describing obstacles encountered in working for interracial justice. I want to outline a situation that constitutes such an obstacle. There is a Catholic high scho~l for. girls (one only) iffa.certain city: .t.he city's population is one-fifth Negro and one-half or more ~Catholic. ¯ The Sisters of this school are eager to do all they can to~ bring the blessings of higher Catholic education to the colored as well as the white ~girls of high school age. They long for converts among the colored, among whom the Church is little known. What can they do? Prejudice runs high ¯ in this town. But the nuns are not afraid of prejudice. They tell themselves, at least, that thdy would rather be lynched, with the col-ored than lynch with the white. They say, "We would,ripen our - halls to colore~l girls this afternoon, and remove .the lie which our doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ, taught but not practiced. m~kes us live. But we have not the auth6rity of the clergy behind us." These Sisters talk racial justice in season and out Of season. They "teach a unit on it to every religion student. They write articles, give and have students give speeches, hold interracial panels, and urge girls, to take part in interracial retreats. And then they realize, in a cold sweat, that they are teacbihg their students that, as a matter of fact. o the local clergy are not bei.ng true to their pastorates. For it is known that the priests consider these .Sisters imprudent, not to say misled. And when the schedule o'f sermons calls for a sermon on brdtherly love. every pastor in the city talks about hating Japanese, of whom there are none in the city. or Germans, whom. they do not hate: but no pastor so much as mentions the Negroes-living just three or four blocki away in a shantied Africa that is largely the direct[ result of white oppr.ession, mistrust, and. in many cases, white hatred. Who would say that these Sisters are not, though with the best of intentions, forced either to deny the doctrine of the Mystical Body in practice by refusing Catholic secondary education to a portion of 40 'COMMUNICATIONS the Catholic population because of color; or, on the dther hand~ to prepare the way for the rending of tl~at same Mystical Body by teaching doctrines their students do not see upheld by.the ecclesiastical ~uthorities? Now everybody knows that many a Catholic diocese is not up a~ainst such.a prgblem as this. In many places the ecclesiastical supe-riors are backing fully and with Christ-like zeal the work of zealous lovers of racial jus~tice. But it is not done everywhere; and the tragic urievenness of the thing hu~ts. I suggest that your readers pray earnestly that the spiritual authorities will back us urffforrnl~t ,and ev, eryu)here so that the souls of our Negro brethren may not go on-languishing because loyalty to ecclesiastical authority keeps us from acting fully and with all our resources in their favor. " Sister Reverend Fathers: Father Coogan is right (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, ,November 15, 1945): "Hopes for a racially,~better day lie largely with religious, especially teachers." To. begin liquidating these l~opes many religious can within obedience use their.ingenuity about fostering the Christian attitude, They find opportunities, many or f~wer according to local circumstances, of influencifi'g their students. They can always give good example. They can a.t.the fight, moment encourage and direct classroom discussions: they can at time~s inspire their students through direct instruction and exhortation. ~ " The students are ge.nerally far ahead of their eiders, both parents and teachers, on matters interracial. "School strikes just don't hap-pen, unless the youngsters themselves are certain of being supported by parents, and even by teachers and pastors. ,.lanie and 2ohnny stand in no "picket lines once they hear an unmistakable order from home to '.'Get back into that school building!" The kids will squeal t~ the crooning of a generous, well-intentioned Sinatra; but a,snappy. rebuke from Dad packs more authority than an old-fashioned truant o~_cer. . ~ We were carrying on a discussion in my sophgmore class about the advisability of admitting Negroes to theschool, a private, academy for boys in a large Mid-Western city. Two or threeloud voices were" adamant, but the group all in all was very' favorable. -The discus, sion, however, was brought to a premature end by this p-olitely . 41 COMMUNICATIONS intoned comment: "If we're real Catholics, Father, we have to !~ C61ored boys into the school, The fellowss~em to agree on that. So it's.up'to the school authorities to talk'about it and do something." Since then two Negroes have been admitted and are-doing well. So is the school. Many authorities are in a position, to do mort by way of effective planning f6r Negro students. Those institutions which do havea "token attendance"i could'in many cases go a ~tep further by positively encouraging well qualified Colored youth--inviting them to scholar-ship competitions, personally canvassing their 'families, contacting Catholic pastors in Negro neighborhoods, etc. Elizabeth Adams has a poignant observation "in h~r autobio-graphical Darh Sgmphong: "Think of the number of Religious wh~) pray dail)~ to suffer--to share humiliations like those endured by. the Christ ;~ yet, if accepting a Colored child in a school or boarding home would mean financial loss to their institution, they would deny that child admittance." Truth is, Catholic schools have suffered not the siightest l~ermanent loss by accepting Negroes. Richa.r.d A. Schuchekt, S.J. West Baden, Indiana. CONCERNING COMMUNICATIONS We always welcome letters from our readers and are: eager to publish such as may prove helpful to others. However, to facilitate our work and to avoid confusion, we request that correspondents observe the following suggestions: 1. If you want your letter published, address .the envelope to: Communications Department Review for Rel;g|oui St. btary's College St. Maws, Kansas 2. If at all possible, type the letter, double-spaced. . 3. Make the letter as brief as you°reasonably can, without however sacrificing ideas for the sake of brevity,t 4.~ Sign ~rour name and ad~lres~, at the end of the letter~. If, however, you do not wiih your name and address published, add a postscript to that effect, In the past we have published some letters that were not signed, and we may do so again in the future. -However, we cannot guarantee that unsigned letters will receive the same consideration as those that are signed.--THE EDITORS. 42 The Virtue of IEquit y LouisJ. Puhl, S.J. 4~AUL, having passed through the upper country, came to Ephesus and found certain disciples; to whom be said, 'Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?' But they answered, 'Nay, we have n0.t even heard whether there be a Holy Spirit.' " (Acts 19' 1-2.) If an examination were conducted on the virtue of equ!ty, it is safe to say that .many answers would much resemble that Of the Ephesian disciples of St. Paul. Yet St. Thomas,°in his treatment of justice in the Summa (II- _ti, q. 120, a. 1), not.only defends itsplace among the vir:. ~ues but calls it a :'superior rule of human action,'; the noblest species of justice. Equity, according, to St. Thomas, rises above the dead .letter of the law,. that killeth, and-seeks to be guided by the spirit of tl~e law. by the intention of the lawgiver. It is impossib!~ for the limited human mind so to word a law or command that it will cover every set of circumstances that may arise. The lawgiver, as St. Thomas points, out, has in mind that which happens in the majority of cases and cannot foresee the almost infinite variety of circum: stances that may at times make it impossib, le to observe the 1citer of the law. (Summa, II-II,q. 120, a. 1.) An illus'tration from obedience wil! make the-matter clear. No one could be considered obedient who by. observing the letter of the law thereby, defeats the very put.- pose and intention of the superior. St. Thomas gives a few s!mp!e and striking examples of the application of equity to the natural law. If a madman Should demand the return of a:sword he bad deposited with us, we would be bound to 43 Louis J. PUHL Reoietu for R~ligious refuse to return it. in order to protect, .the lives of others. Sho~Id~someonedemand the return of a sum of mon.ey he had ~intrusted to us, the common good would oblige us to refuse if he intended to use it to fight against his country.~ Moralists and canonists are familiar with this matter. underanother name. They commonly retain the.Gfei~k word of Aristotle, epicheia. However, they are so busy with the exceedingly complicated and ever-recurring cases. of commutative justice and taw that they do ngt.look upon. it from.the point ~of view of the virtue, as St. Thomas does~ but rather from the angle of legitimate interpretation Or exception to the law. ¯. This question has a far greater bearing on the daily lives of religious .than may at first be appa_refit. Superiors often have the duty to judge of the application of certain. laws of the. Church to tl'ieir, subjects. They should, kn~w the recognized "excusing causes" from these obligations so i:hat neither they nor'their subjects will have to bear bur-dens theywere never intended to.carry. Also they should know the legitimate exceptions to their constitutions and;. according to circumstances, should "temper these and the-- prescriptions of rule and the Orders .of:higher. superiors." - If they have no concept of duty other than the literal observance of the law, actual injustice may be done in indi-vidual circumstances and the whole purpose of the law may be defeated. They must understand that conditions ~an arise in which it is eviderit to any prudent person ~hat the lawgiver never intended the lav~ to bind. In such. gases, both the cbmmon good and justice to the individual demand that they consider the spirit Of the law and the intention of the lawgiver. Canon Sheehan wrote a beatitiful novel, "The Blindness Of Dr. Gray. Throughout the story, "It is the law," w~s the final decision of the deluded doctor, on all points. 44 danuar~l, 194~ TH, E VIRTUE OF EQUITY C_harity ~nd justice had to yield to this inexorable maxim. The blindness that affected Dr. Gray is not sd uncommon. A misguided zeal for the rule and the constitutions may _ lea~d to flagrant ifijustice against individuals. The comm6n : gobd, too, which is the ultimate, purpose of the law, may then be wholly disregarded. Even individuals may be called upon to exercise the virtue of equity. We cannot always consult, and circum-stances arise that demand immediate action. To follow the letter of the law without regard to circumstances'might do grave damage--might in fact, ac.tually reverse the intention of superiors. In such cases we should observe th~ spirit of the law and make exception to. the letter. St. Thomas quotes an old legal maxim which~states: o. "There is no doubt that he sins against the law .who embraces the letter of the law, and acts. against the willcof .the prince." (Summa, II-II, q. 120, a. 1, ad. 1.) A still greater violation of law arises at times when there is question of what are rather loosely ~alled"customs.': "It is our custom" is the maxim for se~ttling all cases, even to the extent of secretly setting aside the law of the Church and the higher laws of. natural justice and charit.y. The Code itself make~ it clear that, except for cases allowed by. the Church, nb custom can be established against the gen; eral law. The Code speaks of customs in the ;trict sense; what it saysholds with even greater force regarding those things which are customs only in the wide sense.° And the Code does not have to prescribe that.customs cannot be enforced contrary to the divi'ne laws of justice and charity. This expression, "It is our custom," is occasionally used by . both supe.riors and subjects in ways that show a misguided, " if well-meant, Zeal. Superiors sometimes use it to hinder the accomplishment of a greater good; and inferiors use it to criticize certain exceptions made by Christlike superiors. 45 LOUIS J.,,PUHL ~ Review [or Religious I~ is evident that what, is apparently the highest justice may be the gravest injustice: Summum [us, summa iniuria. Our Lord's severe.condemnation of formalism and Phari,~ saism should be earnestly pondered by all who ire' too quick to quote: "It is the law," or, "Iris our custom." In this connection the whole twenty-third chapter of the Gos-. pel accord.ing to St. Matthev~ may be meditated upon with great, profit. Fortunately, we may tak~ it for granted that there are no willfully hypocritical persons such as Our :Lord was dealing with there, but misju.dgments under the' appearanc.e o.f~good may do very great harin to others. In literal truth, those who seriously violate equity "bind. together heavy and oi~pressive burdefls and place them upon. ¯ theshoulders of others, but not with one finger of their own do they choose to move them" (Matthew 23:4.) They neglect "the .weightier ,things of the Law-~. justice and mercy and faith" (Matthew '23:23). They clean ,the out- ~ ,~ide of the cup by apparent legality and zeal for Order and yet serve injustice within the cup. "This is. really straining 9ut the.gnat but swallowing the camel. (cf. Matthew 23:24). It is no wonder that St. Thomas had the highest praise f6r equity. Without it there can be no true justice. It is a virtue c!osely akin to charity, the life and soul of all the vir-tues. It is full of Christian wisdom and prudence, full Of the spirit of Him who was meek and humble of heart, who did not break the bruised reed or quench the smokiflg flax. It looks beyond the dead letter"of the law and the lifeless :formalism of legality. It respects the dignity of man and the~purpose of the law, the good of man, which'ultimately finds its origin in the Infinite Good itself. Often both superi61s and inferiors should recall that riot all are of equal calibre, physically, intellectua.lly, ,spiritually; that they must' apply and interpret laws.and. ,lanuaryo 1946 " THE VIRTUE OF EQUITY ctistoms in the light of ;circumstances in order to practice justice; in fine, that the Virtue of equity, has an important place in our lives. Not all have the bodily strength to endure the same amount of labor or to do th.e same kind of work. Those in authority would be unjust to demand it, and our com-panions are bound not to expect it. Not all can be treated in exactly the same way under the plea of conformity to law and custom. The delicate health of one.demands more attention than others. The material needs of one in clothing and food are not .the sameas those of another.~ We must love poverty and conformity to common life, but neither of these suffers when individual .needs require more for o'neperson than for another. To follow custom or rule blindly when supplying material wants in clothing and conveniences can. result in this anomaly: .that some have far more than they need (and thereby poverty is not observed), while'others are deprived of what is necessary or convenient (and thus the obligation l~he superior assumes when the subject vows poverty into his hands is being neglected). God has not made us all alike. Superior and subjects alike must accept the will of providence and make allovc'ance for all as God has made them; or they ~in against equity. Intellectually not all are fitted for every position. God has not;given equal talent to all. To ask one to undertake a task beyond his ability under the pretext of treating all alike, is to.oppress the weak and do damage to the common~ good. Not all can have the same opportunities for intel-lectual impro~cement.~ Some are not fitted by nature and it would be vain to try to force them or for them to exigec.t it. Circumstances prevent other~ from obtaining the privi-lege. Equity demands that both those who rule and those who are ruled face ~cts, not with a rigid law and 'custom but with intelligence and the kindness of Christ. It would 47 I~0UIS J. PUHL - Review for Religious be futile to appeal to a custorri of seniority a.s giving the. right to be head of,a department, if thereby either the com-mon good or the individual be made to suffer: Equity 'is a~ virtue far above our rank in the community or the laws of sdniori~:y. - ¯ "' Spiritually not all have the:;same gifts .and advance-ment; hence, here again, subjects.and Superiors must make allowance for conditigns in applying law and customs. It would be foolish to ex~ pect the solidity of virtue in a novice that one might readily expect in a mature religious. Neither can we expect ~ev~ry novice to manifest the s~lme spiritual stature nor under the plea of uniform training indiscrimi; nately apply tests in the s~ime manner and with the same severity to all. God has not given the same grac.es t6 all, ,nor have all cooperated equally well in the past? All have not the same character and.the same difficultie's to overcome. There are times, too, when souls may find a tiial very diffi-cult, which-under normal circumstances they could bear very well; and equity talls for a wiseunderstanding of such critical' situationS. We know what happens in education when 'children are given matter beyond their years and are expected to ~pass tests not suited.to their age. The same can happen iri. the spiritual life. There are works, too, which are fraught with spiritual dangers for one but not for, another. It would be unjust to expose one tO danger under the plea of treating all alike. ~Subjects.and officials are bound to recognize these circumstances which demand interpret~ition.of law and custom if'equity is tO l~e observed. ~ Epicheia, the time-honored term for ~quity, that h;is come down to :us from the wisdom of Greece, expresses well the spirit of this virtue; and its full meaning has been taken over in Christian .practice. It. signifies something that is over and above What is strictly in accordance with law, ~6methifig su~eradded:, to mere legal justice. It signifies J~nuary, 1946 ,THE VIRTUE OF: EQUITY clemency, mer~y, reasonableness. A1Lthese meanings show how necessary this virtue is for one claiming to walk in the spirit of Christ. If we have put on Christ, we must l~ave the kindness and mercy of Christ. We must "put off the works of darkness,-, and put on the armor of light'.~ (Romans 13:12). In truth when our justice is guided by equity, we have put on the armor of light, illumined, by faith and vivified by charity. Books Received (From October 20 to December THE NEWMAN BOOK SHOP, Westminster, Maryland. Sermon Outlines for the Sundays and Holy Days of the Year. By William R. O'Connor. $2.25. Holiness for All. By .His ExcellenCy Norbert Roblchaud. 75 cents (Paper). THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, Milwaukee. World Christianitg. By John J. Considine, M.M. ~ $1.00. The Divine Pur- ~uit. By RaChel Maria. $1.75. The Priest of the Fathers. By Edward L. Heston, C.S.C. $2.50. Going His Way: Little Talks to Little Folks. By Rev. Gerald T. Brennan. $1.75. The Man Who Built the Secret Door. Sister Mary Charitas, S.S.N.D. $1.50. B. HERDER BOOK COMPANY, St. Louis. Pascal and His Sister dacquellne. By M. V. Woodgate. $~.00. The State in Catholic Thought. By HeinriCh A. Rommen. $6.00. SHEED ~ WARD, New York. The Flowering'Tree. -By Caryll Houselander. $2.00. dobn Henry Newman. By John Moody. $3.75¯ The Catholic Centre¯ By Edward Ingrain Wat-kin. $3.00. The Splendor of the Rosary.~ By Maisie Ward¯ $2.50. FREDERICK PUSTET COMPANY, New York and Cincinnati. A Tryst with the Holy Trinity. By the Very Rev. Frederick T. Hoeger, C.S,Sp. .$2.50. CREATIVE AGE'pRESS, New York. Chungking Listening Post. By Mark Tennien. $2.50. LA LIBRAIRIE EUCHARISTIQUE, Montreal. La Piete Eucharistique. By J. F. Berube. (No price given.) CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS, Washington. The Doctrine of S'r. Augustine on Sanctity. By Edward J. Carney, O~S.F.S. (No price given). - THE MARYKNOLL BOOKSHELF, l~Iaryknoll, New York. How the People of Africa Live. By Sister Miriam Claire. $1.00. LO~IC~IAN8, GREEN ~ COMPANY, New York and Toronto. Sptrttual Problems of Our Times. By Luigi Sturzo. $2.00. ¯ 49 May Religious Buy and Sell? Adam C[ Ellis, S.d. .~S A BO,Y,. Christ Our Lord learned the carpenter's~ trade from St. ,loseph; arid after the latter's d~ath, He supported Himself and Our Blessed Lady by His' l~ibo'rs at the carpenter's bench.We can infer this from the testimony of His fellow townsmen. On one of His rare visits to Nazareth, Christ went to tl~e synagogue on the Sabbath and began to'teach. '!And many.hearing Him .were in admiration of his doctrine saying: 'How came this man by all these things? and what wisdom is thisthat is given to him, and such mighty works are wrought by his hands? Is r~ot this the carpenter, the son ot: Mary?" (Mark 6:2, 3). The great Apostle of the Gentiles, St. Paul, imi-tated his Master and supported himself by manual labo_.r. He tells us: "We are homeless and we toil, workirig v)ith our own hands" (I Corinthians, 4: 12)~. And St. Luke informs us that "These two [Aquila and Priscilla] Paul visited and because he was of the same trade he abode with -them, and thus they worked; for by trade they were tent-makers" "(Acts 18:3). Inlthe early centuries'of the Chui:ch clerics and religious supported themselves by manual labor, applying themselves to trades of various kinds. The Church, therefore, has always held manual labor in high honor and has never considered it ber;eath the dign!ty of the~clericai or the religious s.tate, but rather recommended it as a worthy means of support for both clerics and tell: gious_. . From the very beginning, however, some of the clergy -found an easier way of supporting t.hemselves--by engag-ing in gainful trading. In itself, there is nothing wrong with gainful trading provided the price asked for the c0m- 50 MAY RELIGIOUS BUY AND SELL? modity traded or sold is not exorbitant. But the' exercise of gainful trading was beset with'm~iny dangerous practices and easily led to distractions from and neglect of the duties connected with the clerical and religious state. Hence are not surprised to find St. Paul warning Timothy: "No man being a soldier to God entangleth himself in secular business" (II Timothy 2:4). This warning 6f St. Paul became the watchword of the Church in .its legislation for-bidding clerics and r~ligious to engage in gainful trading. -For experience has proved that such occupation not only distracts and leads to a neglect of duty, but exposes clerics and religious to the dangerous spirit of cupidity and avarice with their consequent vices--fraud, perjury, injustke, and so forth. Besides from the practice of gainful trading there arises the danger of involving clerics and religious in civil lawsuits. All these possible dangers may r.esult in a serious diminution of the esteem of the faithful for the clerical and ~religious state and for the sacred.ministry. Hence the, need of a ~lear.understanding of the Church's law with regard to gainful trading as it applies, to religious.' PART I: THE LAW AND ITS MEANING In this matter there are~no special prescriptions that apply exclusively to religious, but canon 592 tells us that "all religious are bound to the common obligations of clerics listed in canons 124-142." The last of these canons, No~ 142, forbids clerics to engage in gainful trading. It reads as follows: "Clerics are forbidden to engage in lucrative industrial (negofiafio) or commercial (merccl~ura) trading, either personally or through others, either for their own advantage or for fhaf of others." Just what is fbrbidden by this cano_n? When are reli-gious and clerics said to be engaged in lucrative trading con- ~ trary to the law of the Church? No act of buying or selling comes unde~ the prohibition ADAM C. ELLIS Repiea~ for Religious against gainful 'trading, unless it contains ~four etem~nts simultaneousl~t.: (1) the object must be bought, (2) with tl'ie intention of reselling it, (3)unchanged or.changed, by hired help~ (4) at a higher price than Was paid for it. Let uk examine each of these four elements in detail. I. "'The object must be bought" .- It is not the property of the religious or cleric to begin with, hence he must acquire it in exchange for money or for some other commodity. Religious do. not violate -the law therefore when they sell the pro'dutts of their fields-- grain, fruits, vegetables. .They may likewise sell., wool~ hides, eggs, but~er, and milk produced by their herds and flocks, as well as calves, lambs, chickens, pigs, and other animals provided these are the natural produci of things ¯ already possessed. LikewiSe articles° received as gifts may ~ be sold, even at a great profit, since they were not purchased by the religious. 2. "'With the intention of reselling it'" ~ The reiigious who bu.ys an object or rawmaterials must intend, u2hen he bd~js them, to resell them later on. If this intention is not present at the time of purchase, then-his transaction does not come under the-prohibition of our_ canon. The religious who purchases a supply ofcommodi-" ~ ties for the use of his community does not intend to sell them. It may happen, however, that in the course of time some of the supplies are in danger of spoiling; or he may find that he has. purchased more than the community-needs. In either ca~e he may sell these supplies, even at a higher price than that he paid for them, because when he bought them he did not do so with the intention of r_eselling them. For the same reaso~ one may sell objects which have lost their usefulness fdr the com.rnunity,"such as furniture, raw materials, books, and other t.hings; and one may take a 52 MAY RELIGIOUS BUY AND SE~'.L~ _profit on them. It is. also allowed to invest the com- "munity funds in real estate, to buy ahouse or a-farm, and then to rent or lease it, thus assuring the community a source of regular .income. To rent or lease property which the commu.nity owns is ~not the same as selling it. This_ is merely an act of prudent administration required by canon 1523., 3 a. "'Unchanged" When an object is bought with the intention of s~lling it unchanged at a higher price, we have the most specific case of that strictly commercial trading which is positively forbidden to clerics and religious. This is never alloWed,. even tl~ough the objects bought are of a religious nature, such as rosaries, crucifixes, and prayer books. Nor may re!ig!ou~s buy real estate with the.intention of~selling it uhimproved as soon as an opportunity arises to sell it at'a higher price. Under this heading one is also forbidden to rent or teas~ property from the owner for the purpose of. immediat.ely subletting it to another party ata h.igher rental, for such a transaction is the equivalent of buying something with the intention of selling it unchanged at a higher price. ~ 3 b. "'Or changed b~t hired help'" We saw above that the Church has always held manual labor in high esteem; and spiritual leaders have ever encour-aged religiousto" employ themselves with such labor ih order to provide for their temporal needs, to avoid idleness.¯ and to make it possible for them to assist the poor and the needy. Furthermore, the Church has always allowed reli-gious to purchase materials in order to change them by their own labor and then to sell such objects at. a profit. Thus the monks of-the,desert supported themselves by wea~ing baskets, making fish nets, and the like. In the Middle Ages 53 AD!kM C~ ELI~IS / o ~ Ret~ieto /or Religious monasteries of both men.ahd ~vomen.frequently supported themselves by manual labor; the monks by cultivating their fields and caring for their herds, and then selling the prod-ucts of field and herd; or .by transforming these products into cheese, butter, wine, bread, or even by distilling.liqueurs such as the famous Chartreuse and benedictine. The nuns were famous for their fancy needle work and for their artistic production of illuminated manuscripts and books, This buying of materials and changing them by the labor of one's own hands may take many forms: grapes" may be bought, and made into Wine; silks and fine materials may be purchased and turned into precious vestments, or ¯ trousseaux. As long ~s the change is brought about by the " labor of the religious themselves, there is no ¥iolatioh of the law forbidding gaiffful trading. But the case is different when materials Which hav~ been rpeulrigchioausse dth.aerme sweolvrekse.d W orh ecnh apnagiedd l abyb ofrii irse tdts feide ltpo, cnfoiat ~b,yg teh"e. materials wfiicfi l~aoe beer~ bo~t~Tbt with a view to their sale at a profit in thei'r changed state, we have an operation which is equivalent to strictly comme~:cial trading since the religious are buying both the materials and the labor involved in making the change. This has b~en the Constant opinion of canonists; an opinion which has been upheld by many decisio.ns of the Holy See. Here are some practical examples of what is forbidden under this head: religious ma.y not buy grapes and hire 6ut-side help to mak~ them into wine; nor may they buy wool, cloth, leather, or other mate.rials, and engag.e hired help to make them into clothing, shoes, and the like with the intention of selling such products at a profit. They may not buy cattle to be pastured on rented land by fiired hell~, to be sold later at~the market price; nor may they rent land to be cultivated by fiired labor and then sell the crops at a JanuarF; 1946 MAY RI~LIGIOUS BUY AND SELLi~ profit. It is not forbidden, however, to. rent land needed to graze a herd which is owned by the religious; nor to buy cattle which will consume the surplus pasturage of land owfied by the religious. In both cases the cattle may be sold later at a just.~price. 4. "'At a higher price than was paid for it" " Here we have the final element which is required to con-stitute gainful trading forbidden to clerics and religious. This elemeni constitutes the very essence of gainful trading --the sale for pro~t. This, however, must be understood rightly. One does not necessarily make a. profit even though he sells an article at a higher price than that which. he paid for it. The ,expefises involved in the transporta-tion, storage, and.conservation of goods, the wages paid to hired, help, and any other ,ex15enses incurred are to be con~ sidered as part of the cost. An increase in the sale price because of such expenses does not constitute a real gain and consequently is not forbidden. This. clause in the, law merely forbids the sale of an article at a higher price than its complete cost, and this is true whether the article is sold unchanged or is sold after having been c.hanged by hired hands. Obvidusly then religious may sell articles and ~oods which they have purchased, provided they do so at the cost price (estimated as above explained). If-no profit is made in the transaction, it does not come under the pro-hibition of the law. This seems to be so evident that nothing more need be said about it. Thus far we have considered the four elements which constitute gainful trading forbidden to clerics and religiqus by canon 142. All"four elements must be present simul-taneoust~ t in order that the act of buying and selling come unde~r the prohibition of the law. If ang single one of them ¯ is lacking, the transaction is not forbidden. Let us now consider the remaining clauses of the canon. 55 AD~I C: ELLIS Re'uieW~for, ReHgio,,s "'Either personall~j or thr6~gh others'" Up to the time of Pope°Benedict XIV there were certain canonists and moralists who held that acleric'or.religibus, though forbidden to engage personally_in gainful trading, might do so through, others by entrustifig his money to a" layman to invest in his.obusifiess or trade. Their argument ran that in such a case the religious or cleric would not be burdened with the cares and worries of such trading.~ In practice, however,, such religious and clerics did not cease to worry about the success or failure of the business or trade in which they had invested their money; and,not infrequently" they were tempted to help the good work.along by taking an active, though perhaps a minor, part in it. H~nce they were distracted and hampered in the exercise of their clerical and religious functions. After pointingout that this had really been prohibited by his predecessors, Benedict XIV solemnly forbade clerics and religious to engage .in gainful trading even t/~rough others. Since his time, therefore, it has been prghibited to clerics and religious to be even part owners of any strictly indust.rial or commercial enterprise, though the busihess or industry was conducted entirely by laymen. "For their own advantage or for that of other~'" ¯ This clause was put into the law by Urban VIII and, emphasized .by Clement IX in,the seventeenth century w.hen missionaries began to engage in gainful trading not for their own benefit but for the support of their missions. In individual cas~s of great rieed the Holy-See gave permis-sion for Such trading in favor of mission work; but at the same time the fact was always emphasized that the law for-bade such trading even for the sake of charity towards others. Hence it should be kept in mind that gainful trading may not be carried on.by clerics or religious, no matter how 56- January/, 1946 MAY RELIGIOUS BUY.AND SELL~? worthy the cause may be. to-which the. profits of such trading are devoted. ¯ In concluding this first part it may be well to call atten-tion to the fact that this legislation binds both religious communities as a~ whole and individual religious with~ respect to their personal property. PART II: SOME MODERN PROBLEMS, IN BUYING AND SELLING Hav!ng anaiyzed the notion of what precisely is for-bidden by the law of the Church with. regard to gainful t.rading on the part. of clerics and religious, let us proceed to apply the law to some probl~erns which a~e peculiar~ to our modern e~onomy. Bookstor,es Most bo~irding schoolg and many day schools conducted by religious have a book store in which textbooks, station-ery, and sundries of various kinds are sold to the students. Originally, and in many cases even today, the primary pur-pose of such a store was not to make money, but rather, to serve the needs and the convenience of the st'udents. Fre-quently enough the Catholic textbooks used in schools can-not be purchased elsewhere. Agai'n, for purposes of dis-cipline and training, it is desirable that uniform stationery be used for class exercises, tests, homework, book reports, and the like. If each pupil purchased his stationery atria different store, such uniformity would be impossible. Hence "the need, or at least the convenience, of.~he school bookstore. What is the actual practice .with regard to such. stores? ,Usually books, stationery, and sundries are bought at. wholesale and sold at retail. ~ When this is done, .we have a perfect example of gainful trading forbidden to religious. The.articles arebought with. the intention of selling them unchanged at~.a higher~ price. As we have said above, the 57 ADAM C, .ELL[S ': ~:-~.: "i~:° 7 ;; ~ RevieW=.[o~ Religid£~s primary purpose" of th~ st,ore.is, not t.o.make profit but to meet the needs and" the convenience of the student body. Still, . the , law is violated unless:the elemeiit.of.profit is :eliminated. "Thismay be.done ifi. 5ne.of two ways : :either sell atcost price,., or. give the profits back to the students. Let us consider each method. " " " " ¯ To sell at.cost price has its .drawbacks. In certain cases the firms publishing school, books :~nsist tha~ a minimum rf.tail pr.ice,be charged. Then too, it is difficult at times to determine. [he exa~t cost of .a Sing!e. article. One must take 'into consideration attendant e.xP.enses--!ight, .heat, kental .ofspace occupied by the bo0kstore;.transportati0n chargds, a juit recompense;f0~dlerki, whether:'theybe extefns whb. work for a salary or students who receive fr~e textbooks and stationery for their services.Then there is the item of ,itoss due to deffi:ioration of goods which' become shoi3worn and must ibe sold.at a bargain, as well 'as books" left over which cannot be returnedto the publishe~,or which, if 'traded in, bring'a lower price than that originally paid: All these itemsshould be taken into consideratioh when "the c'o~t price"is put upon books and stationery. , . ¯ ~A far simpler arid more satisfactory solution of the problem may be found by returning the profits to the stu-dents- giving them something to which they are not entitled by reason of their tuition fees. Thus the profits may be used to supply the library with extra books and magazines which normally v~ould not be purchased; to provide extra lectures and performances of both a literary and entertaining character; to give the Students extra recrea- ~.tional facilities:' for example, additional recreation Or lounge rooms, or needed athletic equipment.: In this way the profits are, returned to .th~ students, whose purchases have created them. Thereligious do not ieceive any of thd profits; hence the law of the Chuieh is observed. 58 danuarg, 1946 MAY RELIGIOUS BUY AND SELL? A thirdsolution would be to turn the bookstore.over to the students: cooperative, if there be one in the school., Lunchrooms or Cafeterias ,Here again the motive for conducting these enterprises in a school is not primarily to make money but to promote discipline and to meet theconvenience of the student body. These activities differ from running a book store inasmuch as materials are purchased and changed before being sold at a higher price. If this change is effected by the religious themselves, they may retain any resulting profits. Usually, however, ~such changes as cooking .food, preparation of lunches, making sandwiches, and so forth are effected by hired help, wl~ether by outsiders or by part-time student help, and then the operation comes within the prohibition ~of the Code. Here again the solution of the problem lies~ . either in selling meals and lunches at cost price, which'is difficult to estimate, or in returning the profits to the stu~ dents as suggested above in regard to bookstores. The same . is .to be s~id with regard to profits derived from the sale of. candy,., ice-cream, and other edibles which are sold ¯ unchanged in lunchrooms and cafeterias. Gift Shops in Hospitals and Sanitaria Within recent years gift~ shops have made t.heir appear-ance in hospitals and sanitaria. One purpose of such shops~ is to supply visitors with a convenient opportunity to ~pur-chase a forgotten gift for the patient they are about to visit. No doubt they are also patronized by nurses and patients. .They have all the appea'rances of sale for profit that any other store has; and the pro.fits may not be kept by the reli-gious who conduct the hospitals. The best solution of the prOblem perhaps would be to rent out the concession to a lhy person who would take both the risks and th~ profits in return for a reas.onable.rental charge. If no ~uch person o 59 ADAM C. ELLIS ~ , Reoiew for ReligioUs. "can be found, the profits should be turned back to the pur-chasers ~in ~ome Shape' or form. Since these are, casual visi-" 'tors for the most part, this may be difficult. A certain amount might be used to make the visitors' "waiting rooms .m.ore comfortable; the rest might be devoted to increased :and ~improxied recreational facilities forconvalescent pa-tients. Sale of Religious Articles " Under normal circumstances there is no reason for reli-gious to engage in the sale of rel~gio.us articles. On special. occasions, however, such as parish missions and school 9r alumni retreats, it may be desirable too have .such good.s available for purchase. Usually,, they are obtained from a general supply house at wholesale prices with the p~ivilege of returning what has not been disposed of. Each indi- ¯ vidual article is marked with the retail p, rice. Here again we have a clear case.of buying and selling forbidden by the Church to clerics and religious. The only proper, way to ~onduct such sales is to turn over the entire transaction a ~church or school society, and allow it to keep the ~rofits. Neither clerics nor religious may share in them. Sisters who ~upply the needs of a. First Communion class (veils, wreaths, prayer books, rosaries, and similar objects) should 'sell. them to the c~ildren at cost price. "In country parishes pious Catholics who wish to obtain religious articles frequently ask the priest or the Sisters to procure them. In this case there is no buying at wholesale and selling ~it ret,ail, since there.is question usually of a single article a rosary, a crucifix, a prayer-book. T-he Sisters may purchase such an article from a Catholic supply hbuse and charge the retail price. The small, discount give.n single article may be considered as ~ gift to the religious: as a matter" of fact, it will .scarcely compensate them for carriage charges and'stamps" expended. 60 J~_r~uarg, 1946 ]~tAY RELIGIOUS BUY AND SELL.7 ¯ i . Articles Made in Trade and Industrial SChools " The modern religigus apostolate includes trade schools f6r poor boys and industrialschools for poor girls. In these schools boys are taught a trade, girls are instructed in'needle~ wc;rk and domestic science. Their first efforts will hardly ~.find purchasers; bu~ they learn rapidly, and articles, and goodsmade by them are sold by the institutio~i. Here we seem. tohave a form of industrg--materials are bought and ¯ changed by outside help. IS' it forbidden to sell such goods at a profit? No, it is not. First of all, the principal pur-pose of such schools is to instruct the pupils, to teach them an art Ora trade; and this cannot be done without practical work. It is not the primary intention, therefore, to sell the materials purchased ~nd changed by hired help at a higher price.,. Secondly, the proceeds do not go directly anti,exclu-sively .to the religious in charge,of the school, but are used to provide board and lodging for the pupils and fre-quently to pay the salaries of experienced lay persons-~ who act as instructors. ~rh~tever surplus may be left over should, be shared With the pupils who are entitled to some recompense for their labors. A final consideration which keeps the transaction from coming under the ban of.ga.inful trading is the fact that, at Ieast in a boarding institution, these pup!Is are not, strictly speakihg, hired help; they,may be considered as part of the religious family. . Printing and Publishing Books A religious or cleric is always allowed to print (or have p~inted) and sell at a profit whatever he has, written himself (Holy Office, June.10, 1846). Here he is not buying anything,, but he himself supplies the object which is changed and sold--his own literary composition. B.ut,. a religious is not allow.ed tO buy.books written and published by others and Sell them at a profit. This latter practice is clearly forbidden by the law. 61 ADAM C[ ELLIS '. ' '.: - ,~" ? ' ~. Ret~ieto for Religio~s M~g religious own and operate a prin, ting.pres~?. ( 1 ) If the religious run the press themselves and do all. the work, they may printand still not only books and writings of the m~mbers of their institute, but .also books written bY others who are not members. (2) If the religious merely. own-and direct the press and the' work is done by hired help, they" mayprint all :works w~itten.l~y members of their institute but nothing else unless they.have a special indult from the H61y See: nor may 'they engage in ordinary com-mercial printing. -In this second case,, they. may print reli-gious reviews, magazines, .journals,other. forms of xeligious literature destined for the spread, of the faith, and school ¯ books which cannot be obtained elsewhere--provided that ¯ no profit is made. Of coursea reasonable amount of income may be taken gradually to pay for .installation, "amortiza-tion of debt, .superintendence, and so forth. Rental.6f Space ~or Vending Machines Many institutiong, hospitals' especially, find it very conv

Issue 20.6 of the Review for Religious, 1961. ; Carl ]. P]ei]er, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 398 plan of all liturgical worship: 1) the service is begun with a reading; 2) after the reading follows singing; 3) and the service is ended with a prayer. Among the early Christians all prayer services and devotions were carried out accord-ing to this basic plan, and since the third 6r fourth cen-tury this has been the ruling principle of all liturgical services.-" Such a plan is not merely arbitrary, nor is an accidental or aesthetic arrangement of elements. Ac-cording to Father Jungmann: ¯. it is in character with the essential nature of the Christian plan of redemption. Our salvation, typified by the divine word which we receive in the reading, comes from God. It descends from heaven to earth and stirs within the hearts of the faithful the echo of song. Thereupon the prayers and petitions of the Christian community are gathered up and brought back to God on high by the priest. There is something dramatic about this arrangement; through it we actually come to realize what is meant in saying that the liturgy is the public worship of the Church? This structure--reading, song, prayer--is filled out ac-cording to basic themes central to Christian revelation. In the Christian message of salvation and the prayer of the Church, certain themes appear as focal, around which all other truths are centered and from which they receive their meaning.' One of these themes centers on the love and kindness God shows His people. Freely, out of love, He created man; freely and out of even greater love He has worked out man's salvation. Such generous and unmerited good-ness demands a response of love and thanksgiving. Grati-tude is thus ~een as a fundamental attitude of man, and more so of a Catholic: "O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good" (Ps 135:1). It is this scriptural theme of God's love calling forth our grateful response that runs through the proposed Thanksgiving Day "bible vigil." Perhaps a fuller explanation will be helpful. Reading God's plan of salvation is effected and manifested to us by His Word, and according to Scripture this redemptive plan is realized gradually. Somehow man's redemption was to be achieved through Israel, the Lord's chosen peo- -"J. A. Jungmann, s.J., Liturgical Worship (New York: Pustet, 1941), p. 67. Father Jungmann devotes most of this book to a dis-qussion of the basic liturgical groundplan. See also Louis Bouyer, Liturgical Piety (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame' Press, 1955). ~ Jungmann, op. cit., p. 80. * For a fuller treatment of the structure and themes of Christian revelation see Johannes Hofinger, S.J., The Art o] Teaching Chris-tian Doctrine (Notre Dalne: University of Notre Dame Press, 1957) and Mary Perkins Ryan, Key to the Psalms (Chicago: Fides, 1957). Most useful for constructing "bible vigils" is Reading the Word ol God by Lawrence Dannemiller, S.S. (Baltimore: Helicon, 1960). pie. After centuries of intimate relations with Yahweh, this nation brought forth a:Savior; from this race the Word Himself took flesh. And when in the fulness of time God became man, He suffered, died and rose from the dead that men might die with Him to sin and .rise with Him to forgiveness and grace. His redemptive activity continues on through the centuries in His new people, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church. Finally, He is to come again bringing the divine plan to its fulfillment in the new and eternal Jerusalem. The .plan itself is one; likewise the revelation of the plan is unified in the unique Word of God. The Old Testament, then, is not just a collection of interesting and sometimes edifying stories, but the gradual manifestation of God's plan for our sal-vation. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is also our Father in heaven. He is the one Lord of History, as the Church teaches us in the. liturgy of the Easter Vigil: "O God, we behold your ancient wonders shining even to our own time. For that which the power of your right hand did for one people in freeing them from Egyptian bondage you accomplish now for the salvation of all men by the waters of rebirth." Throughout the Old Testa-ment run basic themes "about God and man's relationship to Him. Although the stories vary,~ the basic relationships do not. Central to the religion o-f the Israelites was the belief that their God, Yahweh, moved by love alone, not-by any merit on their part, had called them, chosen .them out from among the nations, to be .His people_. "You shall be My people, and I will be your~ God" (Ez 36:26). The initiative was wholly on His~part. This call, given initially to Abraham, found its highest expression through Moses in the Exodus, the focal point of Jewish religious history. Their God saved them from slavery, destroyed their pur-suers, and leading them through the desert, formed and purified them into a nation, His chosen people, and fi-nally brought them to the promised.land. The initiative was all His. He perpetuated His call in a covenant with His people, a promise.eternally binding, freely offered out of love. This covenant was prepared for and initiated in the first act of creative love. It became more definitive in the Garden, then with Noah, later with Abraham, and finally with Moses. From then on, it was renewed ritually each yegr by the Hebrew people. Such a covenant renewal ceremony is found, in the book of Nehemiah, 9: 1-55. This then will be the first selection to be read. It is a prayerful remembrance of God's initia-tive in. forming and saving His people, a remembrance of His covenant, His love. After a short period for silent, prayerful reflection on the first reading, a selection from the New Testament is ÷ ÷ ÷ Thanksgiving Da~ Service VOLUME 20, 1961 399 Carl ]. P~ei]er, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS read. It indicates the continuation of God!s plan and its culmination in Christ. In Nehemiah the ritual renewal of the covenant-between Yahweh and His people is re-corded in which' the fundamental beliefs of Israel's reli-gion were proclaimed to the assembled nation. These same ideas are fundamental to our belief, for, as we saw, God's salvific plan continues into our era and culminates in Christ. What went before Christ was not accidental to God's plan, and hence, not accidental to our own reli-gious education and worship. Rather it was a preliminary stage, preparatory to the coming of the great High Priest and His priestly people. In Him all history finds its mean-ing. This is the substance of what is expressed in the second selection, taken from Paul's letter to the Ephe-sians. For what God did for His chosen people through Abra-ham, Moses, and the prophets, He continues now in a more perfect manner for us, the new Israel, through Christ. The Jews wer6 set apart by Yahweh, a chosen nation; we are adopted as His sons, made members of His eternal Son, temples of His Spirit. The Jews He led out of Egyptian slavery; He frees us from the power of Satan. The manna of old is replaced by "bread from heaven," and the vague prophecies of the Old Law have given away to the full revelation of the Word. And in-stead of a promised land "flowing with milk and honey," we look forward to-the eternal banquet, where "eye has not seen, nor ear heard . " Such is the great love of our Father in heaven for us His new people. "He would have all future ages see, in that clemency which he shewed us in Christ Jesus, the surpassing richness of his grace" (Eph 2:8). Song Filled with the realization of the goodness of our Father, of His love for us sinful creatures, we sing out in gratitude, making use of Hig own revealed words, Psalm 135. Joined together in a worshipping community we re-spond to His word, which has just taken vital form through 'its proclamation in our midst. We sing now, the new Israel, an ancient Jewish hymn of thanks. And as it recalls Yahweh'S great deeds for His ~oeople, we make the words our own, singing our thanks for His even more wonderful deeds toward us. Our song of gratitude is rooted in faith, faith in the Word we have just heard. This faith is our response to God's call and covenant; it, is our total, personal commitment to our Father, a total giving of self to God in return for His gifts. As with Abraham and the Israelites, this faith is the fundamental virtue of our Christian life. God calls, elects, chooses. To him whom He chooses, He freely offers His graces, eve~ ! Himself. Our response is faith, belief in what He says, but also belief in Him, personal dedication to Him, flow-ing over into gratitude, confidence and joy? Prayer Our gratitude now takes the form of prayer. We exer-cise our priestly role, proper to us who share the priest-hood of Christ by our baptism and confirmation. And we enumerate with gratitude the gifts of the new covenant. God's plan of salvation, begun in the Jewish nation, cli-maxing in the Incarnation and Redemption of Jesus Christ, continues on to us through the Mystical Christ, the Church. It is only by pertaining to this Body of Christ that the saving action of God reaches us through Christ our Lord. Through membership in the new people of God we are in personal contact with our Redeemer. His word is proclaimed in our midst, His grace is shared with us in our personal encounters with Him in His sacra-ments. Through our union with Him we are enabled to offer our Father a suitable thank-offering, the Mass. And through our ever increasing share in His life we have al-ready a ~beginning of that glory which awaits us with Him in heaven. And all of this, prefigured in Yahweh's rela-tionships with His chosen people, is a completely free gift of our Father. United, then, in one worshipping commu-nity, we offer our thanks to our Father in our united prayer. Finally, after a moment of silent prayer following our vocal prayer, the priest gathers up our grateful expres-sions and offers them to God for us. Christ's mediatorship is continued through His ordained priests. They stand between us and God, not as barriers, but as the normal means by which God comes to us and we reach up to God. Through the priest His Word is proclaimed and finds living reality; through the priest Christ allows us to come directly in contact with Him in the sacraments--a per-sonal encounter between us and our Savior. And through the priest Christ offers our prayers to the Father. Hence the service ends with the priest's prayer as our representa-tive. The particular prayer chosen dates from the year 215 A.D. and was composed by Hippolytus of Rome as a sample that migh~ be used in the first Mass of a newly consecrated bishop. It is one of the earliest extant formu-laries for the Prayer of Thanksgiving, or Eucharistic Prayer, now more commonly called the Canon of the Mass. The text has been somewhat adapted for use in this "bible vigil"; the words of consecration, for example have been omitted, as have other references to sacrifice. What remains is a beautiful prayer of thanksgiving for God's ~ For,a further treatment of faith as a personal response to God, see Jean Mouroux, I Believe (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1959). + 4- 4- Thanksgiving Day Se~vi~e VOLUME 20, 1961 401 Cad 1. Pleiler, SJ. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 402 redemptive work through the llfe, death, and resurrection of His Son, Christ Jesus, our Lord. Such, then, is the suggested biblical-liturgical service. Its structure leads to an appreciation of the meaning and purpose of public worship, while its content manifests an essential theme of Christian life an.d revelation. In 'this case, the theme is suited to Thanksgiving Day, Similar "bible vigils" can be worked out for almost any occasion and allow for much variety within the basic group plan of reading, song, prayer. For example, a homily may be preached after the reading(s). And although the Psalms~. are admirably suited to such services, any hymn that fits the theme may be substituted. The priestly prayers of the Mass (Collect, Secret, Preface, Postcommunion) are a rich source of acceptable prayers, as is the Raccolta. And the service may be concluded with Benediction or some other suitable rite. For example, a service constructed on the theme of Baptism might fittingly be concluded with blessing and sprinkling with holy water. So much for the explanation of the ser.vice. The text follows in full, with hymns added at the beginning: and end to round out the basic structure. If used in full, it should take about twenty minutes; verses of the Psalms may be omitted to reduce the time. ENTRANCE HYMN: [stand] Psalm 22" (All sing the antiphon after the cantor and after each verse): HIS GOODNESS SHALL FOLLOW ME ALWAYS, TO THE END OF MY DAYS. My shepherd is the Lord; there is nothing I shall want. FreSh and green are the pastures where he gives me repose. Near restful waters he leads me, to revive my drooping spirit. [Antiphon] He guides me along the right path; he is true to his name. If I should walk in the valley of darkness no evil would I fear. You are there with your Crook and your staff; with these you give me Comfort. [Antiphon] You have prepared a banquet for me in the sight of my foes. My head you have anointed" with oil; my cup is overflowing. [AntiPhon] OThe text of the three psalms used in the service is taken from Joseph Gelincau, S.J., Twenty-Four Psalms and a Canticle (Toledo: Gregorian Institute of America, 1955) with permission of the pub-lishers~ Surely goodness and kindness shall follow me all the, days of my life. In the Lord's own house shall' I dwell for ever and ever. [An[iphon] To the Father and Son give glory, give glory to the Spirit. To God who is, who was, ,:and who will be forever and ever. [Antiphon] ' ¯ GOD'S GIFTS IN PREPARATION: [sit] Nehemiah 9: 1-15, 32.' ~ '~ ¯ Then, ~n the twenty-fourth day of this same month~ the men of Israel met together, fasting, and with sack-cloth about them, and sprinkled with dust, ~nd the whole breed of Israel severed itself from all contact with alien, folk. :. This was the prayer offered by the Levi.tes . Up, friends, .and bless the Lord, your God, as blessed he musE be from the beginning to the end of timel.,Blessed be thy. glorious name, O Lords that is beyond all blessing, and all praise! Heaven is of thy fashioning, and the heaven o~ heavens, and all the hosts t.hat dw~ell there, earth and sea~, and all that earth and sea hold; to all these thou givest the life they have; none so high in heayen but must pay thee worship. It was thou,-Lord God, that didst make' choice of Abram, and beckon ~him away from Chaldea, from the City of Fire. And now~ thou. wouldst call~ him Abraham; a loyal servant thou. did~st find him, and didst make a covenant with him, promising that his race should inherit the lands of .Chanaanite and Hethite, Amorrhite and Pherezite, Jebusite, and Gergesite. That promise, in thy faithfulness, thou didst make good, Thou hadst an eye for the affliction our fathers suffered in Egypt, an ear for their cry of distress at the Red Sea; the pride~of Pharao and Pharao's court and all his people, had not passed unregarded; there were porte.nts, an£ cnarvels, and thy name won renown, as it has w~on renown this day: Thou didst part ~the,w~ters.at their coming, so that' they crossed the sea dry-shod, didst hurl their pursuers into the depths of it, so that they sank like a stone be-neath the rushing waves. Thou thyself didst lead thy people on their journey, hidden by day in a pillar of cloud, by night in a pillar of fire, to light the path they must tread. There, on mount Sinai, thou didst keep tryst with them; thy voice came from heaven to teach them thy just decrees, thy abiding law with all its observance.s, all its wholesome bidding. There thou didst reveal to them ~ From the Old Testament, volume i, in the translation of Mo~: ~ignor Ronald Knox, Copyright 1948, Sheed and Ward, Inc, New York. , ,, + Thanksgiving Day Service VOLUME'20, 1961 ÷ ÷ ÷" Carl 1. Ptei~er, $.], REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 404 how thy sabbath should be kept holy; law and observance and award thou, through Moses, didst hand down to them. When they were hungry, thou didst give them bread from heaven; when they were thirsty, thou didst bring water out of the rock; and for the goal of their journey didst beckon them on to take possession of this same land, which thou hadst sworn .to give them . To thee, then, we turn, who art our God, to thee, the great, the strong, the terrible God, who didst not forget thy covenant, or the mercy thou hast promised. A MOMENT OF SILENT PRAYER [kneel] GOD'S GIFTS IN FULFILLMENT: [sit] Ephesians 1:3-14; 2:4-10.8 Blessed be that God, that Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us, in Christ, with every spiritual blessing, higher than heaven itself. He has chosen us out, in Christ, before the foundation of the wbrld, to be saints, to be blameless in his sight, for love of him; mark-ing us out beforehand (so his will decreed) to be his adopted children through Jes~us Christ. Thus he would manifest the splendor of that ggace by which he has taken us into his favor in the person of his beloved Son. It is in him and through his blood' that we enjoy redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. So rich is God's grace, that has overflowed upon' us in a full stream of wisdom and~ discernment, to make known to us the hidden purpose of his will. It was his loving design, centered in Christ, to give history its fulfillment by resuming everything in him, all that is in heaven, all that is on earth, summed up in him. In him it was our 10t to be called, singleff out before-hand to suit his purpose, (for it is he who is at work every-where, carrying out the designs of his will); we were to manifest his glory, we who were the first to set our hope in Christ; in. him you too were called, when you listened to the preaching of the truth, that gospel which is your salvation. In him you too learned to believe, and had the seal set on your faith by the promised gift of the Holy Spirit; a pledge of the inheritance which is ours, tO re-deem it for us and to bring us into possession of it, and so manifest God's glory . How rich Godis in mercy, with what an excess of love he lok, ed usI Our sins had made dead men of us, and he, in'giving life to Christ, gave life to us too; it is his grace that has saved you; raised us up too, enthroned us too above the heavens, in Christ Jesus. He would have all future ages see, in that clemency which he shewed us in~ Chri'st Jesus, the surpassing richhess of his grace. Yes, it was grace that saved you, with faith for its instrumen.t; it s From the New Testament in the translation of Monsignor Ron-aid Knox, Copyright 1944, Sheed and Ward, Inc., New York. '/ did not come from yourselves, it wa~ God's gift, not from any action of yours, or there would be room for pride. No, we are his design; God has created us'-in Christ Jesus, pledged to 'such good actions as he has prepared befor~- hand, to be the employment of ~3ur lives. OUR GRATEFUL RESPONSE IN SONG: [stand] Psahn 135 (All sing the following refrain after each phrase of the cantor): FOR HIS' GREAT LOVE IS WITHOUT END O give thanks to the, Lord for he is go~d, FOR HIS GREAT LOVE IS WITHOUT END. Give thanks to the God of gods . Give thanks to the Lord ,of lords . Who alone has wrought marveilous works . whose wisdom it was made the skies,. who, spread the earth on :the seas, . It was he that made ~the great lights,. the sun to rule in the day . the moon and the stars in the night,. The first-born of the Egyptians he smote . brought Israel out from their midst . arm outstretched, with power in his hand . He divided the Red Sea in two . made Israel pass through the midst,. flung Pharaoh and his ~orce in the sea,. Through the desert his people he led . Nations in their greatness he struck . Kings in their splendour he slew . He let Israel inherit their land . On his servants their land he bestowed,. He remembered us in our distress . And he snatched us away from our foes,. He gives food to all living things . To the God of heaven give thanks . OUR GRATEFUL RESPONSE IN PRAYER: [kneel] ~lifford Howell, s.J.~ Priest: O Lord God, we thank you. People: ~O LORD GOD, WE THANK YOU. Pr: We thank you *°that our Lord Jesus Christ still lives on in His Church. ~ The text of the people's prayer is qubt¢d with pei'mission of the publisher from the leaflet by Clifford H6well, S.J., You are Christ's Body (St. Louis: Pio Decimo Press, 1949), p. 3. ÷ Thanksgiving DWy Service VOLUME 20, 1961 4o~. 4, 4, + Carl 1. P]eif~r," $.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 406 Pe:,.WE THANK YOU * .,THAT THROUGH HIS CHURCH *' HE CONTINUES HIS ACTIV-ITIES AMONG MEN. Pr: We thank You * that when the C[aurch teaches * it is Christ who teaches. Pe: WE THANK YOU * THAT WHEN THE CHURCH SACRIFICES * IT IS CHRIST WHO SACRIFICES. Pri We thank You Christ ~vho doe~ all these things * through the Church, His Mystical Body. Pe: WE THANK YOU * THAT~WE HAVE BEEN MADE MEMBERS * OF THIS MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST. Pr: We thank You * that as members of this Body * we can worship You through Christ our Head * in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Pe: WE THANK YOU * THAT WE MAY OBTAIN ALL GRACES * FROM YOUR HOLY SACRA-MENTS. Pr: We thank You * that through Your Church we may attain to Eternal Life. Pe: O LORD GOD, WE THA.NK YOU~ * TO YOU BE PRAISE IN YOUR CHURCH * AND IN JESUS CHRIST * FOR EVER AND EVER. * AMEN. A MOMENT OF SILEN~ T PRAYER. OUR PRAYERFUL RESPONSE OFFERED TO GOD THROUGH THE PRIEST: [stand] Hippolytus oI Rome?° Priest: The Lord be with you. P~eople: AND WITH YOU ALSO. Priest: Lift up your':h~arts. People: WE HAVE. LIFTEI~ THEM UP TO THE LORD. Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord. People: IT IS RIGHT AND JUST. Priest: We give thanks to You, O God, "through Your be-loved servant, Jesus Christ, whom You have sent dtoe eums eirn a tnhde smee lsassetn tgimere° so fto Y boeu or ucro usanvsieol.r Haned i sre- Your Word, inseparable from You; thrqugh Him You have made all things and in Him You are well pleased. You did send Him from heaven into, the womb of the Virgin; carried in her womb He was made flesh and was manifested as Your Son; being born of the Holy Ghost and,. of the Virgin. FulfilIing,your Will and acquiring for You a holyl people He stretched out His hands in suffering in~ lo The full text of this thanksgiving prayer can be found in J. A Jungmann, s.J., Public Worship (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1957j~] pp. 92-3.if' order that He might free from suffering those who believed in Him . He was handed over to volun-tary suffering to rob death of its power, to break the bonds of the devil, to tread hell underfoot, to give light to the just, to set up a boundary stone and an-nounce the resurrection . Remembering there-fore His death and resurrection., we thank You that You have considered us worthy to stand before You and to serve You. And we pray that You will send down the Holy Spirit on Your Church. Be-cause You gather all together in unity, we pray that You will grant the fulness of the Holy Spirit to all the saints., that their faith may be strengthened in truth, and that we may praise and glorify You through Your servant Jesus Christ, through whom honor and glory be unto You, O Father, with Your Son and the Holy Spirit in Your Holy Church both now and for ever and ever. People: AMEN. CONCLUDING HYMN: [stand] Psalm 99 (All sing the antiphon after the cantor and after each verse.): ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him, singing for joy. [Antiphon] Know that he, the Lord, is God. He made us, we belong to him, we are his people, the sheep Of his flock. [Antiphon] Go within his gates, giving thanks. Enter his courts with songs of praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name. [Antiphon] Indeed, how good is the Lord, eternal his merciful love; he is faithful from age to age. [Antiphon] Give glory to the Father AJmighty, to 'his Son, Jesus Christ, the Lord, to the Spirit who dwells in our heartsY [Antiphon] n For further information on "bible vigils" see "Organizing a Bible Vigil," by Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B., in Worship, February, 4. 1960, pp. 144-48 and the article by the present writer, "Popular 4. Devotions--a New Look!" to be published soon in Homiletic and Pastoral Review. Examples of such vigils can also be found in Wor-ship, January and March, 1959; March, 1960; January, 1961. Tiuml~giving Day Serv~e VOLUME 20, 1961~ 407 RICHARD M. MCKEON, S.J. ' Human Relations in Religion ÷ ÷ ÷ Richard M. McKeon, $.J., is the director of the Institute for In-dustrial Relations at Le Moyne College, Syracuse $, New York. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 408 The title of this article may seem strange to many. Cer-tainly a great deal has been written about the human factor as applied to the religious and the priestly life. But we wonder if there has ever been a systematic study of human relations in religion similar to the hundreds which are being made in the field of industry. Before me .is book, Human Relations in Management, numbering over 750 pages. Subject to correction, I doubt if there is a similar book concerning human relations in religious management. The following are some of the topics treated in the book: the human factor in industry, the philosophy management, conditions of effective leadership, motiva-tion and increased productivity, work group behavior, basic psychological factors in communication, the psy-chology of participation, dealing with resistance to change, empathy--management's greatest need. If great accent is being placed on human relations "as a systematic, develop-ing body of knowledge devoted to explaining the behavior of industrial man," should there not be a similar body knowledge based on the best findings of the behavioral sciences to explain the human relations factor.in religious and priests? The history of industrial relations shows how the human element was sorely neglected up to the start of the twenti-eth century. That was why in 1891 Leo XIII issued his famous encyclical letter On the Condition of the Working Class. Up to World War II there were some noted ad-vances in this field, as the Hawthorne Studies and the im-petus prompted by the passage of the National Labor Relations Act show. But from 1945 to the present the study and application of human relations in industry has been phenomenal. With these thoughts in mind I shall make comment on an article, "The Human Relations of a Foreman," pub-lished in the Monthly Letter of the Royal Bank of Canada for May, 1961. By applying some of the topics to the re-ligious and priestly life, the need for further exploration will be evident. "Why is the supply of men of supervisory capacity so thin?" Why have so many superiors in religion been lacking in the qualities which make for good administra-tion? Many answers will be given and I have listened to them for over forty years. Some will point out men who have been advanced with no worthwhile achievement behind them--merely because they were sources of no trouble. Is there also a chance that,administrative pro-motion in religion is connected with nepotism and cliques? It is true, of course, that the principles and rules of re-ligious life will sustain su~cient order in a community even under a poor administrator; the vow of obedience is the great foundation here. But in this article let us set aside the supernatural side and try to view human re-lations in the light of modern industry. Let us begin by remarking that just as a foreman in a factory needs "poise, wisdom, suppleness of mind, courage, and energy, besides the know-how of his technical special-ity," so also are these qualities to be hoped for in a su-perior. A superior is called upon to be an executive. Do the current methods of selecting a superior prove that he possesses executive talent for this or that particular position? Take, for instance, the priest who has charge of the ma-terial things in a seminary or a religious house where the teachers and students number one hundred or more, As far as shelter, food, and material services are concerned, such an institution is like a hotel. While custom, tradition, and discipline will keep things going, it is evident that such a priest would do a far better job if he had a course in hotel management. We all know the grand rush for our priests and religious to go on for higher studies in order that Catholic intellectual life be improved. This is to be commended. But is it not logical also to send those in charge of the ordinary living conditions of religious and priests to special studies to improve such conditions? Such training should result in better economical operation as well as in better living conditions. Have you ever tried to dry yourself with the moisture-proof towels found in certain communities? "Good human relations is people getting along well to-gether." It is not enough to rely on the religious or the priestly garb to command proper respect. Respect should b'e won by "intelligence, administrative competence, and the power to make men follow him~ because of personal attributes." All evidence of playing a policeman's role mnst be avoided. + + + Human Relations VO~-UME 20, 1961 409 4. o÷ R. M~ McKeon, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 410 Every religious and priest is a person; the superior must show a. sincere interest in each one; he must give him a sense of really belonging to the team--the institution under the superior's charge. The superior's chair must not be turned into a throne; around it there should be an atmosphere empty of fear but rich with sympathetic un-derstanding. "The best company to work for, and the company that gets the best work done, is the company with a strong company-group feeling." There are and will be divided religious communities; they are not pleasant places to live in.,How can such a situation be remedied? One answer is by superiors "who obtain the collaboration of people in their work-groups through loyalty and liking and coopera-tion." A superior will assign a subject a task; the subject will obey. But it is certain that the job will be better clone if the superior has excited enthusiasm, initiative, loyalty. "However.tall a man may stand in the hierarchy of management, he is not a successful executive unless he un-derstands the points of view and the problems of the rank and file of his workers." This statement is equally true of the religious superior. Unless his interest is sincere and sympathetic, subjects may do their work; but human na, ture being what it is, we wonder how good the work will be. ~A superior must prove himself superior; otherwise his authority is bound to suffer. It is necessary to strengthen that authority by personal performance and demonstrated ability, Good managers ask their workers for counsel and help. They know, that fine ideas are often buried in the mind waiting for the right tapping. The post-war growth of suggestion systems is proof that industry values the min'd of subordinates. It gives courteous hearing to such ideaS; it allows workers to take part in decisions. By such action workers feel that their jobs are important and that they share in responsibility. A few words abou~ discipline. In his own development, a manager should learn to obey. "But discipline is more than blind obedience. The word itself comes from ,the same root as the word 'disciple,' and a disciple is one who follows the teachings and the example of a respected leader." A good manager will have discipline because he is fair in the allotment of work and in the handling of grievances and because he inspires. He is not worried about "losing face" by appearing too human. In a crisis he will be forceful but friendly. The same things will be true of a good superior in reli-gion. Moreover, in his case there is the supreme examplel of Christ in His handling of His disciples to drive home many a lesson applicable to religious life. Christ con7 demned, sin; He had love and mercy for the sinner. "Probably foremost among the techniques of handling men is .the building of morale through praise and en-couragement. Commendation by a superior is of great consequence. It breeds loyalty and it inspires the worker to follow "through." Religious and priests are human and will remain so till their dying breath. Human nature likes encouragement especially when skies are dark. Religious and priests are also humble; when just praise from su-periors is lacking, they will console themselves by remem-bering the words of our Lord: ~'Even so you also, when you have done everything that was commanded you; say 'We are unprofitable,servants; we have done what it _was our du_ty to do.' " But praise justly won for doing one's duty weli means a. great deal in religious life. It does boost morale and it .strengthens self-confidence. It makes~a man willing to as-sume more difficult work. Moreover, when a superior gives credit to his community on the occasion of his in-stitution receiving public praise, he will build up initia-tive and a mutual sense of responsibility. I believe that the words of Peter F. Drucker, an. expert in management matters, should be applied to a religious superior. He writes: "Who is a manager can be defined only by a man's function and by the contribution he is expected to make. And the function which distinguishes the manager above all others is his educational one. The one contribution he is ~uniquely expected to make is'to give others vision and ability to perform:It is vision and moral responsibility that, in the last analysis, define the manager." In the previously mentioned textbook, Human R~la-tions in Management, over one hundred pages are de-voted to communication. I am willing to wager that no treatise on the religious life has a quarter amount of'this topic developed as it should be. If successful communica-tion is necessary for the functioning of industry, it should be equally, true for the religious life. Effective communication can build up a stronger com-munity spirit. How embarrassing it has been for religious and priests to be among lay people and hear, for ex-ample; that a new building will be built on the campus about which they have heard nothing. XVhen special work is assigned, it is,well for superiors to give the subject all information possible or refer him to one. who can help him. When information is passed through several superiors, measures should be'.taken to keep the original information intact. If the lower superiors are not able to explain clearly the.orders and policies of the "top brass," confusion will be more confounded among the rank and file. Communication is a two-way street. A good superior will listen to his subjects. Many have excellent brains + ÷ + Human Relations VOLUM.E 20, 196,1 ÷ ÷ 4. R. M. McKe~n~ $.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 412 and are trained in special fields. To pose as all-knowing and not to recognize the interest and contribution of such subjects for the common good is a fatal error. As.I was writing this article, the new president of the college called a special meeting of the community to in-form them about plans for three proposed buildings and for the future development of the entire campus. Three members of the architect's firm spent over two hours ex-plaining intimate aspects of the plans and answering ques-tions. Then followed an informal discussion for another h6ur. As a result, the entire community has a greater in-terest. The president said very little outside of thanking the architects; but he was responsible for this excellent,job of communication. "Sound administration is the sum total of mature imagination, mature perception, mature judgment, and mature humanism." It is well to remember that maturity is not a matter of years of service but of mental develop-ment. It calls for self-discipline manifested by regularity in work habits, exactness in execution, and alertness; More-over "healthy self-criticism and continued willingness to learn are among the important attributes of the foreman" --and likewise for the religious superior. One purpose of this article is to call attention to the great number of books and magazines dealing with the human aspects of industry. In them will be found a wealth of material which can be applied to the religious and priestly life. It is also true that we of the Church, if prop-erly trained, can give to industry the constructive princi-ples of our Christian heritage: the Sermon on the Mount, for example; can be developed into a powerful treatise in industrial relations. What holds for leadership in industry is also true in religion. "Leadership means to initiate, to instruct, to guide, to take responsibility, to be out in front . The joy of leadership and the thrill of being in charge of a group of people does not consist in doing a terrific iob yourself, but in spending your last ounce of energy and encouragement to see the group crack through to success." There have been magnificent leaders in the priesthood and religious life as history testifies. But certainly the Church would make better progress in these critical times if our leaders were well vbrsed in human relations within their respective groups. If the development of human nature studies in industry can be of help to the Church, let us be humble and sincere in translating the best things into the priestly and religious life. SISTER MARTHA MARY, c.s.J. The, Wisdom of Praise Why is p?aise such a welcome sound in our ears? Is it be- Cause we are so egotistic or is it rather that we, as social beings, have such a deep need for the approval of others? St. Thomas remarks that dependence on others is typical of the rational creature. Security in the companionship of our family and associates is our first and most enduring need as a human being. No amount of food, entertain-ment, or suhshine will take th~ place of this ingredient of life. Every li¢ing person needs to know that he is loved and appreciated; and if such recognition is not forthcoming, life loses much of its meaning. He feels that he is'maimed in some interior and frightening way, for deep in his heart everyone agrees with the poet's words: "No man is an is-land." It is interesting to note that our Lord praised people without any hesitation. He praised the widow for her in-significant contribution in the, temple, Mary Magdalene for loving much, the centurion for his faith. What glow-ing words He had for St. John the Baptist, a supposed rivalI1 Sometimes He made these remarks in the presence of the person praised; sometimes not. What is important is that we know our Lord did communicate to others who were with Him the conviction that He appreciated them. He did it by words of praise in many recorded instances. True, He warned against flattery, but that was something quite different, the antithesis of praise--false praise. Jesus Christ was always the enemy of hyp.ocrisy; He was always on the side of truth because He is truth. The qnly true praise is truth. Thus flattery is ruled out from the start. How could it have any meaning when it has no basis in truth? Praise is based on real accomplishment or at least the capacity for ~ Lk 21 : 2-4; 7 : 44--~0; 7 : 9; 7 : 26-28. Sister Martha Mary, C.S.J., teaches religion and English at St. Jos-eph Academy, 1015 South Monroe Avenue, Green Bay; ,Wisconsin. VOLUME 20, 1961 41.~ 4. 4. Sister Martha Mar~ REVIEW ~:OR RELIGIOUS 414 this achievement; flattery is an appeal to another's vanity. Praise flows from principle; flattery comes from policy. Praise is genuine; flattery, is counterfeit. Yet, just as no one rejects all currency because he knows that counterfeit money is in circulation,, so no one would wisely reject all praise simply because flattery does exist. Praise is a great goo~ because it is the straightforward recognition of the cooperation of another with the grace of God. Every worthwhile deed a person accomplishes is brought to fruition under the grace of God without whom no one can do the ~lightest thing. This awareness of the good in others is made tangible by words of praise and by the pleasant relationship which these words set up. Praise be-comes the externalization of the empathy within the heart. It is a combination of joy, gladness, and great-heartedness. It is the visible expression of love and admiration. It is the positive keeping of the eighth commandment which is so closely connected with the great commandment. The Christian is so busy bearing true, glowing, enthusiastic witness to the neighbor that he chnnot bear false witness. To praise, then, is to be virtuous. But is praise not t~o be considered_ dangerous to hu-mility? Will it not be aft inducement to pride? Will it not draw us away from God and focus our attention on self? St. Thomas allays our fears on this point. He says that praise can be a very good thing, and this for several rea-sons. Rightfulpraise is iri reality the praise of God through whose power the good ~eeds have been performed. Sec-ondly, the praise of good may stimulate others to emulate these good acts. Finally, prhise is a means by which one can come to recognize good qualities in himself, the talents which God has entrusted to him. Once recognized, these talents can be developed and the person possessing them can thank God in all humility for the many gifts he has received. How could he be grateful if he did not know what God had given? Awareness brings gratitude. In these words, St. Thomas points out that praise is a means to an end; it i's not to be sought as an end in itself.2 God is the end, but praise is a very powerful stimulant to approach Him more quickly. The theological viewpoint receives strong support from psychologists who agree that vanity, conceit and other un-desirable qu.aliti~s flourish widely where recognitiofi is not given, for they serve as modes of self-defense when a per-son's sense of personal worth is or is thought .to be under attack. Humility flourishes best in an atmosphere of loving approval, and the normal means for making known this approval is praise. Regarding this, Sister Annette spoke at some length to religious superiors at the 1959 Institute of Spirituality: ¯ Summa theologiae, 1-2, q. 132, a. 2. All that you have to do to demonstrate that there really is no incompatibility between humility and a sense of personal' worth is to work very hard and consistently for a while at giv-ing your Sisters a sense of personal worth. Show your appreci-ation, of ~hat they are. doifig. Give. them praise whenever, p.os-s~ ble . And you will see more evidences of genuine humility than you did before this principle of psychology was applied so assiduously in your hguse. You see, it is the secure S~ster, the Sister who feels that she counts for something with her superior and with her community, who can afford to be humble. She is not continually being called upon to defend herself . A sense of p.ersonal worth is not only ~ao detriment to the virtue of hu-mility but it is also a natural help to. the .acquisition of humility.8 Father Nuttin notes that individual, actions tend to be repeated in .proportion to the success achieved: ~Experimental data about the way human personality de-velops from past experience show that normal forms of be-havi'our and the dyndmic forces which lie behind them, tend,to develop according to the success achieved; that is to say, forms of behaviour which lead to a satisfactory result are maintained by theoorganism, whilst the kinds of behaviour~ that end in fail-ure or a comparatively unsatisfactory result are increasingly eliminated.' If such is the case, ignoring good actiom, or worse yet, condemning them, may be a p6sitive deterrent to the praiseworthy development of another; Whether we wish to be or not, we constitute someone else's env~ironment. Now the question can be asked: Who should praise? Theologians and psychologists agr~ee that"~ tO produce its most desirable effects, praise must be given'by those who matter to us. Father Lord, in perhaps his greatest pamph-let, In Praise of Praise, comments thus: I should be quick to praise and eager to approve those who are connected with me by blood and kinship. The nearer the re-lati. onship, the more spontaneous and generous should-be my praise. I should gladly praise those who in the slightest .way depend on me. Their dependence extends to a real need for a state-ment that I like them and their work. I should be quick to notice and point out the good work of associates. Assoctation can easily turn out to be less the'occasion for friendship than for rivalry. That is tragic. Men and women thrive under the approval of those who work at their side. I am wise if I.praise those who are or could be my rivals. I may be sure the praise given to them is not stolen from me. Indeed, if I were to play a calculating and selfish game, I can remember that when I praise a rival and speak well of work that parallels my own, I am displaying my own generosity of soul.8 ~ Sister Mary Annette, C.S.J., "Environmental Factors Conditioning Personal Development," in Proceedings oI the 1959 Sisters' Institute o] Spirituality, edited by Joseph E. Haley, C.S.C. (Notre Dame: Uni-versity of Notre Dame Press, 1960); pp. 105-06. ¯ ' Joseph Nuttin, Psychoanalysis and Personality (New.York: Sheed and Ward, 1953), p. 185. ~ Daniel A Lord, S.J., In Praise o[ Praise (St.Louis: Queen's Work, 1953), pp. 47-8. + ÷ + VOLUME "20, 1961 415 $ist~ Ma~tha Ma~y REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 416 It is a known fact that many persons in the United States, even religious, go to 'a psychiatrist to have selbconfidence restored. How has it been lost? Might not a steady diet of apreciation have helped to prevent such personality starv-ation? The duty to praise is far'reaching indeed. It includes family, superiors, associates, everyone--in varying degrees. But for those in a pgsition of authority, the duty is more pressing because the results are more telling. What about religious superiors? Where praise exists, there is a smooth-running, happy community. Where recognition is never given, the virtue of the subjects is tested to the extremes; duty is made very difficult. A much-lo~ed superior general used to say to her subjects: "Do this, Sister dear, with the grace of God and your own smartness." She made her subjects feel that the cooperation they gave to God was tremendous and that they were great persons. They left her presence feeling that they could conquer the world for Christ. Deep in their hearts they felt, too, that perhaps their cooperation had been somewhat defective in the past, but that such a thing would never happen again. Such attitude of mind is healthy. Just the opposite is the de-flation felt when one has been told how inconsequential" one,s achievements and capabilities are. There is no to de better, just a dead feeling that one's clay feet match the rest of one's anatomy. There is always', the danger too, that since religious regard superiors the special representatives of God in their lives, unguarded and thoughtless remarks may be taken very seriously. The commitment of a religious demands excellence performance because what is done for Christ should be' perfection itself. However, a superior who takes the ex-cellent performance of her subjects for granted, does not establish a happy community feeling. The mere fact she provides a well-balanced diet for them, comfortable sleeping quarters, and the proper medicine for them when~ they are sick, does not compensate for a lack of confidence' and trust. Sisters value such comments as: "You did that well, Sister"; "I heard Dr~ Jones comment on your "The talk you gave at assembly was splendid"; "That apple pie tasted just like my mother's." When~ such remarks are made, the small talk of religious becomes, big talk because it makes each member feel that she is necessary person in her religious family, Does this mean that the praise must be all on the side the superior? Should the subject praise the superior? Ob-viously, since praise which is true praise is merely aspect of 19ve, the subject ought to show her appreciationl! for her superior. Too often this manifestation of regard classified as "polishing the apple" or "getting a stand-Yet, in religious communities no one ever aoes anyt alone. Subjects must back their superiors, not just from a sense of duty but in a happy manifestation of esprit de corps. This is best done when appreciation is shown on both sides; therefore, subjects ought not to fear to tell their superiors that a job has beefi well done, that they ap-preciate kindnesses. On the whole, superiors receive less praise than they should. They need kind words to counter-balance the worry and responsibility they have to shoulder. Superiors do a better job when they feel the warmth of subjects' love and admiration. When is the best time to praise a person? Obviously there is no pat answer for this; still it seems that praise should be given as soon as possible after achievement as it is a powerful tonic for relieving the fatigue concomitant with difficult work. It should be given, also in the tedium of steady progress toward distant goals, and it should be given at the moment of failure when discouragement may overwhelm one. In fact, there is no time unsuitable for praise; yet, it is of least value when it is prefaced by un-kind remarks simply because there is little likelihood that it will be believed. Praise, then, we may conclude, is a powerful incentive to virtue when it comes from one who matters to us, when it concerns a good action in an aspect of life which is im-portant to us, and when it is rightly timed. Praise is pre-cious and abundantly at hand. Then why is there so little of it in circulation? Observation will furnish the answer. Praise cannot thrive where there is selfishness, thoughtless-ness, and jealousy, It does not spring from misinterpreted moral principles. Praise is choked in the worldliness of our product-conscious age. All our superlatives have been cheapened in advertisements of such things as cars, beer, patent medicine, soap, and toothpaste. The people who invented these things have usually never been heard of. It seems that only diseases are named for their discoverers. Since the product has taken precedence over the person, we praise the product and ignore the person who devised it. This subtle and damaging form of worldliness can not only creep into religious communities but even thrive un-der the protection of ill-applied moral principles. The extent of the damage which results is almost impossible to gauge. This is true because very few people in the world have enough self-confidence to compensate for not receiving it from others. In our age, most people, rather than tending to pride, seem to be on the opposite side. They tend to be too afraid, infantile, immature, or in a Thomistic sense, pusillanimous. We are more like the man in the parable of the talents who buried his one talent. It is an odd, Jansenistic notion, I suppose, that makes many of us afraid to encourage others for fear we will make them ÷ ÷ Prate VOLUME 201 1961 proud. This is least likely to happen in our age. Rather we seem to need true encouragement to help us along the way.~ The need that is most basic,to our spirit is the need to be loved. We cannot live normally without it, It is being loved by others that gives us our sense of personal worth. Why should we hesitate to let this love shine through our words? Granted that praise does good to others. Does it help the one who bestows it? Yes. Praise dilates the heart. It fills us with love. It makes us outgoing. It makes us want to live life, not just to undergo it. Hearts that sing with praise are far removed from the dry rot of egotism. St. Thomas in explaining why God demands our praise and worship for Himself, underlines the fact that we are the ones who are benefited~ not God. Praise opens us up to God so that we can make contact with the divine. An analogous thing happens when we praise our neighbor. We praise God when we praise what He has made. Thus true praise finds its beginning in the worship of God. °Charles A. Curran, "Some Basic Factors in the Formation of Feminine Character and Spirituality," in Proceedings o! the 1959 Sisters" Institute o[ Spirituality, edited by Joseph E. Haley, C.S.C. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960), pp. 59-60. 4- Sister Martha Mary REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 418 FATHER AIDAN, C.P. The Examination of Conscience Cemeteries are not, I suppose, places to which we would willingly go to 'pass our time. It is true that the grave-zligger in Hamlet sang at his grave-making, but theh 'custom hath made it in hima property of easiness"; less frequent visitors find light-heartedness the least of their emotions. If the churchyard is well=kept, colorful, and dive with flowers; the contrast between what it looks like ~nd what it serves' as is themore marked; if on the other ,Land it is neglected and untended, theatmosphere of g'en;., eral mournfulness and melancholy befitting the place is dl the more enhanced. No doubt Gray's "Elegy" has done .nuch to contribute to this association of ideas, but the ,~ensive sadness he found in his churchyard is a feeling =ommon to nearly all. I wonder whether a religious about to make his examen ¯ f conscience ever finds himself oppressed by much the ame sensation. Here we are---daily invited to 'attend and :arefully inspect the tombs of our buried ~hopes, our luickly perished good resolutions, our infant virtues; to emember carefully all the ills and diseases that did them o swiftly to death, and thereby to guard more effectively ,gainst the future attacks which we know to be inevitable. 1~o return again and again to the scede of so many defeats, o behold repeatedly evidences of such .feeble efforts--it an be a depressing pilgrimage, so depressing that th6 de- ,otion essential to any pilgrimage quickly evaporates,and ve fall into a routine performance of a task which ought o be, must be, fulfilled: And: tlien, perhaps, our resolutions, like everything me-hanical, begin to wear down. We become less convinced ,f the utility of the practice;, after all, we know ourselves ~retty welt by flow, so wliavis the point of this cons'~ant elf-analysis? Our duties keep us busy, our day is a full ohm, ,nlooked-for circumstances rob us of our precioffs~ mo-aenis; they surely can not be squandered on so profitless ÷ ÷ ÷ Father Aidan, C.P., teaches English at. St. Gabriel's College, Blythe Hall, Orraskirk, Lancs., England. VOLUME 20, 1961 419 Father Aidan, C.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 420 and dispiriting an employment. It can well be treated more cursorily, shortened, even omitted altogether. We are amazed to read what great store has been set on the examen by spiritual writers-~quite reputable ones, too~ and we can only feel that they are given to pious exaggera-tion. Yet for all our specious reasoning, the examen is an es-sential feature in our spiritual life, Perhaps it is not merely our practice of it, but our attitude towards it that stands in need of re-orientation. Perhaps we should remember more firmly that it represents not a solo effort with our-selves as judge and jury, plaintiff and defendant, but a joint partnership between ourselves and Christ. After all, the dead we mourn in our own little cemetery were also once His. He is concerned about all those abortive efforts, those frustrated failures, those sadly neglected promises. The sorry wreckage we contemplate so ruefully is not merely the ruin of our own hopes; it is also the thwarting of His loving desires for us. If we remember His presence,~ His concern in what we do, then perhaps we shall not find it too heart-breaking or too strength-sapping a task. When we look out of a window at a view beyond, we, are really lo~king at two things. We see the window itself,I and through it we see the landscape. Our gaze, it is true,,, is focused on the view, and we are aware of the windowl only secondarily, in a vague sort of way. Further, the more magnificent and appealing the view, the less conscious we are ot~ the intervening glass. There is a certain analogy here with our examen. Our souls should be like clear glass, through Which can be seen the magnificent spectacle of God. Too often, however, that unclouded pane becomes speckled and spotted with dust and dirt, so that it steadily grows opaque. It is to removing the source of that dirt that our examen is directed, so that~ we may look beyond to the splendor of divine brightness, Obviously, to clean merely for the sake of cleaning, like a fussy house-proud housewife, is a soulless occupation. The window is cleaned so that it may be seen through-~ that the beholder may gaze in full enjoyment at the beauty beyond. And when we are once convinced that the view is really worth looking at, surely we labor more eagerly at the window cleaning. In other words, when we attend to keeping clean the window of our soul, we must have our gaze steadily focused on the sight of our Divine Lord beyond. We should not rest in a sterile contemplation of our own limitations-- that way lies discouragement--but should compare them, at once with the unlimited virtues in the Sacred Heart Of Christ. He can, and He will, help us to remove those limitations, if we sincerely will to allow Him to do it. The sincere will to let Him have His way--perhaps i.t, ~as been the lack of this that has made our examens in the past so tedious, so disheartening, so~ fruitless. So easy to allow a gush of self-pity to drown the good resolution; so easy to stand idle, paralyzed with dismay, at the revela-tion of our utter weakness; so e~igy to forget our Divine Partner in the examen, that "combined. operation" that is nothing less than the accomplishment, together with Him, af the redemption He has died to bring, us. This should be remembered even if our examen ,has lacked more than sincere good will, and has been only a perfunctory formality--a mere lip-service without any ,eart-searching.: A few pet imperfections hurriedly re-clewed, their number estimated vaguely if at all, some nechanical acts~of sorrbw and petition, and we rise hastily _o get on with the real business of the dayRsomething for which we can see some positiveresult and tangibl~.fruit Of :ffort. Never a substitute for sincerity; formality has, llere ~. fossilizing effect; every subsequent examen only serves _o add a further stratum in the soul and renders future ~clamation more and more remote. Yet if with us works Dne for whom no obstacle exists, save only in our own tardened wills, we can not doubt the outcome. ~ There can be no excuse of "parvity of matter"~in our .elf-analysis. We are never likely to run short of raw ma, erial.'Our vows, our duties, the virtues we should practice, ,ur attitude to and our contacts with our neighbor--all ,r0vide us with food enough for reflection, and after re, iection, action. If it seems otherwise, then we know with ertainty that we are deceiving ourselves. Five loaves and wo fishes seemed at first a scanty meal for a few men; yet, _~lessed by our Divine Lord, they provided ample nourish- ,-tent for five thousand--and still there were left twelve ~askets of fragments. If we complacently survey our soul :nd can see little therein to engage our attention for long, ;'e need the blessing of Christ upon our efforts to detect ,ur infidelities; then we shall be kept busy indeed. Our poverty, for instance--what can we check on there? .~o great breach, perhaps, but are there no ,lesser infideli-ies? A practical distrust of Providence, for example; else ;,hy do we so often hoard up so much for such~remote ontingencies? How about our spirit of detachment? Why 11 those knick-knacks and bric-a-brac that so drearily ollect the dust in our rooms? They would be at home no loubt in a drawing room, but in a religious cell?. "But, ,f course, I should willingly give them up if the superior sked me for them." And how likely is that? Superiors rave surely more sense than to ask their subjects for lbums-of photographs, tawdry little souvenirs, showy ittle gewgaws, or even that battered copy of the New I'estament, guarded so jealously since profession day-- or its sentimental value only. VOLUME 20, 1961 ÷ ÷ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ~ Or, as superiors, have we put purposes before persons; The purpose we have in mind, that is, before the .persons we should have in mind, those under us whom we are responsible to bring closer to Christ. Have we neglected to give them what we might have done well to give them, with the excuse that necessary retrenchments must be made in order to meet the expenses of some pet project of ours? Has there been an over-cautious pruning of certain preliminary expenses, which in the long run will impair the success of the complete scheme as a whole? We must be poor after the manner of Christ. The key: note of His way of living was simplicity. He did not create artificial needs; He did not hanker after what conduced' merely to comfort. He 'accepted what was given, when it was .given, and did not repine; He slept how, when, and Where He could, and was content; born in another man',, stable, He was buried in another man's tomb. All through His life, His indifference about means shines out: "Do no~ fret~ over your life"; "Be not solicitous, therefore.,' He showed practically His self-aband0nment to the provi: dential.care of His heavenly Father. Analysis of our practice of obedience is another useful mine of self-information. Perhaps our faith here has bei come imperceptibly weaker over the years; we are more conscious of the ,human limitations of the superior ~than we are of the fact that he represents Christ for us. (Yet suppose our Lord had seen the cross merely as a painful instrument of an ignominious death?) Would we not go freely and willingly to Christ to discuss our ideas, plans, suggestions-not trying to catch Him at an off-moment of distraction or when we know He is in a "good mood;!' or when we have paved the way for a successful issue b careless hints? Would we not abide by His decision, after discussion, He gave judgment against our petition~ so obviously to us the best for all concerned? If He were to order us tosome employment which we felt would only expose us to almost certain failure, with all its consequem mortification, we would surely not ~'twist and turn frenzied efforts at evasion. He needs our efforts to do Hi., work about as much :as the sun needs a candle to light thb world; but He does look 'for our good will. Or as superiors, remembering that the sole purpose ot the authority we hold from Christ is to bring those ~ndel us nearer to Him, have we really tried to understand sym pathetically the capabilities and limitations of those dis ciples of His? "Splendid isolation, may be all very well a~ a political slogan; it should be far from the mind of superior. The crown of thorns round the brow is probab!: inevitable; but no prickly thickets round the heart shouR render access difficult and even impossible. Man is, cording to Shakespeare, "dressed in a little brief autho~l ity," and should not play "such fantastic :tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep:" The donkey that bore our Lord into Jerusalem had his moment of triumph, felt the garments under his feet, saw the palm branches being waved as he passed, heard the hosannas and shouts of joy; but he would have been an ass indeed to assume that it was for him that the people were rejoicing. The manner in which we obey provides a wide field for examination. "Prompt, blind, and cheerful" is cer-tainly a high enough ideal. We need to ~be on our guard against any "delaying tactics" ("He may think better of it in a day or so") and against any disinclination to carry out what our own intelligence does not dommend. And if the Lord loves a cheerful giver, how much more is He pleased by. a hearty, willing obedience? Yet~how much disobedi-ence may be dignified by the name of manly self-assertion; and how often may pusillanimity usurp, the title of obedi-ence? We must obey as Christ obeyed. Had He not been obedient "unto death, even the death of the cross," we should not have been redeemed at all. He saw the will of His Father in everything that" befell Him, and "the things that are pleasing to Him.I' do always." Authority, even when vested in unworthy holders of office, whether malicious like Caiphas or weak like Pilate, always re-ceived from Him its due recognition, without servility or consideration of human motives. He knew that even such as these "would have no authority, unless it were given from above"; and since from above it.had been given, He submitted to itowith obedience and dignity. Yet even He, Son of God as He was, had to "learn obedience by the things He suffered." ¯ Our third vow, chastity, is perl~aps, best considered under its~ aspect of love, since serious failure here will not require examination, being self-evident. It is possible to allow our very pursuit of purity to blind us to its wider implications. If we. do not find in ourselves anything con-trary to our vow, we should thank God: "I could not other-wise be continent, except God gave. it." Yet are we in-tolerant and censorious of the peccadilloes of others? The "heart of iron for chastity" must not preclude the "heart of flesh for charity"; for "chastity-without charity shall be chained in hell." A mortal sin again~st charity.will kill the soul no less effectively than a mortal sin against chas-tity. Purity means that we long to love only God and for His sake all others. If self-complacent purity should lead to bitter, wounding remarks and unkind lack of considera-tion, we are completely missing the end of the sacrifice entailed by the vow; we might well ask: "To what purpose was this waste?" Again, it is surely only an incomplete view to confine ÷ ÷, ÷ Ex~mi~tlon o Comci~nce VOLUME 20, 1961 423 ÷ ÷ ÷ our warfare against "the flesh" to sexual temptations alone, Perhaps we may not indeed have offended here; but if faith wanes dim, and love waxes cold, there is the danger of the law of compensation creeping upon us unawares. We may tend to grow self-indulgent in smaller matters: to prolong our sleep unnecessarily, to be fussy over what we have to eat and drink, to be fastidious and finical about what we are given to wear, to show a marked disinclina-tion for work that is boring, disturbs our ease, or does not suit us. Purity should not preoccupy us so much that freedom from its grosser infringements blinds us,to the necessity of mortifying our senses--also "the flesh"--our taste, touch, ease, vanity. Nor should our natural propensity for friendship lead us to exclusiveness or to the loss of the spirit of prayer. Our human affections must not be put down, but put straight; they must not be kept under, but kept under con-trol. Controlled affection can be made to serve Christ's purposes; uncontrolled, our inclinations court disaster. What of Christ? His love was not jealous, mean, or petty; but magnanimous, and universal in its sweep. He did not shrink from self-denial in showing His love; He did not fear running the risk of others failing Him, as others did, like Judas,, Pilate, and the unknown "rich young man." All-embracing in its scope (although He too had His "special friends": John, Martha, Mary), His love went out to beggar and well-to-do, Pharisee and publican, virtuous and vicious. He showed no antipathy, no con-tempt towards any one of His creatures; there was nothing forced or spurious about His love, which was the perfect flowering of the all-holy purity of the Man-God. Our examen is, after all, the mirror we hold up to na-ture; a poor weak human nature,.no doubt, but one that all the more on that.account needs the mirror to reflect faithfully all its deficiencies. If we undertake this work more sincerely, more generously, in partnership with Christ, perhaps we shall find what we thought to be stumbling-blocks transformed by Him into ~stepping stones. Our examen will no longer have the dismal charac-ter of a solitary.visit to a desolate cemetery, but the hopeful quality of a pilgrimage with a Friend eager to help us. We may still discover dry bones aplenty on the face of the plain, but if faithfully we do our part, even of them also it may be said "I will give you spirit and you shall live." ~ Father A/dan, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS MARTIN A. STILLMOCK; C.SS.R. Two Century Masterpiece "Of all my spiritual works, I should call this' one the best." These are the words spoken by St. Alphdnsus Maria de Ligouri on July 24, 1760, about his book, The True S~ouse ol Jesus Christ. When we consider that of the ope hundred eleven books and pamphlets written by the saint sixty-four ar6 ascetical works, this statement commands attention. The book in question could hardly be given higher praise. To understand why St. Alphonstis made this' remarl~- able utterance, it will' be well to consider the background of this book. As a founder of a religi6us congregation of missionary priests, as a popular and skilled retreat ~aster, and later as a bishop, St. Alpho. nsus was deeply concerned that llis priests and all priests should be learned and holy. To help priests in the field of learning he wrote his famous Mm:al Theology. To help prie,sts in their spiritual life he wrote his well known Selva which treats of the dignity and duties of the priest. All Christians know that there is no salvation for the world except through Jesus Christ. Now the ordinary channel of the world's salvation is the priesthood whic.h Christ instituted. Hence it was that Alphonsus loved so much to preach to priests and seminarians. And hence also it was that he wrote for them. He knew that the sanctification of one priest could mean the saving of thousands of souls that perhaps otherwise would not be saved. Alphonsus know he could put weapons into the hands of priests: weapons of theological learning, sermon material, ~naterial for retreats, missions, novenas. He could give them food for spiritual thought by combing spiritual writers, especially the fathers of the Church, and presenting their writings and ideas in a popular and interesting way. He could point out to priests the road to sanctity and the ways and means to attain holiness. All these weapons as well as many more St. Alphonsus, following Catholic tra-dition, put into the hands of pastors and missionaries for converting the world to Jesus Christ. But to insure success, he thought it necessary to supplement these weapons by Martin A. Stillmock, C.Ss:R., is engaged in parish work at St. A1- phonsus Church, 1118 North Grand Boule-vard, St. Louis 6, Mis-souri. ~OLUME 20, 1961 425 ÷ M. A. Stillmock, C.$s.R. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS the prayers of all those who are consecrated to God by religious profession: In every day and age it has been difficult for people to understand the n~cessity and value of the contem-plative life. To mauy it seems a pious waste of time. The problem is that many of these people understand little or nothing of the communion of saints, even though they may believe in it as they profess in the Apostles' Creed. Consequently, they do not understand or even -begin to realize the value of intercessory prayer or suppli-cation. Why God created such an institution as the cloister and why He calls religious to lead lives of penance and pr.ayer is beyond them. But the saints understand the value of these" things; and Alphonsus, from long experience in working for the most. abandoned souls, realized fully how much priests and missionaries need the help of prayers for success in their priestly and missionary work. Whenever Alphonsus had a difficult mission before him, or when he knew strong resistance would be forthcoming from the great enemy of souls, he recommended himself to the prayers of ~:eligious who spend their lives in the presence of God. Alphonsus himself had founded an order of contem-pla'tive nuns, the Redemptoristines. For him they were the second branch of his apostolic congregation, the Redemptorists, While the missionaries were on the front battling [or souls whd were often deep in the clutches of the devil, these nuns raised their minds to "heave/i, like Moses on the mountain, and by 'their prayers and pen-ances obtained the victory. . It was thoughts such as these which impelled A1- phonsus to write The True'Spouse of Jesus Christ. In the volume he says to the religious souls for whom he is writing: You should be :useful to all, especially by yqur prayers. A!l the spouses of our Lord should be zealous for His honor. He Himself said to St. Teresa: "Now that you are My spouse, you must work with zeal for My glory." Indeed, if the souls so ~logely united to Jesus do not take His interests to heart, who will do so? Our Lord has promised to hear anyone who prays to Him. In your prayers, then, at your communions, during the visit to the Blessed Sacrament, recommend to God all poor sinners, infidels, heretics~ and those Who live without God. And Alphonsus goes.on to say: Our Lord Himself asks this of His. special servants. He said to a venerable nun one day: "Help me by your prayers to save souls"; and to St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzi: "See, My daughter, how Christians are in the hands of the evil onel If My elect did not deliver them by their prayers, they would become the prey of that monster." This prompted the counsel which she gave to her religious: "My dear sisters, God has withdrawn, us from the world to save our own' souls, of course, but also that we may satisfy His mercy by interceding for sinners. We shall have to account for the loss of many souls if we neglect to recommend them to God." For this reason she never let an hour of the day go by without prayir[g /0r sinners. Another servant of our Lord did penance for forty years and applied it all to the salvation of souls in need of divine grace. Oh, how many sinners there are who owe their conversion not so much to the sermon of the preacher as to the prayers of some holy re-ligiousl It was revealed to a celebrated orator that the conversions apparently worked by him were not attributable to his elo-quence but to the prayers of the lay brother who sat at th~ foot of the pulpit. Pray then for sinners, and pray also for priests that they may work with true zeal for the salvation of souls. But if religious are to be powerful intercessors with our Lord, it can be only on condition that they be His true spouses. Therefore, just as he did for priests, A1- phonsus treats at length of the duties of religious women. While reading this book, weshould keep in mind that in the eighteenth century many abuses had crept into the cloister. The spirit-of the times breathed laxity, tepidity, and worldliness. A1phonsus was not one to use half meas-ures, and in many instances his language is strong. But his one big purpose is to preach holiness. He does this by pointing out what virtues should be specially practiced, and he prescribes, the means for wiping qut abuses. It may be thought that St. Alphonsus wrote Thk True Spouse solely for cloistered or contemplative nuns. He certainly had° thegn in :mind, but not exclusively. In his preface the saint himself tells us: This work, as appe.ars from the title, is intended particularly for nuns. However, only a small part of it is directed exclusively to them; the remainder, but especially what regards the ob-servance of the vows of religion, regular discipline, and the per-fection of the religious state, is equally suitedto religious of all congregations; and what regards the Christian virtues will be found highly useful even for seculars. What is to be found in The True Spouse? Practically every facet of the spiritual life is treated, The saint starts off his work by treating of the merits of virgins who have consecrated themselves to God. He goes on to state the advantages of the religious state and how religious should belong wholly to God. He speaks of the desire religious should have for perfection and then warns that imper-fect religious are exposed tb danger. The necessity of combating self love is treated. After treating of interior mortifications, the saint goes on to speak of exterior mortification of the appetite, of the senses of hearing and touch, and of the eyes. The book also contains a long treatise on poverty, its perfection, its degrees and practice, the detachment it involves from relatives and other persons. Closely allied to poverty is humility; the saint here discusses its ad-wmtages, the nature of humility of the intellect, heart, and will, and patience in bearifig contempt. ÷ ÷ ÷ Two Century Masterpiece VOLUME 20, 1961 4. M. d. Stillmo¢l¢, C.Ss.R. There is a beautiful chapter on fraternal charity, fol-lowed by one on patience, a virtue that leads to resig-nation to the will of God. Then follows a treatment of mental prayer, its necessity as well as its practice. From there the saint points out the importance and necessity of silence, solitude, and the presence of God. The topic of spiritual reading forms a chapter in itself. The True Spouse contains a long treatment on the frequentation of the sacraments of confession and com-munion. Under confession the saint has a consoling and practical treatise on scruples: what they are, how they are hurtful, their remedy and a practical application. Prayer and purity of intention form two more chapters. A work of this type would not be complete for St~ Alphonsus unless he devoted some space, to the Holy Mother of God. First, Alphonsus contends that no true servant of Mary can be lost; then he goes on to show who are to be considered true servants of Mary. Following the chapter on devotion to Mary is one on the love of Christ, the obligation of a religious to iove Him, and the means of acquiring this love. The saint concludes his work with particular admoni-tions for superiors, novice mistresses, and so on. In the last chapter he gives a rule of life for the religious who desires to become a saint. This includes the treatment of such things as the Divine Office, hearing of Mass, exami-nation of conscience, necessity of banishing melancholy, recreation. The True Spouse even has an appendix con-taining such considerations as a summary of the virtues which the religious who wishes to become a saint should practice, spiritual maxims for religious, and aspirations of love for Christ. Very few books written almost exclusively for religious women handle such a wide and practical range of treat-ment. As one German translator of The True Spouse observes: This book, written as it is with great fo~'ce and piety, contains the.q.uintessence of ascetic theology and is a practical ex-posmon of the virtues of the religious life. I have no hesitation in saying that the reader will find in it all that has been written by ancient and modern writers on the subject of spirituality. It sums up a multitude of books and gives all that the holy author has developed at greater length in other writings on the same matters. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 428 MARCEL MARCOTTE; S.J. Health and Holiness Father, it seems that for the majority of priests, a person suffering from neurosis is condemmed to stand in one spot marking time with no chance of advancing in the spiritual life. I take it that you are not of that opinion, and 1 am so glad. Your opinion confirms my own per-sonal experience and that ol others who have confided in me. When a person is unbalanced in some way, one at once thinks that there has been some frustration in the past of his emotional needs. In most cases this is true. But do not certain neuroses grow worse because of a conflict be-tween the profound need of God which we experience on the one hand and, on the other, the behavior we are led to persist in, sometimes, under the influence o[ the guidance we receive? It seems to me that the more aspir-ing and straightforward a soul is, the more woeful can be certain mistakes in spiritual direction. I think that there is a tendency among religious and priests to make too little of the needs of the soul. Spiritual writers teach clearly that in order to reach God, the soul must proceed by a series of purifications suited to its spiritual progress. But how many spiritual advisors grasp that when the time comes? They seem to think that this was written more for initiates in the spiritual life. But I think that such ideas could be carried over with great profit into many ordinary .lives. Don't you agree? IfI we sidestep debating certain merely incidental ele-ments in this letter so as to throw into relief its main point, the question it asks can be put thus: Does our sanctification depend on our psychological balance as well as, in some degree, on our bodily health and the sound condition of our nerves? Pascal, who was all his life a _very sick and anxiety-haunted man, declared that "ill, ness impairs the judgement and the senses . " "If great 1:This article is translated with permission from Relations, March, . 1961, pp. 64-66. The translation is by George Courtright. 4. 4. 4. Marcel Marcotte, S.J., teaches at the ColI~ge Sainte Marie, 1180 rue Bleury, Montreal 2, Canada. VOLUME 20, 1961 Mar~e! Mav¢otte, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 430 illness," he says plainly, "visibly alters them, I have no doubt at all that minor illnesses have a proportionate fect." This opinion, dictated by the personal experience of a man of genius who was, also, in his own way, a kind of saint, ought doubtless to be kept in mind. How-ever, recent discoverie~ in psychology together with the teaching of experience and certain data of theology lead us to qualify it. Does our relationship with God really depend upon our physical and psychological formation, which, while in us, is, for all that, not us? Are we to be marked in ad-vance for sanctity or for spiritual mediocrity by reason of our temperament, i the condition of our endocrine glands, certain accidents of education, or traumas ex-perienced in the course of life which definitively open or close to us the approaches"to Christian perfect~ion? "The will of God," says St.Paul, "is ,that' you become saints." But is this divine will concerned only with people who have perfectly healthy and well-balanced bodies and minds? Does sanctity reser~b!e some sort of royal feast to which only a small number of chosen guests--great lords and noble ladies with impressive names--are to be in-vited, while the great mass of the faithful must be satis-fied with the crumbs of the banquet? This would be .a surprising and rather scandalous thing. God, in His giving, remains free, but when once He has granted, in baptism, the first, essential gift ("if you knew the gift of Godl" Jesus said to the Samaritan woman), then that spring of living water, which has just penetrated by grac~ into the Christian soul, must inexhaustibly "gush from his breast into eternal life." For the gift of God is nothing else but God Himself, from whom life pours out, diffuses itself, and irresistibly increases in the Christian so as to make him achieve his full height, his complete stature in Christ. S~ill, we must yield to the evidence: Not all Christians are saints--far from it--for indeed if God's gift is to produce its fruit of sanctity in the soul, the Christian must cooperate freely with the ~ace that is offered him. But the usual effects of original sin make this free co-operation very difficult for the normal Christian. Besides this, in many instances, the exercise of freedom is en-cumbered by" special difficulties which render infinitely more unpredictable the conformity of our acts in life to moral standards and the higher dem~inds of sanctity. "It is hard to practice Christian virtue," Alexis Carrel says, "when one suffers from a glandular deficiency." Edu-cators, judges,-moralists, and spiritual directors realize today how important a role the body plays in the origin and development of certain 'kinds of moral, social, and spiritual weaknesses. Chrtesian dualism no longer has currency; we have learned to, recognize ;and admit the. reciprocal influence of the body and the soul~ on .the physical and mental health of human beings. Psycho-somatic medicine, for its 'part, is ready to take into ac-count complications on the physical and bodily level arising from the psychic; why should not .Catholic moral-ity and spiritual teaching,, in turn, take into account the, repercussion of sick organs and nerves upon the interior, psychic life? "Man," says Pascal again, '~is neither angel nor beast, and ill luck would have it that he who would play the angel plays the beast."-" Furthermore, physical health: is not alohe concerned here. Depth psychology has shown (doubtless to the. point;, of sa.t.iety) that the evolution of a religious and moral personality, is linked to the dynhmic'drives of ifiapulses and tendencies of instinct, and emotion which we carry along with us from earliest infancy to adult life. Ac-cording as the liquidation of ce.rtain psychi~ conflicts has been more or less successful, habit~ and moral or spirit-ual attitudes assume very different characters. In certain instances, repression and sublimation will facilitate ,the practice of virtue and thai.pursuit'of sanctity; in others, they will make virtue and holiness, at least in appearance, very difficult or even altogether impossible. Therefore, in the quest for God, the-Christian must not only adapt himself to his nature as he finds it, but, in ad-dition, undergo to a degree very difficult to estimate the inbuilt necessities springing from the past. Why seek to deny it? There are ill-favored creatures who, so far from being naturally equipped to live a truly spiritual life, are not even fit to live a life in accordance with common morality. They will never be so thoroughly good as they might otherwise be simply for lack of discipline and con-tr61 aiid will drag along through weakness after weakness t6'~the end of their lives. Their sense of judgement is warped, their wills debilitated: how can they aspire to personal holiness? Yet, is sanctification to be made de-pendent on the chance that on~ has or has not a healthy hormone balance, or that one is blest in one's psycho-logical makeup or has been guccessfully educated? Some-times, it takes so little (a thyroid'deficiency, the awkward or rough meddling of a teacher) to change the course of one's life. "If Cleopatra's nose had been shorter . " Is the longing of a Christian for sanctity to be similarly sub-ject to accident, to that "grain of sand in the ureter" which, according to Pascal, upset the, Whole map of Europe? To avoid so scandalous a notion, we must first take care to have a right idea of the meaning of sanctification. We must not'confuse it with the attainment of purely human perfection or even~ with the moral perfection Health and Holiness VOLUME 201 1961 43! ÷ ÷ ÷ Marcel Marcotte, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 432 which makes saints so attractive. In essence, sanctification is the act by which God divinizes man. This action occurs in the spiritual order, an order the harmonies of which are not necessarily echoed in the outward behavior and visible appearance of the man God has sanctified. In re-lation to this action, one's psychological makeup is of no importance. Whether a man be endowed with a nature favorable to the acquiring of virtue or is a neurotic ob-sessed by the flesh or by guilt or scruples, it is enough for him to say "Yes" to God, to cling to Him in his soul of souls, beyond all temptation, all childish fear, in order to be swathed in divine grace and himself made divine. On this point, Saint Francis de Sales says: It is beyond question true that our souls ordinarily take on something of the traits and tone of our bodily lower nature . A body weakened and distracted by much pain cannot but in-hibit the vigor and spontaneity of the soul in its performances. But nothing of this is in anyway prejudicial to the spiritual actions of the soul. As pleasing to God as such actions can be when done among all tlie pleasures of the world, they are even more so when done with greater trouble and pain . We must not be unjust to ourselves and demand more of our-selves than we can do. When our bodies and our health give us trouble, we must, at such a time, expect of the soul only acts of submission and resignation and that holy union of ou~' wills with the good pleasure of God, which is formed in the highest reaches of the soul. As for our outward actions, we must direct and perform them as best we can and be conr tent therewith, though our hearts mislike it and the going be slow and heavy. Nevertheless, the fac( remains that sanctity, in the usual sense of the word, requires certain conditions, which are not given to everyone. For example, an idiot finds himself, as such, incapable of that renunciation of sin and of that assent to grace which are essential ,in the spiritual life. Just as a certain healthiness of the nervous system is needed before the moral consciousness can un-fold, So, too, in the order of sanctity, a certain psychologi-cal healthiness is necessary before that love, thanks to which one renounces sin in order to give oneself utterly to God, can unfold. In what does this healthiness consist, without which sanctity becomes impossible~not that sanctity which exists in the hidden mystery, of the sou! but the sanctity we find in the faces, in the words and the actions of those whom we call saints? There are certain characteristics, certain somatic and psychological qualifications which are necessary so that the fruit Of divine grace .may grow and show itself in the form of Christian virtues: for ex-ample, mildness, temperance, purity, brotherly love. If there are serious deficiencies in one's makeup, the soul will struggle vainly to remain faithful; all its efforts, at least in appearance, will remain useless. True, in the eyes of God, "who searches the reins and the heart," all these struggles, endlessly abandoned and endlessly lost, will have contributed to the sanctification of the soul. But for the bystander, and often for the soul itself, hypnotized by its own weakness, this mystei~ious but real sanctifica-tion will never be verified. It will not even be verifiable. It may even happen that priests and experienced spiritual directors will fail to recognize the value and the merit of these hard-fought spiritual battles which always end in a checkmate. But such a lack of understanding--wit-ness the lives of the saints---often forms a part of the means God uses for the spiritual progress of souls. It is a kind of night added to that night in which souls struggle only to make the darkness darker and faith more meri-torious. Yet, the darker the night, the nearer, the more lovely the stars. "Close your eyes, and you will seel ." God has a way all His own of dealing with the emptiness surrounding the soul. It is at the moment when He ap-pears to be forevermore far away that He is often closest. "If you had already found Me," God says to Pascal, "you would not look for Me." The important thing, then, is the search for God, the effort, as the accepted phrase is, toward sanctity while trying evermore in one's life to accept the divine will, even when that will rules that we make our way toward God stumblingly, foundering in the earth like plough-oxen, we who were made to fly high in the heavens like eagles. There are two kinds of saints, says Father Beirnaert. There are the saints with ill-favored and difficult personalities, that mass of people ridden with anxiety, aggressiveness, and love of the body, all those who bear the intolerable weight of having been born as they were, those whose blighted hearts will al-ways be nothing but a knot of snakes, unlucky because they were born with repulsive faces, or because they have never been able to identify themselves with a father. They are those who, unlike St. Francis, will never in their lives charm a bird or pet a wolf of Gubbio; those who sin and will sin again; who will grieve till the day they die, not because they lost their temper a little but because they keep on committing the same filthy, unmentionable action. They are that vast crowd whose sanctity will never shine out in this world through their personalities, who will rise up only on the last day to glitter, finally, in eternity. They are saints without the honor of the name. At their side are the saints blest with attractive personalities, the pure, strong, sweet saints, the model saints, the canonized saints and the saints fit to be canonized, saints with hearts as free and wide as the seasho~'e; saints whose being, like a per-fectly tuned harp, forever sings out the glory of God; wonderful saints, who encourage the advances of grace and in whom we touch a grace-transfigured nature--the recognized, the cele-brated, the great saints, who trail a shining splendor through history. Both kinds of saints are brothers. Those saints whose per- 4- 4- 4- l;ealth and Holiness VOLUME 20, 1961 sonalities are haunted by m'onsters and those in whom angels dwell have the same basic experience, and they speak Of God and of themselves in the same words. They are of the same bourn, the same world; a world where the only grief is to find oneseff so unworthy of God, and the only happinesg is to be loved by Him and to try to give Him love for love. For us, here below, they are different. Before God, they are alike. And we shall see this in the day of the Lord Jesus (Etudes, t. 266, pp. 63-64). Once more, pure holiness can and sometimes must adapt itself to certain bodily and psychological states which will give their stamp to the outward aspect and ac, tions of a Christian, without, for all that, compromising his inner adherence to the divine will and, therefore, without hurting the life of charity in him. "In the evening of'life," says St. John of the Cross, "we shall be judged~on our love." For each and all of us, it is simply a question of love and, therefore, of choosing, according to the meas-ure of freedom that has been given us, between good and bad, between the perfect and the imperfect. In propor-tion to this, God Himself comes to meet us so as to share His life more intimately with us, before finally, bringing us into His beatitude. ÷ ÷ .÷ Marcel Marcotte, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 434 THOMAS DUBAY, S.M., ' ' The ,Superior's Predept and God S Will One of the first pro~ositions a.tyro meets in a religious novitiate ,is one to the~effect that a '~superior's directive is "an expression of God's wilV' for .him': If'a religious wishes to know what God' desires of him,~ he need only listen to;accept, and execute the~precepts of his superior. Unfortunately, this early lesson'-'is subject to ambiguity and confusion. And more unfortunately, it can happen that the novice may embrace for life an incorrect interpre-tation of the~,ambiguity or he may simply, practice reli-gious obedience in a pekdffring cloud ofmisunderstand-ing. Does a superior "manifest,God's will" to a subject? If. he does, what does the expression mean? If he does not, ought we to modify our instruction°on this facet of obe-dience? Before attempting an immediate answer to" these, ques-tions, I should like to ask the reader to consider'a philo-sophical and theological antecedent; namely, the problem of how a man can conform his will to the divine will. A conference or retreat master ,can easily advise his listeners to conform their wills to the will of God, but to what ex-tent this conformity is possible and how itls to be achieved is not at all so simple as might appear on the surface. And-, yet a mature and accurate understanding of religious obe-dience would seem to require that we delve beneath the surface and discover~ what-precisely~ we are doing when we obey. For the attainment of this understanding we can follow no better guide than St. Thomas Aquinas. To tinderstand the Angelic Doctbr's doctrine on the precise °fiaanner in which a man is bound to conform his will to the divine will, we must, as Thomas does, dis-tinguish betweeh what may be called a material and a formal conformity.1 In an act of willifig we notice that there are two elements involved: the thing willed and the 1 Summa theologiae, 1-2, q. 19, a. 10~, c. ÷ ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay, S.M., is spiritual director at Notre Dame Seminary, 2901 South Carrollton Avenue, New Orleans 18, Louisiana. VOLUME 20, 1961 ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay,. S.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 436 motive for willing it. Willing an act of kindness, for ex-ample, implies first of all, the sundry components of the benign deed, and, secondly, the motive or reason for willing that deed. The activity willed (here, the kind deed) is called the material element, while the motive or the reason~why (for example, love for God) is the formal element. It can happen that even when they will opposite real-ities two created wills can be good provided their- motives are good. St. Thomas uses the example of ttie execution of a thief. The judge wills his death, whereas the thief's wife does not will it. The wills are opposed as regards the material element, the fact of the executiori; but they can both be good provided the judge wills the death for a good reason (thecommon welfare) and the wife opposes that death for some evil consequent on it (for example, harm to her family). Because the judge has care for a more universal good, the community, and the wife for a less universal one, her family, both can will opposites and yet be good as long as their reasons are worthy. The° reader will understand that we .are not suggesting that any action at all may become morally good merely by the presence of a good motive. A man may not stem five dollars in order to buy his wife an anniversary gift. We are simply stating that two wills can at times be opposed regarding one action and yet both be willing rightly. We are now in a position to apply this principle to our problem of conformity to God's will. As St. Thomas points out, God as the Maker and Governor of the whole universe knows and wills .whatever He wills under the aspect of the universal good, which is His very goodness. A created will, on the other hand, knows some particular good and sometimes wills it for some reason that is good on a particular scale but not good from the point of view of, the more universal. For example, the avoidance of a spanking is a good from the particular or limited aspect of a child's physical well being, but itsoadministration may be better from the universal and wider aspect of his whole welfare and that of the family. In orde~ for a man to Will well some particular good he must refer it somehow, to the universal good; that is, to God. This referral, this motivation to the last end is the formal element in willing and must be present in a volitional act in order for that act to be rightly ordered. A man, therefore, conforms0his will to the divine will when he refers all that he does to God, since God Himself refers all to His own glory. This is a formal conformity and must always be present in a human act. A man, how-ever, need not and cannot always materially conform his will to the divine will as regards particular acts. It is sufficient that those particular acts be good in themselves and be referred to God, for in so acting man is operating as God wants him to operate~ even though God may not actually will this or that particular act. Hence, a material conformity to the divine will is ,not always required or even possible. Why do we say that a material Conformity to God's will is not always required or even possible? The reason is simple~ We often do not know what God wills as re-gards particular acts. We surely know that He wills us to do all for His sake, but that is a formal conformity, the ordering of all to Him. On.the other hand,.we~frequently do not know whether He .prefers.us to do on~ thing rather than another. I know He wants me'to tell-the truth when I am rightly questioned, but I do not know with certitude whether in ten minutes I should still be writing or visit-ing the BlesSed Sacrament. I know He wants me to obey canon law and my religious rule/but I may not know whe!her He really desires that I make~ tfii.s or that ex-cepaon to them. What ought I to do in these cases? I shbuld use my reason, follow the principles~of.sound ~asceticai theolggy, and exercise the virtue of supernatural prudence. God undoubtedly wiils that I do these latter, but the fact re-mains that once I have made my decision there may or may~ not be a material confOrmity between my will and His. Such,' however, is quite a Satisfactory situation pro-vided that what I do is good and is ordered to Him. In other words, material .conformity may' be lacking, but formal conformity may not. , ~pp!ication to Religious Obediencei: Can we, then, say that a religious Superior manifests tile will of God when he gives' a directive to his subjects? Surely, if the superior merely reiterates a precept of the natural or divine laws, he is indicating the divine will, but he is hardly manifesting it. ,That will is usually al-ready manifested to the subject, 'remotely by human tea, son or supernatural revelation, and proximately by in-struction he has received. As regards other matters (and they are commonly practical on~s) the superior cannot be said tO manifest the divine intention for the obvious rea-son that he does not know what the divine intention' is. If Father Superior tells Father Jones to suspend convert instruction classes during the summer, he is not neces, sarily manifesting God's will to Father Jones. Short of a private revelation Father Superior cannot know with certitude whether God really desires that suspension or not. All he can °do is.Use his experience, reason, and supernatural prudence in coming to a,decision and then hope he is doing what God wants. When Mother Pro-vincial assigns Sister Alice to teaching rather than to ÷ ÷ ÷ The Superior's Precept VOLUME 20, 1961 437 ÷ ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS nursing, Mother is not necessarily declaring the divine mind, because God may actually know that Sister Alice is better fitted to be a'nurse. I would say, then, that, simply speakin.g, a religious superior does not manifest God's will when he issues a command. In an improper sense, however, the superior may be said to manifest God's willAn his precept insofar as God wishes the subject to carry~ out what His representative has commanded. While it is true-that the fulfillment of this command is willed by God, yet the command itself does not properly manifest'anything but the superior's intention. I think it would be re.ore correct to say that by his precept a superior gives his subject the opportunity to do God's will, that is, to obey. It would seem wise, therefore, not to use this.expr~ession in an improper sense because it is misleading and confusi.ng. There-is no mani-festation of what we may call the content of God's will. By his obedience, then,, a religious conforms his will formally to the divine will when he orders his obedience to the divine glory through the virtue of charity. There is, secondly, a material conformity insofar as God wills this precept to, be carried out. There may or may not be, thirdly, a material conformity as regards the content of the precept. The reader will notice that our whole position on the superior's inability to manifest with certitude the con-tent of the ~livine will rests on his ignorance of that will. Hgw can~we establish that ignorance? Really, it needs no establishing because it is obvious on a moment's" reflec-tion. St. Thomas himself saw no difficulty about the matter. "Although we cai~not know a proper end, we can know the ultimate end from whom issues all the goodness found in proximate ends, so t.hat we may direct all we do to God, who made all things for Himself."z "The just on earth, whose will clings to the divine goodness, and yet do not so perfectly contemplate it (as the blessed do) that they clearly see the ordering ofoevery actiop to it, are conformed to the divine will as regards thos_e things whose character th~ey perceive . ,,s The Saint's last remark is most clear: "In particulars we do not know what God wills, and a~s regards.these we are not bound to conform our will to the divine will.''4 ~ St. Thomas readily admits our ignorance of the divine will in many details of human life, the proximate ends as he calls them. We need. only apply his thought to reli-gious obedience and _we have the basis on which our above explanation rests. But can a superior because of his sharing in the divine 1 Sententiae, d. 48, q. l, a. 3, ad 6; see also article 4. De veritate, q. 23, a. 8, c. Summa thkologiae, 1-2, q. 19, a. 10, ad I. ruling authority somehow claim to set forth what we have called the content of the divine will? I think not. No man, be he superior, equal, or inferior, can rightly claim to manifest the mind of God unless God in some way re-veals His mind and ratifies, the claim. God's mind is God and~He is unsearchable. Hence, if a mere man may be said to make known God's mind or His will, that man must have some divine-assurance that such is the case. Does the religious superior have this assurance when he directs his subordinates in the observance of their vows and constitutions? The teaching Church, the Roman~ Pontiff and the bishops in union with him, certainly enjoy this assurance when they intend tobind in their authentic teaching (See Mt 16: 16"19; 18: 18; Lk 10: 16; Jn 20:21).~But does a re-ligious superior as such share in these divine commissions in any way that would permit him to claim that he, too, reflects the .divine will in 'his decisions? We ~may note, first of all, that on the one hand a religious superior, qua : talis, does not possess any special teaching authority in : the Church. On the other, Plus XII made it clear that the i ruling power of ~'eligious superiors is,;a participation in the divinely received ruling power of the Supreme Pontiff ~ himself. Speaking to.the superiors general of orders and .~ to other religious superiors, the Holy Father remarked -" thgt "you have been appointed tO a certain participation " in Our apostolic office," and then enlarged his thought: "Thus in this,.part of Our office, most beloved sons, delegating to you some of Our supreme jurisdiction, either directly by the code of canon law or by your insti-tutes and their rules approved by Us, and setting the foundations of your power which is called 'dominative,' We have assumed you as sharers in Our supreme office. Hence, it is that We are .very much concerned that you exercise your authority according to Our mind and that of the Church.'5 Does this participation in the apostolic governing power give a religious superior some capability to manifest God's will? To answer this last question we must distinguish be tween a mere ruling power and a teaching pbwer. Even the Church herself~, does not claim infallibility in as, pects of her universal laws unconnected with doctrine, and therefore, she does not claim in them to bg represent-ing what we have been terming the content of the divine mind. In setting twenty-four years as the minimum age for the reception of the priesthood even the Holy See would not'claim that it knows the content of the divine mind on that question. While God may conceivably prefer some other age limitation, yet it is His will that 6 Translated from L'osservatore romano, February 12, 1958, p. I. ÷ ÷ ÷ The Superior'$ Precepg VOLUME 20, 1961 439 ÷ Thomas Dubay, $.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 440 bishops obey the Church's actual determination of twenty-four years. If the hierarchy itself, divinely endowed with a right to govern men to eternal life, cannot at times be sure that its laws express exactly the divine preference, it can come as a surprise to no one that we deny any such certainly to a religious superior who merely participates in the Church's ruling authority on a delegated basis. When a provincial superior of religious men appoints a priest to the mission band or when a local superior of religious women directs a sister to wax the floors on Saturday morning, it is not objectively sure that the priest is best suited for mission work or that the sister ought not rather be doing background reading in her teaching field. Yet it remains true that both the priest and the sister may be sure that God wills them to give missions and wax the floors respectively. While the two superiors may not6 have manifested the content'of the divine will, both of them have issued directives that God, as a matter of fact, wants implemented by two religious who have received two specific precepts. Even though the religious superior does rule through a participation in a divinely-given governing authority, he has nonetheless received no divine assurance that his commands are always going to conform to the objective truth of things. The subject, then, sees God in his supe-rior not in the sense that the superior's word must be taken as God's own word, but only in the sense that the superior's command is .given by one who has God's authority to give it. The distinction is important. On the one hand it obviates the untenable conclusion that a re-ligious superior is immune from error in his decisions as superior, and on the other it preserves the necessary postulate that a superior's precept is given on no mere human basis. In view of what we have said one could hardly miss the conclusion that a religious superior ought to weigh carefully the directives he gives. Even though it would be unreasonable to expect him to be objectively right in each of his decisions, yet he should make every effort consonant with the gravity of the matter.to be objectively right. Because he rules with a divinely authorized delega-tion, he should take care that his directives be as closely in accord with the divine intentions as possible. Reli-gious government by whim, directives issued by worldly prudence, commands based on favoritism, prejudice, or misinformation are wholly unbecoming in men and women who rule in such wise that their precepts some-e Our use of the word "may" indicates naturally enough that the two superiors may, as a matter of fact, be indicating the content of the divine will. "May not" suggests also "may." how flow from a divine authorizati+n. Traits of the good superior, then, most assuredly include supernatural pru-dence, a personal selflessness, and a willingness to take and follow counsel. We must note correlatively~that what we have said in this article does not absolve a subject from a perfect obedience to his superior. The fact that God may not "agree" that the decision contained in a particular com-mand is the wisest of all choices does not mean that the subject does well in refusing an obedience of execution, will, and intellect (the last, insofar as it is possible). In other words, our discussion is meant to clarify, not to damage the perfection of our obedience. ÷ ÷ ÷ The Superior's Precept VOLUME 20, 1961 44! R. F. SMITH, S.J. Survey of Roman Documents ÷ ÷ R. F. Smith, S.], REVIEW FOR REI.IGIOUS In this article those documents will be summarized wliich appeared in Acta Apostolicae Sedis during June and July, 1961. All page references in the article will be to the 1961 Acta (v. 53). A New Encyclical On May 15, 1961 (pp. 401-64), Pope John XXIII is-sued a new encyclical, Mater et Magistra (Mother and Teacher), to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical on social matters, Rerum Novarum. In the introduction to his encyclical, the Pope observed that just as Christ, though primarily interested in the spiritual welfare of men, was also concerned with their material welfare, so also the Church takes care of the spiritual good of men without neglecting their ma-terial, economic, and cultural needs. Passing to the first of the four parts into which the encyclical is divided, His Holiness sketched the evils of the economic and social situation of the nineteenth cen-tury, evils which occasioned Rerum Novarum. The Holy Father then listed the chief principles of Catholic social doctrine as laid down by Leo XIII and as afterwards en-larged and amplified by Pius XI and Pius XII. In the second part of Mater et Magistra, the Vicar of Christ took up and developed certain points of the teach-ing found in Leo XIII's document. While the economic order/ he pointed out, is the. creation of the personal initiative of private citizens, still the State must see to it that economic development benefits all the citizens. This, however, must be done in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity enunciated by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno, a principle which protects the personal initiative of individual persons. In this connection the Pontiff con-sidered the matter of modern economic and social plan-ning which involves public authorities in matters as crucial as the care of health or the controlling of pro-fessional careers: Such planning, he remarked, brings many advantages and satisfies many personal rights;, how-ever, it also makes juridical control of hurfian relations more detailed and creates an atmosphere which makes initiative and responsibility difficult. Hence, such plan-ning should be realized in such a way as to draw from it all its advantages and to remove or restrain its disadvan-tages. ¯ .," Pope John then turned to consider the question of "the remuneration to be given to workers. ~AI1 workers, he af-firmed, should be given a wage that:allows them to live a truly human, life and to face with dignity their family responsibilities. Other factors;~.however; must alsb be considered: the worker's effective contribution to produc-tion, the economic state of the enterprise, ~he require-ments of the common good,both of the country and of the entire world~ " The economic'wealth of a people,., the Pontiff went on to say, must not be judged merely.by, its total aggregate wealth, bht also by its efficacious distributidn~throughout the entire populace. One of the most desirable ways of achieving this distribution~ is to permit th~ w6~kers to participate in the ownership of the enterprise. One last necessity for a just economic system was,underscored by the P6pe'when he obseiwe6that~if the structure of an economic system is suEh~that it compromises human dig-nity by systeinatically removing a" sense of-responsibility and of initiative in the 'worker, then .the system is un-just, even though through it riches are accumulated and distributed according to the rules of justice and equity. Hence the continuing importance today of artisan and co-operative enterprises. And in large enterprises, workers should have an active part, the enterprise becoming a real community with relations between employer and employee marked by mutual appreciation, understand-ing, and co-operation and by a mutual,grasp, of,:th~ en-terprise not,merely as a source of income but,,as the ful-fillment of a duty and°the rendering of a service.:~Workers, he.said, should not be reduced to being merely execu'tors of work, entirely passive in regard to decisions that regu-late their activity. Here the Pope stressed the desirability of associations of workers and the need that the influence of workers'should be extended beyond the limits of~their individual productive units. The Holy Father turned next to the matter of. private property, observing that the modern growth of the dis-~- tinction between the ownership of capital and the man: agement of the larger economic entities, the increase of social insurance and security, and the greater confidence in income and rights from, labor,rather'than from capital ÷ ÷ ÷ Roman, Documen~ VOLUME ;'0, ÷ ÷ ÷ R. F. Smith, $.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 444 do not diminish the natural right of private ownership. This right, he said, is fouflded on the priority of individ-ual human beings as compared with society,,is necessary for free and personal initiative in the economic field, and prevents the stifling of freedom. Not only must the right to private property be recognized; equally neces-sary is the recognition of the natural right of its effective distribution among all social classes; added to this must be the acknowledgement that a social function is intrinsi-call~ linked with the right, of private property, for the goods of the earth have been destined by God for the worthy support of. all human beings. In the third part of the encyclical, Pope John took up a consideration of new socio-economic problems that face the modern world. First among these is the extensive exo-dus of farm populations to urban centers. While many reasons lie behind this exodus, the Pope pointed out that among these reasons is the fact that the farm sector lags behind other sectors, in productivity of labor and in living standards. Hence public authorities should see that essential services (education, roads, utilities, and so forth) in the country are suitably developed. Improved produc-tion methods and selective agriculture should be encour-aged. In the assessment of taxes, it should be remembered that in ,farming returns come slowly and are exposed to greater risks; the same considerations should lead to a special credit policy for farmers. Social security and in-surance systems should not give farmers allowances sub-stantially lower than those granted to industrial and other' sectors; there should be an effective system to protect farm prices. At the same time, rural workers should keep in mind the rights and interests of other types of workers as well as those of the common good. They should con-ceive their work both as a vocation and as a mission, as a call ~from God and as a contribution to human civili-zation, The Holy Father next took up the matter of relations between developed and underdeveloped countries. Hu-man solidarity as. well as the doctrine of the Mystical Body forbids that political communities with abundant resources remain indifferent tO the misery and hunger of underdeveloped-areas. Countries with an excess of consumer goods, especially farm products,, should give emergency, aid to the indigent and needy of other coun-tries. This, however, should be ,accompanied by scientific, technical, and financial help to remove the causes of *underde~elopment. In the execution of this aid, social progress should grow simultaneously With economic progress, the native characteristics of the country should be respected, and political interestedness--another name [or colonialism--should be avoided. In giving such aid, it should always be remembered that technology, economic development, and material well-being are and must re-main secondary to spii~itual values. At this point the Pontiff showed how the entrance of the Church into a country has always restilted in social and econbfiaic better-ment. With regard to the problem of the increase in popula-tion and the sufficiency of mea'ns of sustenance, the Vicar of Chi'ist remarked that in a view of the world as a whole there does°not seem tobe at least for the moment and the near future a great difficulty. In any.case ~here is no need for solutions such as birth control which offend the moral order established by God. Even in individual countries and regions where there is an actual dispib'- portion between population arid means of sustenance, such means can not be used. The true solution is to be found only in economic development and in social prog-ress brought about in a moral atmosphere. "A provident God," he stated, "grants sufficient means to the human race to solve in dignified fashion even .the many and del-icate problems attendant upon the transmission of life." The last of the problems to be considered by the Pope was that of world co-operation. All problems of any importance, he began, present today supranational and often world dimensions. Hence the different political -communities can not solve such problems on their own and by themselves; accordingly there is a need for mutual °understanding; such understanding, however, is pre-vented today because of the mistrust and fear among nations. This mistrust exists because some political leaders do not recognize the existence of a moral order that is based or/ God. And without God, c6ncluded the Pontiff, science and technology are powerless to con-struct a civilization. In the fourth and last part of the encyclical, the Pope insisted that whatever technical and economic progress there may be, there will be neither justice nor peace in the world until men return to a sense of their dignity as creatures and sons-of God. This is why the Church is a herald of a way of life that is ever modern. From .her doctrine of the sacred dignity of the individual, she has drawn a social teaching that takes into consideration the realities of human nature, the various dimensions of the temporal order, and the characteristics of contem-porary society. This social teaching, he said, is an integral part of the Christian conception of li~[e and should be known, spread, and put into observance by all Catholics. The executibn of this doctrine will be the work especially of the laity whom, in the concluding sections of the en-cyclical, the Pontiff urges to remain close to. the doctrine of Christ and His Church. ÷ 4- 4- Roman Documents VOLUME 20, 1961 445 R. F. Smith~ S,]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOU, S 446 Miscellaneous° Documents O~a July 22, 1960 (pp. 3~1-43)~ Pope John" issued an apostoli~ constitution dstablishing an exarchate foi: Ukranians of the Byzantine Ri~e living in .France. The see of the exarch will be in Pari~ and~he will be a ~uffr~igan of the archbishop of Paris; the power of the exarch will be exercised cumulatively with that of the loc'al ordinaries of France. On the sameday (pp. 343-44) a similar exarch-ate was estabhshed for those of the Armeman Rxte hwng in France. On April 23, 1961 (pp. 314-18), Hi~ Holines~ spoke to members of various Oriental rites, exl~ressing his admiration for the grandeu~ of Eastern Christianity and the hope that it will find'in the Pope "the sweetness of David and the wisdom of Solomon." On Pentecost, May 21, 1961 (pp. 358-62), His Holiness delivered an al-locution after he had consecrated fourteen mi.ssionary bishops from Africa, America, and Asia. He told his listeners tha t the. riew bishops w.ere the flowers of the new churches of Africa and Asia,~urged the new bishops to study the cultures and histories of their peoples and to work and firay that these be~b'enefited by the redemotion, and re'~all'ed the centenary of the dea'th of Bish~)p de Mazenod, founder of the Oblates 9f Mar~ Immaculate, one o~ the gre.at nanies in the modern renaissance of mission.activity. On November 24, 1960 (pp. 346-'50), the Holy Father'issued an apostolic c6nstitution establishing the hi.erarchy in Vietnam- with a division into three ecclesiastical provinces. On May 27, 1961 (p. 388.),. the Sacred .Cong~egation'bf Rites issued a declaration according to _which a ferial of the fourth class i~ never to be commemorated in a festive or votive Mass,. even though it be a conventual,, one. Accordingly~the f611owing numbers of the new code of rubrics are to ~be modified to read: N.-26. All ferials not mentioned in Nos. 23-25 are ferials of the fourth class; these ar~never commemorated. N.-289_. [At the beginning] On all'ferials of the fourth clasS . there may be said without a commemoration of the ferial. N. 299. [Second part] On bther ferials the Mass of the pre-cedin~ Sunday is said unless the rubrics provide otherwise. On May q l, 1961, the Feast of the Ascension (pp. 289- 95), Pope John XXIII solemnly canonized Blessed Mary Bertilla Boscardin'(1888-1922), virgin, of the School Sisters of St. Dorothy, Daughters of the Sacred Hearts. Her feast day is to be kept on October-22. In the hom.ily after the canonization, the Holy Father pointed out that the new saint is a l~sson to the~great and wise of this world, for she achieved greatness through humility and ,heroism through hidden sacrifice. He also stated that her sanctity was founded on her family where she learned the secret of constancy, on her catechism which taught her true wisdom, and on her religious vocation which allowed her to give herself entirely to God and to her neighbor. On April 26, 1961 (pp. 381-85), the Sacred Congregation of Rites affirmed the heroic virtue ol~ the venerable Servant of God, Leonard Murialdo (1828-1900), professed priest and founder of the Pious Society of St. Joseph. On'the same day (pp. 385-88), the congregation also affirmed the heroic virtue o1: the venerable Servant of God, Gertrude Comensoli (1847-1903), ~oundress of the Sacramentine Sisters. ~ On April 21, 1961 (pp. 308-14), the Holy Father ad-dressed the First National Italian Congress for Ecclesiasti-cal Vocations. He laid great stress on the influence of priests on vocations, the importance of seminaries for the developing of the human and Christian virtues of future priests, and the need to labor with discretion and zeal for the increase of vocations. On M~rch 25, 1,961 (pp. 371-80), the Sacred Congregation of Religious issued an instruction and statutes to govern extern sisters of monasteries of nun

Issue 16.5 of the Review for Religious, 1957. ; A. M. D. G. Review for Religious SEPTEMBER 15, 1957 God's Living Sermon . Bonaventure Balsam Dismissal in Lay Institutes . Jo,eph g. ~,allen Our Supernatural Organism . Daniel J. M. Callahan Book Reviews Questions and Answers Roman Documents VOLUME 16 NUMBER 5 RI::VII:::W FOR RI:LIGIOU.S VOLUME 16 SEPTEMBER, 1957 NUMBER, 5 CONTENTS GOD'S LIVING SERMON AND MYSTERY-- Bonaventure Balsam, O.P . 257 DISMISSAL OF RELIGIOUS IN LAY INSTITUTES-- Joseph F. Gallen, S.J . 265 SOME BOOKS RECEIVED . 292 OUR SUPERNATURAL ORGANISMu Daniel J. M. Callahan, S.J . 293 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . i99 SURVEY OF ROMAN DOCUMENTS--R. F. Smith, S.J . 300 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: 29. Professed of Temporary Vows and Return to Motherhouse for Perpetual Profession . " . '.309 30. Adaptation and Renovation and New Laws on Poverty . 310 31. Last Gospel According to the Simplified Rubrics .312 32. Masses. Permitted on the Saturday of Our Lady . 312 33. Personal Gifts and Poverty . 312 BOOK REVIEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS: Editor: Bernard A. Hausmann, S.J. West Baden College West Baden Springs, Indiana . 313 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, September, 1957. Vol. 16, No. 5. Published bi-monthly by The Queen's World, 3115 South Grand Blvd., St. Louis 18, Mo. Edited by the Jesuit Fathers of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approval. Second class mail privilege authorized at St. Louis, Mo. Editorial Board: Augustine G. Ellard, S.J.; Gerald Kelly, S.J., Henry Willmering, S.J. Literary Editor: Robert F. Weiss, S.J. Copyright, 1957, by The Queen's Work. Subscription price in U.S.A. and Canada: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U.S.A. Please send all renewals and new subscriptions to: Review for Religious, 3115 South Grand Boulevard. St. Louis 18, Missouri. God's Living Sermon and Myst:ery Bonavent:ure Balsam, O.P. WE CANNOT LOVE, reverence, and respect what we do not know: A religious priest, brother, or sister will never love and appreciate his life and vocation as much as it is lovable unless he first sees and tastes the indescribable nobility of that vocation. We begin to evaluate a thing rightly only when we begin to see it, to understand it, rightly. Misguided love follows on misguided and false knowledge, detestation often follows on the footsteps of ignorance. To a very great extent, the intensity' and scope of our love will depend on the genuineness and grasp of our knowledge. All religious preach God. They do so, not so much by word of mouth as by their whole life. Their preaching--and this is the judgment of the great minds of the Church- since it is by action, can make a far deeper and more lasting im-pression on the world than any or all the sermons preached in Notre Dame Cathedral. For religious are their own sermon and their own cathedral. In preparing and preaching .their sermon to the world, they must study, not so much the spoken word, as the far more powerful and vocal deed. If .we could summarize in a few words the influence which it is the role of a religious to have on the world about him, it is this: it is his vocation in life to teach the whole world this v~ery important lesson, "We have here no lasting city, but we look for 6ne which is to come." By their life, religious must preach that lesson to the world. It is the holy and privileged task of every religious to make the world unworldly, to teach the world to be divine, and to lift up the mind and heart of the world to God in one great offertory. The vocation of a religious is brought home to him every day in the Preface of 257 BONAVENTURE BALSAM. Review for Religious the Mass; he is to lift up the heart of the world to God in love, "Sursum Corda.'" And where a religious does not find love, he must see to.it that God puts love there. As St. John of the Cross says: "~ 'here there is no love, you must put love." To preach that sermon with its double element of detachment from the world and clinging to God is the vocation, par rxcellence, of every religious brother and sister. In a special way, and by special right, religious can apply to themselves the words of the same St. John: "The life of every religious sho~,ld be a complete doctrinal sermon." The life of every religious is one continuous paradox, a divine anomaly. Religious must love the whole world and everyone in it; yet they must ceaselessly try to keep it dis-satisfied with itself, discontented. Their life is one of opposi. tion to the spirit of the world and its maxims, one of constant disagreement and protest. That is a most unenviable task; and, like all opposition and protest, it brings with it much enmity and misunderstanding. That is why the-world often and in many ways misunderstands religious and scorns them. That is why, too, religious sometimes misunderstand them-selves and their role in the salvation of the world. In walk-ing down the street, every step a religious takes is a sort of step of protest, of admonition. He protests to the world and warns it that the glitter and tinsel meeting the eyes on all sides are all too ephemeral and passing and petty and that the only One worth living for and loving with every fibre of one's being is God. The way that they teach this to the world which they live in, but away from, is a most efficacious one. Religious preach to the world by the daily living of their vows which make their life unearthly because heavenly. By their vow of poverty religious lecture on the unending wonders of divine Providence. They lecture on that subject though they may never actually utter a word about it; they do not have to, for they live their subject. By the mere fact that they have freely and gladly relinquished all claim and aspira- 258 September, 1957 GOD'S LIVING SERMON tion to this world's goods, religious proclaim to the world that they trust in God's divine providence with an unshakeable confidence and that "possessing nothing, they have all things." For they have learned to "cast your care upon the Lord, who cares for you." Religious daily experience the truth of St. Paul's words: "As needy though enriching many; as having nothing and possessing all things." By that childlike confi-dence in divine Providence, a confidence solidified andmade a very part of their life and reridered inamissible, as it were, by their vow of poverty, religious take at face value the loving promise of our Lord that, if God is ever careful to feed the birds of the air and clothe the grass of the fields, will He not take infinitely greater care of a religious who is of much more value than they and the rest of the material universe combined? Moreover, by their vow of poverty religious te.ach a materialistic world an important lesson in divine economics, for they teach the world a proper sense of values, a divinely wise and exact evaluation of all creation. Religious appraise things for what they are--and are not--and proper ap-praisal of a thing is indispensable for its true appreciation and enjoyment. One can never love a thing rightly until one knows its true value; j~ust as one can never know its worth unless one knows the value God places on it. All of which means that we can never love a creature rightly except in and through God Who makes it worth whatever it is. In teaching mankind all this by ~he daily living of their vow of poverty, religious are teaching a most wise lesson. In so doing, they themselves become more wise and share their wisdom with others. For it belongs to the wise man to order and evaluate things rightly. By their vow of chastity, religious teach the world another saving lesson; they teach a selfish and unsacrificing world the value of sacrifice. Religious teach the world the fruitfulness of unfruitfulness. They teach the world that in order to win more of the children of God they have given them up. Relig- 259 BONAVENT~JRE BALSAM Review for Religious ious teach a grasping world that, in order to gain what is really worthwhile, one must lose what is really not worthwhile. They teach the world that oi~ten the only way to conquer is to surrender and that everything that one gives up for God he gains back again in God, and "pressed down, in good measure, and flowing over." And God besides. Religious give up a lesser privilege t~or a .greater one; they t~orego the privilege of bringing children into the world because to that privilege they pret~er the greater privilegi~ of bringing God into the world. So, in actuality, the chaste brotherhood or sisterhood of a religious is far more fruitful and noble than wedded t:ather-hood, or motherhood. There is something more that religious can do t~or the world and for God's children which often goes unappreciated even by themselves. Religious should realize the element of personal reparation and vicarious atonement inherent in their vow of chastity./ Vices are not only expelled, but are most fittingly atoned for, by. their opposite virtues. Religious are God's "chosen pedple." They stay the avenging hand of God by the purity of their lives. God, in looking upon the un-earthly purity of His religious, is moved to forgive the morass of impurity in which a great part of mankind is floundering and to give it grace to repent and change its evil ways. Here, again, the life of religious is a living protest to a "wicked and adulterous generation." The protest they lodge against the world is the silent protest ot~ their unassuming though uncon-cealable modesty and purity which, "like a city seated on a mountain top, cannot be hid." By their entire and absolute chastity, religious work to make this carnal world into a holy and pure generation. They must offer up their chastify, which makes them akin to the angels, as a protest to the world and and as a propitiatory sacrifice for its unspeakable impurities. Only the pure o~ heart will ever see God,. and they alone will be able to show God to others. God makes use o~ the conse-crated purity ot~ a religious to sterilize the world ot~ its in~ection 260 September, 1957 GOD'S LIVING. SERMON of impurity. Thus the~ freely chosen childlessness of religious is, .indeed, most fertile of good--their holy barrenness begets countless children of God. By their vow of obedience, religious proclaim to the world that the root of all sin lies in inordinate self-love and inordinate self-will. And they teach the world the remedy fo~ this ill. By their obedience, religious tell the world that the only way to escape out of the maddening labyrinth "of self and selfish-ness is to take one's will in both hands and exchange it for the #111 of God by riveting it to His most Sacred' Heart. The o~nly way to be truly free is.to serve m to serve God without stint. In this exchange of wills one's own narrowness and smallness are exchanged for the infinite generosity of God. The stagnate pool of selfishness ,is displaced by7 the restless sea of love which is God's holy will. And since the will of God is the cause of all good; since, too, religious have exchanged their will for His by vow, then they too will bring into the world and into the lives of men unlimited good. Religiods, by the life they lead, will diffuse through the universe some of the infinite goodness of God. In this vowed exchange of wills with God, religious be-come more and more sinless. For the more God's will dis- 'places theirs and becomes the motive force of their life and actions, the more religious approa.ch the state of impeccability --the impeccability of God's holy will. Hence, the more and longer God's. will works in them, the less will they fall into daily sins and faults, and the more they will do, and diffuse, good about them. The world seeing this transformation in religious, their own fellowmen, will first wonder at them, then admire them, and finally imitate them. And when the world imitates them, religious thus renew the face of the earth. They and the life they live. Besides being a living sermon on G~d, every religious is a living mystery also. Religious must have all the elements 261 BONAVENTURE BALSAM Review for Religious about them of a true mystery of faith. They must be thor-oughly supernatural. They must think, will, and act always on a supernatural plane. They must survey the whole of their own life and every event that befalls them from that super-natural ~vantage point, from the loft~; peaks of faith. Their viewpoint, their perspective of everything will always and every-where be determined by faith. Nothing will be purposeless; everything will be judged according to a divine pattern. All their assignments, and the minutest details and circumstances surrounding those assignments, must be looked upon and judged with the eyes of faith. The hardships and crosses of a par- ' ticular assignment, the trials and difficulties attached to an act of obedience, the misunderstandings and false accusations that may dog their steps, all these must be seen in their supernatural light. They must be seen as~having a definite .place in God's plan for their sanctification and salvation. Never will religious live on the merely natural level mthe level of those who have no faith. Rather, they must, under all circumstances, "live in such a way that their life would not make sense if God did not exist." God and their great faith in God must determine every decision religious make, must be the heart in every one of their motives for acting. By profession, and even more by religious consecration, religious belong to God and are familiar with God's ways. But religious are a living mystery for more reasons than that. As in the case of every' mystery, their life is one of im-penetrable paradox. Religious are in the very midst of the wo~ld, though they can never claim any of it as their own. By profession, they are consecrated down to their fingertips. Though they are vowed to seek after that peace which only God can give, still they are ever stirring up discontent and dissatisfaction. They are ever fomenting a rebellion against the ways of the world. A religious is an aposde of elevation; his whole life tends to. raise the general worth and standards of. mankind by the 262 September, 1957 GOD'S LIVING SERMON unearthliness and loftiness of his own life. He is the divine yeast in the rather inert and formless mass'of humanity without God. He is what the priest has been called, "the minister of restlessness." In looking upon his life, the world is wounded with a sort of tormenting longing for the divine. A religious may be rightly called "an apostle of the abso-lute." He is ever on a relentless search, a quest, not for that which is merely good, but for that which is God, for the Per-fect. His very religious consecration makes him ever a pilgrim, ever a foreigner to this wor/d, and en route to see the face of God. Whatever he finds, good, whether in himself or in others, he must ever try to make better. He is gripped by a continu-ous and divine unrest, which, oddly enough, is the great source of the profound peace which surrounds his life. That unrest takes the form of a hunger to be more united to God, though he knows full well that divine union must entail the painful surrendering of deep-seated attachments. It entails turning a deaf ear to the unending call of the flesh to pla~ riot in the warm fields of its pleasures; it entails purging out of one's spiritual organism the multiplicity of sins which plague it and keep it undeveloped, ~tunted, and impede its more complete union with God. All this means pain, struggle, denial, sacri-fice, and death. But the religious is equally aware that in the midst of all this struggle to embrace his God and never to let Him go there is a joy that makes all this tremendous effort and strife insignificant, short-lived, accountable as nothing at all. He knows that the more he peels away the outer bark of bitter self, the more he sees and tastes of the fruit of God with-in. He knows that the sufferinss of these times are like seasoning, sharp and bitter, but necessary to taste one's God, indeed to consume Him in love. Like ev.ery mystery, the religious .must remain beyond. the ken and grasp of the generality of mankind. He will be misunderstood, his actions misconstrued. So lofty and extra-ordinary is his life that those who see only with a fleshly eye 263 BONAVENTURE BALSAM will say that it is impossible or a huge deception. He will be considered a cowardly fugitive from the world, from reality; 'whereas, in truth, he pursues thd world in its flight from God, takes it in his arms as a father does a recalcitrant child, and offers it up to God in love. Instead of being a dreamer, as he is accused of being, he is the world's greatest realist, for he knows and appreciates God, the cause of all reality, and claims Him as his very own possession and gift to the world. Since he is a sort of special creation of God, the religious must remain unknown; he must n~ver become profane. When his life becomes common, banal, vulgar, a byword among the people, he is no longer a living and sacred mystery; he is now common knowledge. He has then lost that necessary quality of' super-naturalness. He must ever remain like a beautiful tree with its roots hidden in the earth and its head and heart in the heavens. Every religious is a living mystery. Like every divine mystery, he must be accessible to all those who ai, e seeking God. He and his life must ever be a source of awe for the world. Being a pilgrim and an apostle of the absolute, of perfection, he must keep the world dissatisfied, discontented with its smug and mediocre ways. He must be .the tangible and living expres-sion of the life of God and the degree in which it can be shared by grace. His life must be one of elevation, of an offertory. Sworn to pursue perfection, he must make himself and the world one grand host of love offered up to God in adoration, thanksgiving, petition, and atonement. From ttie rising of the sun even to the going down thereof, the religious must be a liv!ng mystery and sermon of God. 264 Dismissal ot: Religious in Lay Insfit:u es Lloseph g. Gallen, S.,J. 1. Definition. Dismissal is the compulsory departure from a religious institute during the time of the vows of the religious. Any religious, whether of solemn or simple vows, perpetual or temporary, may be dismissed. Dismissal is effected by the de-cree of the competent superior and by law, ipso facto, or automatically because of the commission of any of the crimes specified in canon 646. The present article is confined to the dismissal of religious in lay institutes. However, the norms are the same in other institutes for the dismissal of a professed of temporary vows and also for men of perpetual vows in a clerical non-exempt institute. The canonical prescriptions for the dis-missal of a clerical or lay religious man of perpetual vows in a clerical and exempt institute are likewise the same as in a lay institute of men except that in the former the crimes, admoni-tions, and incorrigibility must be proved in a judicial process. The provisional return to secular life is essentially the same in a clerical exempt institute (cc. 653; 668). The laws of the code and of the particular constitutions must be accurately' and sincerely observed in a dismissal. They were enacted to protect the rights of both the institute and the individual religious. It is very likely that an unusual number of highly unsatisfactory religious justifies a complaint against facility of admission and retention during the probationary periods rather than against the difficulty of dismissal. It is evident, also that the age of the religious is to be considered before deciding on the formalities of a dismissal, even though this is not mentioned in the code. Older religious should be dismissed only for most serious reasons. Their adjustment to secular life, especially in the case of a religious woman, is obvi-ousl'y more difficult. A religious whose conduct merits serious 265 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious thoughts of dismissal should practically always be first encour-aged to ask for an indult of secularization. Those who are found certainly unsuitable at any time during temporary pro-fession are to be counseled to ask foi: an indult of secularization rather than to wait until the voluntary departure or exclusion at the expiration of temporary vows. I. Competent Authority for Dismissal by Decree and for Final Adjudication of Provisional Sending Back to Secular Life . 2. In pontifical congregations. (a) For professed men and women of temporary vows (c. 647, § 1). The competent authority is the superior general with the deliberative and secret vote of his council. In the few constitutions where his part in any dismissal is mentioned, it is prescribed that the pro-vincial should consult his council before proposing a dismissal to the superior general. The provincial will usually, in fact, initiate a dismissal by proposing it to the superior general, Since the matter is one of greater importance, in prudence he should at lea~t ordinarily consult his council before doing so. (b) For professed of perpetual vows. 1° In congregations of men (c. 650, § 2, 2°). The superior general with the consent of his council is competent to decree the dismissal, but his decree has no effect until it is confirmed by the Sacred Congregation of Religious. 2° In congregations of women (c. 652, § 3). The Sac/ed Congregation of Religious alone is competent to decree the dismissal. 32 For professed of temporary or perpetual vows in diocesan congregations of men or women (cc. 647, § 1; 650, § 2, 1°; 652, § 1). The competent authority in all cases of men or women is the ordinary of the diocese where the house to which the religious is attached is located. The ordinary of the diocese of the generalate is competent only for religious attached to houses' in his diocese. In virtue of canon 647, § 1, the local ordinary may certainly initiate the dismissal of a professed of temporary vows. He probably possesses the same .right with regard to professed men or women of perpetual vows.' If the 266 September, 1957 DISMISSAL IN LAY INSTITUTES ordinary initiates the dismissal, he is obliged to inform the superior general before dismissing the religious. He is also obliged to give consideration to the reasons the superior gen-eral proposes against the dismissal and is forbidden to dismiss a religious, if this superior ha~ just reasons against it. If he does so, the superior general has the right of recurring to the Sacred Congregation of Religious. 4. Societies living in common without~ public vows (c. 681). The norms of dismissal for pontifical and diocesan religious congregations ~pply also to these pontifical and diocesan socie-ties, i. e., the norms for the professed of temporary vows apply to members whose bond is temporary, those for religious of perpetual vows to members whose bond in such a society is per-petual. 5. In monasteries of nuns. (a) For professed of temporary vows .(c. 647, § 1). If the monastery is not subject to regu-lars, the competent authority is the local ordinary of the mon-astery. If the monastery is subject to regulars: two opinions are probable, i. e., the competent authority is either only the regular superior or, the more probable opinion, the regular superior and the local ordinary acting conjointly. (b) For professed of perpetual vows (c. 652, § 2). The competent authority is the Sacred Congregation of Religious, but all the documents and acks of the case are to be transmitted to the congregation by the local ordinary of the monastery with his own vote and that of .the regular superior, if the mon-astery is subject to regulars. 6. Obligation of competent authorities. The competent au-thorities, as well as the superior and his council who propose a dismissal to such authority, have a grave obligation in con-science to observe the norms for dismissal imposed by canon law (cf. c. 647, § 2). ~ Tabera, Corntnent,~rium Pro Reli]io$i$, 13-1932-124-25; 14-1933-35; Schaet:er, De Religiosis, n. 1602; Quinn, Relation of t/~e Local Ordinary to Religious o/ Diocesan/l$/~ro¢,al, 103-105. 267 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious . II. Dismissal by Decree of a Professed of Temporary Vows (cc. 647-48) 7. Sufficient" reasons for dismissal. (a) ' General principles (c. 647, § 2, 1°.3°). The authority dismissing a religious of tem-porary vows must have. moral certainty, i. e., a judg,ment that excludes a founded doubt, of the existence and sufficiency of the reasons. The reasons must be external to the extent that they are known by others. They mu~t also be ~sekious'or grave, which does not imply serious moral culp~ibilit~ or any culpa-bility at all. The general principies on the sufficiency 0f the reasons are that it is to the good of the institute not to retain the subject; the institute will suffer a notable harm or serious incon;cenience in retaining him; there is no hope that ~he reli-gious will be able to conform his life in a creditable or praise-worthy manner to the demands of .the constitutions; "lie lacks the general aptitude for the religious life or the special aptitude requisite for the spiritual life or works of. the particular insti-tute; and any reason is sufficient that is of the same or greater import than that stated by way of example in canon 647, § 2, 2°, i. e., a defect of religious spirit that 'is a cause of scandal to others. It is probable, as under exclusion from a further profession,~ that after more than six prescribed years in tem-porary vows a religious may be dismissed or~ly for reasons that are sufficient to dismiss a professed of perpetual vows. (b) Particular sufficient reasons (c. 647, § 2, 2°). A sufficient reason on the part of the institute is the lack of aptitude stated in the preceding paragraph. Sufficient-reasons on the part of the religious himself can be reduced to intelledtual defects, which is included under aptitude above, to health, which will be explained below, and to moral defects. Moral defects constitute" tl~e principal motive for dismissal. The code mentions only one sufficient cause of dismissal by way of ex-ample, and this is a habitual moral defect, i. e., a defect of 2Cf./IEwsw FOg RELXG~OL~S, July, 1957, 216-18. 268 September, 1957 DISMISSAL IN LAY ]INSTITUTES religious spirit that is a cause of scandal to others. This defect can be ascertained from the conduct and motives of the religious and from the effect of his conduct on others. Such a religious seems to lack all supernatural motives, and' acts almost constantly from those that are purely natural. He is de~oid of love, attachment, and devotion to the religious life and its duties. His transgressions arise from habitual negligence, sloth, weariness, perversity, and ill will, not from accidental weakness and frailty. He ,manifests little care or effort for per-sonal sanctification. In his conduct he "habitually violates the constitutions, rules, customs, and usages of the.institute, even if not in relatively serious matters. He obeys superiors with diffi-culty in matters that are not strictly commanded. He habitually omits, performs carelessly, or places little value on religious exer-cises. In its effect on others, the conduct described above is already scandalous in a person consecrated to God. Such conduct and the fact that .the motives and state of his will externally manifest themselves decrease in others respect and 'devotion to the religious life and its duties and make observance of religious disci-pline by others more difficult. Often there, is added the direct insti-gation of others to violations of religious duties and discipline. Among the equivalent habitual moral defects are the follow-ing. 1° Obedience. Habitual, unwilling, and grudging obedience; .habitual murmuring against and criticism of superiors; habitual negligence in fulfilling duties assigned by superiors. 2° Poverty. Repeated violations of the vow and of common life, even if not in serious matters. 3° Anger. One who is habitually quarrelsome or has an" ungovernable temper that~ breaks out in frequent and serious fitsof anger and causes frequent disturb-ance of the peace of the community, loss of peace of soul, insults, and injuries to companions, .and dissensions in the community. 4° Charity. One who is addicted to faults of the tongue that annoy, disturb, or provoke others to quarrels, Or that consist of frequent calumnies, detractions, imprudenc~e in speech or violations of secrets. 5° Disturber of the peace. A 269 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious habitual disturber of the peace of the community who creates or fosters dissatisfaction, dissensions, factions, or provokes to quarrels. 8. Necessity of repeated admonition and salutary penance with-out effect (c. 647, § 2, 2°). Any habitual moral defect is a sufficient reason for dismissal only when a repeated admonition together with a salutary penance has produced no effect. The code demands only that the subject should have been admon-ished at least twice, orally or in writing, secretly or in a manner /hat can be proved, by a local or higher superior, to reform his conduct. Canon law does not require here that the admoni-tion be given in virtue of a mandate from a higher superior or that a threat of dismissal be. added to the admonition. The salutary penance to be added to each admonition i~ one suitable for effecting the reform of the religious and the reparation of the scandal" already given. It will consist of the penances in use in the particular institute, e. g., recitation of determined prayers, an act of humility, or a public acknowledgment or reprehension of defects. A sufficient period of time is to be allowed to pass "after the second admonition to permit the religious to reform his conduct. After this period, if he has ¯ nbt reformed his conduct to such an extent that it can no longer be considered a sufficient cause for dismissal, he may be dismissed. Both for the reform of the religious and proof in the eCent of dismissal and recourse, the more secure and prudent ¯ dgctrine is to be followed in practice, i. e., a threat of dismissal is to be added to each admonition and the admonition and penance are to be given in such a way that there will be proof that both were given and received. This can be accomplished b'y¯giving the admonition and penance before two witnesses or in writing. A copy of such a document is to be retained. by the institute. 9. A single act as a sufficient reason. A religious of temporary vows may be dismissed because of a very serious single act, 270 September, 1957 DISMISSAL IN LAY INSTITUTES e. g., a grave external s_in against chastity; formal contempt of the authority of superiors; violation of a formal precept .of obedience; an act that creates a danger of notable harm or infamy to the institute; serious scandal given once or twice in the community, or what is more serious, to seculars, when there are indications that the same thing will happen again.-~ A pro-fessed of temporary vows who becomes a fugitive from religion or does the same thing as an apostate from religion, even though he cannot technically be called an apostate because he is not in perpetual vows, may be dismissed because of either of these acts. :~ 10. Insul/icient reasons (c. 647, ~ 2, 2°). The statement of the religious that he never possessed or has lost a religious vocation or the mere agreement of the institute and the religious that he be dismissed are insufficient reasons. In either case, the religious, giving all the reasons that actually exist, may ask for an indult of secularization or may wait and depart at the expiration of temporary vows. Ill health is a sufficient reason for dismissal only if it was certainly fraudule.ntly concealed or dissimulated before the first profession of temporary' vows. Everything said under exclusion from a further profession because of ill health, lack of ability arising from ill health, ailments such as hysteria and neurasthenia, and insanity apply here also.~ 11. Procedure (c. 647, § 2, 3°). No special process is pre-scribed for attaining certainty of the existence and sufficiency of the reasons for dismissal nor for decreeing the dismissal. If it is d~cided to proceed to dismissal, the .necessary preliminary data should be written out first, i. e., the religious and family name of the subject, age, date of entrance into the postulancy and noviceship, date or dates of temporary profession, and the houses and employments to which the religious had been assigned. To this should be added a brief and accurate descrip-tion of the previous conduct of the religious. The formalities 3 Cf. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, May, 1957, 162-63. -1 Cf. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, July, 1957, 219-20. 271 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious of dismissal are practically always preceded by a protracted period o'f most unsatisfactory conduct. The decision on dis-missal is then to be studied and obviously with the greatest care. The matters to be decided are whether certain proof is had of the existence and sufficiency of the reasons, of the admonitions given privately and of those given in writing or before witnesses with a threat of dismissal, and of the lack of effect, of these admonitions. Proof of the existence of the reasons will ordinarily be from signed statements of local superiors and councilors, principals of schools, companions in religion, etc. Canon 647, ~ 2, 3°, prescribes that all the reasons for dismissal, not the proofs nor the names of the witnesses, be manifested to the religious orally or in writing before dismissal. The proposal of the reasons in writing is preferable for proof. The religious must be given full liberty and a su~cient amount of. time to reply to the charges. He is .to be counseled to reply in writing. If his replies are given orally, they are to be taken down immediate!y in writing and he is to be requested to sign them. If he refuses, this is to be noted in the document on which his replies are given. His replies are to be submitted fully to the authority competent for dismissal. Everything given above in this number should have been followed also by the superior general and his council in a diocesan congregation and the superioress and her council in a monastery of nuns before tl~e written petition for dismissal is forwarded to the competent authority. The vote of the council should be given in writing to this authority. In a monastery of nuns, this vote must be deliberative.~ In a diocesan .congregation, the superior general will present the petition for a dismissal to the local ordinary; but the constitutions will frequently require the con-sultive or deliberative vote of his council for such a petition. The local ordinary and the regular superior must have certainty ~Cf. Tabera, Commentarium Pro Religiosis, 12-1931-372-73; Larraona, ibid., 2-1921-364-65; Schaefer, 010. cir., n. 1584. 272 September', 1957 DISMISSAL IN LAY INSTITUTES of the existence and sufficiency of the reasons alleged in the representations of the superior. They accordingly have the right and duty of investigating the existence of the reasons, although this is usually proved in the proposal of the superior, and of weighing the seriousness of these reasons. 12. Dismissal. If the decision is for dismissal, a decree" of dismissal should be drawn up containing the date, name of the religious, the reasons for dismissai, and the statement that the religious is therewith informed of his right of suspensive recourse against the decree to the Sacred Congregation of Religious. The decree should either be read to the religious or he should be given a copy of it. Either the original-or a copy of the decree and of all the proofs and documents in the case is to be retained in the files of the institute. It would be well to give the religi-ous a written statement to the effect that he was l~gitimately dismissed from the institute and freed of all his vows and obligations. In the presence of two religious as witnesses, the dismissed religious is to be asked to sign the following or a similar docu-ment after it has beenread to him. "I realize that I am hereby informed that'I have the 'right of recurring to the Sacred Congregation of Religious against this decree of dismissal and that, if I make this recourse within ten days from this date, such a recourse will suspend the effect of this decree until offi-cial notification is received that the decree has been confirmed by the same Sacred Congregation." The two religious witnesses are also to sign as such. If the dismissed religious will riot sign, this refusal is to be noted on the document; and the two religious witnesses ard also to attest on the document to this refusal. This document also is to be retained by the institute. If the religious has already left the institute illicitly, th'e notification of the decree and of the right of suspensive recourse is to be sent to him by certified mail, which provides for a receipt, to the sender and a record of delivery at the offi~ce of the address. 13. Suspensive recourse (c. 647, § 2, 4°). The one who 273 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious communicates the decree of dismissal is counseled in a reply of the Sacred Congregation of Religious to inform the religious of his right of recourse.° This should always be done; and several authors advise that this information be included, as above, in the decree of dismissal. The religious has the right of making a suspensive recourse to the Sacred Congregation of Religious against the decree of dismissal within ten days from the date on which he was informed of the decree. The first day is not counted. If the religious was informed of the decree on June 1, the time begins to run on June 2 and expires ~it midnight of June 11-12. The time does not run for any period during which the subject is ignorant of his right or unable to act, e. g., because of illness. The recourse is to be made by letter, either immediately by the subject or mediately through the superior who communicated the decree to him. The subject is to give his reasons againsf the dismissal. Proof that he had made the recourse is had by the authentic document of his own letter or the testimony of two trustworthy witnesses. The recourse within ten, days suspends the effect of the decree, which is completely ineffective until the authority that issued the decree is notified of its confirmation by the Sacred Congre-gation of Religious. While the recourse is pending, the subject is not dismissed and remains a religious with the same obligations as any other professed of temporary vows. He has the right and obligation of dwelling, under obedience to superiors, in the religious house assigned by them. If the religious does not wish to make recourse but to leave the institute immediately after the. decree is communicated to him, he may do so. Superiors may oblige him to leave immediately only if he has declared in writing that he will not m~ike recourse.7 Otherwise the religious is to remain until the ten days have elapsed without recourse having been 0 Bouscaren, Canon Law Digest, 1,329. ¢ Cf. c. 1880, 9°; Coronata, Manuale Practicum luris Discipli~iaris et Criminalis Regularium, n. 248. 274 September, 1957~ DISMISSAL IN LAY INSTITUTES made. A subject may als6 make recourse after the lapse of the ten-day period, but such recourse does not suspend the effect of the dismissal, 14. Effects of dismissal (c. 648). Canon 648 frees a professed of temporary vows, as soon as the decree of dismissal is effective, from all the vo~,s of his religious profession. There is no need of a dispensation from the vows. The ~ther effects are the same as explained under secularization in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, September, 1956~ 233-36. III. Dismissal. By Decree of a Professed of~ Perpetual Vows (cc. 649,52; 669, .~ li 672, ~ 1) 15. Sufficient reasons. (a) In institutes of men (cc. 649; 656, I°). Three grave and external crimes of the same or different species in the proper sense of canon 2195, § 1, two admonitions, and incorrigibility a~e necessary. A violation of any positive law accompanied l~y special gravity or scandal is also a crime (c. 2222, § 1). The following are examples of sufficient ¯ reasons:' serious sins against common life, external si~s against chastity, disobedience to formal precepts, formal contempt of authority, rebellion against superiors, seriously impeding the government of superiors, creating or fomenting factions in the community, drunkenness, striking companions in religion, seri-ous diffamation of others or 0f the institute, apostasy or flight from religion, as also violations of the vows or of the ~onstitutions that constitute a specially grave offense or give rise to~ grave scandal in or outside the institute. These acts must be seriously sinful objectively and subjectively. Crimes of different species should be such as to reveal, when viewed collectively, a will obstinate in evil (c. 657).s (b) In institutes of women (c. 651, § 1). The same reasons are required for the dismissal of any religious woman of per-petual vows, whether solemn or simple. The reasons must be s Cf. Creusen, Religious Men and Women in the Code, n. 353; Bastien, Directoire Canonique, n. 634, 1, 1°; Tabera, op. cit., 14-1933-267; Beste, Introductio in Codicem, 443,448. 275 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious external, culpable, serious, and joined with incorrigibility. The reasons have to be external to the extent that they are known by others. The code requires culpable but does not certainly demand seriously culpable reasons. Inculpable reasons, e. g., lack of aptitude and physical and intellectual defects do not suffice for the dismissal of a perpetually professed religious. The reasons must be serious or grave. Finally, the reasons must be joined with incorrigibility, i. e., attempts at correction were made and their lack of success proves that there is no hope of amendment. ~The following are general examples of sufficient reasons: violations of the vows, constitutions, and religious dis-cipline that are considered more serious, even though in them-selves they are not mortal sins, or that cause serious scandal in or outside the community; and conduct that causes a notable spiritual or temporal harm to the community. The following are examples of particular sufficient reasons: repeated violations of~the vow of poverty, even after admonitions, reprehensions, penances, and even though the matter in itself does not consti-tute a serious sin; repeated and more serious acts of disobedi-ence; exciting others to rebellion and insubordination; arousing others against superiors by word or conduct; impeding the authority of superiors; disturbing the peace of the community by constant murmuring and complaints; causing dissensions and factions in the community; and the diffamation of the institute or its members among seculars. The reasons given above for men also evidently suffice for the. dismissal of women, since less serious reasons are required for the dismissal of women. Incorrigibility supposes repeated or habitufil actions. There-fore, one violation does not suffice for the dismissal of a per-petually professed religious woman. As in the case of religious men of perpetual vows, there must be at least three violations or one continued violation which, after a double admonition, becomes vi'rtually three violations. These three violations may all be of the same species, e. g., all against poverty; they may be of different species, e. g., one against poverty, the second 276 September, 1957 DISMISSAL IN LAY INSTITUTES against obedience, and the third contrary to charity. The one continued violation is verified in such things as apostasy from religion, being a fugitive from religion, and a refusal to obey. The apostate who has been admonished twice to return to religion and refuses commits virtually three violations, the original act of apostasy and the two refusals to return (c. 657). 16. Attempts at correction and 'incorrigibility (cc. 649; 656- 62; 651, § i). Everything below on the admonitions and incor-rigibility is of obligation 'from canon law in lay institutes of men. The code does not determine just what' 'the attempts at correction are to consist of in the case 'of religious women but leaves these and the judgment of the incorrigibility to the supeiioress. However, the doctrine that is more probable :in itself and to be followed in practice is that the canons on religious men should be extended to women, i. e., there should be two admonitions coupled with suitable corrections and penances. When these produce no effect, the religious wom£n may be judged in-corrigible. 17. Admonitions (cc. 658-62). (a) Prerequisite certitude of first violation (c. 658). Before the first admonition may be given, there must be certitude, not mere suspicion, probability, or conjecture, of the commission of the first violation. If cer-titude is not had, a further investigation of the conduct of the religious may be. made. If the investigation does not give certitude, an admonition may not be given. (b) Matter of the admonitions (c. 661). The' essentialnotes of an admonition are three: the superior reprehends the religiou~ for the violation already committed; warns him to avoid slich conduct in the future; and adds a threat of dismissal if the religious should persist in such conduct. The thi:eat of dismissal is always to be added to the admonition in the case of a per-petually professed religious man or woman (c. 661,. § 3). 9 Statuta a Sororibus Externis 8er~anda, n. 119; Coronata, lnstltutiones luris Canonici, I, n. 651; Palombo, De Dimissione Religiosorum, n. 179; Tabera, o~. cit., 13-1932-123; Bastien o/,. tit., rt. 639, 3. 277 JOSEPH ~. GALLEN Review for Religious The superior is also to add to the admonitions: 1° an apt exhortation, i. e., to give motives to the religious for the reform of his conduct; 2° an apt correction, i. e., to show the religious the disorder of his past conduct, its effect on himself and .others, on the community and the institute; 3° preventive measures against a future violation. Almost necessarily these will imply putting the religious under the vigilance of a superior. Other such measures that the particular case demands are also to be employed, e. g., changing the employment or house of the religious and, in general, removing and lessening the occasion of a future violation. 4° apt penances. These are to be added to each admonition. Their aptitude is to be judged from their suitability for effecting the amendment of the religious and the reparation of the scandal already given. (c) Number and form of the admonitions (c. 660). There must be two admonitions, one for each of the first two viola-tions. In a continued violation, at least three full days must elapse between the first and second admonition. The admoni-tions are to be given in such a way that there will be proof that ' they were given and received. They are accordingly to be given before two witnesses or in writing.When given before witnesses, it is better to have the admonition also written out, to retain a copy, and have the two witnesses sign this copy to the effect that they witnessed the giving of the admonition. If given in ¯ writing, the religious is always to be made to sign a document to the effect that he received the admonition, a copy of the admonition is always to be retained, and two witnesses are to attest that the copy agrees with the original. If the religious is'outside the institute, e. g., as an apostate or fugitive, the admonition is to be sent to him in writing by certified mail (cf. n. 12). (d) Competent superior for admonitions (c. 659). In institutes of men, the admonitions should be given by the immediate higher superior personally or through another authorized for the purpose. An authorization given for the first admonition 278 September, 1957 DISMISSAL IN LA~ INSTITUTES suffices also for the second. From analogy, the same principles are to be followed in an institute of women. (e) Interval and violation after the second admonition (c. 662). After the second admonition, there must be a third vio-lation or a refusal to obey the second admonition in the case of a continued violation. An interval of at least six full days is to elap, se between the second admonition and any further action in a continued violation.'° After the third violation or the lapse of the six days without sincere repentance, the religious is canonically incorrigible and may be dismissed. If he sincerely repents within the six days, ¯ he is not incorrigible and may not be dismissed. If such repen-tance is verified only after the third violation or after the six days, action on the dismissal may be continued, since the religious is canonically incorrigible; but it would be better to discontinue such action provisionally, because the religious is not in fact incorrigible,n If the religious later commits another violation, the formalities of dismissal may be continued unless the reforma-tion of thereligious was sincere and complete. Such a reforma-tion excludes the computation or inclusion of past violations and admonitions and requires that the formalities of dismissal be begun anew. A sincere and complete reformation demands that the religious, e. g., have avoided the occasions of violations, have been willing to repair scandal by public penance, and have been more than ordinarily faithful to religious observance. The common doctrine is that such an amendment of conduct should have continued for three years, but a lesser space of time, e. g., a year, will su~ce in the case of extraordinary repentance.12 l°Cf. Tabera, 0p. cit., 14-1933-273; Toso, Commentaria Minora, II, II, 268; Chelodi-Ciprot~i, lus Canonicura de Personis, n. 291; De Carlo, Jus Religiosorum, n. 587. 11Cf. Goyeneche, De Religiosis, 217; De Carlo, oiO. cir., n. 587; Schaefer, oil: clt., n. 1629; Palombo, 0/~. cir., n. 113; Coronata, 0/L cir., 867; Beste, 0/~. cir., 450; Jone, Commentarium in Codicem Iuris Canonici, I, 586. ~2Cf. Goyeneche, op. cir., 217; De Carlo, oiO. cir., n. 587; Schaefer, o/,. cir., n. 1629; Palombo, op. tit., n. 114; Beste, oiO. cit., 450; Jone, o~O. tit., 586; Coropata, op. cit., 864. 279 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious 18. Procedure (cc. 650-52). (a). Intervention of the superior general and his council. In pontifical or diocegan lay institutes of men, canon 650, §§ 1-2, not only require that- the dismissal of a professe~ of perpe~tual vows be submitted to th~ superior gen-eral but also demand a deliberative vote of his council for such a dismissal. Canon law "does not clearly demand the interven-tion of the mother general nor of her council in the dismissal of .a professed of perpetual vows. However, from analogy with the law on the dismissal of religious men of perpetual vows and the constant practice of the Sacred Congregation of Religi-ous in the approval of constitutions, the dismissal of a professed woman of perpetual vows in both pontifical'and diocesan congre-gations is to be referred to the mother general and h'er council and the council is to have a deliberative vote.la For the same reasons, the deliberative vote of the council is required in a monastery of nuns. The remarks on the provincial and his council in n. 2 (a)apply here also. A proviricial should prac-tically never initiate the formalities of dismissal except after having consulted the superior general. The superior general and his council should have the pre-liminary data on the' religious drawn up, as stated in n. 11. To'this document are to be added a description of the three violations, proof of their existence, and proof that the admoni-tions Were properly given and received. As explained in n. 11, the reasons for the dismissal are tg, be fully manifested to the religious; and his replies in writing are to be submitted to the authority competent for dismissal. The matters .to be decided are whether certain proof is had of the three violations, of the giving and reception of the admonitions, and of the incorrigi-bility of the religious. (b) If the decision is for dismissal. 1° In a pontifical congre-gation. The mother general is to transmit all the acts and a:~Cf. Larraona, Commentarium Pro Religlosis, 2-1921-364-66; Ta~era, op. cir., 14-1933-53-54; Schaefer, op. cit., n. 1608; Jone, op. cit., 578; Muzzarelli, Tractatus Canonicus de Congregationibus Iuris Dioecesani, 175; Goyeneche, op. cit., 219; Bastien, op. cir., n. 640. 280 September, 1957 DISMISSAL IN LAY INSTITUTES documents of the case along with the vote of her council to the Sacred Congregation of Religious (cf. n. 2). In a congregation of brothers, the same things are to be sent to .the Sacred Con-gregation. However, the brother general,, with the deliberative vote of his council, decrees the dismissal; but this has no effect until it is confirmed by the Sacred Congregation (cf. n. 2). A superior who transmits a case to the authority competent for dismissal may include further information from himself or the members of the council in, addition to the latter's vote. 2° In a diocesan congregation, of brothers or sisters. The same things are to be forwarded to the local ordinary (cf. n. 3). The matters to be decided by the ordinar~ are the same as those stated above. He may summon the religious, defer the dis-missal and prescribe further attempts at correction, deny the dismissal, or issue the decree of dismissal. 3° In a monastery of nuns. The superioress is to transmit the same things to the local ordinary and the regular superior (cf. n. 5). 19. Dismissal. The religious is dismissed only at the moment that he or she receives legitimate notification of the decree of dismissal or of the confirmation of the Sacred Congregation of Religious in the case of religious men.~ Before that time he may neither leave the institute nor may the institute eject him. He is then to leave the institute, unless he is a member of a diocesan congregation, as will be immediately explained. 20. Recourse. (a) In any pontifical lay institute of men or women. The religious may recur io the Holy See against the decree of dismissal, but this recourse does not suspend the effect of the dismissal. The code gives no such right, and the Holy See has both examined ihe reasons of the religious against the dismissal and has itself effected or confirmed the dismissal. (b) In any diocesan congregation of men or women. The code says nothing on the right of the religious to recur to the Holy See against a dismissal effected by the local ordinary. a4 Palombo, op. cit., nn. 144, 187; O'Leary, Rdi.oious Dismissed after Perpetual Profession, 47-50. 281 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious However, it is admitted that the religious has the right of recur-ring. to the Sacred Congregation of Religious against the decree; and, if made within ten days from the date on which the religi-ous was informed of the decree, this recourse suspends the effect of the dismissal. This right to a suspensive recourse follows a fortiori from the fact that such a right is granted to a religious of temporary vows dismissed by the local ordinary (c. 647, ~ i, 4°). Therefore, everything said in n. 13 under ¯ the dismissal of a professed of temporary vows applies here also. 21'. Effects of dismissal (cc. 669, § 1; 672, § 1). (a) If dis-missal frees from the vows. The code itself (c. 669, § 1 ) does not free a dismissed religious of perpetual vows from the vows of religious profession by the very fact of the dismissal. Such a liberation may be effected by a provision of the particular constitutions, or the Holy See may append a dispensation to the dismissal, or the dismissed religious may petition the Sacred Congregation of Religious in the case of pontifical institutes or the local ordinary in that of diocesan institutes for a dispen-sation. 1~ The religious is to be most earnestly encouraged to make such a petition, and the superiors are willingly to aid him. Constitutions of lay congregations submitted to Rome in the earlier years after the Code of Canon Law became effective, May 19, 1918, uniformly do not provide that legitimate dismis-sal of a perpetually professed religious frees from the vows; tho~e submitted in more recent years frequently contain this provision. The latter practice should be followed in any revis-ion of pontifical or diocesan constitutions. Ill such a provision is contained in the constitutions, the dismissal frees from all the vows of religious profession as soon as the decree is effective. There is no need of a dispensation from the vows. The other effects are the same as explained under secularization in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, September, 1956, 233-36. (b) If the dismissal does not free from the vows (c. 672, § 1). Canon 672, § 1, prescribes that a religious of perpetual is Cf. Muzzarelli, o~. cir., 306. 282 September, 1957 DISMISSAL IN LAY INSTITUTES vows who has been dismissed without being freed of his vows is obliged to reform his.life so that he will be worthy .of being received back into the institute. If the dismissed religious has manifested a complete reform during a period of three years, he is obliged to return to the institute and the la'tter~ is obliged to take him back. Howe.ver, it is the far more probable interpre-tation that this canon applies only to a religious in sacred orders (priest, deacon, subdeacon).'6 If the dismissed lay religious will not voluntarily petition a dispensation from the vows, the practical remedy is to submit the case immediately to the Sacred Congregation of Religious. A professed of~ perpetual vows is also to be given an official statement to the effect that he had been l~gitimately .dismissed, and mention should b~ made as to whether he had been freed of the vows by the dismissal or a concomitant or subsequent dispensation. IV. Dismissal By Law (c. 646) 22. Definition. This dismissal is effected automatically by canon 646 itself by the very fact and at the instant that any of the three crimes specified in the canon is committed. Therefore, the law itself, not the decree or declaration of a superior, effects the dismissal. In its nature, the dismissal is a punishment in-flicted for the crime and also a means given to religious, insti-tutes to free themselves immediately of members who have perpetrated most serious crimes against the religious life. 23. Subject. The subject of the il~so facto or dismissal by law of canon 646 is any professed religious, man or woman, of solemn or any type of simple vows, whether perpetual or tem-porary, and the members who have been aggregated perpetually or temporarily in societies living in common without public vows (c. 681). A postulant or novice is not the subject, but the commission of any of these three crimes is certainly more 'than a sufficient reason for his dismissal by the decision of the competent superior. ~6 Cf. Fanfani, De lure Religiosorum, 703-705. 283 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious 24. "Religious who have publicly apostatized from the Catholic faith" (c. 646, § 1, 1°). The crime is simply public apostasy from the Catholic faith. (a) Simply. The canon does not demand that the religi-ous have joined a non-Christian sect, e. g., Judaism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism. The crime can be" verified either in or out of such a sect. "(b) Public (c. 2197, 1°). In the case of a religious, a crime is public when it is actually known or is in serious and immediate danger of being known by at least a notable part of the mem-bers of the religious house to which the delinquent is attached.1~ It is not necessary that such knowledge or danger extend.to the province, institute, or to externs. External apostasy that has not attained this publicity does not effect dismissal by law. (c) Apostasy from the Catholic faith (c. 1325, ~ 2). Apos-tasy is the act of a baptized person who formally" denies or positively doubts about the entire Christian-faith. The unbap-tized are infidels, not apostates, heretics, or schismatics. Formally means that there must be a subjective mortal sin in the act. A doubt is the suspension of the acceptance of the intellect. A positive doubt is had when the intellect judges that there are sufficient reasons for affirming and denying the proposition, that the reasons on neither side are convincing, and therefore the intellect suspends assent to the proposition. In a negative doubt, the intellect suspends assent because it does not p~rceive reasons either for affirming or 'denying the proposition. This is to be classed rather as ignorance. As in heresy, /~ positive doubt constitutes an injury to the faith and is sufficient four apostasy.18 The one who so doubts has had the truth suffi-ciently proposed to him, but he positively judges that the truth is not sufficiently proposed and that contrary reasons make it uncertain. ~ Cf. Michiels, De Delictis et Pornis, 117-18. ~8 Ciprotti, De Consummatione Delictorum, 15; Coronata, o,O. cir., IV, n. 1856. 284 Septe,~be~', 1957 DISMISSAL IN LAY INSTITUTES Apostasy is a denial or positive doubt concerning the entire Christian faith, e. g., the existence of God, the fact or possibility of the Christian revelation, the fact or possibility of the supernatural order. Apostasy is therefore distinguished from heresy or schism. A heretic is a baptized person who formally denies or positively doubts about one or some dogmas of faith. A schismatic is a baptized person who formally refuses to submit to the spiritual authority of the Roman Pontiff or to communicate with the other members of the Church (c. 1325, ~ 2). Canon 646 mentions only apostasy and thus inflicts dis-missal by law only on apostates, not on heretics or schismatics. (d) Excommunication (c. 2314). An apostate incurs by the very fact of the apostasy an excommunication reserved in a special manner to the Holy See. An excommunication demands merely that the act be external and not that it be public. 25. "A religious man who h~as run away with a woman or a religious woman who has run away with a man" (c. 646, ~ I, 2°). The crime will be explained with a religious man as the subject. Four notes are required to constitute this crime. The last three are only probably required in theory but are certainly necessary in fact to effect the dismissaI (cc. 15, 19). (a) The religious man must be united physically or morally in flight from one place to another with a woman. It is not required that the r.eligious be an apostate or fugitive from religion in the canonical sense of canon 644J" Flight in canon 646 has the common and ordinary sense of running away with a woman. The crime, is completed as soon as this notion is verified, without any consideration whatever of the length of absence from the religious house. The intention of returning or not returning, of contracting or not contracting marriage has nothing to do with the crime. Both must flee, since the canon demands that the religious man have run away with a woman. This is verified physically if both start out from the religious house; it is verified morally. 19 Cf. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, May, 1957, 155-64. 285 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for "Religious if the religious alone flees in virtue of a previous agreement to meet the woman. The moral union is caused l~y the previous agreement; if such an agreement does not exist, there is no flight. In a doubt, this agreement is'to be presumed if.there was an illicit attachmehr or familiarity beforehand and union shortly after the departure of the religious; otherwise the agree-ment must be proved. The dismissal is effected at the begin-ning. of the flight. The flight described above is always neces, sary. Without such flight, neither concubinage nor the illicit leaving of the. house to sin with a woman, even though done frequently and furtively, constitutes the crime. When tlqe flight of this canon is difficult to prove, as is often true, an investiga-tion is to be made as to the existence of a marriage ceremony. It is rare in such cases that the woman does not insist on some form of marriage ceremony. (b) Probably the motive of the ,flight must be the satisfaction of lust. The iaecessity of such a motive is implicit in the text of the law and is part of the common notion of running away with a woman. Ordinarily this motive is to be presumed as soon as the other notes are verified.2° (c) Probably the woman must have attained puberty and not be a relative by blood or marriage in the direct line (mother, grandmother, etc.) or in the first degree .o~ the collateral line (sister) of the religious man. Puberty in a girl is attained can-onically on the day after the twelfth birthday, in a boy on the day after the fourteenth birthday (c. 88, § 2). The correspond-ing relatives will apply in the case of a religious woman, i. e., father, grandfather, brother. The necessity of this note is founded on the extrinsic authority of several authors. It has little foundation in the text of the law. The sense of the law is rather that the lustful motive is presumed not to exist with such persons but, if proved, the crime exists. Otherwise, the state of the woman is indifl:erent. It is of no import that she z°Cf. Tabera, Ol~. cir., 11-1930-416; Goyeneche, oil. cir., 209; Vermeersch, Periodica, 19-1930.122". 286 September, 1957 DISMISSAL IN LAY INSTITUTES is married, unmarried, capable or incapable of contracting marriage validly;. (d) Probably proof must exist of the preceding, requisites. The probability of this doctrine arises from the fact that the other two crimes of canon 646, public apostasy and marriage, are of their nature capable of proof and from the extrinsic authority of some authors. If the religious has verified the other notes but the crime is so secret that this fourth note is not verified, he is not dismissed by law."~l Any proof that gives moral certi-tude suffices, e. g., the testimony of reliable witnesses. (e) Excommunication (c. 2385). Obviously the flight described above will usually also imply apostasy from religion if the religi-ous has perpetual vows and thus the incurring i/)so fdcto of an excommunication reserved to the ordinary.-~" 26. "A religious who attempts or contracts marriage, even the so-called civil marriage" (c. 646, § 1, 3°). The crime is the contracting (validly) or the attempting (invalidly) of marriage by any type of Catholic, non-Catholic, or civil ceremony pro-vided both parties gave a naturally valid consent. The form of celebration of a civil marriage must be valid according to the civil law of the place of celebration. A solemn vow of chastity renders marriage invalid; a simple vow forbids but does not invalidate marriage. The crime presupposes a marriage consent valid" from the natural law and is not verified if the consent is vitiated in either party by an essential defect, e. g., ignorance, simulation, physical violence, grave fear. However, it is to be presumed that true consent was given; and this pre-sumption is sufficient to declare the religious~dismissed. In itself, the invalidity of the marriage does not exclude the crime, i. e., the crime is still verified if the marriage is invalid because it was attempted outside the Church or because of a diriment impedi-ment. ~lGoyeneche, Quaestiones Canonicae, II, 153; Schaefer, op. cir., n. 1578; Bas-tien, op. cir., 446, note 2; Jone, o~0. tit., 572; Jombart, RevUe des Communautets Religieuses, 6-1930-148. 22 Cf. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, May, 1957, 158. 287 JOSEPH ~. GALLEN Review for Religious Excommunications (cc. 2388; 2319, § 1, I°~; 2385). By presum-ing to attempt marriage, both a solemnly professed religious and the other party incur an excommunication reserved simply to the Holy See (c. 2388, §.1); if the vows of the religious are simple but perpetual, the presuming to contract or attempt marriage is punished in both parties by an excommunication reserved to the ordinary (c. 2388, § 2). If the marriage is attempted before a non-Catholic minister, the punishment of a Catholic is an excommunication reserved to the ordinary (c. 2319, § 1, 1°). A marriage ceremony implies an intention never to return to the institute and thus results in an excommunication for apostasy from religion reserved to the ordinary in the case of a religious of perpetual vows (c. 2385). A civil ceremony is not punished by the code, but in some dioceses of the United States it is punished by an excommunication reserved to the o~dinary and in some others it constitutes a reserved sin. 27. Effects (c. 646, ~ 1). Upon the commission of any of the three crimes, the religious is immediately an.d i~pso facto dis-missed, by canon 646. This dismissal by law is a legitimate dis-missal and produces all the effects of the ordinary dismissal by decree. Therefore, in the case of a professed of temporary vows, the effects are ~he same as those described in n. 14; if the religious is. of p.erpetual vows, the effects are those of the'ordinary dismissal exp!ain~d in n. 21. 28. Declaration of fact (c. 646, ~ 2). This canon commands the higher superior with the consultive vote of his council to make a declaration of fact concerning the crime. Some con-stitutions restrict this right to the superior general, and some also demand a deliberative vote of the council. In monasteries of nuns, the declaration is to be made by the superioress of the monastery with the consultive or deliberative vote of the council or chapter as commanded by the constitutions. The declaration of fact is merely a description of the pertinent points of the case, the headings of the proof, e. g., a copy of the marriage record, statement of witnesses, etc., and the conclu- 288 September, 1957 DISMISSAL IN LAY INSTITUTES sion that the religious ~was dismissed in virtue of canon 646. The local superior is ordinarily in the best position to secure these proofs, e. g., the statements of witnesses. Frequently a trustworthy man such as a lawyer or priest should be deputed to secure some of the proofs in the case of an institute of women, e. g., the copy of the marriage record. The declara-tion and proofs are to be retained in the secret files of the house of the higher superior who made the declaration. The pur-pose of the declaration is to possess proof of the automatic dismissal and to prevent future doubts and difficulties, particu-larly for the eventuality of a recourse by the subject to the local ordinary or the Holy See. V. Provisional Sending Back to Secular Life (c. 653) 29. Subject. The subject of thi~ provisional return is any pro-fessed religious, man or woman, and any aggregated member of a society living in common (c. 681). Canon 653 speaks explicitly only of the perpetually professed; but afortiori, from afialogy of law, the common opinion of authors, and the practice of the Holy See in approving constitutions, the same canon applies to the professed of only temporary vows and to the aggregated members whose bond with the society is only tem-porary. 30. Reasons required. The reason must be either of the fol-lowing: (a) Grave external scandal. This is a culpable defamatory act, committed within or outside the religious house, which is well known outside the house or known only to a few externs, who, however, will not keep the matter a secret, e. g., a sin against good morals. (b) Very serious imminent injury to the community. This is an extraordinary injury or harm certainly and proximately threatening at least reductively, not merely one or some individ-uals but the religious house, province, or institute. The religious must be the cause of this harm but it is not certain that he 289 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for" Religious must be a culpable cause. Examples of this reason are the proximate judicial accusation of a defamatory crime in either the moral or political order; sexual actions with students in an institute devoted to education when it is foreseen that these wil][ become public and bring infamy on the house, province, or institute; a serious threat to set the house on fire or against the life of a superior or another member of the institute; and a serious loss of temporal property of the house, province or institute. (c) Three conditions required in both cases. Since such an extraordinary action should not be taken against a religious because of mere probability, conjecture, or suspicion, the ex-istence of the cause must be certain; it must also be impossible to avoid the scandal or harm in other ways, e. g., by transferring the religious to another house; and there must be at least prob-ability that the scandal or harm can be averted or appreciably diminished by the provisional return to secular life. 31. Competent authority. (a) Ordinarily. Canon 653 gives the right for such action in lay institutes to the higher superior with the consent of his council. The right is therefore given by the ~ode also to provincials, even though the constitutions may affirm it only of the superior general. In prudence and if possible, the provincial should refer the case to the superior general or at least consult the latter. In a monastery of nuns, "the competent authority is the superioress with the consent of her council. (b) In a more urgent case. In a case in which the time re-quired for recourse to the superior general or provincial would imperil the avoidance of the scandal or injury, the competent authority is the local superior with the consent of his council and also the consent of the local ordinary. If it is impossible to have recourse to the local ordinary and the case will not admit _.3 Berutti, De Religiosis, 349; Bouscaren-Ellis, Canon La~w, 319. 290 September, 1957 DISMISSAL IN LAY INSTITUTES o~. delay, it is.safely probable that this action may be taken by the local superior with only the consent of his council.'~4 32. Final adjudication of the case. (a) Report. A report of the case should always be made out without delay and submitted to the authority competent for a final decision of the matter. The report is to contain the religious and family name of the subject, date, age, date of entrance, date of temporary or perpetual profession, house to which he was assigned at the time of the return to secular life, cause of this return, proofs and present state of this cause, a brief record of the past of the religious insofar as it is pertinent to the cause 6f his return and dismissal, the name and rank of the superior who effected the return, the fact that the consent of the council and of the local ordinary, when prescribed, was obtained; and, if the latter was not secured, the report is to state the reasons that'justified its omission. (b) Authority competent for a final decision. Canbn 653 states that the case is to be referred to the Holy See without delay. This canon, however, is to be interpreted in the light of the other canons on the competent authority for dismissal; and it is admitted doctrine that the authority competent for an ordinary dismissal by decree is competent also for the final decision in the case of a provisional return to secular life.~'~ Therefore, the case is to be referred, according to the nature of the institute and the vows of the subject, to the authority competent for dismissal by decree stated in nn. 2-5. 33. Effects. As soon as the provisional return is decided, the re-ligious puts off the religious habit and leaves the institute. The return to secular life is a provisional measure. It is not a dismissal and does not produce the effects of a dismissal. The competent authority mentioned above decides for or against dismissal and 24Cf. Tabera, 0p. tit., 14-1933-58; Goyeneche, De Religiosis, 221, note 31; Palombo, op. cir., n. 192; Schaefer, 0iL cir., n. 1609; O'Neill, The Dismissal of Religious in Temporary l/o~vs, 104. 25Cf. O'Neill, op. cir., 103-104; Schaefer, op. cir., n. 1636; Wernz-Vidal De Religiosis, 490, note 13; Bastien, o~0. cir., n. 645, 4; Palombo, op. cir., n. 195; Tabera, op. cir., 14-1933-57; Vermeersch-Creusen, Epitome luris Canonicl, I, n. 807. 291 JOSEPH F. GALLEN decrees the dismissal in the t~ormer case. The charitable subsidy is to be given to a religious woman who is provi~ionally sent back to secular lithe.2° SOME BOOKS RECEIVED [Only books sent directly to the Book Review Editor, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana, are included in our Reviews and Announcements. The following books were sent to St. Marys.] The 1957 National Catholic Almanac. Edited by Felician A. Foy, O.F.M. St. Anthony's Guild, Paterson, New Jersey. $2.00 (paper cover). Does God Exist? By Alfred M. Mazzei. Translated by Daisy Corinne Fornacca. Society of St. Paul, New York, N.Y. $3.50. St. Bernadette Speaks. By Albert Bessi~res, S.J. Translated by The Earl of Wicklow. Clonmore & Reynolds Ltd., 29 Kildare St., Dub-lin. 10/6. Queen of Heaven. By Ren~ Laurentin. Translated by Gordon Smith. Clonmore & Reynolds Ltd., 29 Kildare St., Dublin, 12/6. Le Ciel ou l'Enfer. II. l'Enfer. By Chanoine G. Panneton. Beau-chesne et ses Fils, Rue de Rennes, Paris. Methods of Prayer in the Directory of the Carmelite Reform of Touraine. By Kilian J, Healy, O. Carm. Institutum Carmelitanum, Via Sforza Pallavicini, 10, Rome. Some Philosophers on Education. Edited by Donald A. Gallagher. Marquette University Press, 1131 Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee 3, Wis-consin. $2.50 (paper cover). Wellsprings of the Faith. By Most Reverend John C. McQuaid, D.D. Clonmore & Reynolds Ltd., 29 Kildare St., Dublin. 18/-. The Reluctant Abbess. By Margaret Trouncer. Sheed and Ward, 840 Broadway, New York 3, New York. $3.75. Quadalupe to Lourdes. "By Frances Parkinson Keyes. Catechetical Guild Educational Society, St. Paul 2, Minnesota. $0.50 (paper cover). The Mystery of My Future. By Jean De Larhove. Society of St. Paul, 2187 Victory Blvd., Staten Island 14, New York. $2.50. Of the Imitation of Christ. By Thomas a Kempis. Translated by Abbot Justin McCahn. The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., 501 Madison Ave., New York 22, New York. $0:50 (paper cover). The Caiholic Booklist 1957. Edited by Sister Mary Luella, O.P. Rosary College, River Forest, Illinois. $0.75 (paper cover). ¯ _,6 Cf. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOt;S, September, 1956, 235-36. 292 Our Supernat:ural Organism Daniel J./~. Callahan, $.J. GOD IS THE author of all things. The more science ad-vances, the more does it disclose the wonders of His crea-tion. Even a superficial reading of a manual of biology or physics or chemistry or astronomy wrings from us the words of the Psalmist: "How great are thy works, O Lord. Thou hast made all things in wisdom; the earth is filled with thy riches" (Ps. 103:24 ). These divine masterpieces, especially as mani-fested in man, qualify us by analogy for the marvels of the supernatura! order. God gives life in the embryonic state and with it an or-ganism capable of developing the tiny creature into the pleni-tude of its specific perfection. The fundamental natural prin-ciple of this evolution is the vital principle within it, which energizes it and is the source of its least activity. Its separation from the bodily element would mean the termination of growth, deterioration, death. In us the human soul is the basic source of our natural life; its faculties or powers are the immediate cause of our vital activities and these in turn bring to perfec-tion our human life. To all this the supernatural is closely analogous as will appear from a brief study of the components of its organism. Sanctifying Grace Appropriately this may be styled the soul of the higher life in us. Only from divine revelation do we know its exis-tence and nature, and it will be useful to recall here what rev-elation tells us about this precious endowment. It is something most real; a spiritual quality inherent in our soul and of such an excellence'that only God could be its principal cause; it is a stable quality, an adornment abiding in the soul till forfeited through mortal sin; it is a totally free gift to which no one of us could lay claim and which transforms us into God:like 293 DANIEL J. M. (~ALLAHAN Review for Religious beings resembling our eternal Father and enabling us to share, in a finite manner, in His life. That life comprises the infinite contemplation;, love, and possession of His uncreated perfec-tion. To this no creature by its native powers could aspire. By a privilege entirely gratuitous God destines us for the immediate visiofi of Himself in heaven and adapts us ~or it through sanctifying grace. Attended by faith; hope, and charity such grace equips us to know, love, possess God, imperfectly, of course," as He knows, loves, and possesses Himself; and thus we enter into the divine life and become truly His children. And while this life is distinct from our natural life, it is not merely superimposed on the latter: it penetrates it through and through, elevating and transforming it. Leaving intact all the natural goodness that is ours, sanctifying grace imparts a new orientation to everything within us, establishes new relations to the Blessed Trinity, and inaugurates on earth the life of the blessed. To aid us in the apprehension of this prerogative, writers resort to many comparisons and illustrations. They liken the soul to a living image of the adorable Trinity., divinely impressed on the soul as the seal leaves its image on the wax, lavishing on it an entrancing beauty since the prototype and the artist is no other than God. Again such a soul is compared to a trans-parent body receiving the sun's rays and, all aglow" itself, radiating them in all directions; to a bar of steel plunged into a furnace and sharing the heat, brightness, and pliancy of the fire; to a branch engrafted into a plant, maintaining its identity while partaking of the life of the plant; to the union in us of soul and body where the soul quickens and energizes the body even as grace communicates a new life and effects our most intimate union with God. Finally, an analogy with the hypo-static union in Christ is introduced; and, though the soul's union with God is only accidental, yet it is the union of a substance with a substance; and, while the hypostatic union results in the God-man, the union through grace issues in a God-like being, 294 September, 1957 OUR SUPERNATURAL ORGANISM whose actions are performed at once by the Creator and His creature, even as in Christ His actions were shared in by both His divine and human nature. And though our union with God is neither hypostatic nor substantial in the proper sense, for we always retain our personality and the union is only accidental, it is not merely the intimacy of two friends, for it rests on a/physical quality abiding in the soul and on physical bonds intensifying and safeguarding that union. The three Divine Persons are immediately presefit to the soul in a com-pletely new way and are possessed and enjoyed by it. Though the precise nature of this extraordinary inhabitation continues to exercise theologians, we are assured that it is capable of indefinite expansion up to the last breath of life here below, and this in p.roportion to our surrender to the Holy Spirit through the removal of all barriers and the cultivation of the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. The Infused Virtues In the natural order our soul functions through its faculties or powers. It thinks through the intellect; .it loves through the will; it senses through our different senses. These faculties bestowed on us together with the soul, by means of their varied activities, are susceptible of tremendous development. In the supernatural order grace parallels the soul, and the infused virtues are its chief faculties. These emanate from sanctifying grace, elevate our mind and will, enable us to perform supernatural, meritorious deeds. Virtue may be described as a good habit designed for action. It is natural if it has been acquired through the repeti-tion of the same specific act and communicates facility in doing so; if directly granted by God and if it confers the ability to do something, it is called infused. The natural virtues facilitate nat-ural righte6usness; the infused confer the power to act on a superhuman level. These latter are usually divided into theologi-cal and moral. The former have God for their formal and principal material object; in the concrete they are faith, hope, and charity and unite the soul directly to God. The moral 295 DANIEL J. M. CALLAHAN Review for Religious virtues have for their objective some moral good distinct from God, serve to eliminate the hindrances to divine union and to stabilize it, and are commonly listed under the four cardinal vi£tues. The theological virtues certainly accompany sanctifying grace and integrate the process of justification, and it is the generally accepted doctrine that the moral virtues also are then bestowed. ¯ All of these virtues are susceptible of increment and 'do increase proportionally with the increase of grace, just as the branches of the tree ke~p pace with the expansion of the trunk. Apart from the complete loss of the virtue, may they diminish? In general, any activity that is discontinued or exercised bnly rarely tends to decline or even to cease. Venial sins, especially when frequent and deliberate, considerably impede the practice of virtue and thus diminish the facility previously attained. Neglect of actual graces may likewise occ~lsion the privation of such helps as notably conduce to acts of virtue and add vigor and polish to them. And though venial sins do not directly decrease or destroy the infused virtues, it remains true that such failings open the way for serious lapses and the destruction of th.e virtues. Do all grave sins deprive us of these? Faith is destroyed only through a mortal sin of infidelity, hope through the same and that of despair; charity and the infused moral virtues, through any mortal sin. Relative to the duration ot~ all such virtues, in the lost none of them persists; the theological remain in the souls in purgatory; in heaven there will be neither acts of faith nor of hope relative to God, and most probably not relative to objects distinct from Him. And whereas neither the moral virtues nor those of faith and hope will endure in the blessed, these will retain the virtue of charity and live a life of the purest actual love. The Gifts of the Holy Spirit There is unanimity among Catholic theologians about the existence of such gifts, but their specific nature is widely contro-verted. In accordance with the doctrine of St. Thomas (Summa, 296 September, ~957 OUR SUPERNATURAL ORGANISM I-II, q. 68, a. 3), the most prevalent opinion is that they are supernatural habits, distinct from the virtues, implanted in the soul conjointly with sanctifying grace, which impart a recep-tiveness, a docility to the impulse of the Holy Spirit, a more prompt and more generous cooperation with His grace. They would appear to be, at least in the early stages, not operative habits like the virtues, but rather dispositive, adjusting the soul for a better reaction to the divine intervention. Their func-tion, then, is that 0f perfecting the exercise of the virtues. There is no certainty about their number; and, while conferred simultaneously with grace, a more copious outpouring may be the fruit of the sacrament of confirmation. The docility issu-ing from these' gifts improves perceptibly through prayer for fidelity to grace, through a life of faith and recollection, through the cultivation of the moral virtues and due control over our passions, for unless these latter are consistently mortified, the inordinate attachments in the soul will hamper us in discerning, accepting, and responding to the inspirations of grace. We must combat the spirit of the world which is diametrically op-posed to the divine and school ourselves in prompt, magnani-mous compliance with God's will. The more complete our surrender' to Him, the more will He be pleased to enlighten and inflame us. Actual Grace just as in the natural order we cannot bring power into motion without the concurrence of the Almighty, so also in the supernatural. Such cooperation is known as actual grace to distinguish it from habitual grace previously considered. It is a transitory aid imparted by God, consisting in the illumina-tion of the mind and the urge of the will for the performance of a supernatural act. It sets the intellect and heart in motion and enables them to function on a superhuman level. In the concrete, it is a holy thought, a salutary incitement of the will, produced by God who directly influences our rational faculties, stimulating them to operate, and cooperating with them to 297 DANIEL J. M. CALLAHAN Review for Religious elicit a good thought and a salutary desire in keeping with the special need of the moment. The thought is most real and comes directly'from God; it is a holy thought, designed for the spiritual benefit of the individual. When we say "salutary desire," we understand any good act of the will, for instance, the love of good, hatred of evil, fear of divine punishment, sorrow for sin, joy 'in well-doing. It is a real act of the will. Antecedent to our activity God lovingly takes the initiative and continues to act within us and with. us for the accomplishment of a deed that will conduce to life eternal. This assistance is not permanent; it persists only while its purpose lasts; and it influences us in a moral way through attraction and persuasion and physically by adding energy to our intellectual faculties too weak to act of themselves. As religious we are to be profoundly penetrated with the conviction of our need of such divine assistance. It is necessary for the achievement of every supernatural act: for the prelim-inary acts of faith, hope, sorrow requisite for the remission of sin. The constant endeavor to resist temptations which assail even the just, as well as our steadfastness in good living, are the fruits of actual grace. Obviously, then, we have not the power to persevere in religion and even to reach perfection through our unaided strength. Christ's memorable words, "Without Me you can do nothing" (Jn. 15:6), are pertinent to the natural and supernatural levels. Everyone who attains the use of reason needs this grace and all such receive it. It proceeds from the love of God; the ordinary channels for its dispensation are the sacraments, prayer, and'our meritorious deeds; and the more generous our cooperation with grace received the more will be granted, for here, as in the entire economy of salvation, God takes the initiative, awaits our free reaction, and assures us that He will" bestow th~ necessary help for the completion of our project. Conformity to the divine will, consequent peace of soul, trust, and magnanimity are supremely important in the struggle for real sanctity. 298 September, 1957 OUR SUPERNATURAL ORGANISM Appreciation "If thou didst know the gift of God" (Jn. 4:19) spoke Jesus to the Samaritan woman, referring to the supernatural life which He communicates to us through His vivifying action, here compared to water springing from an unfailing source. Religious have totally consecrated themselves to God; to Him they belong entirely; and there must be in them the life that is His. In them the supernatural must always be dominant. It is a treasure to be courageously safeguarded even at the cost of sacrifice; it is an endowment to be zealously augmented; it is a life and life is essentially progressive. Cessation of growth soon induces recession. In the wake of tepidity and lethargy spiritual death follows closely. The law of spiritual gravity is to be counteracted through p.urity of intention at all times, through earnestness even in small affairs, through fervent, per-severing prayer, and through the frequent reception of the sacraments of penance and Holy Communion. "Walk in a manner worthy of the calling with whic'h you are called," wrote 'St. Paul to the Ephesians (4:1 ff.), "with all humility and meek-ness, with patience bearing with one another in love, careful to preserve the unity of the. spirit iri the bond of peace; one body and one 'Spirit . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all and .throughout all and in all." Surely a relevant injunction for all religious. OUR CONTRIBUTORS BONAVENTURE BALSAM is engaged in parish work at St. Anthony's Priory, 4640 Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. JOSEPH F. GALLEN is professor of canon law at Woodstock Col-lege, Woodstock, Maryland. DANIEL J. M. CALLAHAN is profes-sor of ascetical and mystical theology at Woodstock College, Wood-stock, Maryland. 299 Survey ot: Roman Documen!:s R. ~. Smil:h, S.J. IN THIS survey only those documents will be considered which appeared in the ./Iota/lpostolicae Sedis (AAS) during the months of April and May, 1957. Hence all page references throughout the survey are to AAS of 1957 (v. 49). The African Missions On Easter Sunday, April 21, 1957 (AAS, pp. 225-48),. the Holy Father issued a new encyclical letter which is entitled Fidei Donum (TheGift of Faith) and which treats of Africa and its missions. After noting that man'.s gratitude for the gift of faith is best shown by spreading the light of Christ's truth, His Holi-ness remarks that while he is not unaware of the grave and pressing problems attending the spread of the Faith in all parts of the world, yet special attention is needed in the case of Africa, for this continent now finds itself on the threshold of its political and cultural maturity and faced with circumstances the import-ance of which is rivaled by nothing in the previous history of /~frica'. The Vicar of Christ then begins the first of the four sections into which the encyclical letter is divided. This first section is devoted to an over-all picture of the missionary scene in Africa. Most of the countries of the continent, the Pope says, are in the midst of profound social, economic, and political changes which will have a lasting effect on the fut.ure lives of these nations. The Church which has seen the rise and growth of so many nations cannot but be intensely interested in the peoples of Africa who are now attaining their civil rights. It is at this point that the Holy Father exhorts the coloniz-ing nations to grant civil rights to peoples who are prepared for them; and at the same time he urges the colonial peoples of 300 ROMAN DOCUMENTS Africa to be grateful .for .~vhat they have received from the vari-ous countries of Europe. Only such a harmonious attitude will exclude prejudice and exaggerated nationalism and will permit the peoples of Africa to experience the entire range of benefits which flow from the religion of Christ. Pius XII is especially concerned that in many countries of Africa atheistic materialism has been spreading the seed of its doctrine, thereby arousing jealousy between nations, inducing false perspectives in the matter of temporal prosperity, and excit-ing to rebellion. The presence of this atheistic materialism in Africa, thinks the Pontiff, is particularly grave owing to the fact that the peoples of Africa, because they wish to accomplish in a few years what ~he peoples of Europe took centuries to achieve, are psychologically vulnerable to the specious .promises which materialism offers. The H01y Father continues by remarking that of all the missionary regions of the world, Africa is the one with the greatest needs. African mission posts which have been estab-lished in the last ten or twenty years cannot expect a sufficient number of native clergy for a long time, while the missionaries in such stations are few and widely scattered throughout large regions where, moreover, non-Catholic religions are also spread-ing their doctrines. The gravity of the situation can be illustrated by one region of Africa where there are 2,000,000 inhabitants but only 50 priests whose energies, moreover, are completely absorbed in the care of the 60,000 persons already converted to Catholicism. Twenty more missionaries in such regions at the present time would mean, the Vicar of Christ sadly comments, the spreading of the banner of the cross in places which twenty years from now will be impossible of access. Moreover, twenty more missionaries would mean that the Church could educate in such regions a corps of African Catholics equipped to meet the social and political needs of the continent. Nor are difficulties lacking in African missionary centers which have long been established. Such centers too feel the 301 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious extreme lack of missionaries. Moreover, the bishops and vicars apostolic of Africa are obliged to provide for their flocks a full Catholic life; and this necessitates in turn schools, colleges, social institutes, all the modern communication arts. Such needs can be met only by a great flow of material and apostolic help to the continent of Africa where 85,000,000 human beings are still attached to the practice of paganism. The Holy Father centers the second part of his encyclical around the theme that the problems of the Church in Africa are not merely local difficulties, but are of vital concern to the entire Mystical Body. Bishops, those preeminent members of the Mystical Body, should have a special concern for the Church in Africa, for they as the legitimate successors of the apostles retain the duty of preaching to all nations. Moreover, continues the Holy Father, there ig not a Catholic in the world who should not be interested in the problems of the Church in Africa. Nothing that is characteristic of the Church should be absent from the mental outlook of the individual Catholic. If then catholicity or universality is one of the characteristics of that Church which is the mother of all nations, breadth of outlook must also mark the individual Catholic. In the third part of the encyclical the Holy Father dis-cusses the means by which Catholics can aid the missions of Africa. ~The first means is that of continual and earnest prayer. The best prayer, of course, will be that which Chris~, our High Priest, daily offers on our altars. And while the faith-ful should be instructed that it is good to offer Mass for their private intentions, still they should also be taught to give atten-tion to those petitions with which the Mass is primarily and neces-sarily concerned and "which include the we~Ifare and propaga-tion of the entire Church. To prayer must be added alms or material help, for present needs far exceed the help now being given. The faithful in other parts of the world should compare their conditions with the 302 September', 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS situations of missionary countries and see who are the real need~i of the Church. Hence the Vicar of Christ urges that each Catholic make an examination of conscience to consider if there is not something tl~at can be given up in order that material aid might be given to the missions. The third way of helping Africa is through the fostering of vocations to missionary work.~ Bishops should train their flocks in such a way that there will always be members of that flock ready to heed the Lord's command i~ Genesis 12:1 to leave one's land and the house of one's father. Dioceses with a suffi-ciency of priests should give of their workers to the missions; and even dioceses which themselves suffer from a scarcity of priestly workers can still offer their mite as did the widow in the gospel story. The problem of missionary recruitment, however, can be met only by the ~oncerted work of all the bishops who should encourage the Missionary Union of the Clergy, foster the work of pontifical missionary associations, and be aware of the needs of those religious institutes which do missionary work but which cannot increase the number of their vocations without th~ under-standing assistance of the local ordinary. Finally, the Holy Father approves the practice of a diocese lending some of its priests to missions for a limited time. The fourth part' of the encyclical consists of a brief conclu-sion in which the Holy Father repeats that he is as interested in all the missions as he is in those of Africa. To all missionaries of the entire world he extends his gratitude and his congratula-tions and exhorts them to labor fervently in the work to which they have been called. Lenten and Easter Messages On March 5, 1957 (AAS, pp. 208,15), the Holy Father gave his usual Lenten allocution to the parish priests and Lenten preachers of Rome. The present year, begins the Holy Father, marks the fifth anniversary ot: the inauguration of the movement 303 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious "Fora Better World." After detailing the work accomplished in the diocese of Rome during that period and after noting the things yet to be done, His Holiness then urges his listeners to sow the seed that is the word of God. To preach anything but the word of God, he warns them, is to sow destruction. He gives special attention to the matter of Sunday preaching, insist-ing that nothing can achieve so much as this regular and familiar custom so long in use in the Church. Finally,. he recalls to his listeners the fact that the true sower of the good seed is God and that they are but instruments in His hand; what changes then would sweep the world if all who preached did so as ones truly coming with the power of God. The Holy Father's Easter message, delivered on April 21, 1957 (AAS pp. 276-80), was a meditative reflection on the phrase "O truly blessed night" of Holy Saturday's E, xultet. The night preceding the Resurrection, His Holiness begins, was one of desolation, tears, and darkness: Christ is dead; His flock is scattered; all is apparently in ruin. Nevertheless, even in that night there are signs of the dawn to come: the body of Christ suffers not the slightest taint of corruption and Mary prays in quiet confidence and expectation. That night before the Resurrection is also a symbol, adds the Vicar of Christ, of the night in which modern men find themselves: they must live in fear; their intelligences are cap-tured by error; immorality has reached a new depth. Neverthe-less, there are signs of a new day dawning. Science is provi-dentially multiplying the means to a fuller and freer life, while technology is providing the way to make these means available on a large scale. Moreover, men are now beginning to realize that the night of modern times is here because Christ has again been betrayed and crucified. Day will finally come to modern man when Christ restores grace to the individual soul and takes His rightful place in human social life. The Holy Father con-cludes his Easter message to mankind with a prayer that Christ may send the angel of the Resurrection to remove the obstacles 304 September, 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS which men have built up :but which they are now powerless to remove. To Hospital Sisters On April 24, 1957 (AAS, pp. 291-96), Pius XII spoke to some 2,000 Italian hospital sisters who had met for the first time in a national meeting to discuss their common problems. The Pontiff began with a forceful statement of the part that religious women play in the life of the Church today, remarking that many branches of the Church's apostolate, especially those concerned with education and with works of chariiy, would be inconceivable without the existence of religious sisters. This said, the Holy Father then began to discuss with them the ideals of their relig-ious life. It is.a truth of our faith, he notes, that virginity is higher than the married state; for through virginity the soul achieves an immediate relationship with God that is one of absolute and indissoluble love. The virginal soul takes everything that God has given her to be a wife and mother and offers it back to Him in a complete and perpetual holocaust. In order to love God, the vi,rginal soul does not reach Him through other loves: noth-ing is interposed between such a soul and God. Hence it is that a religious must be a true spouse of our Lord, uniquely, indissolubly, and intimately united with Him. Hospital sisters then must take care that their assistance to the sick does not interfere with their spirit of absolute and perpetual devotion to God, guarding against all disordered activity which leaves them neither time nor repose for prayer to Christ. They must also guard themselves against long and frequent withdrawals from common life, that strong protection of the interior life. And they must watch carefully over their spirit of individual and collective poverty, making certain that their hospitals do not assume the character of merely money-making organizations. Turning now to their work for the sick, the Vicar of Christ notes that the existence of special institutions for the care of the 305 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious sick stemmed historically from the charity of the Church. Even today, when so many are interested in the care of the suffering, the Church will never abandon her task of caring' for the sick, for no one can take the place of the Church at the side of one who besides a body also possesses a soul whose needs and claims are often greater than those of the body. It is for this reason that the Holy Father urges hospital sis-ters to continue their work. Besides being perfect religious, they must also know and use the latest scientific methods and ap-paratus. They must train themselves to a motherly kindness that is linked with a strong element of firmness. They must lead a fully dynamic life and still retain their calm and serenity. Here the Holy Father adds that superiors must see to it that community time-schedules and practices do not make the sisters' work ineffi-cient and more difficult. In conclusion the Holy Father dwells at some length on the recommendation that the sisters train themselves always to see Christ in each of their patients. If they do so, he notes, then it will be easy to pass from the chapel to the sick room; religious observance and care for the sick will not interfere one with the other; and there will be no interruption of the sisters' union with Christ. The Holy Father then blessed the assembled sisters and concluded ~ith a remark that all hospital sisters will treasure: "The Church, the Pope, are depending on you: on your complete dedication, on your abilities, and on your spirit of love." Miscellaneous Matters Under the date March 19, 1957 (AAS, pp. 176-77), the Holy Father issued the rnotu proprio Sacram Co~nmunionern in which he provided that henceforth local ordinaries (with the exception of vicars general) may permit daily celebration of after-noon Mass provided the spiritual good of a notable part of the faithful warrants such a permission. His Holiness also further mitigated the Eucharistic fast. The drinking of water does not 306 September, 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS break the fast'; and the time element for the Eucharistic fast is the following: Before the celebration of Mass in the case of priests and before the reception of Communion in the case of the faithful, solid food and alcoholic drink must be abstained from for three hours, while non-alcoholic drink must be abstained from for one hour. These time regulations extend both to morning and afternoon celebration of Mass and reception of Communion; and they must also be observed by those celebrating Mass at midnight or at the early hours of the morning as well as by those receiving Communion at such times. Finally, the Holy Father grants to the sick, even those not confined to bed, the .permission to take non-alcoholic drinks as well as liquid or solid medicine at any time before the celebration of Mass or the reception of Communion: Three documents of April and May of this year concerned the saints. The first of these is an apostolic letter of the Roman Pontiff which is dated June 8, 1956 (AAS, pp. 199-200), and which appoints St. Dominic Savio the patron of all choir boys. The other two documents are decrees of the Sacred Congre- - gation of Rites, both being dated January 22, 1957 (AAS, pp. 251-56). In the first of these decrees the congregation affirms the heroic virtue of the Venerable Servant of God Sister Mary Celine of the Presentation, professed nun of the Second Order of St. Francis (1878-97); the second decree affirms the heroic virtue of the Vdnerable Servant of God Sister Teresa of Jesus Journet Ibars, foundress of the Congregation of Little Sisters of the Indigent Aged (1843-97). Priests will be interested in the Holy Father's letter, dated March 25, 1957 (AAS, pp. 272-75), and sent to Cardinal Feltin of Paris on the.occasion of the 300th anniversary of the death of Jean-Jacques Olier, founder of the Society of St. Sulpice. - Olier, the Holy Father notes, recalls to the present generation the truth that the greatness and power of a priest consists in being a man of God and a man of ihe Church. As a man of God the priest must have two indispensable qualities: prayer 307 R. F. SMITH Review for Religious exercised especially through meditation and the Divine Office; and asceticism, manifested principally by a perfect chastity of heart and body. The priest then must always be aware that union with God is the indispensable prerequisite for apostolic fecundity and that the cross is the only instrument of salvation: evil is still cast out only by prayer and fasting. As a man of the Church, concludes the Holy Father, the priest must realize that all personal sanctity and apostolic effectiveness must be founded on constant and-exact obedience to the hierarchy. ¯ Several documents of the period surveyed are concerned in one way or another with matters educational and intellectual. On March 24, 1957 (AAS, pp. 281-87), the Holy Father addressed a group of 50,000 college students of Rome and gave them some detailed advice on their studies, urging them to dedicate them-selves completely to the pursuit of truth. A month later on April 25, 1957 (AAS, pp. 296-300), His Holiness spoke to the members of the eleventh plenary assembly of Pax Romana, telling them that no Catholic can be indifferent to the new world com-munity now in process of formation. This is especially true, he says, of Catholics engaged in intellectual work, for it is their task to spread Catholic truth and to give it practical application in all areas of human activity. Educational and intellectual matters also figure in two decrees issued by the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities. In the first of these decrees, dated-November 4, 1956 (AAS, pp. 219-20), provision is made for the canonical erection of a faculty of theology in Sophia University in Tokyo. In the other decree, dated December 20, 1956 (AAS, p. 308), . a faculty of philosophy was canonically erected in the Catholic University of Quito. Thre~ documents of April and May of this year pertain to political matters. On February 16, 1957 (AAS, pp. 201-5), a c-onvgntion was ratified betweeri the Holy See and the German Federal State of North-Rhine-Westphalia concerning the estab-lishment of a new diocese of Essen. On March 28, 1957 (AAS, 308 September, 1957 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS pp. 287-88), the Pontiff:addressed a group of young Berlin Catholics, telling them that the state must always respect the rights of individuals and of families and adding a plea for a united Europe and for the moral conditions without which such a union can never be realized. On Aprii 28, 1957 (AAS, pp. 300-301), the Pope gave a brief address on Communism, empha-sizing that the events of the last fdw months have clearly shown' to all men the aberrations of that way of life. Two other documents may be mentioned by way of conclud-ing this survey. On March 6, 1957 (AAS, pp. 215-17), the Holy Father sent a radio message to the school children of the United States exhorting them to be generous in contributing help for the needy children of other countries. And on Apri'l 23, 1957 (AAS, pp. 289-90), His Holiness spoke to a small group of Paris lawyers, extolling their° dignity as men devoted to the defense of law and of humanity and remarking that their profession is noteworthy as showing the value of humanism in a world where technical and scientific education is at a premium. Questions and Answers [The following answers are given by Father Joseph F. GaIlen, S.J., professor of canon law at Woodstock Coll~ge, Woodstock, Maryland.'] 29 Are the professed of temporary vows obliged by canon law to return to the motherhouse two months before perpetual profession, remain there, and prepare for this profession? No. You are applying to the professed of temporary vows what an instruction of the Sacred Congregation-of Religious, November 3, 1921, had commanded only for novices employed in the external works of a congregation during the second year of noviceship. The code does not even command a retreat before perpetual profession. The constitutions almost universally prescribe such a retreat, and the usual duration is eight full. days. A shorter retreat is also found, for" 309 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religioue example, five or six days. It seems evidvnt enough that the constitu-tions or customs should command a retreat before perpetual profession. It would also be reasonable and profitable to prescribe a longer period of greater recollection .before perpetual profession. REVIEW FOR RE-LIGIOUS, September, 1953, 267; November, 1955, 313. --30-- Hasn't the movement of renovation and adaptation suggested any new laws whatsoever concerning poverty? This movement is primarily spiritual, theological, educational, formative, and apostolic. It is only very secondarily canonical or legal. Therefore, in the matter of poverty the emphasis of the move-ment is on the striving for detachment that. leads to an intensified love of God (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, November, 1955, 302; September, 1956, 269-70). No new laws on poverty have been enacted by the Holy See, and no important suggestion for a new law has been made by authors with regard to the poverty of solemn profession. In the 'matter of the poverty of institutes of simple vows, suggestions have been.maple for inclusion in constitutions that are being origitxally approved or revised. The purpose of these suggestions is to make the poverty of simple p*ofession at least approach that of solemn profession. They are founded on the principle that in itself it is more in accord with evangelical poverty to give away one's property than to retain it for life and to be deprived or restricted in the right of acquiring property for oneself than to retain this right in an almost unlimited manner. The su.ggestions are thus reducible to two headings. 1. Right of acquisition. A limitation of the right of acquisition is according to the mind of the Sacred Congregation of Religious. In new or revised constitution~, congregations of men or women may in-clude an article of the following type: "After profession, whether of temporary or perpetual ~,ows, the religious acquire for themselves only property received as an inheritance or legacy from relatives to the second degree. All other temporal goods are acquired for the con-gregation." This practice may be followed only by institutes that have such a provision in their approved constitutions. An article of this nature would effect a purer poverty and would also eliminate some practical 310 September, 1957 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS difficulties and abuses. The meaning of relativ.es may be confined to blood relatives or extended also to relatives by marriage. The degrees would be computed according to canon law. 2. Giving away or renouncing one's property. New or revised con-stitutions of women may contain an ~rticle of the following type: "A professed sister, whether of temporary or perpetual vows, may not alienate the ownership of her property by a free gift effective during her lifetime. However, the professed of perpetual vows may (or, are counselled to) give all the property they own to the congregation under the form of a dowry." The similar article for institutes of men would be: "A professed religious, vShether of temporary or per-petual vows, may not alienate the ownership of his property by a free gift effective during his lifetime. However, the professed of perpetual vows may (or, are counselled toI give all the property they own to the congregation under the condition that the capital sum will be restored to them if they should leave or be dismissed." Either of the practices of the preceding paragraph, since they are not contrary to the code, may be ~ollowed even if not contained in the constitutions. The second sentence in Zither article may be introduced by an apt spiritual phrase, e. g., lCor their greater sancti-fication, for their greater poverty, for the greater purity of their evangelical poverty. There would be no difficulty also in applying either practice to the professed of temporary vows. In both cases the capital sum of the property will be restored to a religious who leaves, is excluded from further profession, or is dismissed. This fact would pro.tect the right of the religious to leave, if he wishes to do so, aad ,~iould also prevent want in the case of a departure, both of which constitute the purpose of the retention of property in congregations. Neither practice would prevent the religious from applying part or all of the income oa his property to other good purposes, e. g., to needy relatives, nor, with the permissioa of the Holy ~;ee, all or part of the capital sum of his personal property. However, it does not seem contrary to the mind of the Sacred Congregation for new or revised constitutions not merely to permit or counsel but to impose either practice with regard to all the personal property of a religious (REvIsw FOP, RELIGIOUS, September, 1953, 258-59; Escudero, /Iota et Documenta Congressus Generalis de Statib'us Per[ectionis, I, 377; Muzzarelli, ibid., 430-31). 311 ~UEsTIONS AND ~NSWERS ~31m What is the law for the last Gospel according to the simplified rubrics? The last Gospel is always that of St. John except in the third Mass on Christmas and low Masses on Palm Sunday at which the palms are not blessed. Cf. Bugnini-Bellocchio, De Rubricis ad Sira-pliciorem Formam Redi#endis, 69; Bugnini, The Simpli/ication of the Rubric, s, 113; J. B. O'Connell, Simpii[yin# the Rubrics, 71; The Cele-bration o[ Mass, 178. What Mass may be said on the Saturday of Our Lady (S. Maria in Sabbato)? The Mass of the Saturday of Our Lady; the Daily Mass of the Dead and any votive Mass that is not of the BlesSed Mother, but both of these, if low, are forbidden during the three periods of January 2-5; January 7-12; and Ascension-Vigil of Pentecost; and the Mass of an occurring simple feast or mere commemoration, e. g., on Jan-uary 5, 19; July 13, 27; August 3; September 28; October 5, 26 in the ordo of the Universal Church for 1957. As stated above, the only Mass of the Blessed Mother permitted is that of S. Maria in Sabbato. Cf. Wuest-Mullaney-Barry Matters Liturgical, n. 252. --33-- What should be done if a check in a small amount is received for your own personal, use? Endorse the check and drop it in the treasurer's box. The inten-tion of such a donor is certainly not that the religious should sin by using the money without permission. Neither are we to presume that a donor intends that the religious should make use of the gift in a way that is contrary to the greater perfection of the religious. Externs are fully conscious that the religious is in the state of perfection and that his life should be distinguished by renunciation and self-denial. They are readily scandalized at the lack of these qualities. If you have any material necessity, the more perfect time to ask for it is not on the occasion of receiving a gift. Cf. gEVlEW FOg gELIG~OUS, January, 1949, 39. 312 Book Reviews [Material for this department should be sent to Book Review Editor, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana.] THE ROMAN CATACOMBS AND THEIR MARTYRS. By Lud-wig Hertling, S.J., and Engelb~rt Kirschbaum, S.J. Translated from the German by M. Joseph Costelloe, S.J. Pp. 224. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee I. 1956. $3.50. It is a pleasure to ir~troduce this excellent hook to readers of the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. The subject is nowhere so well presented, to my knowledge, within the compass of one modest volume. It is com-petent; it is well ordered; it is readable; it is warm with the sympathies of the Christian tradition of culture. Archaeology, in all its branches, has a remarkable appeal to many people today, no doubt becauseit brings to them a new and vivid revelation.of the community of human nature with itself. The catacombs of Rome, with their touching expression of the pi.eties of our forefathers in the faith, reveal to Christians the communion of saints. A Catholic feels wonderfully at home in these ancient resting places of our dead. The authors are professors of ecclesiastical history and of achae-ology, respectively, in the Gregorian University and scholars of estab-lished authority in their fields. Father Kirschbaum was one of the four commissioned by Pius XII to investigate the reputed site, under the high altar of St. Peter's, of the apostolic tomb. A brief account of the results Of their quest is among the points of major interest in this book. Father Costelloe'meets with ease the two great exigencies of the translator's art, faithfulness to the thought of his author and to the idiom of his reader. A skilled initiate in Roman archaeology, he can write so clearly about these matters which he understands so well. With the praiseworthy permission of Fathers Hertling and Kirsch-baum, he has added his own notes to theirs and some quite new matter in the body of the book, known through the advance reports of explorations yet unpublished. By this positive contribution, he gives to English readers a welcome revision as well as a sound version of the original. 313 BOOK REVIEWS Review' for Religious The scope of the book may be indicated by running down the titles of the chapters: The Exploration of the Catacombs;. The Ceme-teries; The Tombs of the Popes; The Tombs of the Martyrs; The Tombs of the Apostles; The Persecutions; On the Way to Martyrdom; The Eucharist; Baptism; The People of God; The Art of the Cata-combs; The Creed of Catacombal Art. Forty-five plates and eight figures make an important complement to the text. By some fault of printing, twoor three of them, in my copy, are rough to the touch. Generally, the publisher has done 'a good job, and at a remarkably low price.--ED~;~,g R. SMOTH~P,S, S.J. FRANCIS OF THE CRUCIFIED. By Myles Schmitt, O.F.M.Cap. Pp. 152. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee 1. 1956. $3.00. Father Myles Schmitt, of St. Francis Capuchin College, Washing-ton, D. C., offers his readers a series of conference-chapters on the Franciscan way of perfection. Writers of general treatises on spiritual theology, such as Tanquerey and de Guibert, can present a .particular way of perfection only in skeletal form. Father Schmitt develops at suitable length the Franciscan way. At the same time, he is constantly concerned to relate it to the Christian way. For, at root, all Christian perfection is one, no matter the diversity of ways proposed for arriv-ing at it. In a way reminiscent of Gerald Vann's The Heart of Man, Father Schmitt organizes the life of perfection around the Beatitudes. His book is not as complete and detailed as Theodosius Foley's Spiritual Conferences for Religious Based on the Franciscan Ideal. Nor does it follow the life of St. Francis as closely as de Tour's Franciscan Perfection. But his choice of the Beatitudes as an organizing principle keeps the main line of argument simple, strong, and progressive and still gives him room enough to touch on a variety of subjects. Father Schmitt is especially good at describing the spiral move-merit of growth in perfection. Not only must ofie try to live more and more in accordance with his vision of the ideal; but, at the same time, one's vision must grow correspondingly in depth and p~netration. This spiral movement is particularly clear in St. Francis's religious life which began with what might be called an "inaugural vision" and grew as that vision' deepened and matured. Father Schmitt takes great pains .to delineate the initial vision of the Franciscan way, to map out 314 September, 1957 BOOK REVIEWS the s~ag'es of progress of that vis~ion, and to relate to it all growth in perfection. Basically, then, the Franciscan must focus his attention on the imitation of Christ crucified through a living out of the gospel life as envisaged by the Beatitudes. The foundation of this life is poverty leading to that poverty of personality called humility. Keeping before his eyes his nothingness in the presence of God, the~ Franciscan makes a sacrifice of himself and .thus fulfills simple justice. With mercy and simplicity, he takes on the role of peace-maker, courageous!y overcoming the opposition of a world set against Christ and at war ,with itself. His is a life of love, of devotion to the Eucharist, of love of Mary sorrowful. And oil such is his .vision, his necessary response will be apostolic action. Obviously the book's usefulness is not limited to Franciscans. Inasmuch as all the means proposed are the common heritage of Christi

'- 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.

*mt*m*m**m+***¥* N^CURY MAT, 1800 VOL., XVII NO. 3 I*** GETTYSBURG COLLEGE GETTYSBURG, PA. C9MPILIR PRINT HELP THOSE WHO HELP US. The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume. Cotrell & Leonard, ALBANY, N. Y. Makers of CAPS AND GOWNS To Gettysburg College. Lafayette, Lehigh. Dickinson, State College, Univ. of Penn sylvanin, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wellesley, Bryn Mnwr imd the others. Class Contracts a Specialty. Correct Hoods *• Degrees To The Glass of '09. We have begun our college campaign for Dext Spring and Summer. Over 25,000 employers look to Hapgoods for their men in sales, offices and technical positions in all departments. Most of these firms use college men. They arrange with us to cover the entire college world for them. We have a unique proposition of immediate interest to any college man who will be open for a propo-sition. Let us tell you about it. Write to-day. TJIJJ Commonwealth Trust Building, Philadelphia, Pa JWATMOJYAl, Ott6UIJVlZ«*TfOJV OM> BUJWJY BKOKERtj. HOTEL GETTYSBURG, Headquarters for BANQUETS. Electric Lights, Steam Heat, All Conveniences. Free Bus to and from station. Convenient for Commencement Visitors. RATES $2.00 PER DAY. .Livery Cbbiackecl. Jol)ri P. M^tH Proprietor. L E. REILING, ~ Successor to BECKER & Co,, DEALERS IN kinds of Fresh and Smoked Meats Chambersburg St., Gettysburg, Pa. WE RECOMMEND THESE FIRMS. Established 1867 by Allen Walton. ALLEN K. WALTON, Pres. and Treas. ROBT. J. WALTON, Supt. HUMMELSTOWN BROWN STONE COMPANY QUARRYMEN and Manufacturers of BUILDING STONE, SAWED FLAGGING and TILE. Waltonville, Dauphin Co., Pa. CONTRACTORS FOR AEL KINDS OF CUT STONE WORK. Te'egraph and Express Address, Brownstone, Pa. Parties visit i ng quarrjes will leave cars at Brownstone Station on the P. & R R. R. For Artistic Photographs —GO TO — TjPTON The Leader in PHOTO FASHIONS Frames and Passapartouts Made to Order. D. J. REILE, Clothing, Cent's Furnishings Sole Agent for the CRAWFORD SHOES, 13-15 Chambersburg St; Come'and Have a Good Shave or Hair Cut —AT— HARRY I. SEFTON'S BARBER SHOP 35 Baltimore St. Barber's Supplies a Specialty. Also choice line of Cigars. Shoes Repaired —BY— CHAS. HARTDAGEN, Middle St., Opp. Court House, GUARANTEE ALL WORK THE GETTYSBURG DEPARTMENT STORE Successors to the I,. M. Alleman Hardware Co., Manufacturer's Agent and Jobber of HARDWARE, OILS, PAINTS AND QUEENSWARE, GETTYSBURG, PA. The only Jobbing House in Adams County. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. ftftftftftftftU «*** com-munity who will deal with us for a Piano or Organ. WEAVER ORGANS AND PIANOS have no question mark to the quality. MAIL THIS COUPON TO US. Send me special proposition for the purchase of a Piano. Name Address. WEAVER ORG*N AND PIANO CO., MANUFACTURERS, YOKK, PA , U S A. '■.! t* "f •I-ft '•!■' *'E '& 'V. ■■i- 'V. •& .1-. '± .* ■•i t ■$ ■\i■%t■■ & •F •r Headquarters —FOR— HATS, SHOES, AND GENT'S FURNISHINGS. Sole Agent for WAEK- OVER SHOES ECKEHT'S STORE, Prices Always Right Ttie Lutheran PuMcaliori Society No. 1424 Arch Street, PHILADELPHIA, PA. Acknowledged Headquarters for anything and everything in the way of Books for Churches, Colleges, Families and Schools, and literature for Sunday Schools. PLEASE REMEMBER That by sending your orders to us you help build up and develop one of the church in-stitutions with pecuniary ad-vantage to yourself. Address HENEY 8. BONER, Supt, THE: KA ERCURV The Literary Journal of Gettysburg College. VOL. XVII GETTYSBURG, PA., MAY, 1909 No. 3 CONTENTS. THE IRON CROSS 2 BY EMIL FEOMMEL. AN EXTENSIVE OB' INTENSIVE ACQUAINTANCE WITH GBEAT AUTHORS 5 SAMUEL FAUSOLD, '10. NEW ENGLAND RAMBLES 7 EEV. CHAELES W. HEATHCOTE, A.M., '05. THE CATACOMBS 12 MCCLEAST DAVIS, '11. OUTWITTED 17 ELMEE STOUFFEE, '11. NAPOLEON IN LITERATURE 19 CHAELES SHINDLEE, '10. A GREAT TEACHER 22 E. H. HINTEENESCH, '13. THE EDUCATION OP THE INDIAN 25 H. S. HOSHOUB, '10. MAY—Poetry. (Submitted by 1911.) 27 EDITORIALS 29 EXCHANGES 31 THE MEPGUKY THE IRON CROSS. BY EMIL FEOiniEL. (Translated, from the German by Earl Bowman, '11.) iJSTE morning about a year after the Franco-Prussian War a Pomeranian landlord notices among his work-men a sturdy day-laborer who was wearing the Iron Cross upon his breast. When the hour of leisure comes be calls him, and in order that the taciturn Pomeranian might be induced to speak, he first gives him something substan-tial to eat, for then the mill begins to run. Then he asked him how he came into possession of the Iron Cross. "Yes," remarked the Pomeranian, "that is a long story—for I have got it from King William himself, and that too for pegging away." Thereupon the Pomeranian takes a draught from the pitcher and proceeds. "It was after the battle of Champigny in which the Wiirten-burgers bad conducted themselves so bravely and were driven back only by greater numbers. Our regiment is ordered to ad-vance. My company was to swarm out, and I sought shelter that I might shoot comfortably. "Now for a fight, boys," said our captain as the French, who had to be kept back until our comrades had come up to us, were coming out thicker and thicker. "Shoot away to your heart's desire." "I pour my cartridges out before me, all to the right so that I can easily reach them, and shoot away. Here, however, more Frenchmen were coming; conditions appear to the colonel to be rather critical and he gives orders to retreat. I hear it,—but think: "To pack up all the cartridges is not pleasant, and to let these dear and costly goods lie, that you can't do either,— therefore you just let the fellow blow his bugle, remain here and shoot away your cartridges, and then you have time enough to take your heels." I am busily engaged in shooting, when the adju-tant of our regiment comes galloping up and shouts: "Back, THE MEBCUBY. 3 boys, don't you have any ears?" "Never mind," says I," turn-ing myself halfway around, "not until I shoot my cartridges." And gone was the adjutant, nowhere to be seen At last I was entirely alone and before me everything was red with French-men, barely twenty paces away. As I shot the last cartridge I think to myself, "Now it's high time that you break away" So I take to my heels and run behind the regiment like a deer. The French were shooting after me like a hailstorm but all their bul-lets were too high and I got to the regiment hale and hearty, Just as I am about to enter the lines I see the adjutant parley-ing with the colonel and pointing to me with his hand. "Now,"' think I, "a charge is made against me for disobeying orders." Our colonel, a downright good man, comes riding up to me, laughs heartily about the whole affair, and said: "Fellow, are your bones all together?" "Please Your Honor," says I. Here he laughed again and says: "Well, now you can eat more than bread." "Ah, this time," I mused, "the affair turned out all right and the tale-bearing of the adjutant didn't do any harm. The next the report goes around: "His Majesty, the King, is coming." What a joy there was when the old hero came. He rode by and I had already procured a few potatoes, for I had an enormous hunger. Then suddenly our adjutant conies gallop-ing up to me and says that at once I am to report at His Ma-jesty's headquarters. "Now," think I, "that's the last of you." But I took cour-age and said: "Please, Your Honor, you know I have'nt done anything bad." But the adjutant had an expression on his face as if he were about to say: "Just wait, I've got you for not obeying orders and you shall not get off so easily." I indeed did not think that a person could be so spiteful. My knees tottering, I was led into a house, then into a hall where there was such an odor that my mouth watered, so good it was. I am just thinking: "0 happy the man who can have his dinner here,—" when I am called into an adjoining room. Then the king who is as friendly as the sun comes up to me and says: THE MEECUET. "My son, how was that affair yesterday with the cartridges ? Tell me all you know about it, just exactly as it was." "Please Your Majesty," says I, "and tell everything just as it ■happened and that I had indeed heard the signal, but that I had not been willing to leave behind the costly goods when the adjutant had come up and shouted: "Go back, boys" Then I thought indeed that there was no time to pay compliments and said: "Oh! I'll first shoot my cartridges. That is the whole -affair, King, I have done no other wrong." His face aglow with a smile, the king said: "That you did •well, my son." I think to myself, "Now it's all right, now the adjutant may say whatever he will." "Have you had your din-ner, my son?" asked His Majesty. "Please, Your Majesty," says I, "I am still quite empty." "You are probably very hungry," His Majesty again re-marked. "Yes, and also very thirsty," says I. The king again laughed and said that I was to take dinner with them. So I sit down to the fine large table with all the high officials and generals. We had soup, pea-soup, extra fine. But my plate was only half full, so I thought: "If only you could have more of this soup." When I had almost finished with it, the king called to me: "My son, do you care for any more soup?" "Please, Your Majesty," say I, "if there is enough of it." This caused the men to laugh and one of the waiters brought me another plate full. Sir, I can taste that soup with my pal-ate to-day! Next a servant comes in and brings a portion of roast veal almost as large as a joint of an ox, another takes a large knife and carves one piece after another from it upon a large platter. "This fellow," thought I," "undertsands his business better than the one with the soup." The large platter comes to me first and I put it before me, and aside of it also a small plate with potatoes. I think to my-self: "It is a little too much, but you must show yourself equal to the occasion," and begin to eat. Bright drops of per-spiration were standing upon my forehead by the time all the thin slices of meat were eaten. While the gentleman at my THE MEECUHT. 0 •side uninterruptedly kept filling a glass that I might wash it ■down, His Majesty, the King, asked me: "How about it my son, will you have some more?" "Please, Your Majesty," I say, "if there is enough of it." All the men gave a hearty laugh and the King himself was holding his sides. Why, I did not know. But the King said: "No, this is enough for to-day, my son, now we shall have an-other course." Well, I was glad we were done with the roast veal, and was thinking to myself: "Kow what's coming,— when a high officer with epaulets comes up and fastens upon me the Iron Cross. When I returned to my regiment again the adjutant laughed all over his face, twisted his mustache and gave me his hand. I was glad that he was again reconciled, that his lively talking with His Majesty had after all been of no use, and that for peg-ging away at the banquet, I even got the Iron Cross from His Majesty himself. That is the way it happened and not otherwise—. Note.—The Iron Cross is a military decoration bestowed upon the soldiers of the German army who had distinguished them-selves for bravery during the war of 1870-71. AN EXTENSIVE OR INTENSIVE ACQUAINTANCE WITH GREAT AUTHORS. SAMUEL FAUSOLD, '10. 0 sound the depths of the world's literary artists from Homer to Tennyson is well nigh impossible. To make a slight acquaintance with all of them is possible but hardly desirable. The better plan is: know as many great authors as possible intensively and then seek, at least, a slight acquaintanceship with the rest. The tendency of the day seems to be an extensive rather than an intensive acquaintance with the world's great authors. What college man of mediocre ability does not have a passing acquaintance with Homer, Horace, Goethe, Milton, Shakespeare 6 THE MERCURY. and Tennyson, and yet very few of us can call one of these men a comrade in any sense. What pleasure it must be to forget the present and turn back the hands of time to Shakespeare's day and catching the spirit of the seventeenth century, see the world as Shakespeare saw it; and read his masterpieces through spectacles uncolored by pre-judice and pre-conceptions. Such a process must ultimately end in giving us that comradeship with Shakespeare which deepens the insight into the workings of the human heart, broad-ens the vision immeasurably and quickens one's sympathy for humanity. Such results are not attainable by a slip-shod ac-quaintance with the greatest play-writer of English literature. We must know tlie man and his work. To have drunk deep of the springs of Shakespeare's genius is a requisite of true culture. AVhat Las been said of Shakespeare can be applied with pe-culiar fitness to Milton. The great blind poet must, in fact, be known intensively', if we would know him at all. Of course his genius has given to the world more than one production and yet his "Paradise Lost" stands out conspicuously as the high-water mark of his achievement and to know Milton we must be familiar with this poem—the grandest and greatest epic of Eng-lish literature. To be familiar with "Paradise Lost" means ex-tended study and thoughtful meditation which has but one logical sequence, viz, intensive acquaintance. Having cultivated an intensive acquaintance with these two giants of English literature, I would recommend the same pro-cess with respect to the other poets, if time permits. If time forbids an intimate acquaintance, we should learn to know the rest, at least, in a slight way. It is well for us to know our Burns to keep our dispositions sweet; Macaulay to teach us perspicuity, and Bacon for his logic. It is well to come in contact with the melancholy Poe and then to be entertained by the quaint and kindly verse of Whittier. Neither can we afford to miss the rare and spicy descriptions of Washington Irving or the vivid character portraitures of Dick-ens. Again, the author of Hiawatha should be known to all of us; also the master hand that penned Thanatopsis. We may close by saying that if you learn to know any one of these, your desire shall be whetted to know them all. THE MERCURY. NEW ENGLAND RAMBLES. EEV. CHARLES WILLIAM HEATHCOTE, A.M., '05. ARTICLE III. JHEEE are many outlying districts of Boston which are very interesting from the historical viewpoint. They have been in many cases annexed to Boston proper, but they still retain their interesting characteristics. Charleston is famous from the revolutionary period. It was settled in 1629. Almost the entire town was burned during the battle of Bunker Hill. The Navy Yard, which is close to Charleston, is certainly worthy of a visit. Visitors are admit-ted and there is much to be seen. One will be very anxious to see "Old Ironsides" of the famous navy of the 1812 War. She performed glorious service for the country and she now lies very quietly at her anchor. From the Navy Yard one should go to the Bunker Hill monument on Breed's Hill. The monument is placed on the southeast corner of the "old redoubt behind which the Ameri-cans stood on the seventeenth of June, 1775." "The obelisk measures thirty feet square at its base, and rises to the apex, two hundred and twenty feet. The observatory at the top is reached by a spiral flight of two hundred and ninety-four stone steps. It is a long climb, but the magnificent views from the windows amply repay one for the effort. In the lodge at the base of the monument is a statue of General Warren." The monument was dedicated on June 17, 1843. President Tyler and his cabinet officials were present and Mr. Webster was the orator of the oc-casion. The monument stands near the spot where the hero, Warren, fell. The spot is also marked where Prescott stood at the opening of the fight. In Charleston we ought to visit the old graveyard. It is closed to the general public but admission can be secured. The oldest slab bears the date of 1643. There is a piece chipped from the corners which was done by a shot from a British war vessel. The Harvard monument, a granite shaft was erected in 1828 by alumni of the university. The following inscriptions are upon it: 8 THE MERCURY. (On the eastern face.) "On the twenty-sixth day of Septem-ber, A. D. 1828, this stone was erected by the graduates of the "University of Cambridge in honor of its founder, who died at Charleston on the twenty- sixth day of September, A. D. 1638." (Western face. In Latin.) "That one who merits so much from our literary men should no longer be without a monument, however humble, the graduates of the University of Cambridge, New England, have erected this stone nearly two hundred years after his death, in pious and perpetual remembrance of John Harvard." There are many beautiful suburbs around Boston but none can compare with Cambridge. It is the largest of Boston's su-burbs, having a population of 92,000. It is famous as the cen-ter of Harvard University. The following inscription taken from an old London pamphlet published in 1643, which is near the college gate reads: "After God had carried us safe to New England and we had builded.our houses provided necessaries for our livili hood reared convenient places for God's worship and settled the civill government one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity dreading to leave an illiterate ministery to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust." Another interesting inscription reads: "By the General Court of Massachusetts Bay 28 October 1636, Agreed to give 400 £ towards the schole whearof 200 £ to be paid next yeare & 200 £ when the worke is finished & the next Court to appoint wheare & wt bvilding THE SiJSKCUKY. » 15 November 1637. The College is ordered to bee at Newe Towne 2 May 1638 It is ordered that Newe Towne Shall henceforward be called Cambridge 15 March 1638 It is ordered that the colledge Agreed vpon formerly to bee built at Cambridge Shallbee called Harvard Colledge." An unique tablet in the entry of Massachusetts Hall states a number of illustrious men who were its occupants: "William Ellery, 1747, signer Declaration of Independence. Artemas "Ward, 1743, commander Massachusetts forces, 1775. Eobert Treat Paine, 1751, signer Declaration of Independ-ence. William dishing, 1751, chief Justice of Massachusetts. John Lowell, 1760, chief justice United States Circuit Court. Elbridge Gerry, 1762, Vice-President of the United States. Francis Dana, 1762, first minister to Eussia. Theophilus Parsons, 1769, chief justice of Masaschusetts. Joseph Story, 1798, justice of Supreme Court of the United States. Charles Henry Davis, 1825, admiral of the United States Navy. Eobert Gould Shaw, 1860, soldier." "Mather Byles, 1751, clergyman and wit. Jeremy Belknap, clergyman and historian. Samuel Gillman, 1811, author of "Fair Harvard." James Walker, 1814, president of Harvard College and his, torian. Jared Sparks, 1815, president of Harvard College and his-torian. John G. Palfrey, 1815, professor and historian. George Bancroft, 1817, statesman and historian. Horatio Greenough, 1825, sculptor. Eichard Hildreth, 1826, historian. Francis Parkman, 1844, historian. Phillips Brooks, 1855, bishop of Massachusetts." 10 THE MERCURY. The tablet on the face of the building is thus inscribed: "Massachusetts Hall Built by the Province 1720. Occupied by the American Army 1775-177G. Used for students' rooms until 1870-71." Harvard presents many things -which are interesting to the tourist. Her beautiful and stately buildings are worthy of close inspection and study. On Cambridge Common can be seen cannon which were cap-tured by Ethan Allen at Crown Point in 1775. During the fol-lowing winter they were brought by General Henry to Cam-bridge, being drawn across country by eight yokes of oxen. Then there is the famous "Washington Elm which bears an in-scription thus: "Under this tree Washington first took command of the American Army, July 3rd, 1775." One should also view the Longfellow and Lowell houses which are located in one of the most beautiful parts of Cambridge. Mount Auburn Cemetery should be visited as a sort of a pil-grimage for the following reasons which we quote from a pamph-let: "It is impossible to think of Cambridge and Harvard with-out having Mount Auburn also in view, and at least a part of the day assigned to Cambridge and its attractions should be kept for this spot. The entrance is at the junction of Mount Auburn and Brattle Streets, Watertown. The grounds contain over thirty miles of avenues and paths, and half a day would be too short a time to visit the most distinguished among its thou-sands of graves. The grounds are beautified by many trees, flowers and shrubs, and costly sculptures and statuary are to be seen on all hands. Passing through the Egyptian entrance gate a short distance a turn to the left leads to the Longfellow sarchopagus, on Indian Path, and close at hand is the tomb of THE MEKCURY. 11 Motley. The grave of Oliver W. Holmes is just beyond, on Lime Avenue, and on Fountain Avenue, at the base of Indian Eidge, under tall pines is the grave of James Bussel Lowell. To the right of the gate a curving main avenue leads past the Ball Hughes' bronze statue of Nathaniel Bowditch to the mort-uary chapel, in which are the marble statues designed to rep-resent the Colonial and Eevolutionary periods, the Eepublic, and Law; the first, a sitting figure of John "Winthrop, by Horatio Greenough; the second, a standing figure of James Otis, by Thomas Crawford; the third, John Adams, by Eandolph Eog-ers; the fourth, Judge Joseph Story, by his son, William W. Story. In front of the chapel, beyond, is the granite Sphynx, by Martin Milmore. which commemorates the dead of the Civil War, with the inscription: "American Union preserved American slavery destroyed By the uprising of a great people By the blood of fallen heroes." A short distance from the chapel to the right, on Menoza Path, is the grave of the "Good Bishop," Phillips Brooks. On Spruce Avenue Anson Burlingame and Dr. Thomas G. Morton, the discoverer of ether, are buried. On Walnut avenue may be found the graves of Eufus Choate and N. P. Willis. On Greenbriar Path is William Ellery Channing's grave. On Sweetbriar Path are the graves of Josiah Quincey and John G. Palfrey. In the neighborhood of the tower, is the monument to Margaret Puller. Truly New England is a part of the nation which is rich in history and tradition. It is a beautiful part of the country which is worth all the time we can give to study and view. Her people are hospitable, kind and cultured. We owe her a debt of gratitude for her part she played so well in the history of our nation. We owe her much for her determined stand in the cause of liberty. May her influence never cease! Chambersburg, Pa. 12 THE MEKCURY. THE CATACOMBS. C. MCLEAN DAVIS, '11. 3WS IHE hills which surround Borne are formed of three' strata of volcanic tufa. The topmost stratum is com-posed of volcanic ashes called pozzolana which are not. solidified, next comes a harder rock called tufa grano-lare, and lowest of all is found a solid and compact conglomerate called tufa lithoid. The last was used for building purposes and because of its hardness, the early Jews chose the softer middle-stratum in which to cut out their burial places. These were long narrow passages, not more than three or four feet wide, and intersecting and crossing each other again and again. If drawn out into a straight line these passages would extend for a distance of three or four hundred miles, a line long enough to stretch from one end of Italy to the other. On each side there are niches for bodies, and occasionaly we find little chambers called cubicula, or bed chambers, which were used as family vaults. The darkness and gloom of the place were re-lieved by light and air passages in the roof which were concealed above in the fields by bushes. As before stated, these underground passages, or catacombs,, were used as burial places. Prom Old Testament history we full well know that it was the custom of the Jews to bury their dead in caves and rock-hewn tombs. Consequently when the Jews were dispersed throughout the Eoman Empire, they car-ried this custom with them; and those who settled in Eome it-self, found that the only available place for their tombs was irr the underground stratum of rock. Accordingly we find that be-fore the birth of Christ catacombs had been excavated for burial' places, and the Eoman's careful protection of the right of sepul-ture permitted of no interference. But the coming of Christ and the early persecution of the- Christians in Borne changed the purpose and character of the catacombs. No longer could the Christians practice their re-ligion openly; no longer had they even the right to exist. They fled to the catacombs to live and worship according to their faith. Then did Valerian in A. D. 257, forbid the observance of their- THE MEECUKT. 13 religion even in the catacombs. Like the hunted hare closely fol-lowed by its pursuers, seeks safety in the secret passages under-ground, so did the Christians pursued by the relentless and. merciless Eoman soldiers, seek their safety in the depths of the-catacombs. The old entrances were walled up and many pas-sages were closed. On the other hand new passages were made,, narrower and more intricate than the former ones, and secret winding stairs approached by a ladder movable from within, led. to the open air. Small chapels also were made in which the hid-ing bishops conducted worship. Wells were dug for water, and. store rooms were made for corn and wine; many lamps have been found which were used for lighting up the dreary passages. Hither were the bodies of the martyrs brought for burial, and in a short time hundreds of graves bore testimony to the spirit of the early Christian Church. Sometimes the inscriptions state that a whole family lies buried here, strangled to death for the cause of righteousness; and again we read that here lies the bones of ten, twenty, thirty or forty martyrs. Is not this holy ground, a place consecrated by the bones of the martyrs interred there ? Is it any wonder then, that during the period of toleration which was ushered in by the coming of Constantine in A. D. 312, the Christians continued to use the catacombs as a place of' burial, and moreover made them an object of pilgrimages? In life the catacombs were to them not a series of dark gloomy passages, but a place of inspiration, a place filled with the mem-ory of loving sacrifice and holy zeal, a place glorified by the true faith; and in death it was a source of great joy and peace to know that their bodies would rest near those of the saints. Dur-ing this period the catacombs were reconstructed. The passages which had been closed up were opened again. Parian marble-was used for doorways; silver tablets were put on the walls, dedi-cated to the memory of the saints; chapels were built and old ones remodeled; new passages for air and light were created and these underground chambers took on an entirely different aspect. But in the year A. D. 410 disaster again befell them. Alaric with his barbarian hordes fell upon Eome and despoiled it Prom this time until; the sixteenth century was a period of dis- 14 THE AIEBCURY. mantling, and finally of utter neglect of them. The popes in the first years of this period carried away many of the remains of the saints to sanctify the churches, and relics were carried forth in abundance; and in the last centuries the catacombs were utterly forgotten. Finally in the latter part of the sixteenth century Antonio Bassio rediscovered them, and spending thirty-six years in groping around in their crypts, he desciphered many of the inscriptions and copied many of the pictures. These inscriptions and pictures reveal to us much of the be-lief of the early Christians, and it is very interesting to know their character. There are two series of biblical pictures, the first dealing with Old Testament scenes, and the second with those of the New Testament. Under the first we find pictured the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden, the sacrifice of Isaac, Moses taking off his shoes, Moses receiving the law, Moses striking the rock, the sufferings of Job, the translation of Elijah, Daniel in the lion's den, the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, and the main incidents in the life of Jonah. Under the second series we find illustrations of the adoration of the magi, Christ with the doctors, and various other incidents and some of the miracles of Christ's life. Once is the nativity shown, and once the crowning of Christ with thorns. No fur-ther into the sufferings of Christ do these pictures go. The early Christians shrank from the horrors of the scourging and the mockery, and from the agonies of the cross. But the most important consideration in regard to these pic-tures is not the amount of art evidenced in them, but the pe-culiar facts concerning the belief of the early Church which are brought out through them. It has long been supposed that the cross was the earliest emblem of the Church. Now in the cata-combs the cross does not appear at all in the first two centuries. Moreover, the Virgin Mary does not appear until the fourth century, and then only as a human mother, sometimes with the infant Jesus, and sometimes in the attitude of prayer. In the latter case it is well to note also that her head is simply covered with a veil, and not with a nimbus such as is given to saints and angels. Here surely we can find mo grounds for the adoration of the Virgin. THE MEKCUEY. 15 Light also is thrown on the question of the primacy of St. Peter. This apostle is represented in two different scenes; oftencst with the cock at his feet indicating the denial, and fre-quently he is standing on one side of Christ with St. Paul on the other. Nowhere is he represented as being the rock on which the Church is founded, and nowhere is he shown as hav-ing the keys in his possession. Now while we do not hold that the inscriptions and the pictures of the catacombs portray fully the faith of the early Christians, nevertheless it is not probable that the early Church, if it had believed in the primacy of St. Peter, would make him an equal with St. Paul in their paint-ings. But brightest and most inspiring of all is their portrayal of their blessed Lord and Master. Here they dwelt with a fond-ness that evidences their great love for Him His miracles, His works of healing, His acts of love and mercy are here recorded. Christ the good shepherd with the lamb upon His shoulders, and with his sheep about Him, is frequently found. Again He is leaning upon a shepherd's crook or seated at a well. Never do we see Him being scourged or hanging upon the cursed tree. Always He is the gentle, loving and kind shepherd of the sheep, caring for His flocks, leading them into green pastures and be-side still waters up into an eternal vale of peace. Moreover the hopeful character of the early faith is attested by the 11,000 inscriptions which commemorate the dead. Here breathes the sweet atmosphere of the Christian love. The affec-tion of husband and wife, of parents and children, and of the Christian fathers for each other is here beautifully set forth. Moreover prayers to the dead are not infrequent. But in reality these prayers are more to the living than to the dead, more to those who have gone on a little farther, for whose love and assist-ance they implore. No evidence is found of belief in a Purga-tory. To them death seemed indeed but the portal of.eternal life, and an eternal life of joy and peace. They had no fear of Hell or future punishment for sins; in fact their sins no longer caused them anxiety, for, the blood of Christ had cleansed them from all sin. Heaven was secured them by the sacrifice upon Calvary. Thus we see that in the catacombs we find no grounds for the 16 THE MERCURY. supposition that the cross was the earliest emblem of the Church, for the adoration of the Virgin Mary, for the primacy of St. Peter, or for the belief in Purgatory. Moreover there are no representations of the Trinity, the Atonement, the Last Judg-ment, Satan and punishments in the underworld, and Christ is no where shown as one of the Trinity, but rather as the good shepherd, the true vine, the bread of life, and the fountain of truth. This was the sum and substance of their theology. This was sufficient for them to live righteous lives, and die martyr's deaths, if need be. Love rather than theological controversy righteousness rather than scruples concerning creed, character-ized them. They were the believers in the one Supreme God, and the man of Galilee was to them "Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Saviour of the living." Under such conditions gloom could not reign in these under-ground passages. Where so much of life and light are revealed, gloom can not be. These are indeed glorious abodes where the saints sleep the peaceful sleep of the righteous. The light of the hope of an eternal day shines here, and these passages, these crypts, these halls loudly proclaim:— t "ISTo, no, it is not dying, The Shepherd's voice to know; His sheep He ever leadeth, His peaceful flock He feedeth, Where living pastures grow. Oh, no, this is not dying, Thou Saviour of mankind! There streams of love are flowing, No hindrance ever knowing; Here only drops we find." * THE MEKCUUY. OUTWITTED. 17 i ELMEK STOUFFER, '11. HEN" James Bryce, police captain of West Hampton came into his office last evening, everybody from the janitor to the sergeant saw that something which was pleasing to him must have happened. To-night the usually exacting chief seemed to be pleased with everything and everybody. But no wonder he felt happy. For his orchard of young peach trees which were now loaded with the choicest fruit were the special pride of his heart. And ever since the opening of the fall term of Hope College the orchard had suffered from nightly raids by some of the students, and try as he would he couldn't catch them at work or find out who they were. But that morning he had met with a piece of rare good fortune which it seemed to him would discover the culprits for when he went into his orchard he found the Sophomore class roll-book lying under a tree of his choicest peaches. This was the cause -of Captain Bryce's unusual good spirits. He knew that the boys. would never lose that book yet whoever came to get is must ex-plain how it came to be lost in his peach orchard. Accordingly he put an advertisement in the evening paper announcing the rinding of the class roll book and that the same could be pro-curred by calling upon Capt. Bryce at City Hall. Meanwhile there was consternation in the Sophomore class. They never would lose that book. Yet how was it to be recov-ered without someone going to the police captain for it? And to go to Bryce would be giving himself away entirely. What should they do? Hammond, to whom the book was entrusted, volunteered to go to police headquarters, confess to stealing the peaches and get the book, but his classmates wouldn't permit such a procedure. They thought there must be some way to outwit the captain. That night a meeting was held in the class president's room and various means of recovering their roll were discussed. JSTone of the plans proposed seemed satisfactory until at last Hammond suggested what they thought would do the trick. So the meeting adjourned and the boys retired to their rooms. 18 THE MEltCUEY. An hour later two young men wearing slouch hats pulled low over their eyes stole out of the shadows of the dormitory and walked rapidly up town. They came to Eyan's barber shop just as Byan was closing up for the night. The boys exchanged greetings with the little barber and Hammond said, "Say Byan, how much will you take for your barber pole?" Eyan stared at the boys a moment bu t when they assured him that they were in earnest, he replied: "Well its beginning to look pretty shabby so you may have it for two dollars and a half. I need a new one at any rate." The boys paid the money, got a receipt and then marched away carrying what had been Eyan's barber pole. After they had gone several blocks they met a policeman, who thinking them up to some prank, arrested them and took them to police headquarters. Here the boys showed the receipt which they got from the barber and were promptly set free with apolo-gies from the captain. Soon after they ran into the arms of an-other policeman who also arrested them and took them to head-quarters with the same result as before. A third arrest followed and an hour later the chief was again confronted by two youths who were charged with stealing and carrying off someone's bar-ber pole. Captain Bryce now lost all patience. Calling a ser-geant he said to him: "Wagner, reach every officer on duty and tell him not to arrest any fool college students who are carrying a barber pole around town." The sergeant immediately departed upon his errand and so far as the boys with the barber pole were concerned, the captain had peace for the night. The next morning there was a lively scene about police head-quarters. No less than the two dozen barbers of the town were clamouring about the theft of their barber poles some time dur-ing the night before. "Nice state of affairs," said one irate old fellow. "A crowd of young vandals carry off half the town while the police are in league with them." "Why don't you complain to the officer on your beat," asked the captain. "I did complain," answered the barber, "but he said that he had posi-tive orders from you not to arrest anyone stealing barber poles." Bryce was in a dilemma. He saw that he had been outwitted by the students. But as for a solution of his own difficulties he was at sea entirely. While pondering upon his position a solu-tion came in an unexpected manner. The postman brought in THE MERCURY. 19 the morning mail, and among it he found a short typewritten note which ran, "You have our roll book. We have the barber poles. We are willing to exchange on even terms. If you wish to see the barber poles returned, deliver the class roll book to the colored messenger boy whom we shall send to you this after-noon." Signed, The Sophomores. Bryce saw that this was al-most his only relief, so when the messenger came he at once gave the book to him, soon afterwards a dray loaded with barber poles drove into town and a pair of carpenters soon replaced them all. X NAPOLEON IN LITERATURE CHARLES SHINDLER, '10. | HE literary genius is often'considered a dreamer and a man of little worth in other realms. In fact, the world is prone to place upon him the brand of imprac-ticability. However just such a characterization may be, we have had men of great literary talent who have been in-tensely practical. So practical that as statesmen, soldiers, and civilians, they have won imperishable fame. Such men were Caesar and Grant. The commentaries of Caesar were written by him when in the midst of stirring ac-tivities. His information was first hand and the resulting liter-ary production has never wearied the world. Grant, too, pre-eminently a general, wielded a facile pen. At the end of a stirring life, he lived over again the events of his crowded career and his "Memoirs" have been added to the world's masterpieces of literature. We now turn to another soldier with whose military exploits we are so familiar and yet whom we have, perhaps, failed to* meet in the fields of literary achievement. Napoleon has not given us a great commentary but the orations delivered to his soldiers disclose the genius of the man and reveal the secret of his power. Even as Caesar held his legions by the eloquence of his speech, so Napoleon prodded on the emotional Frenchmen to greater and greater efforts. It is not extravagant to say that 20 THE ME11CUEY. the marvelous success of the Corsican can be attributed more to the personality and cogent speech of the man than to his cun-ning on the battlefield. Napoleon is irresistible. The enthu-siasm of the man is contagious. Eead his speeches and then cease to wonder that he fired the hearts of the quick-tempered warm -hearted Frenchmen. Imagine yourself in his army when he delivered the following speech upon entering Milan.: "Soldiers: You have rushed like a torrent from the top of the Apennines; you have overthrown and scattered all that op-posed your march. Piedmont, delivered from Austrian tyranny, indulges her material sentiments of peace and friendship to-ward France. Milan is yours and the republican flag waves throughout Lombardy. The dukes of Parma and Madena owe their political existence to your generosity alone. The army which so proudly threatened you can find no barrier to protect it against your courage; neither the Po, the Ticino, nor the Adda could stop you for a single day. These vaunted bulwarks of Italy oppose you in vain; you passed them as rapidly as the Apennines. These great successes have filled the heart of your country with joy. Your representatives have ordered a festival to com-memorate your victories, which has been held in every district of the republic. There your fathers, your mothers, your wives, sisters, and mistresses rejoiced in your good fortune and proudly boasted of belonging to you. Yes, soldiers, you have done much—but remains there noth-ing more to do? Shall it be said of us that we knew how to conquer but not how to make use of victory? Shall posterity reproach us with having found Capua in Lombardy? But I see you already hasten to arms. An effeminate repose is tedious to you; the days which are lost to glory are lost to your happiness. Well, then, let us set forth! We have still forced marches to make, enemies to subdue, laurels to gather, in-juries to revenge. Let those who have sharpened the daggers of civil war in France, who have basely murdered our ministers and burnt our ships at Toulon, tremble! The hour of vengeance has struck; but let the people of all countries be free from apprehension; we are the friends of the people everywhere, and those great men whom we have taken for THE MERCOKY 21 our models. To restore the capitoL to replace the statues of the heroes who rendered it illustrious, to rouse the Eoman people, stupefied by several ages of slavery—such will be the fruit of our victories; they will form an era for posterity; you will have the immortal glory of changing the face of the finest part of Eu-rope. The French people, free and respected, by the whole world, will give to Europe a glorious peace, which will indem-nify them for the sacrifices of every kind which for the last six years they have been making. You will then return to your homes and your country. Men will say as they point you out, "He belonged to the Army of Italy." The ability of Napoleon in persuading men to follow him in the most hazardous attempts was extraordinary. He could make the most difficult task appear as child's play and by the offer of rich rewards allured the undecided. This is seen in the following: "Soldiers: You are naked and ill-fed! Government owes you much and can give you nothing. The patience and cour-age you have shown in the midst of this rocky wilderness are admirable; but they gain you no renown; no glory results to you from your endurance. It is my design to lead you into the-most fertile plains of the world. Eich provinces and great cities will be in your power; there you will find honor, glory, and wealth. Soldiers of Italy, will you be wanting in courage or perseverance? " In ability to shame his "soldiers and secure better service, Napoleon reminds us of Caesar. Soldiers: I am not satisfied with you; you have shown neither bravery, discipline, nor perseverance; no position could rally you; you abandoned yourselves to a panic of terror; you suffered yourselves to be driven from situations where a hand-ful of brave men might have stopped an army. Soldiers of the Thirty-ninth and Eighty-fifth, you are not French soldiers. Quartermaster-General, let it be inscribed on their colors, "They no longer belong to the Army of Italy." 22 THE JIEKCUKT. A GREAT TEACHER. E. H. HINTERNESCH, '13. N" the Chinese race we have the mightiest aggregation of human beings in any one nation on earth "with a written history extending as far back as that of any other which the world has known, the only nation that has throughout retained its nationality, and has never been ousted from the land where it first appeared." How can this be explained? Greece and Eome have lived and died, the Per-sian Empire has long since passed away, the map of Europe has changed a hundred times, yet China is much the same as in hoary antiquity. Investigators of this subject are most thoroughly united in declaring the result to be due to the fact that, whereas other nations have depended on physical force, China alone, has re-lied on moral force. Whence has come this moral force? Dr. Williams says, "It would be hard to overestimate the influence of Confucius in his ideal princely scholar, and the power for good over his race which this conception has ever since ex-erted. The immeasurable influence in after ages of the charac-ter thus portrayed proves how lofty was his own standard " Realizing the great influence which this one man has exerted on after ages we cannot help but anticipate profit in the study of his life. From the middle of the sixth to the end of the seventh cen-tury there swept over this earth one of those tidal waves of rea-son, "when the nations were full of unrest, and the mountains of thought were shaken with discontent." Then lived Themisto-des, Leonides, Cyrus the Great, Miltidates, Cambysese, Xerxes and Darius. Of course then occurred the battles of Marathon, Salamis and Thermopolye. Then, too, lived Budda Gantauma. Lo-Tesse, Ezekiel, Hazzai, Daniel, Zachariah, Pythagoras, Pin-dar, Aeschylus and Anacreon. It was then that Confucius K'ung-foo-tsze," "the master K'ung"—was born, B. C. 551. Confucius was the result of a peculiar union, a man of seventy married to a girl of seventeen. When the boy was three years old his father died, and his care and education was left upon the shoulders of his girl mother. THE MERCURY. 23 Though the son of a governor and of royal birth, he was brought up in the village like other boys of his time, not being allowed to think himself better than his playmates. As a boy he showed his superiority; at fifteen he was considered a phe-nomenal musician. He himself tells us that at that age his mind was set on learning. At nineteen he married, and in the same year was given his first public trust, that of keeper of the herds. This made him a sort of government overseer. He collected rents, enforced the laws and settled disputes between rival herders. At first he rode about much as an itinerant judge, but after a little sum-moned the disputants to him and gave to them a series of talks, or lectures on the absurdity of quarrelling and the necessity of getting together in complete understanding. He taught them the "Golden Eule." At twenty-two he commenced his career as a teacher. His pupils were not school boys but young and inquiring souls, who had a thirst for knowledge. He charged no fees, but like Plato accepted the goodly honorarium left by an admiring pupil. Yet no pittance was too small to be acceptable to the master. Sin-cerity and ability were the main requirements. The chief men of the state gradually became aware that a "prophet" had risen among them, and gave their sons into his keeping. His fame now quickly increased and we find him soon surrounded by a host of disciples. In B. C. 516, the marquis of the province of Lu, his patron, having been worsted in a struggle fled from the country. Con-fucius followed him but finding he could do him no good, re-turned. He now continued without official employment until B. C. 500, when at the age of fifty-one he was appointed "chief magistrate of the town of Chung-tu, and a marvellous reforma-tion in the manner of the people took place." He was now pro-moted from position to position until he held the office of Min-ister of Crime, in the province. The appointment made an end of crime. The existing laws did not need to be enforced. No offender showed himself. His administration was so wise that the neighboring states began to take alarm. At length, through intrigue, Tsze-Lu, the governor, was induced to forsake his wise counsel and say to him, "It is time for you to leave." 24 THE MEKCUKY. The sage was now fifty-six. He traveled from state to state, offering his service, and though many a prince would have gladly given him office, yet not one was ready to accept and prac-tice his principles. In B. C. 483, he returned to his native land and in the five last years of his life wrote several of his works. He died B. C. 478. He was pre-eminently a teacher and reformer. He taught rhetoric, mathematics, economics, the science of government and political and natural history. He pointed out the foibles of society and the wrongs visited upon the people by those who pre-tended to serve them. He denounced hypocracy, selfishness, vanity and pretense. Let us now consider some of the teachings of this wonderful man. He taught filial piety; that we should serve our parents while living and adore them when dead. Of the future the master knew nothing, in fact he was accus-tomed to say, that as man knows very little of the past, how can he expect to know the future? He knows not whence he has come, how can he expect to know where he is going ? In regard to worship his advice was to "reverence the gods, but to keep at a distance from them," and, "to respect spiritual things, but to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.'" The word "God" he does not use, but is constantly speaking of "Heaven," of "doing the will of Heaven" and says, "He who sins against Heaven has none to whom he can pray." "Heaven is speaking through you." Heaven to him was a principle. The word is used in the Chinese classics in such a way as to convey the idea of a personality or a will. He did not claim divinity, not even divine revelation. He was not a religious teacher, but rather a teacher of ethics. Perhaps D. Legg's words give a better statement: "He was unreligious rather than irreligious; yet by the coldness of his temperament and intellect in this matter his influence is un-favorable to the development of true religious feelings among the Chinese people in general." Did he live to-day he would undoubtedly be one of the world's THE MERCURY. 25 foremost peace advocates; for it was one of his sayings, that, "To fight decides who is the stronger, the younger and most skill-ful in the use of arms, but it does not decide who is right. That is to be settled by Heaven in your own heart." He spoke in parables and was an epigramist. These then are some of his words: "Beware of ever doing that which you a,re likely, sooner or later, to repent of having done." The cultivator of the soil may have his fill of good things, but the cultivator of the mind will enjoy a continual feast. "Be slow in speech, but prompt in action." "He whose principles are thoroughly established, will not be easily led from the right path." "The cautious are generally to be found on the right side." "By speaking when we ought to keep silence, we waste our words." "If you would escape vexation, reprove yourself liberally and others sparingly." "Disputation often breeds hatred. "Make friends with the upright, intelligent and wise; avoid the licentious, talkative and vain." THE EDUCATION OF THE INDIAN. H. S. HOSHOUR, '10. | HE Indian sat a"ione on the vast prairie meditating his own miserable fate, a shadow fell across the path of his vision. He looked up and saw a white man. The white man told him that it had been decided that por-tions of the corintry,—the Indian country—were set apart for the exclusive use of the Indians "Where," said the white man, "you shall be taught the white man's ways, and once more be happy." "You would teach us?" repeated the Indian thought-fully. He gazed intensely in all directions. As he turned to-ward the north, a ray of hope came over his dusky brow. "There is a valley yonder, there I will take my people." The Great 26 THE MERCURY. Father hesitated. "Some of the white men have taken a fancy-to that valley. See the hilltops yonder. There is your reser-vation." A mighty passion shook the whole frame of the In-dian, He stretched his arms fiercely towards the north. "My country," he gasped, and stood mute, rigid, motionless. The Great Father had gone. The Indian was alone, plun-dered, forsaken. His head dropped upon his breast. "It is as I thought," he muttered. All was lost. The furrows once more seamed his weather-beaten face—deeper than before. Fifty years of the American Indian's story lies in the reserva-tion. There they are grouped and dare not leave. The Indian is taught such things as beadwork, pottery, basketry and the like. White men generally disdain the Indian. Such condi-tions can only take away from the Indian the self-respect and manhood which is innate in him. Some thirty years ago the maltreatment of the Indians impressed itself forcibly upon Colonel Pratt, an old Indian fighter, who determined to do something whereby the condition of the Indian might be better-ed. Out of this resolution came the Carlisle school, which has been the American Indian's greatest boon. It is not my pur-pose to describe the system of education which has stood the test for so many years and has become so famous, as to be known the world over. It has been assailed frequently but a large propor-tion of the criticism against the "Carlisle idea" is only of the class which proves the system's real efficiency. Though the In-dian is by nature proud and haughty, no person will respond more readily to a genial and kindly interest, than he. It has been said that the educated Indian returns to his people and takes up their ways and thus his education has been worthless. This is the exception rather than the rule. Of a group of about three hundred Carlisle graduates, one hundred and twenty-five went into the government employ, seventy-five went to higher in-stitutions and the others took up various lines of work. The important point is that all—with but three exceptions—are self-supporting and many support others. Surely higher education is not wasted on the Indian. Instead of being an expense to the government, the educated Indian becomes a vital part of it. The fact that "no man has a place or fair chance to exist under the government of the United States, who has no part in it," is THE MERCURY. 27 becoming more evident every year. The detractors of the In-dian schools have demanded that the idea be abandoned. In-stead the American public, with the love of a "square deal" for everyone, should arise and insist that these schools should be multiplied, so as to educate all the Indians and at the end of fifty years every Indian in this land would be a worker, a pro-ducer, and best of all, an American citizen. * MAY. (Submitted by 1911.) 0 how we feel the thrill of spring, "When leaves appear, and song-birds sing, When woods are bright, and blossoms sweet The morning sun with fragrance greet; When all around new life appears, Creation smiles and nature cheers. 0 who feels this and is not gay, For this is spring-time!—it is May! 0 how the robin sings his lay And warbles glad notes all the day; 0 how he thrills the saddened heart, And helps a thought of love impart. He lightens many loads of care, And in their stead brings hope, so fair. Remember him and then be gay, For this is spring-time!—it is May! 0 what a thrill of joy it brings, When nature all around us sings; When in the green and flowery lea, We hear the buzzing of the bee, And in the orchard and the field We see the signs of life revealed; 28 THE MERCURY. And all about are tokens, gay Of nature's resurrection,—May! This is the season of the year That we love best for it brings cheer; Eeminding us, that, though some days Of life point dark and dreary ways, Yet after each dark night, forlorn, There comes a bright and joyous morn, Then cast thy sorrows far away And with the world, be glad in May! T H I HERCURY Entered at the Postoffi.ee at Gettysburg as second-class Matter. VOL. XVII GETTYSBURG, PA., MAY, 1909 No. 3 Editor in-Chief SAMUEL FAUSOLD, 'IO. Exchange Editor G. E. BOWERSOX, 'io Business Manager PAUL S. MILLER, 'IO Ass't Bus. Managers ROY R. ALLEN, 'II RUFUS N. WENRICK, 'II Assistant Editor RALPH E. RUDISILL, 'IO Associate Editors E. J. BOWMAN, 'II C. M. DAVIS, 'II Advisory Board PROF. G. F. SANDERS, A. M. PROF. P. M. BIKLE, PH. D. PROF. C. J. GRIMM, PH. D. Published each month, from October to June inclusive, by the joint literary societies of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. Subscription price, one dollar a year in advance ; single copies 15 cents. Notice to discontinue sending THE MERCURY to any address must be ac-companied 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 MERCURY, GETTYSBURG, PA. est positions- EDITORIALS. The sure test and only test of an institution of learning is the worth of the product, turned out. By this criterion, the college is judged and it justifies its exist-ence by the intelligence, culture, and forcefulness of its alumni. Thus, in most walks of life, the college man excells. This is partly true in politics. The college man holds our high- -state and national and yet the curse of greed and 30 THE MEECURY. graft is upon us. Why is this? Is the influence of the college man for honesty so out of proportion to his powers in other quarters; or is it possible that the college man condones corrup-tion and himself openly courts it? We cannot believe this and yet the college man, permeated by the spirit of graft, tolerates it. This is true of some college men, at least, and the Alma Mater must bear her share of the blame. A professor of one of our sister colleges has said that in that institution boys learned the tricks of dirty politics and later car-ried their baneful methods to the state legislature. This is a shocking indictment, applicable to many of our colleges. Each college is a small republic, set aside from the world. In it, we elect officers for the various organizations. In these elections, the true standard of merit is too often discounted; lesser consid-erations prevail; and the astute politician, in embyro, does his questionable work. The most despicable creature on earth is the unscrupulous politician and woe unto the college that develops him. If we, are guilty, let us clear our skirts and make our beloved college a most potent factor in teaching the proper relations between the individual and the state. Another fault of the college man is a tendency to theorize and procrastinate while the other fellow controls the ballot box. The franchise is a glorious privilege and the neglect of its exercise can be termed almost criminal. The college man must enter the political arena. This is his duty. He must set an example to his neighbor and help destroy that monster which blights our cities and debauches-our legislatures—political indifference. May the colleges in the future turn out men with a more lively sense of political duty, who shall make politics respectable. When our best men learn to be politicians, the perpetuity of the American state shall be assured. THE Seniors' farewell to our Alma Mater is nigh at hand. This is perhaps the most interesting period of their lives. It crystallizes in deathless memory the pleasures of the past and the aspirations of the future. They are taking the final review of the work done and the last lingering words of advice. At THE MERCURY. 31 this time their thoughts are concentrated in two phases: Are we ready? and success. We must acknowledge that the present opportunities are ac-cording to one's ability. It is an occasion for them to use what they have already won by toil and labor. "With these qualifica-tions, there is a success which comes to the educated man, and gives pleasure and joy which money cannot buy. We know that all college men and women living in a community are en-gaged in professions or in business. They are leaders in the church with trained ability, or they are leaders in everything which promotes the culture of manhood. Let him go forward into the competition of business, or the rivalries of the professions or the envious struggles of politics without trust and confidence and life would be a failure. ,But let him go forward with the stamp of Gettysburg's manhood upon him and with the idea that fame is not got by a single bound and their wishes will be answered. As the Seniors are pushed forth amidst the contending forces of the world, let them bear aloft that "manhood crowned" which Gettysburg gives to them and let all unite in wishing them God-speed. EXCHANGES. "Now fades the Jast long streak of snow, Now burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow." "Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovlier hue, The lark becomes a sightless song." And drown'd in yonder living blue We are glad indeed, that as we see the beauty of spring all about us, nature taking on new life, there is seen also this quickening effort in the college papers. Most of them show the 32 THE MEECUEY. effect of the spring environment, and poetry is more in evidence than it was in the winter issues. The general subject matter is more inspiring. There appears to be a tendency on the part of college men in their eagerness to prepare for a profession to neglect the study of the mother tongue and especially what is known as "Old Eng-lish." The advantage of an extensive and intensive knowledge of English cannot be overestimated. This subject is well treat-ed in an article in the "Newberry Stylus." It is a well-written and valuable essay peculiarly applicable to many college men. The story "Maviael the Violinist," in the same issue is worthy ofmuch praise.- The characters are well chosen and the plot well developed, and suited to the season. The other articles of the issue are well composed, but "How John Wells Got His Life Insurance" is rather out of place and not fitted for a college magazine. The "Haverfordian" since devoting its pages entirely to lit-erary productions is quite measuring up to the expected stand-ard. Its appearance in the new cover is quite attractive; the contents are also well arranged. The leading aricle, "The Poetry of William Morris," does much credit to the author. Among our new exchanges we are glad to welcome "College Kays." The paper, though not attractive in appearance, con-tains much worthy of reading. "The Destiny of the Mongo-lian," merits special mention. It shows in a very logical and forceful manner the developments of the various races, and how the trend of events points to the Mongolian as a rising race, and no longer a "Dragon" to be feared but a race co-equal with the more favored peoples. The idea in the "College Student" of the "Keview Depart-ment" for criticizing the articles in the same issue is worthy of comment. There are many benefits to be derived from so close and exact criticisms; yet one feels that the same attention given before publication would greatly increase the literary standard of the paper and at the same time give the writers an opportu-nity to correct his deficiencies before publication, which they will scarcely do once their articles are published. We gratefully acknowledge all exchanges received. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. IN this Drama of Four Year's Course, Play your part without dad's horse ; This to do is up to you With just a little tact between each yearly act, In some domain take a stroll And sell ALUMINUM for next year's Role (roll). Every summer hundreds of students make BIG MONEY selling Aluminum Cooking UteusiJs. For particulars address LOUIS HETZEL, Gettysburg College, GETTYSBURG, PA. THE STEWART & STEEN CO., COLLEGE ENGRAVERS, 1024 Arch Street, PHILADELPHIA. MAKERS OF Invitations, Programs, Menus, Visiting Cards, Dance Cards, Monograms, Class and Fraternity Stationery. P. S. MILLER, 'to, Representative, Who has a full line of samples. ^\> The times an 1 the Schools demand that the best things shall be done and in the best manner. WateFmans^FountainPen accomplishes everything that can be required of a good writing in-strument. Made to last for years of service and give its owner the satisfaction which comes with owning "the best." From all dealers. The Globe trademark Is our guarantee S Sthool St., Bo.Ion .1.5' San Fr>pci«ce. 136 St. Jama* St. Montreal 12 C.jUen L« 0 ^TYX'XV^LtAJ-rX/VJ., V Uty FATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. FU^NITU^E Mattresses, Bed Springs, Iron Beds, Picture Frames, Repair Work done promptly. Under-taking a specialty. - Telephone No- 97. H. B, BENDER. 37 Baltimore Street, Gettysburg, P&- EDGAR C. TAWNEY BAKER West Middle Street. J. B. WINEMAN, DEALEK IN CHOICE FAMILY GROCERIES, PROVISIONS AND FRUITS, BOARDING CLUBS A SPECIALTY. SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON HELPS AND SUPPLIES P. ANSTADT & SONS, Publishers, Book and Job Printing of all kinds. Write for Prices. YORK, PA. PATRONIZE OTJR ADVERTISERS. EMIL ZOTHE, College Emblems, Engraver, Designer and Manufacturing Jeweler. 722 Chestnut St., Philadelphia. Specialties: Masonic Marks, Society Badges, College Buttons, Pins, Scarf Pins, Stick Pins and Athletic Prizes. All Goods ordered through G. F. Kieffer. Charles S. Mumper, DEAI.E FURNITURE, DEADER IN PICTURE FRAMES OF ALL SORTS REPAIR WORK DONE PROMPTLY I will also BUY or EXCHANGE any SECOND-HAND FURNITURE No. 4 Charnbersburg street, Gettysburg, Pa. D. J. Swartz, DEALER IN COUNTRY PRODUCE, GROCERIES, CIGARS AND TOBACCO. GETTYSBURG. OHLER BRO.'S RESTAURANT, F-iist National Bank Bld'g The place to eat the best Ice Cream QUICK LUNCH and Oysters in season. -IS— J. [. MUMPER Your Photographer, If not, why not? 41 Baltimore St., Gettysburg. FLEMING I BAIR'S LIVERY, Baltimore Street, First Square, Gettysburg, Pa. Competent Guides for all parts of the Battlefield. Arrange-ments by telegram or letter. Dock Bock 257. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. WINDSOR HOTEL, W. T. BRUJBAKER, Manager. Midway between Broad St. Station and Beading Terminal on Filbert St. A convenient and homelike place to stay while in the city shopping. An excellent restaurant where good service combines with low prices. ROOMS $1.00 PER DAY AND UP. The only moderate priced hotel of reputation and consequence in PHILADELPHIA. The Modern Steam Laundry . . OF YORK . . Offers the COLLEGE STUDENTS first-class work at Special Low Prices. E. C. STOUFFER, Local Agt. C. D. SMITH, Prop. The Baltimore Medical College Preliminary Fall Course begins September ist. Regular Winter Course begins September 20th. Liberal teaching facilities ; Modern college buildings ; Comfortable lecture hall and amphitheatres ; Large and complete equipped laboratories; Capacious hospital and dispensary; Lying-in department for teaching clinical obstetrics ; Large clinics. Send for catalogue. Address DAVID STREETT, M. D., Dean, N. E. Cor. Madison St., and Linden Ave., Baltimore, Md. COMPILER IMPRINT ON JOB WORK MEANS TASTY WORK CAREFULLY DONE. MENU CARDS WINDOW POSTERS LETTER HEADS ENVELOPES DANCE CARDS TICKETS Programs of all kinds. Everything' the College Man wants in Haper and Ink. Specially designed work. Latest Effects in Paper, done in Colors along lines of College Men's Associations. Catalog and Book work. The Gettysburg Compiler will keep old and new students in touch with town and college life.

Issue 67.1 of the Review for Religious, 2008. ; Mission Praye~r Consecrated Life Spiritual Supports QUARTERLY 67.'I 2008 Review for Religious fosters dialogue with God, dialogue with ourselves, and dialogue with one another about the holiness we try to live according to charisms of Catholic religious life. As Pope Paul V! said, our way of being church is today the way of dialogue. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-633-4610 ¯ Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Maih review@slu.edu ¯ \Veb site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McD6nough OP ¯ Pontifical College Josephinum 7625 North High Street ¯ Columbus, Ohio 43235 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2008 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distrihution, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such perntission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Eugene Hensell OSB Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp Paul Coutinho sJ Martin Erspamer OSB Margaret Guider OSF Kathleen Hughes RSCJ Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD QUARTERLY 67.1 2008 contents prisms 4 Prisms 13 23 mission Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission James P. McCloskey CSSP envisions creating an experience of "common ground" among people of goodwill within religious congregations about the many issues that cause division. Personal/Group Reflection Questions An "Asian" Meditation on the Gift of Mission James H. Kroeger MM reflects on the "mission motive" mentioned first by the Federation of Asian Bishops Conference: a deep sense of gratitude to God. prayer A Dream, Ash Wednesday, .and the Word Godelieve Theys OCSO shares a dream that has profound implications for finding God's Word alive and powerful, having always new things to say. Pedagogy of Prayer Jghn Carroll Futrell SJ reviews many aspects of our Christian prayer and suggests practical ways of making our lives more prayer-filled. Personal/Group Reflection Questions Pray Passionately Brendan Kneale FSC addresses the need to bring to our prayers a passion of the sort found in the wording of many Psalms. Revie~v for Religious 54 6O 67 consecrated life 0 The Institute of Impracticalities: The Financial Support of Monasteries Clifford Stevens cautions that, as soon as the mere support of the monastery becomes the primary concern, "practicality" takes over and Divine Providence goes right out the window. Enclosure and Other Ways to Widen One's Horizons M. Regina van den Berg FSGM argues that the experiences that travel and the media make possible are often escapes from reality, while the limited environment of the enclosure can widen our horizons. Religious Brotherhood Today Anthony Malaviaratchi CSSR sets. forth the challenges facing religious brothers' congregations, especially within the South Asian context. 74 85 spiritual supports Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? Vincent Genovesi SJ presents a solid theological and pastoral response to the questions raised about the usefulness or necessity of the rite of reconciliation. Personal/Group Reflection Questions Mentors Mentored: Spiritual Companionship with a Saint Lou Ella Hickman IWBS shares her experience of choosing St. Edith Stein to be her mentor as she mentors others on their spiritual journey. departments 89 Scripture Scope: Reading the Sermon on the Mount 94 Canonical Counsel: Personal Records of Community Members 100 Book Reviews 67.1 2008 prisms As we move eight years into the 21st century, we could well take stock of how we are measuring up to the vision and mission set before us by John Paul II's apostolic letter "At the begin-ning of the new millennium." As the pope noted, we are not in the peren-nial process of inventing a new program each year or even each century. The program consists in the plan found in the Gospel and in the liv-ing tradition of the church. "It has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved, and imitated so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem." But this Gospel program has to be translated into pastoral initiatives that are adapted to the circumstances of each local church and each local religious com-munity. That is the action call as we begin anew with the favor of another year. Where do we begin? There can be no other beginning than the challenge issued by Vatican II's Lumen gentium, chapter 5: the universal call to holiness. All our pastoral planning, all our religious renewal efforts, all our peace and jus-tice endeavors are measured by the clarity of our focus on holiness. In the way we live and in what we do, the question is most realistic and practical: Do we want to become holy? Is that our desire for others? There can be no growth in holiness without our entering more fully into a learning how to pray. While a widespread interest in spirituali- Review for Religious ties and spiritual practices is a contemporary phenomenon, the foundation remains a personal prayer life. Prayer, even in its most contemplative and cloistered forms, opens our hearts simultaneously to the love of God and to the love of our brothers and sisters. It is our Christian prayer that enables us to be shapers of movements and events in our local situation and sometimes even more widely in the world. It is prayer that roots us in the truth that "without Me, you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). When we pray, we acknowledge the primacy of Christ and, in union with him, the primacy of the interior life and of holiness. Prayer itself needs to be nourished consistendy with a listening to the Word of God. As we continue to steep ourselves in Scripture, we find ourselves warming to the passion of sharing the Good News. This passion leads to a new sense of mission--mission not reserved to specialists or to lands different from our own. Yet witnessing to our faith vision must happen within a context of sensitivity to the differ-ent religious and value paths of our fellow citizens and to the diversity of cultures present within our own country in which the Christian message is expressed. In challenging all of us ordinary Christians, the pope writes: "A new apos-tolic outreach is needed which will be lived as the everyday commitment of Christian communities ahd groups." As Vatican II's Gaudium et spes §34 says, "The Christian message does not inhibit men and women from building up the world or make them disinterested in the welfare ofotheir fellow human beings: On the contrary, it obliges them more fully to do these very things." Review for Religious is privileged to play its part, through its many authors, in sharing insights and encouraging practices for this Christian mission. David L. Fleming SJ 67.1 2008 mission JAMES P. Mc CLOSKEY Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission Ensnarled in traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I began to listen to a radio talk pro-gram more intendy than usual. I'was searching for words of consolation on a long and tedious drive. What I found was a fascinating--and stirring--discussion about reconciliation. The topic was abortion, but the focus of the discus-sion was the search for "common ground." The hour-long program was a recapitula-tion of meetings that occurred during the past year. The meetings were organized by women who had opposing positions on the issue of aborti6n. Representatives of both groups described themselves as feminists. The partici-pants in the year-long discussion were women accustomed to the public forum. That is, they were intelligent and articulate spokespersons James P. McCloskey CSSp writes from Congregazione dello Spirito Santo; Clivo di Cinna, 195; Roma 00136; Italy. Review for Religious for "pro-life" and "pro-choice" positions. During the year there had been unsuccessful attempts by some to cancel the series of meetings, angry leaks to the press about the discussions, and genuine fearfulness on both sides. But the meetings took place. And the result was extraordinary. Women who did not accept the position of other women who, in their opinion, allowed the law to regu-late their bodies listened nevertheless with compassion as their colleagues recounted their religious-faith con-victions, their differing understandings of the human person, and ~their simple--and different--biological beliefs. Other women, who could not theretofore abide the notion that females could terminate what they believed to be a human life within them, responded with empathy towards women whose scientific and human-istic principles were simply different from their own. In the end, members of neither group changed their positions. But also, in the end, members of both groups grew in respect and compassion for their "opponents." They achieved a form of "common ground" that will serve as the basis for future relationship and conversa-tion between them. Not for discussion of abortion do I raise this exam-ple, but as a way of envisioning and creating a similar experience of "common ground" among p~ople of good-will within religious congregations that were founded for mission and for service to the poor. The existence of multiple cultures within congregations, mirroring the multiple cultures within the Catholic Church, is evident. These cultures are related to the different languages, tribes, national identities, and ages within the congre-gations, but they are not confined to them. The social scientist Edgar Schein defines culture as "the deeper 67.1 2008 McCloskey * Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously, and that define in a basic 'taken-for-granted' fashion an organization's view of itself and its environment."1 In Schein's view the most useful way to think about culture is to imagine it as "the accumulated shared learning of a given group, covering behavioral, emotional, and cogni-tive elements of the group members' total psychological functioning.''2 Since the publication of Schein's work, the under-standing and perception that most members of an orga-nization share the same cultural viewpoint has moved toward an awareness that many organizations contain multiple cultures or subcultures. Noting that some orga-nizations may have only fragmented, disjointed cultures, Joanne Martin has asked whether culture needs to be something internally consistent, or whether it can be inconsistent and expressive of difference. Can it incor-porate confusion, ignorance, paradox, and fragmenta-tion? What are the boundaries around culture, and how do cultures change?3 By multiple cultures within a religious congrega-tion, I mean the presence of differing and sometimes opposing worldviews under the umbrella of having been founded for a single purpose and with a single Rule of Life. Similarly, among Catholics in general, some define themselves as God's "pilgrim people," a term that implies moving towards the kingdom of God but not yet achieving it. Others think of the church as the kingdom of God here on earth. These different understandings translate into different understandings of morality, sac-ramental life, liturgy, and hierarchy. They are some-times called differences of "style," but they are more profound than that. Review for Religqous In religious missionary congregations, founded for "the spread of the gospel to those who have not yet heard it," it is no wonder that multiple cultures are the order of the day. On a large scale, those differences are racial, linguistic, ideological, generational, and ecclesi-astical. We make national and tribal attempts at "enculturation" of the life of our congregation and its values within a particular set-ting, translating ideals into prac-tice- often with success but not always. Within our congrega-tion's American subculture, mul-tiple differences of culture, are often experienced just as acutely and intensely as in international subcultures. Even in the "real 'life" of persons in one community, such as the same parish or school, different worldviews emerge that challenge common living. Recently, in a community-room conversation, a priest said, "It is impossible to be both Republican and Spiritan." He said it with the force of true conviction, and the Republican Spiritans in the room grew silent and began to seethe. In one prov-ince there are celebrations of the Tridentine liturgy, and there are those who question whether the celebration of daily Eucharist is ideal--or even spiritually healthy. The understanding and perception that most members of an organization share the same cultural viewpoint has moved toward an awareness ,that, many organizations contain multip!~e cultures or Subcultures. 67.1 2008 McCloskey * Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mis~ion There are liberals, conservatives, social activists, phi-losophers, and papists. A morley--and gracedmcrew! Undercurrents of cultural difference emerge in quiet discussions concerning the role of lay associates in the congregation; concerning the rising influence of the "southern" provinces, where candidates are many and new energy and vitality overshadow the elders of the "north"; and concerning members who choose to live and work in "untraditional" settings, interpreting "mis-sion" in a different way. Undercurrents rise to the sur-face during provincial elections or national assemblies, when stakes are high and the level of well-being is at risk. Sometimes an "elephant in the room" is studiously ignored during discussion of clergy sexual abuse, sexual orientation, financial accountability, or institutional assessments. In congregations with a missionary orientation and an international membership, the formal "cultural" training of members tends to be thorough and highly professional. Degrees in cross-cultural communica-tion, missiology, and anthropology abound. Experts in interreligious dialogue, ecumenism, and international development are fairly commonplace. Candidates in for-marion spend a period of ministry in another cultural context before definitive commitment, and most new members are assigned to countries not .their own. It is usual for members to achieve fluency in a second or even a third language. .Why, then, do we often find it difficult to talk among ourselves? Is it simply the human condition that the "traditionalists" will oppose the "progressives," that tribal alliances will win out over competence in choosing leadership, and that "turf wars" will decide who controls property and finance? We opted for more. Review for Religious And we know that the divisions are sinful reminders of our weakness. And so what is the solution to the dissolution? The solution is a simple one--a commitment to sustained and deliberate conversation for the purpose of achiev-ing "common ground." Following the model employed by the pro-life and pro-choice advo-cates, it is imperative to establish "rules" for dis-cussion. It is urgent to listen with care and real empathy. It is important to proceed with respect and humility. No one We know that the divisions are sinful reminders of . our weakness. person fully embodies the congregation's ideal mem-ber. Together, the members bear worldwide witness to the values espoused by its founders. No one perspective is to be eliminated or misjudged. The effort to engage in this conversation is fearful and intimidating. But it is the only way that differences can be respected--and, ultimately, that the persons expressing those different opinions will be respected and loved. The meaning of "mission" has changed since the foundation of the Spiritan congregafon in the 18th cen-tury. Far from an imposition of a foreign culture upon a people, mission is no less than sustained, purposeful, and respectful dialogue. It is a commitment to remain at the table, conversing honestly until the Spirit speaks. W-hat greater witness to the "mind of Christ" is possible than the example of a community determined to "linger at the table" and fully invest itself in genuine, honest conversation--for mission? 67.1 2008 McCloskey ¯ Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission Notes t Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985), p. 6. 2 Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 2nd edition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992), p. 10. 3 Joanne Martin, Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 4. 2o o Personal/Group Reflection Questions Where does my sense 6f mission come from--directly from God, from superiors, from the community in which I live? What give me a continuing sense of confirmation and support for my mission? When do we talk about our mission-~our individual ministries or our corporate ministry together? What makes this conversation helpful? What makes it painful and contentious? Review for Religious JAMES H. KROEGER An "Asian" Meditation on the Gift of Mission ~/~y mission? This perennial, persistent question mits of a variety of valid responses. Asking why is fundamentally a question of "mission motivation." Why evangelize? Why be Jesus' disciple? Why concern yourself?. What ends does mission really serve? The bishops of Asia continually grapple with these questions as they explore the evangelizing mission of the church on this vast continent of four billion people, where less than three percent of the burgeoning masses are Christian. Although these leaders of the church in Asia have elucidated several reasons for engaging in mission, what is striking is the "mission motive" they James H. Kroeger MM has since 1970 served mission in the Philippines and Bangladesh. Currently he is professor of Mission Studies and Islamics at the Loyola School of Theology; Ateneo de Manila University; Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights; Quezon City 1108; Philippines. jkroeger@admu.edu.ph 67.1 2008 Kroeger * The Gift of Mission mentioned first during the fifth plenary assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC). Collectively they forcefully asserted: "We evange-lize, first of all, from a deep sense of gratitude to God, the Father 'who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing' (Ep 1:3) and sent the Spirit into our hearts so that we may share in God's own life. Mission is above all else an overflow of this life from grateful hearts transformed by the grace of God" (FABC V). The Asian bishops vigorously affirm: "That is why it is so important for us Christians to have a deep faith-experience of the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rm 8:39), that love which has been poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has ,been given to us (Rm 5:5). Without a personal experience of this love received as gift and mercy, no sense of mission can flourish" (FABC V). Note some of the words and phrases that the FABC uses to describe this motive for mission: "gratitude to God," "grateful hearts," "spiritual blessing," "given to us," "love received as gift and mercy." Indeed, mission is viewed as a gi~, graciously given, gratefully received, and generously shared. Gratitude is a powerful motive for energetic evangelization. The Image of Gift All cultures and peoples give gifts, particularly on special occasions and at significant life events: birthdays, weddings, holidays, anniversaries. Gifts bond people together, they express gratitude and appreciation. Gifts are chosen personally and carefully, to please each recip-ient. Often gifts-are exchanged at the same moment, further cementing families together, and friends too. Asians have elevated gift-giving into an art. What would Chinese celebrations and the Lunar New Year Review for Religiot~ be without generous gifts offered in red envelopes (ang-pao)? In Korea the ritual celebration of one's sixtieth birthday (hwangap) is an occasion for lavish gifting. No Filipino feels comfortable without bringing some pasa-lubong-- large or small--when returning home. Probably it is the experience of giving and receiving gifts--so deeply human--that prompted Asia's bishops to see gratitude for abundant grace received as a fit-ting image and motive for mission. This gift image expresses Christian thankfulness for God's unique, gra-tuitous, gift--Jesus the Son. Each day in the Eucharist, a Greek word that means thanksgiving (eucha-ristein), we say "we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks." Frequently in the Mass the Prayer over the Gifts refers to the "holy exchange of gifts." To help in grasping the deep meaning in the image of mission as gift, this "Asian" reflection now presents three interrelated moments of what might be termed "gift missiology." Three "R" words capture mission-as-gift: Recognize, Receive, and Reciprocate. Recognize by being profoundly aware of the uniqueness of God's gift. Receive by personally appropriating God's gift. Reciprocate by sharing God's gift with others. :The first moment in hppreciatin g "gift missiology" is ~to become deeply conscious of th~ depths of God's love. Recognizing the Gift The first moment in appreciating "gift missiology" is to become deeply conscious of the depths of God's 67.1 2008 Kroeger ¯ The Gift of Mission love, the love of the Trinity. The mission decree of the Second Vatican Council (Ad gentes) noted: "The pilgrim church is missionary by her very nature. For it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father. This decree [divine plan] flows from that 'fountain of love' or charity within God" (AG §2). Mission originates in the centrifugal love of the Trinity; our missionary God shares of his essence which is love. God the Father gifts us with his incar-nate Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. One can receive no greater gift. Prayer and contemplation facilitate a depth-awareness of this great gift. The New Testament is replete with expressions of God's magnanimous generosity. Paul reminds the Romans: "Adam prefigured the One to come, but the gift considerably outweighed the fall . Divine grace, coming through the one man Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift. The results of the gift also outweigh the results of one man's sin . Jesus Christ will cause everyone to reign in life who receives the free gift that he does not deserve" (Rm 5:15-17). As one con-templates God's profound generosity, gratitude wells up in_the heart, leading one to proclaim "Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift" (2 Co 9:15). Recognizing God's gifts also means being pro-foundly aware that we do not earn or merit the gifts; they come from God's generosity, as Paul explains to the Ephesians: "This was to show for all ages to come, through his goodness towards us in Christ Jesus, how infinitely rich he is in grace. Because it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit. We Review for Religious are God's work of art" (Ep 2:7-10). Paul encourages the Romans to humbly receive God's gifts: "I want to urge each one among you not to exaggerate his real impor-tance . Our gifts differ according to the grace given us" (Rm 12:3-8). As Jesus prepares to leave his disciples, he promises them: "I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever, that Spirit of Truth. ¯ ." (Jn 14:16). Jesus' prom-ise is fulfilled at'. Pentecost: God's generous gifts are for all peoples, whatever their religious, ,ethnic, or cultural background. "They were all I ~ filled with the - Holy Spirit .The Spirit gave them the gift of speech [to] proclaim the marvels of God" (Ac 2:1-12). The early Christian community--and our church today--have been assured of God's continuous generos-ity: "You will not be without any of the gifts of the Spirit while you are waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed" (1 Co 1:7). Paul notes that all gifts have one source: "There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit . All these are the work of the one and the same Spirit, who distributes different gifts to different people just as he chooses" (1 Co 12:1-12). God's generous gifts are for all peoples, whatever their religious, ethnic, or cultural background; thus, "the Holy Spirit came down on all the listeners . All were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit should be poured out on the pagans too" (Ac 10:44-45). Peter proclaims God's graciousness in Jaffa, saying: "I realized 67.1 2008 Kroeger * The Gift of Mission then that God was giving them the identical gift be gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and who was I to stand in God's way?" (Ac 11:17). Mission originates in this profound consciousness of what the Father has graciously wrought in Christ Jesus and their Spirit, continually manifested in the church. St. Th~r~se of Lisieux expressed her awareness of God's gift when she concluded: "My vocation is Love! In the heart of the church, my Mother, I shall be Love. Thus, I shall be everything." Receiving the Gift A transformed consciousness that fully appreciates God's graciousness will receive the gift of faith with a joyful heart. One need only recall how this precious gift has been given and received. One could ask: Why of the four billion people in Asia have I been privileged to receive the gift of Christian faith? Who were God's instruments in transmitting the gift to me? What price did my parents or the missionaries have to pay so that I would have this great treasure? Who are the holy people in my life who have helped me appreciate God's gifts? Reflecting on these questions will facilitate a more per-sonal reception of God's gifts of grace. When Jesus engages the Samaritan woman at the well, he challenges her to have a deeper appreciation of the gift being offered: "If you only knew the giJ~ God is offering and who it is that is saying to you: Give me a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water" (Jn 4:10). Writing to the Corinthians, Paul invites them to a more profound awareness of the gift of being a Christian; he says: "People must~ think of us as Christ's servants, stewards entrusted with the mysteries of God. Review for Religious What is expected of stewards is that each one should be found worthy of his trust . What do you have that was not given to you? And if it was given, how can you boast as though it were not?" (1 Co 4:1-2,7). Both the Samaritan woman and the Corinthian community are to appreciate that, since they have been recipients of God's gifts, they themselves are now able to be gifts to others. Precisely because one is loved, has experienced God's love, and has thus become lovable, one can reach out to others with the gift of love. This is the transformed ° - consciousness that God's gifting creates in receptive individuals. One is reminded of what the Asian bishops have said: "Without a personal experience of this love received as gift and mercy, no sense of mission can flour-ish" (FABC V). A deep reception of God's Trinitarian gifting will result in a further gift: a personal vocation to minis-try. This was the "conversion" experience of St. Paul; the Lord affirmed: "This man is my chosen instrument to bring my name before pagans and pagan kings and ¯ before the people of Israel" (Ac 9:15). Paul personally owns this gift: "I have been made the servant of that gospel by a gi~ of grace from God who gave it to me by his own power" (Ep 3:7). Paul celebrates God's choice, noting that: "God never takes back his gi)~ or revokes his choice" (Rm 11:29). Reception of God's gift is a continuous, ongoing '~ A deep reception of, -God's Trinitarian gifting will result in a further gift: a personal vocation to ministry. 67.1 2008 Kroeger ¯ The Gift of Mission process. Paul reminds his beloved Timothy (and us) to keep growing in receptiveness (appreciation, personal-ization, appropriation) of God's gift: "You have in you a spiritual gift which was given to you when the prophets spoke and the body of elders laid their hands on you; do not let it lie unused. Think hard about all this, and put it into practice" (1 Tm 4:14-15). Reciprocating God's Gift The New Testament passage that best captures this third moment of gift missiology is: "What you have received as a gift, give as a gift" (Mt 10:8). The logic is simple: if one truly appreciates a gift, one wishes to share it with others. The desire to gift others is the best and clearest manifestation of authentic gratitude. The New Testament letters of James and Peter add further insight: "Make no mistake about this, my dear brothers: every good gift, everything that is perfect, is given us from abtve; it comes down from the Father of all light" (Jm 1:16-17). "Each of you has received a special gift, so like good stewards responsible for all these different graces of God, put yourselves at the service of others . . . so that in everything God may receive the glory." (1 P 4:10-11). Pope John Paul II'S 1999 apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Asia (EA) provides several insightful per-spectives on how the church in Asia is to "reciprocate" (return, repay) the gifts it has received. "The church's faith in Jesus is a gift received and a gift to be shared; it is the greatest gift which the church can offer to Asia" (EA § 10b). "Blessed with ~the gift of faith; the church [is to become] a community aflame with missionary zeal to make Jesus known, loved, and followed . The great Review for Religious question now facing the church in Asia is how to share with our Asian brothers and sisters what we treasure as the gift containing all gifts, namely, the Good News of Jesus Christ" (EA §19a & c). "Only if the people of God recognize the gift that is theirs in Christ will they be able to communicate that gift to others through proclamation and dialogue" (EA §3 If). The perspective of "mission as gift" contains sev-eral insights on the approach or manner of mission in Asia, which is necessarily dialogue. Christians treasure the gift of their trinitarian faith, offering it freely, even enthusiastically, to others. The gift is offered with a sincere heart, yet all evangelizers know that people are free to accept or reject the gift. The dialogue partners, such as Muslims and Buddhists, also have gifts to offer: the riches of their faith and their personal "God experi-ence." Thus, a wonderful exchange of gifts can result. All people who ha~e the gift of faith need to collaborate so that through sharing their gifts they can" enrich the poor and needy in their midst. The Asian bishops were indeed most perceptive in their reflection on a renewed motivation for mission, listing gratitude first among several possible motives. Recall what they said: "We evangelize, first of all, from a deep sense of gratitude to God. Mission is above all else an overflow of this life from grateful hearts trans-formed by the grace of God . Without a personal experience of this life received as gift and mercy, no sense of mission can flourish" (FABC V). Paul's well-worded exhortation to his co-evangelizer Timothy provides a fitting conclusion for these reflec-tions on the gift of mission (gift missiology). In Paul's words, Christifins can find a reprise Of their recognition, reception, and reciprocation of the gift Of faith. Paul writes: 67.1 2008 Kroeger ¯ The Gift of Mission "Fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you .Never be ashamed of witness-ing to the Lord . Bear hardships for the sake of the Good News . Accept the strength that comes from the grace of Christ Jesus . Proclaim the message and, welcome or unwelcome, insist on it . Do all with patience . Make the preaching of the Good News your life's work, in thoroughgoing service" (2 Tm 1:6, 8-9a; 2:1; 4:1,5). Mary Keeping Shabbat There would be nearly nine months ahead Of seventh-day worship in synagogue, Sitting with her sisters and her mother In the women's rows, opposite the minyun Of their men, her secret blossoming within her, Thrusting against the homespun of her gown. She hugged its warm folds, the warm hand Of her mother covering her own. For Jews Seeking signs to believe in, or to disbelieve, The signs were there every Shabbat - seventh- Month, eighth-month - that a daughter of righteous Parents was boldly with child, Her Joseph betrayed! Her betrayer someone here among us! Watch where She turns her eyes. But she only turns her eyes To heaven, while saying her Shabbat prayers, Singing the Shabbat psalms, a bright-haired Mary, keeping Sunday in her womb. Nancy G. Westerfield Review for Religious GODELIEVE THEYS A Dream, Ash Wednesday; and the Word In my fifty years of living in a Catholic mon-astery, an important element of my religious development has been to pay close attention to dreams. My daily life involves prayer, ritual, music, liturgy, silence, study, and work, while my nights, more than sleep, are often filled with religious imagery, prayer, and music as part of dreaming. In the Christian tradition there is a long, often neglected history of dreams pro-viding spiritual insight. John Sanford captures this in his book title: Dreams: God's Forgotten Language. Clearly much of the modern world has forgotten the significance of dreams~ as car-riers of spiritual teachings, and unfortunately, even in religious tradition, we often leave these divine messages of the night unattended. Godelieve Theys OCSO.came from Belgium in 1962 to help found her new Cistercian home at Redwoods Abbey; 18104 Briceland Road; Whitethorn, California 95589. prayer 67.1 2008 Theys ¯ A Dream, Ash Wednesday, and the Word It was in a dream that St. Joseph was warned by an angel to take the holy Child out of Israel for protection from a king who would kill the newborn King. Joseph knew the power of dreams and followed the instruction provided in the night. Where are we in our willingness to listen and follow the dream messengers? Growing older as I am, I recently recalled a dream in which I was told, "You should at least write a book to serve human-ity." This made little sense to me at the time. I did not see myself as an author, and I had no desire or inten-tion to write for others until recently. In the past year I was so deeply moved by a specific dream that I now find myself creating material that seems to want to be shared widely. Though I am not writing a book, I still hope that my experiences may help others realizer that dreams can give'insight into the mysterious reality we call the religious or the spiritual. Religion, while in gen-eral being about dogma and tradition, is also personal, being about the soul's movement towards God. Key to monastic living is to find the divine in all of life's experi-ences. Like St. Joseph, we are called to listen to angelic voices in the night, to listen to dreams as insights into religious living. Last year during Lent I had an indelible dream. For much of this year I have been trying to hear fully the message that it offers. The dream has changed me and continues to do so. The dream was this: It was Ash Wednesday. I was aware that the morning liturgy mate-rial was already typed, but that the evening material was not. I left the church and went for a morning walk outdoors, as I often do. There I saw something alive on the ground. I bent down and touched it. It was the Word for the evening liturgy, alive under my hand. I was moved to tears. It was a numinous experience. I Review for Religious wondered what to do? Should I keep this living Word with me until after lunch, protecting the Word so that it would not be destroyed or die before it was typed for the evening service, or should I return immediately to the community and get it typed right away? I was per-plexed. I awoke singing the refrain of the song "Deep Within." My words were: "Deep within I will plant my law, not on stone, but in your heart. Follow me, I will bring you back; be my own, and I will be your God." I could not recall making any decision. Besides the music, the thing that jumped out for me in the dream was the breathtaking feeling that in touching the Word I was experiencing the living pres-ence of God. In the dream ~- - - this experience of God . ¯ in the Word comes after I leave the church and take a walk amid some of nature's beauty. For me this confirms the church's i'~ life and traditional struc- ', tures and also my rela- , tion to our monastery's natural environment. Going outdoors, as in my dream image, reminds me of the evolution of consciousness itself. Awareness develops through our contact with the: outside world, through relationship with the world around us. Living in the heart of a forest, I am blessed in knowing the world as divine creation. For years I have walked daily in the beauty of our landscape to be restored. Walking and attending to nature is a way of quieting the mind and refreshing the soul. The wonder of the natural world offers my constant .mental activ-ity the opportunity to be touched by the realm of the In touching the Word I was experiencing the living presence of God. 67.1 2008 Theys ¯ A Dream, Ash Wednesday, and the Word senses. In this dream of finding the Word alive, on the ground before me, my senses seem to come fully alive and open me to the deeper experience of this religious moment. Might the Word be more available than we imagine if only we were more attuned to this possibility? Seeing with our eyes, hearing with our ears, touching with our hands---how much of life are we missing and how much spiritual potential lies undiscovered simply'because we are not aware? This dream calls me to greater attention because in it I saw the Word, alive, under my hand. I felt its pulse. It was like a little bird that could' not fly and was waiting perhaps for me to pick it up, hold it gently, quench its thirst, that it could recover its strength and fly again. It was truly an experience of the sacred to feel this life under my hand, to feel the living substance of it. In that moment there was an immediate relationship between God's Word and me. Eros, relatedness, was involved. I was deeply moved; my heart was touched to the point of tears. The Word needs to be seen, to be heard, to be spoken, to be listened to, and to be fol-lowed so that its message can get through and heal the depths of the heart. It is important to me that this Word was found, not only outdoors, but also on the ground, on the earth in front of me--not above, not in the air, not transcendent. Here a divine Word was putting itse!f right in front of me, like something that was lost. There it was, all by itself, needing my help, needing me to keep my eyes open or miss a divine manifestation. Iv am reminded of the story of the rabbi who was asked, "How is it that God doesn't speak to people as he did in the past?" The rabbi answered: "Because no one bows low enough any-more." Bowing low is a gesture of humility that we may Review for Religious lack. As modern people we seek the spiritual above and beyond, outside the world of matter, and perhaps are not humble enough to see what is right before us. But, returning to the dream, what is before me is the Word. Living in a contemplative community, I am regularly in touch with the Word of God in Scripture-- and in the Rule of St. Benedict as well. These are important for my daily life. In this tradition there is nothing more powerful than the teaching in the opening verse of St. John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Before the evangelist, the prophet Isaiah told us: "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of God will stand firm" (Is 40:58). And Jesus himself said: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" (Mt 5:18). In reflecting upon the Word as it comes in the dream, I am reminded that there are many words--vol-umes upon volumes filled with them--and there is the Word. This dream clearly reflects the power of the Word. As Heidegger said, "language is more than little puffs of breath." Words are wellsprings of energy, giving us the power to communicate with one another, to share our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Words bring us into relationship with the world around us and with our inner world as well. They put us in touch with our past, lead us into the future, and help us realize actual Words bring us into relationship with theWorld around Us and with, our inner world as well. 67.1 2008 Theys ¯ A Dream, Ash Wednesday, and the Word situations and attitudes in the present. They tell us what is in our mind and heart. Words both wound and heal. They are not only expressions of our conscious life, our ego identity, but also of our unconscious, as it comes through in dreams. They often have deeper meanings than what they stand for in ordinary life. They are chan-nels to our deeper and truer identity. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVl, in his book Salt of the Earth reminds us that "the word revealed in history is definitive, but it is inexhaustible, and it unceasingly discloses new depths. In this sense, the Holy Spirit, as the interpreter of Christ, speaks with his word to every age and shows it that this word always has something new to say.''1 The Holy Spirit, as the interpreter of Christ, who is God's definitive Word, "always has something new to say," but are we prepared to listen? Listening to my dream, I return to Ash Wednesday and sense the meaning of Lent, a meaning that tells me that, through deeper listening and closer attention to both dreams and daily life, we might come to greater awareness of the Word as it reveals itself to us. Nonetheless, I can-not help wondering why the Word, as it comes in this dream, does not address itself direcdy to me. Why does it not communicate what it expects me to do? I do not know what choice I made about taking care of the Word I was holding. It was only when I woke hearing the song "Deep Within" that I came to sense the message of the Word in this dream, the message of "Follow me." Turning.to the Gospels, I think of Jesus saying "Follow me" in several instances. The words of the song in my dream return: "Follow me, I will bring you back; be my own, and I will be your God." The Word will bring us back, will reveal our true selves, if only we are Review for Religious willing to follow the path of Jesus, the path of becom-ing a new being, with the only true name we have: I am. To follow Jesus as the enlightened one coming out of his baptism as the Son of God, the Beloved, involves living in relationship to the Word. We must entrust ourselves to the flow of life and consciously live the seasonal changes from death to new birth. Like the day that flows into night, we are always in transformation. Nothing remains static. Laziness, not striving to be con-stantly awake, locks us into one place and we stagnate and decay. Commitment to following the Word leads into the paschal mystery, the cycle of life, death, and resurrection. We are to let go of our attachments, not only to material possessions, but also to family, profession, social group, community, even to institutional religion. Like the rich young man who asked Jesus what he must do to have life, we must let go of what we have or who we think we are. We are to sell all and follow the path that leads to greater life, and, as Thomas Merton said when he was at Red, woods in 1968, "we have to stand on our own two feet." Along the same line, Elizabeth B. Howes wrote: "To sell all., means to renounce that right to choose the specificity of one's own desire and to let oneself be molded by the Patterning of the moment. Through such conscious choice, we give back to its true owner what we have been given. It is as if our life were on loan. We either take it and run away to shape it as we will, or we turn it back to its Source in a volitional act of choice, which makes us co-creators with the process of God.''2 To follow God's law planted in our heart is to find our true identity and to know the sacredness of the liv- 67.1 2008 ing Word, as in the image of my dream. This journey of which I write is the task of our lifetimes. Notes ~ Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 62. 2 E.B. Howes, Jesus' Answer to God (San Francisco: Guild for Psychological Studies Publishing House, 1984), p. 89. Longing for Easter Give us Easter, the brilliant wine of the Kingdem, the days when He might appear at any moment and we in his presence become speechless with joy, shy with wonder. Give us Easter, when we can forget (not from shame) the dark pain that went before, or see it as one sees, from the bright rooms of home, the troubled road by which one traveled back Give us Easter and spring and the words of songs we always hoped to learn Give us always Easter. Kate Martin OSC Review for Religious JOHN CARROLL FUTRELL Pedagogy of Prayer HTan persons grow only through their relation-ips to the realities that enter into their self-awareness. This is a matter of integration, of becoming more and more whole rather than more and more dis-persed. Integrated selfhood is achieved only by free commitment to a life-meaning. People actualize their personal identity by faithfully choosing all their lives to express their identity in an authentic way. ~: The total human development of persons gifted with Christian faith calls them to integrate into their growth their relationships with other persons, with themselves, with things, and especially with God. Graced confessing that Jesus is Lord is recognition that the central rela-tionship of their life is their personal relationship with God. To bring this relationship into self-awareness is to pray. I shall suggest in this article a pedagogy of prayer. I shall offer reflections on what prayer is. Then I shall make some practical remarks on how to pray. Finally John Carroll Futrell SJ has written for this journal about ten times, beginning in 1958. His address is 3601 Lindell Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63108. 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer I shall respond affirmatively to the question "Can we pray?" What Is Prayer? When we pray we meet God. Perhaps the best description of prayer is that it is a loving, personal encounter with God. C.S. Lewis remarked: "Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person." Our problem is to verify this encounter. Encounter may take many forms. Close friends can encounter each other by talking or being silent, or even when they are physically far from each other, because they are always in personal commu-nion. It takes two to make an encounter. I can reach out to you, but, unless you receive me and give yourself to me on the personal level, we can have no true encounter. When you reach out to God, God is there to receive you. This loving personal encounter is prayer. God is present, whether we "feel" that presence or not. We know this is true because God has revealed it to us. We know it because we have the gift of faith. The Holy Spirit present in us enables us to confess that Jesus is Lord. We must insist with faith on the fact of God's constant, transcendent, loving presence, even when we feel nothing but dryness. Our own coming to encounter God is the human dimension of prayer. Prayer as a human activity is mak-ing ourselves present to the presence of God within us, so that we can recognize God's presence in everyone and everything around us. Prayer requires of us the labor to get ourselves together, body, feelings, imagination, intelligence, will, desires, place, time, environment--so Review for Religious that we can truly be present to the presence of God in loving, personal encounter. Our essential praying, then, is accomplished by the will to pray even in the midst of distractions or of total dryness. If we have the sincere desire to pray, then, at the bottom of our heart, deep within us, there is a loving encounter with God, even though it is not consciously felt at the top of our head. St. Paul put it perfecdy in his Letter to the Romans: The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For, when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God, who knows everything in our hearts, knows perfectly well what the Spirit means. (Rm 8:26-28) A problem for many people attempting to verify the encounter with God which is prayer is that they begin with their own idea of good prayer, as determined by lack of distractions, no dry-ness, a continuous feeling of consolation. A false notion of prayer makes true prayer unverifiable. The problem here may be that we are seeking God for ourselves rather than for love of God. Instead of welcoming God's personal presence personally, we turn God into an 0/~ect, a thing we can acquire to fill a need. Prayer must be openness, listening, welcome. Prayer leads us from self-centered need to other-centered love. This passage from need to love is illuminated by reflection with Freud on human growth toward matu-rity as a movement from need to desire2 As infants we all begin as quivering bundles of needs. We relate to Prayer must be openness, listening, welcome. 67.1 2008 Futrell * PedagoG of Prayer all the realities that come into our awareness--espe-cially our mothers--as objects there to satisfy our needs. Need seeks self-satisfaction, the absorption of the other into myself. Freudian body imagery is revealing. Need means self-affirmation of my own bodily presence only; this annihilates all that is not myself by consuming it bodily. As long as I am operating chiefly from my need, I affirm myself only as an object, a needy body-thing, just as I affirm others only as objects to satisfy my needs. Freud shows that it is in passing from need to desire that we come to human maturity. In his terminology, when I desire another person, I affirm the reality of the other as a subject, as a free mysterious person, with inalien-able rights and always beyond adequate representation in concept or image. In desire we recognize what is not ourselves and affirm its free otherness. It is only in affirming others as persons that we realize ourselves as persons, as free subjects open to personal relationships. VChen we pass from need to desire, we can say, "It is now for the first time that I truly experience myself as a person, for it is only in your presence that I am." The poet e.e. cummings put it perfectly: "i am through you so i." When we apply this Freudian model to prayer, it is dear that in its initial stages prayer would reflect as in a mirror the emptiness of our need for God. From expe-riencing this need we shall pass gradually to the desire for God in God's infinite otherness. Even on the human level, desiring the other as unique and thus infinitely different from me is the greatest love. "I love you" becomes "You exist!" To love others is to will their pres-ence as irreducible to me. In recognizing their unique-ness, I recognize an absence in their very presence, the inalienable freedom of their otherness. Review for Religious Thus, desire--love--is not a static, finished thing. It is an ongoing living thing. Because of this fascinating and wonderful presence-in-absence, even a moment of intense personal union opens upon a new frontier, a beckoning from beyond towards deeper union. Another person remains an unfathomable secret. I cannot know this secret through thought or images or even bodily union. I can know another person only through love. In The Art of Loving (chap. 2), Erich Fromm points out: "In love, I know you, I know myself, I know every-body-- and I 'know' nothing. I know in the only way knowledge of that which is alive is possible for man--by experience of union--not by any knowledge our thought can give." The only way to full knowledge lies in the experience of love. This experience transcends thought; it transcends words. Thus, if I can have no full knowledge of God in thought, if theology is at best negative, then posi-tive knowledge of God can be achieved only in the act of union with God. In prayer we know God by lov-ing God, by welcoming God's gift to us in the loving experience of God's presence-in-absence. Prayer always remains desire, opening ever more widely toward ever fuller union, as St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cr6ss powerfully attest. Ren~ Voillaume insists that we will be less satisfied with ourselves in prayer the more closely we approach God. This lack of satisfaction is a part of prayer, a proof of unfulfilled desire, which can only grow with growth of love. Far from satisfying thirst for God, prayer increases it. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote: God does not offer himself to our finite beings as a thing all complete and ready to be embraced. For us he is eternal discovery and eternal growth. 67.1 2008 Futrell * Pedagogy of Prayer The more we think we understand him, the more he reveals himself as otherwise. The more we think we hold him, the further he withdraws, drawing us into the depths of himself. The nearer we approach him through all the efforts of nature and grace, the more he increases, in one and the same movement, his attraction over our powers, and the receptivity of our powers to that divine attraction. (The Divine Milieu, pp. 119-120) As St. Thomas Aquinas put it, "by prayer we render ourselves capable of receiving." St. Gregory of Nyssa pointed out that the more we make progress, the more we discover that God infinitely transcends all that we can ever know of God. "To find God is to seek God without end." Thomas Merton noted that "progress in prayer is a continual burning of bridges behind us." Prayer, then, is faith, openness, listening, welcome, surrender. It is not through speculation or through study of theories of prayer and of love that we learn to pray and to love God, but only through the exercise of prayer and of love. We must sweep away all preconcep-tions and simply listen to God. Jesus told us in a parable what our attitude should be when we pray. We should be the good soil that nurtures the seed planted in it by the Divine Sower, accepting the word with faith. Just as we find Christ in the Eucharist under the appear-ances, so we must seek the reality of encounter with God under the words and gestures of our prayer. The soil where the word is sown is the heart, the center of our person. If we do not receive God here, our prayer is marked by boredom and routine and falsehood. We must be present to our own heart, where God is seek-ing us in spirit and in truth. All of our authentic prayer begins in our heart, in the activity of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.2 Review for Religious We have nearly two thousand years of reflection on the experience of Christian praying. The great masters of prayer always have seen as true prayer the "interior understanding and relish" that is born of the Holy Spirit's illumination of our spirit. This prayer may be very dry. Our prayer may often be quite simple: just a period of repeating the same thing to God over and over until it becomes part of us. Prayer can be a tor-ment until we are transformed into what we are say-ing. Christians who really pray have always known that "by their fruits you shall know them." The criterion of good prayer is not sensible consolation, but whether we continually live a more loving life by the power we receive even in very arid prayer. When we seem lost in our own confusion, distracted, and hardly present to God except in a prayerful word or two, there still may be in us, through the Holy Spirit's presence, a desire that we eventually experience as power, strength to serve God and our neighbor with our whole being, no matter what the cost. Thomas Merton's teaching on prayer emphasizes that the Holy Spirit is .seeking us in our hearts, where we come to ourselves. It is difficult to enter into the silence of our hearts, the place where no one else can enter, where we must put off our masks and no longer hide.3 This is where God calls us: "Give me your heart, your very self." Here we allow God to judge us, God who invites us to a full life. Here we learn to be at home We have nearly two thousand years of reflection on the experience of Christian praying. 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer with God, beyond our emotions and our intellectual life. We learn to overcome our fear of what is there and our temptation to go back to what is familiar. God is at home where we are truly ourselves. Merton put it, "Prayer does not consist in an effort to get across to God, but in opening our eyes to see that we are already there." The good that we seek through prayer is not the self-satisfaction of a "successful" prayer according to our own idea, but the formation of an attitude of total surrender to God in every detail of our daily life. This good God gives, through the more or less active coop-eration of our effort to pray. This is the pearl of great God is always calling us, speaking to us in all the events of our daily lives. price always to be sought in prayer. It is this which transforms us in Christ and prepares us always to say yes to the Word of God calling us at every moment of our lives. Brother David wrote, "Only life lived to the full measures up to the task of contemplation" (Gratefulness, p. 64). A life of ongoing prayer will draw us deeper and deeper into the presence of God, until we shall experience it in situations that do not immediately suggest God's presence. Then we are praying always, even though our conscious attention is elsewhere. This is what the masters of prayer mean by finding God in all things. God is always calling us, speaking to us in all the events of our daily lives. God comes to us in every situation we face: in our work, in our play, in the people we meet, in all our duties. All of these serve as invitations to welcome God here and Review for Religious now, to let God challenge us to live our Christian life perfectly. If we understand prayer this way, there are never places where prayer is impossible. Perhaps we need to change our way of understanding prayer. Louis Evely has said, "We're not asked to choose between God and world, but to discover God in the world and reveal God to it." It has been well said that there are no part-time human beings or part-time Christians Or part-time con-templatives. When we confess that Jesus is Lord, no sin-gle moment of our lives is outside this relationship.4 We can live prayer at all times, whether formally praying or not. What are we really seeking at all times during our life? What is our basic operational orienta-tion? What is our heart's treasure? This may be other people, egoism, money, pleasure, popular success, or it may be God. Whatever it is, it pervades all our actions, rules our individual choices and our spontaneous actions and reactions, constructs our world, without our being conscious of it all the time. If my basic existential ori-entation is to God, I am praying always, always having a loving personal encounter with God. Thomas Merton summed it up perfectly: "If I find God I will find myself, and if I find my true self I will find God. And the only one who can teach me to find God is God's self. So pray for your own discovery." How to Pray Since prayer is a loving personal encounter with our forever faithful God, our human effort during any period of our life must always be to make ourselves present to God: to enter into our own faith experience of the Spirit of the risen Jesus at the bottom of our heart, where God touches our life. This is the meaning 67.1 2008 Fuvrell ¯ Pedagog~ of Prayer of all human prayer, whatever the method or style. The criterion for judging which method or style to use is simple: "Does it work?" Does this method at this time bring us into God's presence? Is it enabling us to live a life of love for God, other people, and myself?. A particular method of prayer may meet this crite-rion for years. But normally there will be times when a method is no longer right for us. Then we must experi-ment with various methods. We must be open to all pos-sibilities: God can use anything as a way to encounter us. Our part is to discover a way of finding God now. It may be a hope-filled darkness in which we wait willingly for subde energies of faith and love to return. The best prayer for me now may be meditation on the revealed truths of faith. People sometimes reject this method as "talking to myself." Well, why not talk to ourselves if God, who can make use of anything, is there and listening attentively? At times the best prayer may be lectio divina: slow thoughtful reading of Scripture or of other spiritual writings, stopping sometimes where we experience some heartfelt understanding. God works with us incarnationally, and so the method of prayer that works usually fits our temperament and cultural climate. Some older persons may be drawn to slow recitation of the rosary or to reading set prayers reflectively. The method for other persons_ may be singing or playing a guitar or adopting various body positions. The criterion always is "What works?" The great contemporary master of prayer Brother David Steindl-Rast OSB proposes two excellent ques-tions for evaluating our current method of prayer: (1) Is my prayer truly an expression of my prayerfulness, gratefulness, sorrow, compassion, and so forth? and (2) Does my prayer make me more prayerful? Review for Religious Two millennia of Christian experience show that it is fairly normal for people to be led gradually from more active methods of prayer to quieter, more passive methods. The way of praying may become simply enter-ing into a deeply felt attitude and resting in it: being thanks, being open, being praise, being begging when we feel our radical poverty deeply. In this prayer, when we become aware of our mind or imagination running off in various directions, we simply let those distractions fall as we keep coming back to our deep attitude of being. The Psalms fit this form of prayer because they express deeply felt attitudes, often in just a line or half line. Just a few verses of a psalm may help for days or even weeks. For persons who are feeling far from God and overwhelmed with cares and anxieties, the first few lines of Psalm 40 can be of great help: I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Stop at words or phrases. Let them sink in, and let your own thoughts rise. Stay there until you feel that the Holy Spirit is leading you to the next word or phrase. Another important form of. prayer to learn, consider-ing our tendency to rush on, is repetition: coming back to interior movements we experienced during previous periods of prayer and letting the Spirit deepen these movements and draw us closer to God and away from what holds us back. There are times when we should simply "plough the rock until it bear." 41 67.1 2008 Futrell * Pedagogy of Prayer In Christian prayer there is no method more central than contemplation of t, he life of Jesus in the Gospels. In Christian prayer there is no method more central than contemplation of the life of Jesus in the Gospels. This contemplation can take many forms and range from fairly discursive reflection to simple presence to Jesus in a scene. The proof that our method of contem-plation of Jesus is right for us right now is the experi-ence of being more and more transformed into him in our daily living with and love of other people. We must be ready to recognize when the prayer to which God calls us now is simply to enter into the void and wait in darkness for God. We realize that for us at present God is nowhere else than in this purifying empti-ness. A Jesuit friend of mine once told me that the only way he had been able to pray for weeks was to stand holding his arms up in supplica-tion. There were no thoughts, no images, not even a deeply felt attitude-- nothing. Yet he knew that this body prayer of emptiness was what God wanted of him then, beyond any thought or feelings. Even in desolation we are called to pray by "remembering consolation." W-hen darkness overcomes us, our prayer must be a faith that remembers what we saw, felt, hoped, and loved when we were filled with light. It can be helpful to think about prayer as a place. Sometimes it is a garden, beautiful, full of flowers, sweet scents, and birds singing and fountains play-ing. Sometimes it is a mountaintop, where we would Review for Religious like to pitch a tent and stay. Sometimes it is a desert. Sometimes it is a "blah" place, where all we can say is "God, here I am in my blahness." Sometimes it is a rock that we cling to with bloodied hands. And sometimes it is an empty tomb. For me, sometimes, it is a boat, when I feel as exhausted as Jesus was when his disciples woke him to calm the storm. Then all I can say, before falling asleep, is "Jesus, I'm with you!" A friend of mine, a sister, returning very blue and worn from a day of apostolic work, composed a beauti-ful prayer out of this feeling of prayer as a place: Dear God, tonight I'm tired and discouraged. I want to just give up and walk away. I'm in the basement and I want to go to the attic. In the basement, I'm lonely. In the attic, I'm alone, all one. In the basement, I crouch in the dark damp coal bin and dig up bones from the past. In the attic, I quiedy open the trunk lid and think about the treasures of the past - some painful, some joyful - but treasures nonetheless. Rain in the basement beats me to the cold hard concrete and I feel suffocated. Rain in the attic has a restful pitter-patter, pitter-patter, as it softly sings, "I love you, I love you, I love you." In the basement, I'm closed off. The windows are darkened and covered with weeds. I cannot see the sun when it does shine forth. In the attic, there is no way to keep out the warm sun of your love as it shines through the leaves on the trees. It makes delightful patterns for my enjoyment. And so, dear God, I ask you to take me from the basement to the attic. I ask for aloneness, I ask for treasures, I ask for soft soothing rain 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer and warm loving sunshine. I ask to feel your love. I do believe., help my lack of belief. Prayer Flows out of Life Situations Whatever method of prayer we use, as body-per-sons in space and time, we must seek to compose our-selves interiorly and, if possible, to choose a place that will help us to be present to the presence of God. We know that our body conditions the state of our con-sciousness. And so it is vital to take the time, perhaps a long time, to compose ourselves before praying: to enter into a deep silence of the body and imagination and feelings. Methods like the Additional Observations in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola (§§73-86) or the preparations in the old meditation books or yoga or transcendental meditation or Zen or Sadhana can be helpful. The great 19th-century master of prayer Theophane the Recluse described prayer truly as "stand-ing before God with the mind in.the heart." If we are to pray, we must commit ourselves to make time for it: time to calm ourselves down, time to allow God to rise up in our awareness, to become God for us. We must discern the rhythm of prayer that we need at this time in our lives, and we must be faithful to it even when we do not feel like praying. We know that our most essential duties are not always those that we feel like doing. Nevertheless, we do fulfill them because of the importance they have for us, their priority in our lives. The operational proof of what our priorities are is the quality time that we give to them, not what we may verbally affirm about their importance. Time is the most precious possession of human beings, and what we do Review for Religious with our time is the behavioral proof of what we value in our lives. If we really put a high priority on prayer, we regularly give quality time to it. As in human love, there can and should be steadfastness even when we feel dull and lack spontaneity. And, of course, both love and prayer seek imaginative ways to transform routine and revivify themselves. Can We Pray? If we exercise our faith and our creativity and our common sense, we can pray. We can bring ourselves and take time and wait to encounter God. We can look to see whether our hearts have left space for God to come and meet us. For two thousand years the purpose of Christian asceticism has been to make space in our hearts for God to encounter us there. The difficulty of prayer is that it is the entrance into the bottom of our hearts. It places us before the wall of grace and the invisible. This involves going out of our selfish self, which makes prayer so diffi-cult. It is a true purgatory--a purification. This difficulty is overcome only by the Holy Spirit. To consent to pray is to consent to place ourselves before this wall and to wait with faith and hope for God to lower the wall. The lowering of the wall is the progressive coming of God to our deep self. Here only God can overcome. To believe that we have solved the problem ourselves is to show that we have lost the batde. Here, truly, we gain our life only by losing it. Our prayer should lead us to the still point of our being, the root of our existence, the center of our awareness of our unique individuality, where we are touched by the divine creative act and where, in silence and in darkness, we understand that God is God. At this point of our dependence upon God, we find God 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer in a presence that is absence, in an emptiness that is filled with God, in the knowing that is not knowledge but love. This, I think, is the command of God to the psalmist: "Empty yourself out and see that I am God." Descend to the depths of your own being, to the very point where you spring up out of my creative love, and there you will find me. Here God's presence is felt as breaking in on us, breaking down the wall of selfish self-love that limits our encounter with God. We see that this same wall keeps us from truly loving others as Jesus commands us to do, and that it keeps us from hearing and respond-ing to God's word in all the events of our lives. In this prayer we become filled with the light of the Spirit of the risen Jesus, who will illuminate all our experiences and will bring us at last to find God in all things. Often in this prayer we encounter God in his breaking in on us, and we feel no need or inclination to speak, because everything is understood in love. We simply surrender to God in his transforming action on us. But this is not a prayer of inaction. At no time do we feel more fully alive. For some people this is the habitual form of prayer. For others it happens only rarely. In all our prayer we should be listening to God, ready to welcome him, as God sometimes welcomes us, in a moment of great clarity or great joy.5 Notes i For this insight I am indebted to Jesuit psychoanalyst Dr. Denis Vasse, of Lyons, France. 2 "To cqntemplate means raising our eyes to a higher order that challenges us to measure up . Only the heart is high and deep enough to hold this vision." Brother David Steindl-Rast OSB, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), p. 64. 3 "The heart in biblical culture, and also in a large part of other cul- Review for Religious tures, is that essential center of personality in which the person stands before God, as the totality of body and soul, as T who is thinking, will-ing, and loving, as the center in which the memory of the past opens up to planning of the future . The significance [of] the heart., reaches the sanctuary of personal self-awareness in which is summarized and condensed the concrete essence of the person, the center in which the individual decides upon himself, in face of others, the world, and God himself." John Paul II, Audience at the Gemelli Clinic, 28 June 1984. 4 "Work should not make us stop praying. But when my work becomes my only prayer, it won't be prayer much longer. Its weight will pull me off center. We can hear it quickly when a clothes dryer spins unevenly. Why can't we hear it when our lives do the same? It may be time to stop and reload. It may be time for nothing but prayer, time to disengage ourselves, to find our center, and to re-engage ourselves from the heart. Then our work will truly be prayer, It will be contemplation in action." Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, p. 195. 5 Listen to C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, near the end (p. 307): "He is coming . The air was growing brighter and brighter., as if something had set it on fire. Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy, overpowering sweetness. I was pierced through and through with the arrows of it. I was being unmade. I was no one . The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for his sake. And he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming . I cast down my eyes." Personal/Group Reflection Questions 1. Have I had the experience of trying to teach someone to pray? What did I find to be helpful in teaching someone to pray? What obstacles did I experience? 2. What is my favorite way of defining or describing Christian prayer? 3. How do I respond to Brother David Steindl-Rast's question, "Does my prayer make me more prayerful?" 67.1 2008 BRENDAN KNEALE Pray Passionately of we look at Roman liturgical practice as a form f prayer, it does not seem to encourage pray-ing passionately. Of course, there is a good reason for this--the litur~.¢ is a public, not a private, form of prayer. It expects us to bring to its formalities and rituals a preparation of intense personal prayer. Some devout Catholics, perhaps, find rich emotional con-tent in Gregorian chant if they bring to it a suitable background. Also, the Roman Liturgy does include an extensive use of the Psalms, which are full of passion-ate prayers that any of us can find to be deeply mov-ing. Consider such passages as these used in the official Liturgy of the Hours: Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth . . . For you my soul is thirsting--my body pines for you . . . My soul shall be filled as with a banquet., my soul clings to you . . . Brendan Kneale FSC, a retired professor from Saint Mary's College of California, is now on the staff of De La Salle Institute; 4403 Redwood Road; Napa, California 94558. His email address is bkneale@dlsi.org Review for Religious Let the faithful rejoice in their glory, shout for joy., let them praise his name with dancing. Tremble, 0 earth, before the Lord . I bow down before your temple, filled with awe. The Lord's voice flashes flames of fire. He sends fire and brimstone on the wicked. No one can escape his hand. Praise him with full voice . Ring out your joy to the Lord. There are dozens of passages like these. The Liturgy cites, also, some of the strong language of St. Paul, who certainly expressed himself with passion. We have intimations of how emotional and intense Christ's own prayer was, notably in the garden and on the cross, culminating in: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Likewise, when he declared that he came to "cast fire on the earth." He no doubt was reflecting the strong feelings of his previous prayer. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit communicated himself with the symbolic "sound of wind and tongues of fire." This ought to stir our emotion, as when we sometimes refer to "fire in the belly." It did so, surely, for canonized saints, many of them known for the intensity of their prayer life. Here, however, it seems fair to ask, "Where is the passion in the wording of the Our Father, the arche-typal prayer Christ left us?" Answer: It is certainly there for people who have no "daily bread," and for those of us acutely aware of our need for a. ~'supersubstantial bread." Similarly, if we are full of-faith and devout sen-sibilities, we will experience a yearning, in the words of the Our Father, for "forgiveness of sins" and a fear of being "led into temptation," and for a strong desire to be "delivered from evil." The same goes for other seem-ingly bland prayers of our tradition. If we but bring our 67.1 2008 Kneale ¯ Pray Passionately true situation to such prayers, they will become quite passionate. In older terminology, it is with "fervor" that we should pray. Later Traditions Many modern religious orders have a community spirituality which translates into language that seems at best to be sentimental rather than passionate. An example can be found in English translations of 17th-century texts on prayer. When one of its masters, St. John Baptist de la Salle, wrote "The Method of Mental Prayer," his language in translation was made to sound pallid. Thus, in English versions, we find him frequently urging us to pray with "sentiments of faith." It does not seem adequate to translate the French sentiment into a mild, neutral, and comfortable English word like "senti-ment." In fact, bilingual dictionaries would have allowed translators to use much stronger alternatives. The question arises: How does one bring passion to prayer? Soldiers in any kind of combat do not have to ask that question. Neither do we--if we let ourselves realize how abruptly death may come for us, if we really think about the greatness and goodness of God, if we realize our guilt, if we are at all sensitive to our inner longings, if our mortality weighs down on us as it should, if we are sensitive to our capacity for the infinite, if we admit a yearning for communion with the saints, if we feel deeply the needs of those for whom we pray, if we are persons of genuine loyalty, if we are aware of our past ingratitude and our utter vulnerability. In other words, as the masters of prayer have always taught, we must prepare for our prayer by realizing how desperate our condition and situation is, how great and good God is, how important prayer is, how linked we Review for Religious are to our fellow human beings. Many such deep con-victions are acts of faith and stem from insights aris-ing- out- of experience, meditation, and study--and, of course, from grace. "The Holy Spirit prays in us." We become a version of "deep calling on deep." After the effect of "cool" literature on prayer, one suspects that the rise of devotion to the Sacred Heart and other devo-tions helped compensate for prayer's lack of warmth, and even coldness, in this world of ours. It is evident that passion invigorates prayer, but also the converse holds. Prayer can stir spiritual pas-sion, which then often takes the form of zeal for various charitable works and also for personal discipline. Unfortunately, sen-timent and shallow many of us, since genuine emotion depends on deep convictions and full realizations about serious things. Where do deep feeling, passion, and genuine love come from? The source is true faith, real conviction, theological insights, realizations stemming from deep meditation--that is, things deep in the mind. There is always, however, a danger of self-deception and of artifi-cially stirred-up shallow feelings, ephemeral sentiments. St. La Salle, mentioned earlier, was a man of feeling. He lived in times when emotions were intense over serious internal church struggles. And he had his own battles with civil authorities and with incomprehension by his contemporaries, clerical and lay, so that his own prayer was challenged at a deeper level than most of us and thus felt more keenly. Where do deep feeling, passion, and genuine love come from? feelings may have to suffice for 67.1 2008 Kneale ¯ Pra~ Pa~ionatel~ Where, for us, do the occasion and quality for pas-sionate prayer come from? They arise from experi-ences eliciting fear, gratitude, desperation . . . feelings which call forth our faith and convictions. At the start of our interior prayer, we often include an introduc-tory exercise: making our situation "real," recalling viv-idly, stirring our faith and hope, gratitude and humility, awakening ourselves from somnolence. Frequently Repeated Prayers Prayers that are frequently repeated should not be perfunctory, but should be recited "once more with feel-ing." There is a danger that prayers like the rosary could plunge us into mindless rote. That is where the ancient admonitions about study and reading can be applied. Prayers like the ~'osary will be infused with emotion if we bring to them a rich background of gospel meditation and theological study. Thus in the rosary such insights may prepare as many as ten ideas or rousing images to accompany our recitation of the ten beads in each decade. Every one of us can become a "vas insigne devotionis," rich in insights that stir our emotions and direct our will. The rosary, then, can be prayed passionately. Of course, to recite vocal prayers poorly is often an act of faith and so has value. St. Thomas Aquinas is supposed to have written somewhere that one differ-ence between rote vocal prayers of petition and atten-tive and involving prayers of petition is not that one is answered and the other is not--rather, if both are prayed with faith and goodwill, one is more consoling than the other. That is one difference. There are oth-ers. A prayer that is passionate is likely to be extended, sincere, satisfying, richer in intention, fortifying of our faith and hope., instead of a routine burden. Review for Religious Dryness There is no such thing in this life as a perpetual emotional high. One experience that the saints have often undergone is spiritual dryness. Sometimes, it seems, such periods are imposed by God as trials, but could it be that sometimes they are self-imposed by our own neglect? If we fail to use the sources of inspiration and energy--such as attention, study, sensitivity, insight, consistency, solitude, detachment--then we can expect aridity. The Language of Prayer Perhaps, looking back at the word "sentiment" and recalling the passionate words of the Psalms, we can say that the language used in prayer is important. Paying attention to the stirring words of the Psalms can bring life back into our prayer. Depending on the occasion, .however, vocalized prayer should vary appropriately: ritualistic or hiero-phantic, informal or personal, intense or calm and reflective, importunate or resigned--adoring, grateful, repetitive, vivid, meditative. We do not want to over-dramatize our lives, but one suspects that prayers of petition, at least, do need heartfelt words--the more passionate the better. In any case we have the promise of St. Paul in Romans 8: "When we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words ¯ . . the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God." 67.1 2008 CLIFFORD STEVENS The Institute of Impracticalities: The Financial Support of Monasteries consecrated life G.K. Chesterton, before he created the Father Brown detective stories, tried his hand at the genre by writing a clever story called "The Club of Queer Trades," a tale of a fraternity of tradesmen who had managed to come up with unusual ways to make a living. In it a man makes his living giving excitement to people who lacked excitement in their lives and adven-ture to those who lacked adventure. He would send them sinister and intriguing messages, or leave strange objects on their doorstep, or send them secret packages, all designed to add some spice to an otherwise humdrum existence. I thought at one time if I had not become a priest I would set up a place called Chesterton Square with a number of odd shops and busi-nesses doing business there: a Bottle Shop, a Kite Unlimited Emporium, and imposingly on Clifford Stevens has written for us at intervals since 1975. His addres~ is Tintern Monastery; EO. Box 910; Kemmerer, Wyoming 83101. Review for Religious one corner of the square an Institute of Impracticalities, which would answer any need that was totally and clearly not practical, such as ordering an elephant for a wedding, or sending a truckload of balloons to a sick child. A monastery is and must be, if it is to be true to its character, a true Institute of Impracticalities. We exist for no "practical" purpose; we are useless, as far as most people are concerned, and there is nothing "practical" that we can mention as our particular achievement. We have to cultivate "unpracticality" almost with genius, or else that particular disease, fatal in some cases, called "practicality" takes over and everything is sacrificed on the altar of "practicality." This has been the bane of monasteries from time immemorial and has been responsible for the eclipse of the monastic life sev-eral times in history. I am thinking particularly of the monastery of Fountains in England, where "practicality" drove peasants off the land, made the monastery some-thing of an economic empire, built sumptuous build-ings, and got the monastery involved in the dynastic and ecclesiastical power struggles of the time. The greatest illusion in the contemplative life is the conviction that the financial support of the monastery is the key problem and the critical concern of community life. This has never been. true. The critical factor in con-templative life is the cultivation of intimacy with God and the fashioning of a pattern of life to enable every single member to do exactly that. As soon as the mere support of the monastery becomes the primary con-cern, "practicality" takes over and Divine Providence goes right out the windows. God blesses the monastery only to the extent that it is an oasis for leisure with God. Then blessings for the support of the life come 67.1 2008 Stevens ¯ The Institute of lmpracticalities in abundance, mysteriously, magnanimously, for God takes care of his genuine lovers, and they are never in want--for anything. The basic principle for the financial support of a monastery is this: Will the God for whom we have forsaken the world of business and commerce and the piling up of even legitimate wealth be any less gener-ous with us than the stock market and margin of profit would have been if we had devoted our lives to that? There is one answer: God will not only second our efforts by the action of his prov-idence; he will anticipate our needs. Those who doubt this usually are willing to sacrifice something of solitude, something of silence, something of contemplative tranquillity, and something of intimacy with God for so-called "practical" reasons. God usually gives them what they want, but that is all. The deeper gift for which they have forsaken all is denied them, for the simple reason that they have lost the hunger for it. A strange kind of practicality. The ancient monks made it clear that the treasurer of the monastery was the Providence of God. This does not mean that they did not work or made no provision for the morrow. It just means that they were not depen-dent upon their own efforts: even their own efforts had to be blessed by God. They simply did .not depend on bank accounts or huge commercial enterprises to sup-port their monastic life. God's providence, and their own efforts under that providence, were their only security. This is certainly "impractical" as far as the normal business of human life is concerned, but the monk is not in the normal business of living. He has made God his companion and his passion, and, while he works hard Review for Relig4ous to support his monastic life, he is not dependent upon the "economy." Monks work hard, but simply are not concerned about where their money will come from. It comes, when it is needed, from their own labor or from the action of Providence. As a matter of fact, the monk has become a monk to be free from those kinds of concerns, and, if he wants to get involved in them, God usually lets him have his way, but the intimacy with God that is - the heart of his existence and his chief preoccupation slips from his fingers. His hope and expectation are not really in God, but in the margin of profit, in the interest on stocks and bonds, or in the sale of the next crop. The treasury of Divine Providence never runs out, and God richly supplies his lovers with everything. Those who doubt that have all kinds of arguments to the con-trary, but what they do not have is that closeness to him for which they became monks in the first place. In this day of huge commercial enterprises, financial scandals in religion, and the juggling of stock portfolios and investment opportunities, we have to steer clear of anything that resembles the placing of our security in money. Every monastery needs money, and the financial support of the monastery has to be provided for. But the financial support of a monastery comes from God and his providence and not from the juggling of investments and the margin of profit. When a monastery truly needs money, it comes in bundles, from the most unexpected Monks work hard, but simply are not concerned about where their moneywill come from. 67.1 2008 Stevens ¯ The Institute of lmpracticalities places, and there is no need to buy mailing lists and carry on massive mail solicitations to accomplish this. If there is any choice between depending on a fat bank account and depending on Divine Providence, there is no doubt where the choice would have to be. Certainly not in the bank account, which can fail for all kinds of reasons, but Divine Providence never fails. We have only to look around us to see the disas-ters that occur from an opposite conviction. The clas-sical image is that of the wheeling-and-dealing Father Urban in J.E Powers's Morte d'Urban, who is convinced that hobnobbing with the rich and mighty is the sur-est way to. ensure the prosperity of his congregation. Or the tragic monsignor in John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions who found himself embroiled in scandals and political intrigues unworthy of his office because of his concern about money for the "good of the church." As Paul Evdokimov hasindicated, certain biblical truths get lost in centuries of overgrowth, and from time to time we have to be recalled to the startling dyna-mism of the gospel. It is no visionary enthusiasm that brings religious to their utter dependence upon Divine Providence and reminds them of God's loving care. But they forget that, as redeemed human beings, they are enfolded in his love, and that his benevolence is the very basis of their creation. What they need to recall is a profound metaphysical and theological truth: everything in human life is part of the philanthropy of God, and it is by the exercise of that philanthropy that the inacces-sible God makes himself accessible to our experience. From the generosity of the Godhead comes every gift with which we are endowed and every benefit of our human condition. That includes the margin of profit and whatever benefit we gain from economic prosperity. Review for Religious Even those who do not depend upon Divine Providence are dependent upon it. It is simply human shortsighted-ness that does not see the beneficent God behind the human drama. The wisdom of the saints ends up being the most practical of impracticalities. Some Texts "In building, we need not act as people in the world do. They first get the money and then begin to build, but we must do iust the opposite. We will begin to build and then expect to receive what is necessary. The Lord God will not be outdone in generosity." -- St. Alphonsus Liguori "The more you abandon to God the care of tem-poral things, the more he will take care to provide for all your needs; but if, on the contrary, you try to supply all your own needs, Providence will allow you to con-tinue to do just that, and then it may well hhppen that even the necessities will be lacking, God thus reproving you for want of faith and reliance on him." -- St. John Baptist de La Salle "Now is God not able to send, perhaps tomorrow, sacks of money to my door?" -- St. Camillus de Lellis And see Paul Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1985). 67.1 2008 M. REGINA VAN DEN BERG Enclosure and Other Ways to Widen One's Horizons Tfte practice and rule of enclosure in the convent is en misunderstood, by those who oppose it and those who defend it. It is misunderstood as a way of keeping the world and its evils out, of limiting contact with the world. Enclosure actually succeeds in doing quite the opposite: it enlarges the world. Rather than keeping the world out, it confronts us with it. Rather than keeping evil out, it forces us to face it. Rather than limiting our world, it expands our horizons. It is not only enclosure that expands our horizons: other prac-tices of the religious life do so too. The other practices include common meals, prayers, and recreation, limited use of television, internet, telephone, and email, and also limited travels and visitors as well. The reader may think I am playing with words, for it seems paradoxical at best that all the above-men- M. Regina van den Berg FSGM taught philosophy at Seminary Rolduc in Roermond, the Netherlands. She recently moved to Mater Ecclesiae Convent; 4510 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. Review for Religious tioned practices serve to widen our horizons. It is" not my intention, however, to play with words, but rather to point out a common mistaken notion that "experiencing the world" and "widening one's horizons" are incom-patible with enclosure and other such practices. In his essay "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family," in Heretics, G.K. Chesterton makes the essential distinctions upon which I base this article.1 Chesterton uses the distinction to defend the institu-tion of the family; I apply it to the religious life. When people say that they want to "experience the world" or "widen their horizons," they commonly mean that they want to increase their knowledge of the world and the things in it. They want to do this by learning or by experiencing, virtually or firsthand. It is nearly super-fluous to point out that modern technology enables us to learn and experience all manner of things with the greatest ease and speed. We can experience the world in so many ways: by traveling, by looking at internet sites, by watching television, by communicating via the internet with people we have never met face-to-face, by joining clubs. It is obvious that enclosure and the other religious-life practices I mentioned allow at best a limited experience of the world in this sense. These various experiences of the world, however, have some common elements. For one, the knowledge we gain and the experiences we have often do not affect us as persons. They do not make demands on us as per-sons. We, after all, select the experience we want to have: the persons we want to be with, the places we want to go. We choose people who are agreeable to us, and when we travel we want to relax, not be challenged. Perhaps we look on the internet or watch television to learn, but often just to be entertained. However inter- 67.1 2008 van den Berg, * Enclosure and Other Ways to Widen One's Horizons However interesting the people we meet on journeys or through the internet, they may ieave our inner world untouchedl esting the people we meet on journeys or through the internet, they may leave our inner world untouched. They do not make us grow in Christian self-knowl-edge. When people truly want a life-changing event, Chesterton says, they could effect "a much more roman-tic and even melo-dramatic change if [they] jumped over the wall into the neighbor's garden. The con-sequences would be bracing.''2 We go on vacations or browse the inter-net because we Want a "change," because we want to escape from the everyday, but escapes may blind us to the here and now. The internet provides a fine example. How easily we become so immersed in it that we lose all sense of time, of the people around us, of duties awaiting us. Analogies limp, but this experience is like taking a photograph. To get as much as possible in the picture, we not only use a wide-angle lens, but we also back up. We become observers. Everything becomes small, and details disappear. There is a lot in thepicture, but we see very little. We do the same when we try to know and experience endlessly new things. Enclosure and the other religious-life practices zoom in, so to speak, on a select portion of the world. This new focus enables us to look more closely at the objects in the picture. We do not step back as observers to take the picture, but we get a vivid three-dimensional picture of a select part of the world by being a part of it ourselves. In a Review for Religious limited environment we begin to see in a different way. Confronted by the reality of the here and now, we begin to see details. We notice more of what is there to be seen. With enclosure and the other religious practices, we find ourselves in a special environment with companions we did not choose. They become real sisters of mine, and I cannot merely observe or ignore them; I must live with them. They are not all like me, even if we share a common vision. Some are of a different temperament than I am; I am irritated by some of their peculiarities. Enclosure makes me live with them, and in learning to love them I am enlarging my world. Once we are at home in our limited environment, the reality that is present to us, it encourages us to notice many details: the sunshine on my face as I sit here, the spider crawling up the wall, the sister next door coughing. Then we can respond to the details: to be grateful for the sunshine, to marvel at the spider, to see if my coughing sister may need something. The present reveals itself as fascinating once we see it from up close. Enclosure does not keep the evil things of the world out. Quite the contrary: in the wideness of the enclo-sure, evil has plenty of room to raise its head. I suspect I am not the only one who thought that my congrega-tion should be grateful that I was deigning to enter the community. Being so used to the company of people of like character and inclination, I had no idea that I could be anything but kind--until I was confronted with sisters who were quite unlike me. Then I began to become humbly grateful that the congregation accepted even someone like me. Those who think that enclo-sure somehow forms and preserves a comfortable space 67.1 2008 van den Berg ¯ Enclosure and Other Ways to W'uten One's Horizons where like-minded people can indulge their whim for a lifetime of silence have never lived in a religious com-munity. Enclosure is demanding. Enclosure has no intention of satisfying selfish desires for privacy, for a place where we can escape from the world. It is rather the case that we impose enclosure upon ourselves because we know our human weakness. Knowing that we sometimes would like to escape from the demands of the enclosed world, we bind ourselves to it as self-protection for our weak moments. There is a sense, of course, in which enclosure creates a certain "place apart," but not in the sense of privacy. Privacy in the sense of "my space" would not be compatible with the vows and total surrender of religious life. But the silent place apart is intended to widen horizons, to attune us to the reality of God's presence. As an aid to communion with him, enclosure widens our horizons beyond our imagining--into the wideness of his eternal being! If readers have agreed with everything so far, they may still maintain that enclosure, even if it opens the door to the world, still seems a terribly boring enter-prise. Imagine a life without travel, without television, without internet, without a change of companions. Is this not a recipe for boredom? At least, the reader may surmise, the apostolic religious still have the excitement of the apostolate, the possibility of being transferred, but the contemplative nuns must even forgo that. Add to enclosure the regular routine of the religious life, and the recipe for a dull life seems foolproof. But here, too, Chesterton makes an excellent point. People travel far and wide in search of adventure, but when they do so they by definition fail. They fail because "adventure" refers to something that happens to us (peradventure, Review for Religious by chance), not to something that we attain or that we can find. When we plan a vacation, we know what to expect and plan it often to the smallest detail. But in everyday life in enclosure, one never knows what to expect--here is adventure! And, to quote Chesterton once more, "the thing which keeps life romantic and full of fiery possibilities is the existence of these great plain limitations which force all of us to meet the things we do not like or do not expect.''3 Not only are there two divergent ways of experienc-ing the world, but, I maintain, one is better and truer than the other. The first way of widening our horizon often fails to touch and change us as persons. It tends to make us observers of life, not participants; we avoid the challenges that help us grow. It can more accurately be described as an escape from the world. The truer way to experience the world, the way of enclosure, widens our horizons and opens us up to the drama of good and evil, to the graces of the present moment. This reality is demanding and life-changing. Enclosure, the common life, a~d the limited use of media and communication all serve to reveal and enlarge our world--but not by logical necessity. People can enlarge their world through travels and narrow their world in the enclosure, but those are the exceptions rather than the rule. Those who run into the enclosure to escape from the world discover all too soon that they have run in the wrong direction. Their escape from the world is to be found elsewhere: in the often world-nar-rowing experiences of the media and in other self-selected experiences that do not demand much from us. It is not surprising that the practice of enclosure is paradoxical, that by limiting physical space and limiting our experiences we in fact enlarge our experience. The 67.1 2008 van den Berg * Enclosure and Otber Ways to V~ulen One's Horizons Christian faith is founded on paradox. Through Jesus' death we receive life. Through the seemingly world-nar-rowing experience of the enclosure and other religious practices, the horizons of our hearts and minds can be expanded to God and to his concerns and to his world. And that, precisely, is the point of enclosure. The Weaver Weave the threads. Brown for the earth, Red for the fire, Blue for the air, Silver for the water. Weave the threads. Brown for humus, Red for passion, Blue for reason, Silver for the spirit. Weave the threads. Brown the Father, Red for His Son, Blue His Mother, Silver the Comforter. Weave the threads. Fibre of God. Fibre of men. Fibre of life. Weave into harmony, One in the Cosmic dance. Sister Margaret Anne OHP Review for Reli~ous ANTHONY MALAVIARATCHI Religious Brotherhood Today I n attempting to say what it means to be a religious rother today, we must be clear about what broth-erhood is. To discover afresh the most effective way of being a religious brother today, we must look at the tradition of brotherhood in the church. The brotherhood of Jesus and his ordinary follow-ers (Mt 23:8) and the brotherhood of Jesus and his spe-cially chosen disciples, the apostles (Mk 3:13-15), are already two strands of brotherhood at the very outset. Both were meant for the proclamation of the kingdom of God. The brotherhood of the first Christian com-munity in Jerusalem was~ meant to give witness to Jesus' resurrection. The brotherhood of religious life started with cenobitical life. The lone hermits became com-munities of brothers receiving spiritual guidance from abbas (fathers, animators). This kind of brotherhood Anthony Malaviaratchi CSSR, a former theology professor and for-mator now doing retreat work, presented this paper at a brothers' convention in Sri Lanka. His address is Santa Maria; George E. Silva Ma~atha; Kandy, Sri Lanka. anthonymalavi@yahoo.com 67.1 2008 Malaviaratcbi ¯ Religlou~ Brotherhood Today was making a united and concerted effort to live the gospel radically. Brotherhood in History In the period that followed, brotherhood began a new phase. Penitents entered "monasteries" and gradu-ally became members or at least began to live the life of the community. There seems to be no historical connection between th~se "penitent brothers" and-the stream of brothers popularly known as "teaching broth-ers." In the 17th century St. John Baptist de la Salle brought together a group of teachers to educate the badly neglected children of poor working-class families. So did St. Marcellin Champagnat in. the 19th century. Disillusioned by the growing secularism in French soci-ety and its impact on youth, the founder of the Marist brothers established schools for the underprivileged. The Brothers of Charity came together to care for poor workmen, the sick, and the mentally handicapped. Brotherhood: A Prophetic Lifestyle Teaching the poor and marginalized is not an exci~- ing apostolate today. It does not hit the headlines of even Catholic newspapers. That is because so many religious congregations have been doing it for three hundred years. At their origin the education of the underprivileged was simply not being taken care of by anybody. When Edmund Rice, founder of the Christian Brothers, began his teaching, the education of Catholics was illegal in Ireland. Religious life as a prophetic move-ment was reincarnated through works of mercy. The brothers, influenced by St. Vincent de Paul's Daughters of Charity, did what the society of the time failed or refused to do. They brought a strange but nevertheless Review for Religious refreshing message that drew the attention of the world as Mother Teresa did in our times. That was the secret of their success. Congregations of brothers, therefore, need to ask: How can we be prophetic today? What must we do to convey God's message afresh? What is it that society refuses to do today and would convey a prophetic mes-sage if we did it? Today many works of mercy, including teaching, are no longer prophetic. Many others do them now. Governments have undertaken the tasks of teaching, nursing, running orphanages and technical schools, and so forth. ~ Congregations of brothers, But we need to remember that it was the example of religious con-gregations dedi- - cated to serving the earthly well-being of those in need that paved the way for governments and other secular organizations to take up welfare services. therefore, need to ask: How can we be prophetic today ? Institutions and Status Brothers' institutions do excellent work, much appreciated especially by the laity. But the institutions give the impression of material well-being, security, and status, especially in the third world. Brotherhood, of course, has less status than the priesthood, which is one of the reasons why brothers have fewer vocations. Nevertheless, brothers' institutions do have status. To all appearances the vast majority of those who want to join our communities come not because they have 67.1 2008 Malaviaratcbi * Religious Brotherhood Today heard Christ's call to radical discipleship but because they are attracted by the status and security of the insti-tutions. In factl congregations that do not have institu-tions have few vocations. Widespread unemployment and lack of talent for modern cutthroat competition seem to be the underlying reasons for the many "voca-tions" in the third world. Unfortunately, in too many instances the enjoyment of status and security continues to be the lifelong hidden motivation. As their numbers dwindle, the brothers are being for+ed to give up their apostolic commitments one by one. For various reasons such as pressure from bishops and priests, parents, and old boys [alumni] and because of understandable emotional attachments, the most prestigious institutions will be the last to be given up. This will worsen the image of the brothers and con-sequently the quality of the vocations they get. Since many hold on to their status and security, it is most unlikely that radical measures will be taken. And so the faster religious life in its present form dies, the better it is. For then God will be able to raise radical disciples for Christ from the stones of the earth (Mt 3:9). Congregations, Too, Die Part of the crisis of religious life is the probability, if not the certainty, of dying out and entering the annals of history. The reality of death looms over all reality except over the only Real One. Heaven and earth must pass away, the church must pass away (Rv 21:1-2, Heb 12:22). Even the kingdom of Christ must pass away into the kingdom of the Father (1 Co 15:24-28). If all this is true, then our congregations can hardly be eternal. We must pass away when we have adequately served God's eternal designs. If so, our dying as a group, Review for Religious with all its glory and achievements, will also be a ser-vice. Even the thought of it can be a painful, if not traumatic, experience. It is surely a historical moment when God calls us to bring our self-offering to a climax by embracing his plans in the darkness of faith. Like our Divine Master, we too may be called to give life to oth-ers by an unquali-fied submission to God's designs. In the glorious days of the brotherhood in the church, our faith may not have been so much in God as in our numbers, institutions, and achievements. Our group's willing submission to God's unknown ways will bring life to the world in an abundance which our congregational achievements could never even dream of matching. The history of salvation unequiVocally offers all believers a planofaction in time of crisis. The Remnant The history of salvation unequivocally offers all believers a plan ~of action in time of crisis. It may be new to us who have got used to large numbers, but it is a beaten path in salvation history. The faithful were often led by God to negotiate crises by means of the Remnant. The word remnant indicates how great the destruc-tion of God's people will be. "Only a remnant will remain" (Is 10:22). Surely Christ had in mind a remnant when he called his disciples "little flock" (Lk 12:32) and when he said "Many are called but few are chosen." In the Scriptures the remnant is a tiny minority of those 67.1 2008 Malaviaratchi ¯ Religious Brotherhood Today leading religious lives in the eyes of God. These few continue to believe and remain faithful in the midst of widespread infidelity. The concept shows punishment for sin and God's faithfulness, which remains untouched by human infidelity. The faith in the remnant is an essential aspect of hope in the Bible. The Remnant Today If, as religious, brothers are to have hope, they must first realize that it is to run institutions that large num-bers are needed, whereas to give witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ a few are more than enough. These few must turn back to their founders and rediscover that it is exclusively for Christ's gospel that they were brought together in the first place. Second, they need to adopt a prophetic lifestyle and thus become clearly visible signs: Their lifestyle will be visible: ¯ (1) if they have a community lifestyle that is tangibly religious, that is, God-centered with a strong contemplative dimension. ¯ (2) if they live this life not in legal rigidity but in evangelical fidelity. This needs special attention since post-Vatican II freedom has often resulted in Western permissiveness. As a part of this evangelical fidelity, those who fail to live this life should be asked to leave whenever the superior, with the com-munity, comes to that conclusion. ¯ (3) if they embrace a clearly visible life of poverty, that is,can external life of utter simplicity. In every reform movement within reli-gious life, there has been a return to radical simplicity. Our world in the clutches of consumerism is crying for a modern-day Francis of Assisi. ¯ (4) if they engage in a service that others do not do and reach out to people whom society does not care for. In this way, small groups of brothers will create a Review for Religious counterculture which the Union of Superiors General has described as one with "passion for Christ and pas-sion for humanity." They will give prophetic witness to the spiritual dimension of human life in a world of increasing secularism, to brotherly lives and work in a world of increasing individualism, to evangelical sim-plicity in a world of increasing consumerism, to God's preferential love for those that society does not care about in a world of increasing self-centeredness. In a word, religious brotherhood will be prophetic through and through, a transparently radical form of discipleship of Christ. Zen°Poem for Thomas Merton For Brother Anthony Weber OCSO Abbey of the Genesee A white cloud Near a picket fence Close to a white rose, Walked a white-habited Trappist Praying an ivory beaded rosary Ignoring a cawing crow Noticing a disappearing cloud; Flower petals falling, The fence rotting; His scapular, dusty With prayers ascending, Approaching darkness Amid a forested hermitage. William J. Bly 73 67.1 2008 VINCENT GENOVESI Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? spiritual supports We would quickly recognize the mockery made of love were lovers to ask each other only "What must I do to avoid hurting you?" We expect lovers to share a deeper ambition: "What more can I do to show my love for you?''l The same is true of our relationship with God. When our commitment to our spir-itual and moral growth is seen as a response to God's invitation to love, it would be rather insulting to play at love and revel in testing love's limits. As honest and true lovers, we do not spend time anxiously determining how far we can go before our love relationship with God is strained to the breaking point. Instead, our earnest desii'e is to discover how we can foster that relationship. It is in this context that we come to under-stand more fully the meaning of human sinful- V'mcent Genovesi sJ is professor of theology and campus minister at Saint Joseph's University; 261 City Avenue; Merion Station, Pennsylvania 19066. vgenoves@sju.edu Review for Religious ness. Sin is best understood not so much as an isolated act, but rather as a relational reality. It is deliberately breaking our love relationship with God (mortal sin) or knowingly straining that relationship (venial sin). Of course, our love relationship with God is played out largely in our human relationships. St. John reminds us that, if we profess to love God while failing to love our neighbor, we are liars; we cannot love God, whom we have never seen, if we do not love the neighbors whom we see every day (1 Jn 4:20). It is important, too, that we remember the testimony of human experience--that any love relationship can suffer from thoughtless neglect and eventually die without our notice. To grow as faithful Christians, we must ultimately make decisions for ourselves, but it is folly to believe we can or should make all decisions simply on our own, without any help. Yes, we entrust our moral life to the guidance of our conscience, provided, of course, that we have first honestly, carefully, and prayerfully sought to inform our conscience properly. Even when we do this, however, we do not always live as we know we should. We get off track, and it becomes helpful or even neces-sary to seek guidance, encouragement, and exhortation. At times like these the sacrament of reconciliation can offer assistance, especially when we are not in regular dialogue with a spiritual director. Behind Catholicism's centuries-old practice of sacramental confession, there is a wisdom whose depth can be more appreciated in light of Vatican Council II's theological insights and psychology's contribution to a fuller understanding of the human person. Still, many sincere Catholics, even priests and religious, question the usefulness or neces-sity of the rite of reconciliation. Such questioning must be addressed. 67.1 2008 Genovesi * Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? Doing Wrong versus Sinning As background for our discussion, it helps to recall that Catholics are expected to confess serious or mor-tal sins at least once a year.2 Significantly, the accus-ing is done by ourselves. ("Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.") Sins are committed only by sinners--people who freely decide to live in various ways that they know to be hurtful to their own well-being and/or the well-being of others, and so must judge themselves to be unloving and in the wrong. In acknowledging that entering into sin requires both knowledge and freedom on our part, Catholic tradition teaches that no one sins by accident--just as no one truly loves by accident. Both to love and to sin are choices or decisions. Interestingly, St. Thomas Aquinas did not think it likely that persons who are honestly trying to live as good Christians would easily or frequently rupture their love relationship with God by choosing to sin seriously: "Although grace is lost by a single act of mortal sin, it is not, however, easily lost. For the person in grace does not find it easy to perform such an act because of a contrary inclination." Aquinas means that it is pre-cisely our love for God and others that will make it difficult for us to sin, or deliberately do anything that would put our love relationship in jeopardy.3 In light of Aquinas's teaching, and in keeping with the true nature of love, we may conclude that, although it is possible to sin mortally in one particular act, it is not always a simple matter to isolate that act. It is not likely, in other words, that we would sin mortally in an act that is totally out of our character, or in an act that we have not predisposed ourselves toward. Rather, our relation-ship of love for God and others will probably change and deteriorate before there is any outright rupturing of Review for Religious the union, which is why we must be all the more atten-tive to the daily responsibilities of love. In essence, all sins of commission are expressions of "the one great sin of omission, failure to love.''4 While this failure offends God, we too suffer as a result of our sinfulness insofar as we come to find ourselves within the narrow confines of self-centeredness. It is a confinement that brings with it a death penalty, for in failing to love we become members of the living dead (1 Jn 3:14-15). Thomas Aquinas acknowledges the human destructiveness of sin when he says that sin is indeed an offense against God, but that "God is offended only by those things that we do against our own true welfare.''5 Although:.some of our actions may be undeniably hurtful and wrong, our tradition reminds us that we are not always or n, ecessarily morally guilty of sinning in doing these things. Indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that "imputability and responsi-bility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors" (§1735). A similar idea appears later in the Catechism: "Unintentional ignorance can diminisl~ or even remove the imputability of a grave offense . The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pres-sures or pathological disorders" (§ 1860). We do well to All sins of commission are expressions of ",the one great sin of omission, failure to love." 67.1 2008 Genovesi * Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? remember, however, that if because of our insensitivity, lack of awareness, or curtailed freedom we are not guilty of sin when doing something that is in fact hurtful and wrong, we have no cause for self-satisfaction and com-placency. The less sensitive, aware, and free we are, the less we are fully human. Therefore, whatever stands in our lives as an obstacle to our free commitment in love is to be seen as something to overcome in our growth toward maturity as human beings and as Christians. In no way should this obstacle be relished as excusing us from sin, because the sad truth is that even without sin we may regrettably have done something hurtful to our-selves and others and are all too able to do so again. Three Reasons for this Sacrament In light of what it means to be a sinner--knowingly and freely failing or refusing to love God and others--it is clear that it is not the role of the priest-confessor, nor is it within his power, to determine definitively whether the penitent has or has not sinned, or how .serious that sin may be. In fact, no human being can rightly call another human being a sinner because reading another person's mind and heart is the prerogative of God alone. Thus the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that, "although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God" (§1861). And so it does us all good to remember that "God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but God looks at the heart" (1 S 16:7). Why, then, encourage the sacrament of rec-onciliation? I offer three reasons: the social nature of life and sin, the incarnational dimension of our Catholic tradition, and the moral growth that comes from hum-bly taking possession of our sinfulfiess. Review for Religious The Social Nature of Life and Sin: We need a deeper sense today of the social implications of our sinfulness. No sin is totally private, because in sinning we produce a change within ourselves that invariably influences our dealings with others. Thus no sin really remains "secret"; its effects will somehow leave a trail. Furthermore, whenever we hurt someone, we also hurt all those, including God, who love and care about that person. This means that an appropriate expres-sion of our sor-row should include seeking forgiveness and admitting publicly that our sinfulness has alienated or distanced us from both God and our neighbors. T.he sacrament of reconciliation serves this purpose, for through our encounter with the priest, who is both God's servant-representative to penitents and the people's minister before God, we testify to our desire to be reintegrated into the community of God's love and the company of his people. It is possible that appredation of the social nature of sin would be enhanced were parishes to pro-vide communal penance services more frequently. Catholicism's Incarnational Dimension: Moreover, pre-cisely as human beings who live as body-spirits, it is tremendously helpful for us to incarnate, "flesh out" or "enact," our sorrow and our need for forgiveness through recourse to sacramental confession. In addi-tion, God wants to "enact" his forgiveness of us through Whenever we hurt someone, we aiso hurt all those, including God, wh~; love and care " about that person. 67.1 2008 Genovesi ¯ Room for Sacramental Recondliation? the priest's guidance and comfort. And so, just as Christ puts flesh on our Father's love for us, so the words of absolution put flesh on Christ's forgiveness and mercy. Fortunately, too, I think, many priests today are deeply sensitive to the essentially social and incarnational dimensions of Christian living. As a result, in assign-ing a sacramental penance, they ask penitents to move beyond simple recitation of formal prayers and to seek reconciliation with God and neighbor through spe

Issue 59.1 of the Review for Religious, 2000. ; Vowed Life Featur~ Religious Mission ~ Finding God Living Celibat,ely Balkans Report JANUARY FEBRUARY 2_000 VOLUME 59 NUMBER I Review for Religious helps people respond and be faithful to God's universal call to bollness by making available to them the spiritual legacies tbat flow from the cbarisms of Catholic consecrated life. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bimonthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: foppema@slu.edu Manuscripts, books for review, aud correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP P.O. Box 29260; V~rashington, D.C. 20017 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. 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Such pertnission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. restrictions, in a world of hate and division, of civilian bombings and life-snuffing concentration camps, this iournal spoke about dialogue and intercommunication, about ministries of love and service, about vocations to align oneself with God's peaceable king-dom and to pray for that kingdom to come. I am thankful for the gift this journal has been to the church, to religious life, and to the spiritual-life developments of our times. I thank God for raising up and inspiring the founding editors to begin the dialogue--something not common in the 1940s--across the different spiritual heritages which are represented by Catholic religious congregations and which continue to feed the spiritual life of church members everywhere. I am grateful for all the writers who have shared their insights, raised questions, instructed in prayer and in ecclesial history, and inspired our ministerial efforts. For all that has been---Thanks! With this first issue of the year 2000 a new-look cover greets our readers, along with a revision of our secondary title. For the previous eight years, because of the creative contribution of the advisory board and the staff, the journal had this shorthand way of stating its content: Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living. After more discussion with current board members and staff, we now state our content even more simply: Living Our Catholic Legacies. Our mission statement, too, has found new expression for things our journal continues to have in view (see inside front cover). This is our way of saying Yes as we look to the future. While we say "To all that shall be--Yes," I have some con-cern about a shrinking subscriber list. We know that the primary readership--women and men religious--continues to grow less in number in the United States and in European countries. I would not like to say Yes to a declining subscription number without encouraging all of you tostir up your own efforts to increase our readers, hopefully even our subscribers, among your own congre-gation members and associate members if you are a religious, and among friends and colleagues who share spiritual companionship and ministry with you. Review for Religious remains a unique journal in the English-speaking world for our continuing educa-tion, formation, and inspiration in living the rich Catholic legacies that form our church spirituality. I hope that you, our readers, share in our appreciation and enthusiasm. "To all that shall be-- Yes!" allows plenty of room for our best efforts. David L. Fleming SJ Januaty-Februa~y 2000 MICHAEL HIMES Returning to Our Ancestral Lands feature I am a little more daunted than I usually am because you are vicars for religious and you bring me in, a dioce-san priest, to talk to you. I can plead two things. One, I lived, during my happy years at the University of Notre Dame, at Moreau Seminary in the company and with the hospitality of the Congregation of Holy Cross and came to have the greatest affection and respect for them. I am now living and working with the Society of Jesus at Boston College and have the greatest respect for the Society of Jesus. My brother, and sometime col-league, is a Franciscan. And so, though I am not a reli-gious, I shared a bedroom for years with a religious, my brother Ken. Besides these attachments to and connections with religious communities, I plead that your having a pas-sionate outside observer may be useful. That is what I come to you as--a concerned, passionate, outside Michael J. Himes, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn and formerly on the faculties of the University of Notre Dame and of the Seminary of the hnmaculate Conception (Huntington, New York), is currently a professor of theol-ogy at Boston College. He presented this paper (here some-what revised) in March 1999 at the 32nd assembly of the National Conference of Vicars for Religious, in whose 1999 Proceedings it was originally published. His address is Boston College; Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467. Review for Religio us observer of religious life in the church. I am going to talk with you from the perspective of history. My field is the history of Christianity, with a particular interest in ecclesiology. I am going to be looking at both the history of religious life in the church and at its connection with the mission of the church at large. I took my title from Leviticus. The passage in Leviticus on the jubilee year says to mark the jubilee year by returning to our ancestral lands. In Leviticus the reason for doing this is appar-ently that, because every clan, every group, in Israel's history is of importance in God's plan and in the working out of the covenant, no family, no clan, should be allowed to disappear from the land of Israel. And so, if a clan or family gave up its land, within fifty years it would get it back again. I suggest that some of those same themes are true of religious life in the church today. There are too many important, vital, necessary experiences, images, sources of wisdom which have grown up in religious life in the Western church over the course of fifteen centuries to allow them to be lost to the life of the church. We need to go back periodically and reclaim those ances-tral lands, To do that, I want to discuss three issues--and so there will be three parts. Part One: I want to say something about the nature and pur-pose of religious life in the Catholic tradition, but I want to say it from a somewhat unusual perspective. I will explain what that is in just a moment. Part Two: I am going to offer you a thumbnail history--and it is very thumbnail history--of the development of religious life in the Western church. There is quite a distinct history to the development of religious life in the Eastern church, but up to the present moment in the Western church, I suggest, there have been three central moments in the development of religious life. We may be at the end of number three and the start of number four. In Part Three I am going to make some observations about what can be done to reclaim ancestral lands. How do you reclaim values without trying to resuscitate forms? How do you reclaim the value without saying we have got to replicate the history? Nature and Purpose of Vowed Life Let me say something about the nature and purpose of reli-gious life--of vowed life within the Christian community and espe- January-February 2000 Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands cially within the Catholic tradition--from a somewhat unusual perspective. That perspective I take from an immensely productive, distinguished, and influential figure in Protestant theology and philosophy of religion at the beginning of the century that is now ending--a man named Ernst Troeltsch, who died back in 1923. Before the First World War, Troeltsch produced his masterpiece, a thick volume titled The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. The tide may be misleading to us. You may say to yourself, "All this is well and good, but I do not see what bearing it has on the topic." Let me explain. Just when you least expect it, over the hill will come the topic. Just at the point that you have given up hope of ever hearing anything relevant to your interest, lo and behold, it will make its appearance. Today, when we hear a title like The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, we might expect that it is going to be about what we have come to call social teaching, namely, the teaching of the Christian community about the nature of political and eco-nomic justice within society. That is not what Troeltsch meant by his title. By the Christian churches' social teaching, Troeltsch meant what they taught about tl~eir own natures as societies. I mean, here you have different communities, different societies of Christians that have come together and organized themselves in very different ways. How did these various Christian societies explain themselves? What is their teaching about their own nature as a society? To trace the development of how different church communities and traditions in the history of the Christian tradition have structured themselves as churches, as communities, Troeltsch approached it in a very interesting and important way. He bor-rowed an idea from a colleague of his at Heidelberg, where he was teaching at the time: one of the great fathers that you may very well know if you have an interest in sociology, Max Weber. Troeltsch borrowed from him the notion of an ideal type. Weber's ideal type means this: You explicate different ways, different models of how a community could be organized with-out reference to any concrete existing community. Then you look at the existing communities--at the actual communities as you find them--and ask: Which of these communities is like type one? Which is like type two? Which is like three? He found this to be a particularly fruitful way of getting people" to look at com-munities and raise questions about them which they might not ordinarily raise. Review for Religious Well, Troeltsch took that notion of an ideal type and sug-gested two ideal types as ways of digging in, as tools for analyzing how different Christian communities have understood their own role, how they structured themselves. Those two ideal types he refers to as church and sect. Sect, let me emphasize, is for Troeltsch by no means a bad word. For us today in America it has come to have all sorts of bad connotations. He means none of those connotations. By sect, Troeltsch means a community of people who come together in fidelity to their under-standing of the gospel, who are united first of all by a powerful, dramatic, and deeply personal experience of conver-sion. So, for Troeltsch, one of the hall-marks of a sect type of community is (1) that all of its members are people who have personally experienced some deep and often strikingly dramatic con-version experience. You have to experi-ence being born again into Christ. You must personally "accept Jesus as your Savior," to use language that is familiar to us from some sect types of community in this country. Another hallmark is (2) that these communities see themselves as peculiarly and specially commissioned communities. There is a vibrant sense of mission. There is a kind of urgency about the fact that you have been called, you have been chosen, you have been commissioned to perform an extremely important work in the name of the gospel. So there is a striking and urgent sense of mis-sion in a sect community. Often a sect community (3) sees itself in terms of being over against the larger community. You are the people who have been called upon; you have been set up as a city on a hilltop, as a light for all the world. You are commissioned in a way that is not true of the community-at-large. You may be called to serve them, but you are different in some way from that larger community, and there should be a clear difference between you and that larger community. The sect community (4) is frequently radical in its vision of what needs to be done in the larger community. That is, it takes positions which the larger community may find to be too diffi-cult, too dangerous, too uncomfortable, too impractical. The Different societies of Christians that have come together and organized themselves in very different ways. Janual~-FebruatTy 2000 --10A Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands smaller sect community can advocate radical reform and radical movement. The problem with the sect community, however, as Troeltsch points out, is that it seldom survives beyond the second or at most third generation because the first generation (who have had this striking, personal experience) cannot guarantee that their chil-dren's or their grandchildren's generation is going to have that same striking experience. Very often, then, the sect begins to evap-orate or split up in various ways. My favorite image for that may be seen in one of Flannery O'Connor's letters. She has a wonderful description of why she liked to travel in the south on local trains, trains that made every stop. She said you could always, back in the 1940s and 1950s, see such interesting things. She says: "Why, you stop at one little town and you look out the window and there's a white clapboard church. And out in front of the church is a sign that says 'First Church of Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior of All Humanity, Coming Again in Glory to Save All People Who are Faithful to Him and Moved by the Holy Spirit.' The train goes five miles down and stops at the next little town, and there is a white clapboard church with a sign in front of it that says, 'Church of Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior of the World and of All Humanity, Coming Again in Glory to Save the Living and the Dead and MI Those Who are Faithful to the Gospel and Motivated by the Holy Spirit, Reformed.'" And she said, "You knew there was a history here somewhere even though you could not tell quite what it was." There's a tendency for sect communities to splinter or to evaporate. By contrast to the sect community, the church-style community is a community that (1) sees itself as incorporating all sorts of peo-ple into the Christian community. It does not claim that all of its members are equally, highly, or deeply motivated--depending on your point of view. It does not claim that all of its members have striking personal experiences. It allows for the fact that there are different levels of membership, not official membership perhaps, but in terms of involvement in the community. Not everyone is at every moment of her or his life equally fervent or actively engaged in the life of the church. A church (2) does not see itself as necessarily over against the world. There are all sorts of things in the world-at-large that the church wants to embrace and celebrate. You cannot imagine, for example, says Troeltsch, that a sect is necessarily going to embrace Review for Religious the world of the arts and sciences, whereas the church commu-nity will. It embraces the artistic values and the scientific hopes and dreams and goals and methods of a community at any given time. In comparison with a sect, there is a much greater sense of collaboration between people in the church and people outside it. It tries to build bridges. It is a community, therefore, that is much more stable than a sect community. You can be born into a church community; you have to be reborn into a sect community. The idea, for example, of an infant baptism or an infant initiation into a sect would be simply impossible, whereas it is perfectly possible for a church community. The church community sees itself as a process of lifelong nur-ture, whereas the sect community emphasizes radical, dramatic conversion experiences. The danger for church-style community, says Troeltsch, is of course that it can become too secular, it can end up being, as it were, a tool for social stability used by the soci-ety- at-large. Notice that he is not claiming one is better than another; he is setting up--and I am just giving a thumbnail sketch--he is setting up two types of community that he can use as tools with which to examine the history of various church communities. He wants to ask: What is this like? Is it more like a sect? Is it more like a church? In what ways is it like a sect? In what ways is it like a church? Now, why do I propose to you that this is an interesting way to think about religious life? Because Troeltsch makes, almost in passing, one of the most suggestive comments that I have ever seen about religious life in the Catholic tradition. The Catholic Church--certainly back in the first decade of this century when he was looking at it from his own vantage point--is one of the purest church types of organization. He says, however, that the Catholic community has had for many centuries a peculiar and brilliant way of incorporating into itself the most vital, most insightful, most valuable elements of sects that grow up within the ambit of the Catholic community. It makes them religious orders. I suggest to you that--if you think of a community gathering around Anthony in the desert, gathering around Benedict or Scholastica, gathering around Francis and Clare, gathering around Dominic or Ignatius Loyola--you certainly can see those groups as matching up very closely with what Troeltsch has to say about sect communities. You cannot be born into these groups, you have Janua~. -Feb~wa(y 2000 Himes * Returning to Our Ancestral Lands got to choose to join. It is a matter of discerning a vocational call. There is a radical break with a previous kind of life in order to enter one of these groups. They are marked by clear and certain images of what mission is and what goal is, and how you shape people to accomplish that goal. The goal includes seeing this com-munity as being very much over against the community-at-large. The group is not simply part of this world, and it is marked as not being part of this world by a kind of rejection of this world's dom-inant values. The danger here is that, if the group is not in some way stabilized by the structure of a church, it can melt away in two or three generations. Troeltsch, of course, pointed out the other danger too. The problem for the Catholic tradition is that, although the church model stabilizes the sect model by "turning sects into religious orders," in Troeltsch's phrase, it can suddenly turn the religious order into simply another branch of the church model--and thus lose the vibrancy of the sect model. I suggest that, if we are going to reclaim ancestral lands, one of the things we have to do is look to vital religious communities to be sects in the Troeltschian sense of sects. We have to look for communities of people who see themselves as personally called, called to a clear and decided mission, and who see themselves as in some way in contrast to the community around them, even in contrast to the church-at-large around them. Now, for how that happens, let me move to Part Two. Some History of the Development of Church Life I would like to make a hundred thousand qualifications, but, so that you can go to bed tonight, let me just give a very general description. I suggest to you that, up to the present moment, there are three stages to the history of religious life in the Western church. The first stage in the Western church--quite apart from the origins in Egypt and Syria and Asia Minor in the East--runs for about seven hundred years, from the middle of the 5th century to the middle of the 12 th century, roughly from A.D. 450 to 1150. If we are looking for an example of that first period, it is the Benedictine movement. What is religious life? Religious life for those first seven hundred years of the Western church is first and foremost a community of persons who have come together and Review for Religious pledged themselves to a life of poverty, a life of celibacy, a life of prayer and contemplation done in community. Why is it so important that it be done in community? Well, there are two versions of St. Athanasius's Life of Anthony of Egypt. We do not know which is the real one--whether the shorter one is due to somebody's cutting it down after Athanasius died or whether the longer one includes stuff that somebody added after his death. But the longer one, whoever wrote it, has a striking comment. It says: "Anthony went out to the desert to lead a life of radical devo-tion, deep prayer, and obvious poverty, and in doing so he became a source of wonder. But, when a community of others gathered around him, then he became a sign." That is a very perceptive comment. Living out your life in a radical gospel way makes you a source of astonishment, but what validates you as a sign to the church is that you can do this in a community. Let me put this another way (much less eloquently than the author of the longer life of Anthony does): It is possible to be poor, chaste, obedient, and nuts. We all know that. What guarantees that you are poor, chaste, obedient, and sane? Your ability to live with other people without either killing them or being killed by them. The community is what validates the vows. So this idea of living in community is very important and was very important in the Benedictine tradition from its outset. Clearly there are multiple variants of the monastic ideal throughout those seven hundred years, but that is the image of religious life that dominates the first stage. What is religious life? It is a community of people who come together to live lives of poverty, of celibacy, of devotion and prayer and contempla-tion- and often study too--and who do it in community. That is religious life. That reality has something brand-new added to it in the middle of the 12th century, and for a very practical reason. A whole new class of people emerges in Western Europe in the 12th century: the urban poor. One of the things that marked the end of the ancient world was the collapse of cities in Western Europe. In the early Middle Ages, society is essentially rural, A whole new class of people emerges in Western Europe in the 12th century: the urban poor. Janualy-February 2000 2 Himes ¯ Returnin~ to Our Ancestral Lands largely agricultural. There are no great cities for very obvious reasons: the barbarians. Let me remind you here, when we talk about the barbarians, not to picture Jack Palance with a mustache and a horned helmet swooping down to burn and pillage cities! That may have hap-pened along the way too, but, when we talk about the barbar-ians, all of us who are English, Irish, Welsh, or Scottish, Scandinavian, German, Polish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Sicilian, or northern Italian (from anywhere in Europe but a little piece of land stretch-ing from Naples to just north of Rome)--when we talk about the barbarians we are ta!king about grandma and grandpa. The bar-barians are our ancestors. As they moved into Western Europe, as the empire collapsed, these ancestors of many of us were not stupid. They knew stuff. They knew it takes a lot out of you to burn and pillage. A really good pillage takes a lot of energy. You are not going to waste your time burning and pillaging little one-horse towns. You are going to burn and pillage big cites--that is where the loot is to be got-ten. Since the inhabitants of the Roman empire in its last days were not stupid either, they quickly realized it is much safer living in the little towns than in the big cities: you are less likely to get sacked and pillaged. So, at the end of the ancient world, all over Europe, there is a sort of massive flight to the suburbs. Cities decline, lots of small towns spring up. In that world, how did the church care for people? Well, it was not a money economy. If you were going to found a parish, you were not going to do it with cash. Cash did not mean any-thing in the Middle Ages. Value was in land: it was the land's produce that could support a parish. So some wealthy donor says, "In this town I am giving this field to support the church. It can support two priests so that they can minister to the needs of the people of the town." The problem is, of course, that land is not easily transferable. At the start of the High Middle Ages, from around 1050 on, small towns began to decline in population as people moved back into big cities. In towns where once there were a hundred house-holds, now there were twenty, but there still were two priests for those twenty. Other towns were growing as centers. Where there used to be a hundred households, there were now five thousand households, but there was still only one priest, who was supported Review for Religious by the land donation from centuries before for that town. It is not easy to adjust parish boundaries and clergy resources. So there were growing numbers of people in the major cities of Western Europe who were largely unchurched. Nobody was preaching to them, nobody was teaching them, nobody was lead-ing them into the Gospels, nobody was celebrating sacraments for them. Who was going to tend to these people's needs? New reli-gious communities appeared, communities dedicated above every-thing else to the service of the urban poor. What do they need? Do they need evangelization? We preach. Do they need teaching? We teach. Do they need nursing? We nurse. Whatever they need, that is what we provide. If Benedict and Scholastica are the obvious figures of the first stage, Francis, Clare, and Dominic are the great figures at the start of the second stage, approximately I 150 to 1550. In the course of the Catholic reformation, both prior to and as a response to the Protestant reformers, the church realized that it was going to have to do much better regarding the challenges of a new world. One of the reasons that Luther had such an immense impact--besides the fact that he was immensely insightful--is that he wrote well. He wrote in German and, with the printing press available, turned out lots and lots of copies of relatively short books in the vernacular. Why was it that people like Cajetan and Eck did not have much luck responding to Luther? Because they were turning out thick books, in double columns, in Latin. Nobody was going to read them, even other professors, and so Luther had an impact, whereas initially much of the Catholic response did not. For this third stage we needed a new way to respond to people's needs. Although nobody calls it this, one of the ways was, in effect, the division of l~bor. What we needed was to streamline our styles of pastoral ministry. Instead of communities of people doing what-ever was needed, we were now going to have communities of peo-ple, both women and men, who specialized. We taught young women, we taught young men. We went to the foreign missions. We did nursing. We took care of the elderly. It became clear that different communities had unique apostolates. That model--and I think one can take the Jesuit~ as in many ways the example of this third stage, the embodiment of it--has lasted with great power and great success right down into our own lifetimes. Let me point out something that pertains ~o both the second and the third stages. Something enormously important shifted in Janua~:y-February 2000 Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands the course of the 12th century and, after more than eight hun-dred years, is still decisive for today's religious communities. It still affects what members do: we do this ministry to the urban poor. We do this particular kind of ministry for those who "need" it. What does this presuppose? It presupposes the situation during the second and third stages of Western religious life; it presup-poses people in need. It presupposes a world, and a church, in which the laity were essentially passive. Who was going to do the teach-ing, the preaching, the nursing, the caring, the evangelizing? It was going to be people in religious vows. The simply baptized members of the church--they were the recipients of ministry, they were not people who ministered themselves. An enormous shift happened when Vatican Council II called for a truly alive, energized, and ministerially responsible laity. Because of that shift, inevitably there was going to be some sort of identity crisis for religious life. If what makes me a religious is that I am one of group of people who perform such and such a ministry, and if nowadays other people who are not in vowed life, who are not celibate, and who are not living in community are doing the same ministry that I am doing, then what makes me a religious? Previously the identity of the religious--and I could make a similar case regarding the clergy--has been: "We are the people who do x, Y, and Z, and the laity are the people who have x, ¥, and Z done for them." The laity have been essentially passive recipients of ministry. The moment one begins to talk about the church as a community of people all of whom are called to some kind of ministry by baptism .(and not primarily by religious pro-fession or ordination), then everything shifts. That is why I suggest that we are at the end of the third stage and the beginning of a fourth stage. What does the fourth stage look like? Well, I have not a clu& Actually I may have a clue, but it is nothing more than a clue. Let me hasten to say that one of the occupational hazards of people who pretend to know something about the past is to think that they know everything about the future. With that caution in mind, I speak now with a good deal of self-suspicion, and you should hear it with even more suspicion. It is at least possible that a mark of the next great stage of development of religious life in the Western church--it may look more like the first stage than like stage two or three--is that there is a recentering on the nature of living vowed life in community rather than on any apostolate or mission of ours. That, perhaps, is Review for Religious the characteristic of the next stage of religious life. If that proves true, then a category that may be helpful for religious to consider more deeply and theologically is sacramentality. I am not referring to the great seven public and communal sacraments. I mean the much wider and in many ways much richer notion of sacrament, with a small s. And what is that sacrament called? What does sacramentality consist in? I give you Himes's handy-dandy definition of the sacra-mental principle. I have given it often, and it seems true. (After I hear myself say something long enough, it seems to me that it is true!) The definition of the sacramental principle is, I think, this: Whatever is always and every-where true must be noticed, accepted, and celebrated somewhere, sometime. Those things which are always true, those things which are constantly present to us, are almost always ignored. You do not pay attention to the oxygen in a room until it starts t6 go stale. While you have been reading this, you have surely been blinking periodically. Unless you have found my words altogether boring, you have not been counting your blinks. A couple of years ago ] got hit with a bout of Bell's palsy. I could not move anything on the left side of my face, and I could not blink. Throughout the day I had to periodically pull and hold my eyelid down, and tape it down at night. You become very aware of blinking when you cannot do it. When you can do it, when it takes care of itself, you do not pay any attention to it. In order to accept something that is there all the time and make it effectively present, to us, we have to learn to attend to it, to say yes to it, and to celebrate it. What is omnipresent to us? Well, God is: the self-giving of God. That self-giving of God we call, with the benefit of theological shorthand, grace: the self-gift of God's Trinitarian life outside the Trinity itself. It is everywhere. The whole world is just dripping with it; the whole thing is satu- A mark of the next great stage of development of religious life in the Western church is a recentering on the nature of living vowed life in community rather than on any apostolate or mission of ours. Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands rated with grace. But, precisely because that is true, it can be ignored. What is always present is seldom noticed. Whatever calls you, whatever person, place, thing, whatever sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, whatever experience leads you to he aware of, to attend to the reality of God's self-offering to you at that moment, to be able to say yes to it and to rejoice in it-- that is a sacra-ment. All told, how many sacraments are there in the world? How many things are there in the universe! That is what I mean by sacramentality. In that sense of the word--and this is where I am going to pick up the theme from Troeltsch in Part One--in that sense, religious life is a sacramental state within the church. We do not recognize that this is a sacramental state the way we recognize marriage as a sacramental state within the church. But it is in fact sacramental because, after all, religious are called to a deep sense of poverty, to a deep sense of responsibility toward and obedi-ence to the needs of those around us, to a responsible use of celibacy that recognizes our dependency on one another and on God. Is there anything there that everyone in the church is not called to by baptism? Why, then, do we need religious life so much? Because religious life "clearly, strikingly, astonishingly" (in the words of St. Athanasius's Life of Anthony) leads the church to see what the whole church is called to by baptism, to see it clearly and strikingly in a public and communal embodiment that helps people toward realization. Sacramentality is something that may be crucial for everyone's lively understanding of whht religious life is about and what its relationship to the church-at-large is and can be. How to Be More Sacramentally Aware How do you enliven this sense of sacramentality without repli-cating past forms? How do you rescue age-old values? How do you reclaim ancestral lands without simply going back to old build-ings or forms or structures? What can be done? I begin with a perceptive definition I learned from Jaroslav Pelikan, the distinguished historical theologian recently retired from Yale University. In his Jefferson Lectures at the University of Virginia a few years ago, he said: "We must be very careful to dis-tinguish between tradition ahd traditionalism. Tradition is the liv-ing faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." Review for Religious One is the continuing, living, vital faith that energized those who have gone before us; that is tradition. Traditionalism is faith main-tained by some among us that in fact is already ossified, entombed, embalmed; there is nothing left in it that is energizing. It is the dead faith of the living. How do we begin to reclaim the living faith of our ancestors? I know that this is going on in religious communities at this moment; it has gone on for a good deal of time. But I urge that it continue, and continue precisely in terms of sacramentality. How do we reflect on the meaning of the vows again? Is it possible that the fourth stage of religious life in the Western church into which I believe we are entering is more like religious life in the first stage than the second or third? As a word of preface, let me say that I have thought about this a good deal. Though I am not a religious, I do share with you a vow of obedience and I do share with you a vow of celibacy. I do not share with you living in community, although in fact I have lived in community. My brother Ken lives in a community of Franciscans with only six other people, and I lived in a house at the seminary in Huntington with fourteen other priests and sixty-five seminarians. I used to tell him: "You became a Franciscan and live in a rectory. I become a diocesan priest and live in a monastery." It is wonderful how God moves things around! The thing that has led me to think about this most is the vow I do not have, the vow of poverty. I find that the things I have vowed are not something I have to think about. I know what obe-dience means. The bishop calls me up and says, "I want to see you about doing x, Y, and Z." And I. say, "Okay, bishop, let me come and talk with you." There is'a structure to that. I do not have to get up in the morning and think: What does it mean to be obedi-ent today? That is taken care of. I do not have to think about what it is to be celibate. I know what means: that is taken care of. There is a structure to that too. What is not structured for me is poverty, and so it is a real problem. What does it mean for me as a university professor to talk Much as been written about poverty in recent years that is very powerful, but it is useful rhetorically more than actually real. Januat3~-Febrtta~y 2000 Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands about poverty when I do not have a vow of poverty? How, then, as a baptized member of the Body of Christ, do I incorporate poverty? That is a big issue, and I have thought about it. This is my pref-ace to what I am now going to say about the three vows. Much as been written about poverty in recent years that is very powerful, but it is useful rhetorically more than actually real. It assumes that poverty is about identification with the poor--I am convinced that it is not. I expect some people to say "Oh, but it is.t" I wish it were, but I do not think so. My reason is this: There is an enormous difference between my deciding "I will not eat today" and actually having nothing to eat. If I decide not to eat (even though there are tons of food in tt(e refrigerator) because I want to identify with the poor by going to bed tonight with an empty stomach, I am forgetting something. For me there will be break-fast tomorrow morning, but overnight the poor are thinking: "I would love to have eaten today and I couldn't, and God knows whether I will get anything to eat tomorrow morning." These are simply totally different experiences, and I think it is nothing but self-serving romanticism to say, "Isn't it wonderful that we have identified with the poor!" I think that is just false, and I think it is dangerously false because it is overly romantic. 20 What Is Poverty? I turn to my brother's tradition. Who is the wisest one to have talked about poverty in the Western church? Francis of Assisi. Nobody is wiser on it than Francis. And I suggest that what Francis saw is very much in a line that starts with Augustine. But Francis saw its implications in brand-new ways. What is the most famous line from Augustine? What line does everybody know from St. Augustine? "You made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." (A pastor in a diocese not far from here famously used to get up on any saint's feast and say, "Ah, today we remember St. Cuthbert of Auxerre, who is famous for that wonderful statement of his, 'You made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless . '" According to this pastor, every saint had said it--or must have said it.) Well, what is Augustine saying? He is saying that all crea-tures- not just all human beings, please notice, but all creatures-- have one deep characteristic. That was what Francis saw so clearly. That deep characteristic is this: At our core, at our heart, we are Review for Religious empty. There is hunger, there is restlessness. The characteristic human experience is "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but more!" You have never known a human being who did not want more. The totally satis-fied, totally fulfilled human being is dead. If you want to see a totally filled human being, drop into your local cemetery. The fact is that what marks us as human beings is endless restlessness, end-less hunger--more, more, more, more, more. I say sometimes to students: "If somebody you know ever says, 'I have everything, I am everything, I know everything, I have experienced everything that I could possibly want, I am perfectly and totally satisfied,' ask the person this: 'Would you like it to last?'" If you had everything, what you would want is more time. There is never a moment when we do not want. That is the characteristic of being a creature. This is what Francis saw and recognized as uniting us with all of creation. That is what Francis saw in the mystical marriage with Lady Poverty, and it is what motivates the Canticle of the Sun. V~y is it Brother Sun and Sister Moon? VVhat is it that makes the moon and the sun, earth and water and air and fire, what makes everything my brother and sister? The fact that we all are marked by one great family resemblance: we are all poor. We did not make ourselves. We are all ultimately dependent. Nobody is fulfilled. If that is true, then poverty is what unites us with all other creatures. If that is so, then I suggest that poverty is the key value in the vows. My own reading of the relationship of the vows is that there are not three. There is one, and two further explications. The cen-tral vow is poverty. Celibacy and obedience are ways of being poor. But poverty is the central one. And the point about poverty is: It is not a social condition first of all, it is not an economic condition first of all. First of all, it is metaphysical; it is what makes you you. To embrace poverty publicly is to embrace, publicly, being a human being. Being poor is being human publicly. It is to embrace the human condition. It is to recognize that there are radical limits on me, limits of time, ultimately. A time is going to come when I will breathe out and think "Gee, I'd like to breathe in"--and it will not happen. There is going to come a time when I will say, "I would like just to get to tomorrow morning," and there will not be time for me to get there. There are limitations on time, there are limitations on energy, there are limitations on strength, there are limitations on courage, there are limitations on wisdom, there are limitations on knowledge. Ultimately I have to look at that and say, "And it is a good thing! I embrace it." Poverty is central. Januao,-Februa~y 2000 '-3! Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands Celibacy is a way of saying that very publicly. I told you that I think there is an overly romantic element in much that has been said about poverty in recent years. I think a huge amount of fatu-ous slop has been written about celibacy. I think that much of what has been done on celibacy in recent years is the most patent non-sense. We have all sorts of stuff saying it is perfectly possible to be celibate and a completely fulfilled and happy man or woman. Junk! The fact is that 99.999 percent of the human race has found, does find, and presumably always will find that the most significant relationship in their lives is being someone's spouse and someone's parent. If I come along and say: "Well, I am no one's spouse and I am no one's parent, and it does not matter a hill of beans. I am just as happy as can be. I am just as fulfilled as you can get. What 99.999 percent of the human race thinks is so important really is not important at all"--well, that is arrogance, stupid arrogance. The whole point of celibacy is, of course, that you are unfulfilled. But, if you can be publicly unfulfilled and still be an intelligent, free, responsible, loving, brave, wise, concerned human being, then your life suggests that maybe "fulfillment" is not what human-ity is about. Your life is a public witness to the fact that unfulfill-ment is what is characteristic of being a human being. To go around saying "Oh, we're all fulfilled" is to make hash of the whole of the Franciscan tradition. It is to make nonsense of Augustine's restless heart. Manifestly the human race is unfulfilled, and so, when some-body says "Here I am, a publicly vowed celibate," he or she loudly proclaims: "I am unfulfilled, and that is okay. We are all unful-filled. I am just publicly noting the fact. I am a reminder, a clear picture, of the fact that you are as unfulfilled as I am. I am just publicly acknowledging that fact in a particularly striking way." The same thing is true with obedience. Obedience has nothing to do--or almost nothing--with the submission of one person's will to another person's will. That is anti-Christian thinking. The whole point of our relationship to the will of God is that I do not subject my will to God's will. I discover that God's will really is my will, that God's will is what undergirds my will. It is not a question of "Gee, I want this and God wants that and, by hook or by crook, I've got to pull myself around to want what God wants." That is a misunderstanding of God; that is a destructive picture of God. What does obedience mean? Above everything else, it means poverty in the face of facts. Obedience is, above everything else, a responsibility to what is: not what you would like, not what you had Review for Religious hoped, not what you wanted, not what you wished, not what you feared, but what is. I used to tell my students that, when you are talking about obedience to a superior, when you are talking about obedience to a bishop, the point is this: You are newly ordained and you get assigned to a parish. You are just the best thing that ever happened to kids. John Bosco looks like a piker. This is just the best thing that ever happened to teenagers. You are gung-ho to work with kids. It happens, however, that at the moment you are needed in this parish. There are not a lot of kids; younger fam-ilies have moved out; it is, in fact, a very elderly neighborhood. If you say, "Well, I just don't work with the elderly, I work with kids," you are being disobedient. You are not being disobedient to the bishop, you are not being disobedient to the pas-tor, you are being disobedient to facts. The fact is that these are the people who are here. You are the person on the spot--serve them! If you find yourself saying inside, "Well, you know, I am not really good at serving them," let yourself hear them saying "Yeah, I know. We've noticed." And then notice that you are the only one there. If the Titanic is going down and you are the nearest ship, do not say, "Well, you know, it would crowd breakfast so terribly to take on these other passengers." The ship is going down. Get over and save them! That is obedience to facts, and it is poverty. It is the recogni-tion that, hey, there are some things I am good at and some things I am not good at. Sometimes I am in positions where what I am not good at is what is most necessary. Then I have to give it my best even though it is clear that I am not going to do very well at it. I may also have the responsibility to say, "Somebody else in here might be a lot better at this than I am." But until that happens I am here, and I will get to work. That is real obedience. It is, once again, poverty. It is a recognition of the limitations of our histor-ical placement. I have been given this time and this place. I would have been just a knockout in the 18th century. In the 18th cen-tury I would have been just wonderful. But there was a problem: I was not begotten until the middle of the 20th century. So, no matter how great you would have been in the 18th century, you What does obedience mean ? Above everything else, it means poverty in the face of facts. January-February 2000 Himes * Returning to Our Ancestral Lands were not there. Likewise, you might be the best thing that could ever happen to the church of the 24th century. But, unless you have really good genes in your family, you are not going to be there. This is the only century you have; this is the one you bet-ter relate to even though it might not always be the one you wanted. That is the experience of poverty. Celibacy, obedience--both variants of poverty! Why is it so important that religious life seize that value of poverty and be a sign of it for the whole church? Because it is the experience of being a human being. It is the deepest truth about us as human beings. It is what the rest of us, in all sorts of ways, come to grips with or else try to hide from ourselves. Amid all these human beings, there should be communities of women and men who say in the strongest, clearest, and most striking way: "I, too, am poor, and it is good. This is what it is to be a human being." Now, how do you convey that truth to people? Well, it will he different from person to person, from community to com-munity, and from place to place. You cannot replicate the past. If you had known Dominic or Francis, Scholastica or Teresa of Avila, if you had known Ignatius or Vincent de Paul or Jane Frances Fr~myot de Chantal, perhaps they would have said, "I never had a disciple as good as this." But, you see, they never said that. You are not a contemporary of theirs; you are a con-temporary of mine. Francis of Assisi does not need you, but I do. So do not try to relate to Francis of Assisi or Jane Frances, but make a good attempt of getting to me. When, by retaining or recovering important values we "return to our ancestral lands," we are not thereby called to sow the ances-tral crops. Ancient lands can bear new crops, and new crops are needed for a new generation of people. I predict that, in the next fifty years, religious life is going to experience an explosion of growth. It may look different than we expect. Some older com-munities may die or merge--or meld into newer communities. Not every community will experience an explosion, but there will be an explosion of people living publicly vowed lives in community as sacramental signs to the rest of us of how the Christian tradition understands genuine humanity. I predict that sects, in Troeltsch's meaning, will be powerfully witnessing to the church so that the church is not allowed to become a hidebound and ossified insti-tution. This explosion will happen because the church could not survive without it--and we have the Lord's word that the church Review for Religious will survive. But I do not know how it will happen. The how ques-tion has never been the forte of the church, which, in its own poverty, only just manages to keep going. These observations are those of a passionate religious watcher. In some new ways, religious life will still be there in the future, for the church needs you. I have no doubt that, if only I could live thousand years longer, I could write a whopping good book about that future. Questions for Reflection and Discussion 1. What elements of religious life have been eclipsed in recent years and need to be reclaimed? 2. How do we reclaim values without retreating to past forms? 3. Where do our particular religious communities fit in the development of vowed life in the church's history? 4. How can we establish community in religious life when the community is not its own center? Blink I like to think of thegn sledding, graceful, flying down some swift hill, the white in their hair only snow, bright gloves flashing in the wind above the aluminum board not as this aged couple she scarved in purple, taking careful steps in ankle boots, clutching a brown grocery bag, he shuffling two steps ahead, the long cool silver ironing board tucked beneath his arm. Doretta Cornell RDC January-Februmy 2000 religious mission JOHN KLEIN Transforming Mission: A Spirit of Adventure On 22 March 1999 a headline appeared in the New York Times reading: "Voyage End Brings Crew Back Down to Earth." The article recounted the voyage of the first two balloonists to circle the globe, aboard Breitling Orbiter III. The trip lasted nineteen days, twenty-one hours, and fifty-five minutes and covered a total of 29,054.6 miles. During their news conference one of the adventurers, Dr. Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss psychiatrist, reflected upon their experience: "It was not a matter of setting records; it was a fabulous metaphor of life. To try is the only way to survive." His compatriot, Brian Jones, a former member of the British Air Force, added: "We are not heroes. We just proved that dreams could come true.m Later in the interview Dr. Piccard admitted that the journey posed significant risks, struggles, and sacrifices. Confined in their 16.5 foot-by-10 foot capsule, freezing cold, and often lack-ing water, the adventurers nearly abandoned their effort several times. Piccard said, "When one of us was about to give up, the other would support him." This Magellanesque journey offers us a fabulous metaphor for our lives as religious leaders. Like Piccard and Jones, we find ourselves on a journey demanding John Klein FMS gave this presidential address at the August 1999 assembly of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM). His address is Marist High School; 1241 Kennedy Boulevard; Bayonne, New Jersey 07002. Review for Religious that we move beyond preconceived boundaries, one that forces us to tap into unsuspected personal and corporate resources, one that calls us to risk and trust and sometimes upset the status quo, one that invites us to dream of new possibilities and challenges, one that beckons us to move from the center to the margins. Religious leadership today is truly an adventure extending Jesus' mission to proclaim the kingdom and to make God known and loved. Mission is a description of Jesus, the Son of God, who invites us to be adventurers and dreamers with him. The daily realities of our work, however, do not permit us to escape being administrators, managers, fund-raisers, therapists, legal experts, and arbiters. Who has the time and the energy to dream and to participate in an adventure? How can we become "unstuck" and move forward the renewal of religious life? The church historian John W. O'Malley SJ has said, "It is more diffi-cult to reform a religious order than to found one.''2 Our expe-rience during the past thirty years certainly confirms this. Nonetheless, our role as leaders offers us a wonderful opportu-nity to influence and design the future, remembering that this project of religious life is God's work and not ours. With hope, like Jacob waking from his dream at Bethel, we can say of our time and our struggles, "Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it" (Gn 28:16). With confidence, like St. Paul in his Second Letter to Timothy (1:6-7), we can remind each other that "God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but rather a spirit of power and of love." It is in this spirit that we can face the future and set out on an adventure not of our design, but God's. John Gardner in his book Self-Renewal offers a sobering pre-diction if we opt to respond otherwise. He says: "If people are apathetic, defeated in spirit, or unable to imagine a future worth striving for, the game is lost.''3 We cannot lose this game. On the contrary, we need to see our present situation as opportunity. We need to articulate a high level of expectations for ourselves, the members of our congregations, and the institutions we own and sponsor. We are called to do this in a culture that does not share our values, but rather extols individualism, tends to privatize reli-gion, and fails to engender a true sense of community. Archbishop Rembert Weakland recently highlighted this challenge, asserting that "one of the most difficult pastoral tasks of our day., that has challenged the renewal at every turn is precisely how to overcome the cultural bias of our age toward the individualistic. ''4 Janumy-February 2000 Klein ¯ Tran~fomning Mission Our religious communities have not remained immune from these societal influences. On the contrary, society has tended to co-opt us and has led many religious to make private accommo-dations to religious life. This cripples our mission, diminishes a sense of esprit de corps and solidarity, and saps our energy and possibilities for the future. "The Nygren and Ukeritis study already warned that, despite their language of prophecy and sol-idarity with the poor, many religious in the United States may be far more accommodated and assimilated into the dominant cul-ture than they like to believe. The penchant for individualism and self-fulfillment so characteristic of this culture has found a ready berth in many religious communities. Self-determination has eroded communal and institutional commitments.''s Given this situation, how are we as religious leaders called to respond? I believe that we can discover the answer by reflecting on the example that Jesus provides us. The Letter to the Hebrews (12:2) refers to Jesus as the pioneer. He is the one who goes before us to offer the example and then returns to us to point the direction and to reassiire us that he is always present with us. Jesus is the adventurer calling us to join with him in mission and to fan the embers our commitment into a flame spreading new life and hope. Like us, Jesus found himself engaged in mission, searching for ways to engender new life, struggling and sometimes discour-aged with a disparate band of disciples, and confronting a society at best indifferent to his values and vision. How did he respond? What was and is Jesus' mission? How did he endeavor to foster new life? How did he pursue his mission and commitment? How did he accomplish the transformation of the lives of his disciples and the many others whom he touched as well? By probing these questions we will begin to perceive ourselves as part of a unique adventure that will transform our mission and foster new life. However, we do not probe the questions alone. This effort must be a collaborative and communal one. While we do not need everyone in our province or congregation to participate in this effort, we do need a "critical mass" of people to share the adventure. Only this will move our mission and our group for-ward. "What we dream alone remains just a dream, but what we dream with others can become a reality.''6 If we willingly dream together in faith, then our mission will be transformed and we will have the confidence that our best years are ahead of us. In all of Review for Religious our efforts together, Jesus, the pioneer, presents the lens through which we can discern our course of action and catch a glimpse of the religious life of the future. This is particularly true in three aspects of his mission that challenge us today: Jesus' deep spiri-tuality and relationship to his Father, his commitment to mis-sion at the margins of society, and, finally, his formation of an intentional community of disciples to carry his mission forward. Our following his response in these areas will, I believe, offer the compelling ways through which we will discover our unique role in society and the church. Jesus appreciated better than anyone that to be in close, intimate relationship with God inevitably makes people countercultural and dis-tinctive. It places them in a dangerous situation, making them as disciples part of a cultural minority. This minority cannot help seeing the world and society through different eyes, the eyes of Jesus. This vision encourages those who follow Jesus to choose new life by loving the Lord, our God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him (Dt 30:15-20). Seeing reality this way meant new life for Jesus also, for his profound spirituality caused him to turn society's values on their head and, in the process, made him a dangerous person. We see this clearly in Jesus' table fellowship. He ate with scribes and Pharisees, with the poor and destitute, with tax col-lectors and sinners. By breaking boundaries, risking disapproval, and "imaging" the reality of God for the people of his time, Jesus made his mission, the proclamation of the kingdom, tangible. It was in food-and-drink situations that he revealed the divine gifts of joy (Mt 9:15), pardon (Lk 7:47), salvation (Lk 19:9), and super-abundance (Mr 14:15-2 I). It is at table that we witness the trans-forming conversion of Zacchaeus, Jesus' example of servant leadership, and the opening of the weary disciples' eyes at Emmaus. It is therefore primarily at his table, at his Eucharist, where we religious will find new life for our mission. It is at his table that we will encounter him through the lives of sinners and outcasts, our brothers and sisters, realizing that the margin is our home too. In his message for the World Day of Peace, Pope John Paul II exhorted us to "recognize Christ in the poorest and the most marginalized, those whom the Eucharist--which is communion What was and is Jesus' mission ? Janualy-Februaly 2000 Klein ¯ Transforming Mission in the body and blood of Christ given up for us--commits us to serve. As the parable of the rich man, who will remain forever without a name, and the poor man called Lazarus clearly shows, 'in the stark contrast between the insensitive rich man and the poor in need of everything, God is on the latter's side.' We too must be on this same side.''7 The side of the poor and disenfran-chised is the side where the religious man and woman must be found. Whether or not we work directly with the poor, we can-not escape the imperative of seeing the world with the eyes of the poor. This attitude, then, will inform our prayer, our work, and our lifestyles. The Gospel of Luke reminds us that the sign that Jesus is "the one who is to come" is that the poor are having the Good News proclaimed to them. In this Jesus gave flesh to his kingdom and illustrated that the reign of God is now. Our mission as reli-gious leaders represents the continuing participation in his incar-nation. Our mission calls us to illustrate that economic and social boundaries are artificial, made by human hands. Our mission proclaims that, if "we truly want to see the glory of God, we must move downward with Jesus. This is the deepest reason for living in solidarity with poor, oppressed, and handicapped people. They are the ones through whom God's glory can manifest itself to us. They show us the way to God, the way to salvation.''8 To ignore the sorrows and needs of others is to ignore the flesh of Jesus and to deny the incarnation. For us to make the "option for the poor" a reality will mean a conversion of mind and heart. It is a conversion that will find its source in prayer, reflection, and Eucharist. It is a conversion that demonstrates itself through simplicity of lifestyle and sensi-tivity to those less fortunate than we. Too often we have claimed the adjectives prophetic and countercultural for ourselves. It would be far better that others attribute them to us after seeing the way we live and work and pray. They will do so if we make certain that our rhetoric and our reality coincide and that our lifestyles reflect charism rather than just personal choices. Johann Baptist Metz once wrote that "religious orders are a kind of shock therapy. ¯ for the church as a whole. Against the dangerous accommoda-tions and questionable compromises that the church . . . can always incline to, they press for the uncompromising nature of the gospel and the imitation of Christ. In this sense they ire the insti-tutionalized form of a dangerous memory within the church.''9 Review for Religious Our mission today is to be dangerous as Jesus was and to make Metz's description of us real. This mission is by its very nature a communal one, and I believe that new life for the mission of Christ will be found, not necessarily in endeavoring to enliven already existing local com-munities, but rather in forming new intentional communities within our groups. In addressing the obstacles to refounding a religious community, Gerald Arbuclde acknowledged that efforts to "move" or "change" a group inevitably encounter significant resistance. Hence, he says, "The new belongs elsewhere." These communities, similar to the one Jesus formed with his disciples, have mission at their center and heart. Mission conse-quently operates as their chief source of connectedness and energy. Members of an intentional community realize that they cannot minister to others outside unless they live in a community founded on inter-dependence and a mutuality informed by faith. This faith life sensitively balances the needs of the community and those of each individual and finds sharing of faith to be indispensable to its life. This inevitably leads to a high level of trust that allows mem-bers to challenge one another's behavior in light of a commonly accepted vision and goal. While these intentional communities meet some of the emotional, social, and intellectual needs of its members, they are in no way therapeutic support centers. An intentional community is "a group of religious living together who feel the need to be supported in their ministries and willingly commit themselves to develop a gospel-centered intimacy to be expressed in shared faith, ongoing conversation, and shared action."1° In short, an intentional community is one that has a clear and visible and easily identifiable way of life. Such a group offers the world what it does not find elsewhere: a community of faith, friendship, and mutual support engaged in an adventure larger than itself. In writing about his hopes for Dominican communities, Timothy Radcliffe OP, the master general, highlighted the impor-tance of such communities for the future of religious life. These groups, he maintained, carry within themselves seeds of new life. Communities similar to the one Jesus formed with his disciples have mission at their center and heart. January-Februaty 2000 Klein ¯ Transforming Mission "Unless a province plans the building of such communities, then it dies. A province with three communities where the brethren flourish in their Dominican life has a future, with the grace of God. A province with twenty communities where we just survive may well have none." it To say the least, we religious at the threshold of the new mil-lennium face significant challenges as we participate in Jesus' adventure. Allowing God to transform our mission and ourselves will not be a process devoid of risk and some pain. Nonetheless, to do otherwise would rob our religious families of the new life necessary to bring them into the future and, as a result, would put at risk our contribution to the mission of Christ. In the conclu-sion of Vita consecrata, the Holy Father asserts that religious "have not only a glorious history to remember and to recount, but also a great history still to be accomplished! Look to the future, where the Spirit is sending you in order to do even greater things" (VC §110). A real test of our faith and gospel hope is our belief in the truth of John Paul's words. Martin Heidegger once compared the journey of life to a person walking in a huge forest where it is pitch dark, where it is raining and thundering, and one has completely lost the way. There is a bolt of lightning and for an instant the way is clear. Then it is dark again. All one can and must do is keep going in the direction one saw illuminated by the lightning flash. This is our challenge and our opportunity: to keep going, to trust that God is faithful, to remember the way in the light of those key moments through which God intervenes in our lives. Most of our life we must move ahead in darkness, sustained in our faithfulness by what we once glimpsed when, if only for an instant, everything was clear.12 Notes ~ New York Times, 22 March 1999, p. 8. -' John W. O'Malley SJ, Tradition and Transition: H#torical Perspectives on Vatican II (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1989), p. 97. 3 Albert DiIanni SM, Religious Life as Adventure (New York: Alba House, 1994), p. 108. 4 Rembert Weakland OSB, "Liturgy and Common Ground," America 180, no. 5 (20 February 1999): 9. s Robert J. Schreiter, "Challenges and Directions of Religious Life at the Turn of the Millennium," Address given at the inauguration of the Center for the Study of Religious Life, 21 June 1998, p. 11. Review for Religious 6 Ronald Rolheiser OMI, "Religious Life in America Faces a Change of Epoch," paper prepared for the Inter-American Meeting in Toronto, May 1999, p. 13. 7 Pope John Paul II, "Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace," 1 January 1999, p. 21. s Robert A. Jonas, Henri Nouwen (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1998), p. 35. 9 Gerald A. Arbuckle SM, From Chaos to Mission: Refounding Religious Life Formation (Strathfield, N.S.W.: St. Paul's Publications, 1996), p. 11. ~0 Arbuclde, From Chaos to Mission, p. 15 I. " Timothy Radcliffe OP, Pastoral letter "The Promise of Life," 2 February 1999, p. 3. ~2 John Fullenbach, Prodaiming His Kingdom (Manila: Divine Word Publications, 1992), p. 190. The Joys of January Beautiful month of the cold, clean slate: nothing mars its pristine glare. Starlings stare, perched on empty limbs shaking in their purity. The air bears thoughts of ice. Wind cuts through whispers. Walls show us where twigs scrape messages: deliver words, deliver us: bend, blow beautifully, winter stems. Wake us. The dark recedes, we see our breath, a flickering. Light. Mary Kennan Herbert Janua~. -Febmtmy 2000 A. PAUL DOMINIC Evangelization as Religious Mission of Joy Spurely, in the Indian experience, joy has not been a strong oint in religious life, in fact or in principle. This came to me as a rude shock twenty-odd years ago during a chat with a couple of sisters. As I was leaving their place, one of them made a particularly religious sort of request: "Father, will you please pray for vocations to our congregation?" I replied at once, though with some inner hesitation, "Why pray? If you are all happy, the girls will simply flock to you!" When I said this, I did not know I was echoing the mind of Pope Paul vI revealed in his 1971 apostolic exhortation Evangelica testificatio (§55). I must not have impressed them, for one of them said to me later, "But you must know we are religious!" Though that was not a recent event, attitudes of this type do not change in a single generation--though I would like to be proved wrong. Incidentally, the rumor of joyless religious life is not an exclusively Indian phenomenon: most of the religious con-gregations here have been transported from the West. Why, the very fact that a paper on consecrated life as anointed with joy was read in 1998 in San Antonio, Texas, at the annual confer-ence of vicars of religious implies that even modern American religious are not above the need of awakening to joy in their life of consecration.' A. Paul Dominic SJ last wrote for us in November-December 1995. His address is Satyodayam; 12-5-33, S. Lallaguda; Secunderabad 500 017; India. Review for Religiota This sad state of affairs in religious life is a reflection of Christianity in general, which has been accused of joylessness by both Westerners and Easterners. Nietzsche, for instance, has ridiculed the claim of Christians to have been saved by Christ. If it were really so, he argues, why could they not look joyful instead of appearing so remarkably gloomy? The Indian Shree Rajneesh, quite celebrated in his way, has been no less categorical in his attack on Christian attitudes. "Christians say that Jesus never laughed!" he alleges, and counters: "Now this seems to be the ulti-mate in stupidity. Jesus . never laughed? Then who else can laugh? . . They have made his picture very sad-looking, long-faced, burdened. This is not possible. This is utterly wrong.''2 All this non-Christian aspersion may well serve as a goad, particularly for us religious, to discover or rediscover the characteristic joy of Christ and enter into it (see Mt 25:21 and 23) and thus be evange-lized, that is, "gladdened by the good news" of our redemption. The Oil of Gladness It is heartening to observe that, in the biblical experience, there is a joyous anointing, besides several others. This joyous anointing is bestowed on the righteous king, that is, the king who loves justice, producing the pleasure of the people without seeking his own fortune (Ps 45:3-8). Who can this joyously anointed king be but him whose very name is Christ, meaning, of course, "the anointed one"? He is the one who, as no other, can witness to his joy in this fashion: "I was beside the master crafts-man, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence, at play everywhere on his earth, delighting to be with the children of men" (Pv 8:30-3 I). If, by virtue of baptismal consecration, every Christian shares in the life of the joyously anointed Christ, what may we conclude about those consecrated further by religious profession? Being anointed with the oil of gladness is no doubt a charism person-ally received; it is, however, not to be enjoyed as a private pos-session, but to be ever passed on for the surprise enjoyment of others. If religious are genuine enough, they will necessarily make their anointing evident, for the joyous enhancement of others. Leading lives of contagious joy" because their God is the joy of their never ending youth, they will liberate the masses from their oppressed lives and lead them into the same joy. January-Febrnary 2000 Dominic ¯ Evangelization as Religious Mission of Joy All truly enlightened persons, whatever their religion, would share in this lofty, uplifting, and truly religious sentiment of theirs. People's innermost recesses would be affected, and there-fore the social fabric too. For instance, among the Hindu Tamil saints was Tayumanavar, who prayed out of the abundance of his holy joy: "That all should be happy is my one wish, Almighty One! This is the only thing I know!" The Christian ashrams here in India have, in proper inter-religious spirit, followed suit in earnest and have introduced, somewhere at the beginning of Lauds, the singing of the Sanskrit sloka "Lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu," which means "May all the world be happy!" This vision of joy, flowing to us from God and necessarily flowing to others from us, is certainly wonderful. How do we make this vision vivid to ourselves and transparent to others in a practicable, communicable way? The Religious Way of Joy The way to experience joy in God is, first and foremost, to enjoy our life, basically and paradoxically, in its human and of course ecological dimension. There God will be available, not absent. For one thing, where joy is there will be no room for complaining. Complaining is a root of the atheist's mindset (see Ph 2:14-15). Habitually complaining persons construe everything as wrong, in sharp contrast to the divine intention exhibited in creation and providence (see Gn 1 and Mt 5:45), and so they can-not subscribe to any belief in God. Even if they claimed to believe, their belief would be the result of some psychological or religious conditioning and so only superficial, if not spurious. Rajneesh warns against such joyless nominal faith, advocat-ing an increasing enjoyment of life as the way to find God-given joy in ourselves. He says: Any small thing is full of God! So love this life . Eat, enjoy the food, and let God come to you as a taste. Listen to music, get lost in it, and let God come to you as sound ¯ . . as harmony. Let God descend on you slowly, without any hankering to catch hold of him . Just open yourself as much as possible--to the trees, to the birds, to the rains, to the sun, to the sands¯ Open yourself wherever you are; absorb, and gratitude will arise . And you will not know towards whom this gratitude is arising. When you don't know towards whom., it is towards God) Review for Religious Does this not read like a poetic rendition of the Contemplation to Attain love offered by St. Ignatius at the very climax of his Spiritual Exercises (§§230-237) to train people to find the joy of God no less outside their retreat than in it? Again, does this not evoke the following bold and originally controversial remark of St. Paul? "If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God" (1 Co 10:30-31; see also Col 3:16-17). Again, does this not read like an expository commentary on the praxis and pronouncements of Jesus? He, whose mission was to make known the heart of God to humanity, did not speak explicitly about God as much as he spoke about the happiness people longed for. He assured them that they were des-tined for joy, and, to prove it, he went about doing good for them in ever sur-prising ways. He fed them in their hunger without being asked, and he sat-isfied them. In that way he led them to discover for themselves that it was God who fed them to their heart's content. He healed them of their many illnesses and gladdened them and in that way enlightened them about how God meant them to be healthy and happy. His teaching was new precisely in proclaiming that they were at the threshold of an altogether new blessedness, thanks to the unique intervention God was initiating in humanity. He declared a new law, the law of beatitude (see Mt 5:1-10), for all, but particularly for the poor, that is, for those who longed for blessedness (see Lk 10:23-24). All this would have been offensive to people who abided by their fixed religious ways without, however, conspicu-ous happy living. To those who made much of fasting, for instance, he declared himself against it unless times and seasons made sense of it and demanded it. Indeed, he approved of feast-ing before fasting, gladly characterizing himself as one who came in the spirit of God's new time, eating, drinking, and partying in marked contrast to his predecessor, and not fighting shy of the The way to experience joy in God is, first and foremost, to enjoy our life in its human and of course ecological dimension. .~anualy-Februa~y 2000 Dominic * Evangelization as Religious Mission of Joy nicknames "glutton" and "drunkard" that some hurled at him. Because he found the joy of God in feasting in God's name, he could also, paradoxically, find the God of joy while abstaining from any feast. Is it not quite revelatory, when we come to think of it, that the word feast denotes both a lavish meal (as at a wed-ding) and a periodic religious observance? Christ was persuaded . that God himself was feasting, and so he would urge people undertaking a fast to present an appearance of joy (Mt 6:16-18). Whatever delightful stories of God he told had invariably the magic spell of joy in life. The stories suggest that only those who have known the joy of a wedding feast, or a bumper harvest, or an unexpected catch of fish, or giving birth to a child, or finding a lost coin or son, or stumbling on a treasure, or seeing and being a child, and so forth, could understand and delight in God. They as much as say that anyone who has known none of life's ordinary joys would be unable to know, let alone enjoy, God in their life-- even though God, as the source of all other joys, is a joy well above life's mundane joys. So Christ's call to joy was constant and compelling, encouraging us to be open to unnoticed joys around us and then to greater joy: Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? . . . Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith? Therefore do no worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?". Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. (Mt 6:26-32) All who have known and enjoyed God thus in life will hope-fully carry this, their basic thrill of happiness, all through their life and will further develop their happy character through life's tasks, trials, and temptations. Anointing Others with Joy Like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, the more we become what we are (namely, anointed with joy) by growing in the joy that abides in us from our looking at Jesus, the pioneer Review for Religious of our joy, the more we shall be able to anoint others with joy. Sensing this dynamic of joy, how does one move in this mission of joy (evangelization, translated literally)? Basic to any move in relation to others is openness to all so that all may have life. The joy within us, if genuine, will be free from all conditioning by others and will contrive to make every-one welcome indiscriminately. This is what Christ did. He who said "Let the little children come to me" in an age when they counted for little had much the same attitude of welcome towards all, Jew or gentile or Samaritan, Pharisee or Sadducee or rogue, man or woman, young or old, high or low, rich or poor, clean or dirty, learned or illiterate, virtu-ous or sinful, and so forth, irrespec-tive of all segregations prevailing in his day. When he did make choices, however, it was doubtless towards the poor of all sorts, showing compas-sion for the multitude that was like sheep without a shepherd, saying that he had come for sinners, not the virtuous, and that the Spirit had anointed him to bring good news to the poor, to prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed. And so they, the poor masses, who Jesus sadly foretold are with us always (more glaringly now than ever before), have the greatest claim on our mission of joy. How do we set about this privileged mission? Thefirst move must be to initiate or maintain solidarity with people in their joyless situation, following the incarnation's prin-ciple of bringing joy to the world. We need to be one with them as far as possible. Ideally, of course, we should be so much one with them that nothing differentiates us from them in sur-rounding society. Meanwhile every attempt we make in this direc-tion will be an opening of joy to the unfortunates with whom we seek to share our own joy. During my turn as chaplain at a home for the aged, the day I began eating with them at their own table (something they had never seen before) was a matter of undreamt-of joy for them, far more beneficial than my liturgical or homiletic performance. The ontological principle actio in distans repugnat is no less sociological and evangelical. When Jesus sent his disciples The joy within us will be free from all conditioning by others and will contrive to make everyone welcome indiscriminately. January-February 2000 Dominic * Evangelization as Religious Mission of Joy on mission, what was he doing but bridging the gap between the teaching tribe and the taught? In his clear instruction to them to stay and eat happily with their hosts, what was he aiming at but their insertion into their very midst? When he himself was at home in the company of the sick and suffering and sinful, what was he exhibiting but his identification with their milieu? The second move must be to respond to the felt desires of those whom we have chosen to serve foremost in the promotion of joy. The Bible has as much to do with this as with the worship of God (see Is 58:6-10, Am 5:21-24, Mi 6:6-8). However much we may have identified with various persons, we may be mistaken about their drives and urges. That is why we have not had in great numbers the likes of St. Peter Claver and Blessed Katherine Drexel in the history of slavery, or of Bishop Romero and Corazon Aquino (once president of the Philippines) in the much delayed popular struggle, or of Little Sister Madeleine of Jesus and professor-turned-preacher Peter Reddy pitching their tents on the fringe of society.4 To work today toward a better future, it would on our part be best if we had people spell out their desires and then responded to them. Though at times Jesus' benefac-tions were a surprise to the beneficiaries of them, often he led people to be aware of their needs and then proceeded to respond to those needs, and bring joy (see Mk 10:46-52, Jn 4:4-42, Jn 5:1-9, even Mt 20:20-23). Besides this, he was quick to sense and fill the deeper spiritual needs they felt in spite of, or along with, their physical or social ones (as in the cases of Mary of Magdala and Joanna, Bartimaeus, Zacchaeus, the Samaritan outcast, and the Gerasene demoniac). Unlike him was the North American priest working in a South American parish who, to his dismay, discovered from his old cat-echist that his people, whom he had raised economically to a sat-isfactory level, were leaving him for a newfound evangelical pastor because they wanted to hear the glad news of the gospel. The third move in our mission will be, therefore, to lay bare the hidden needs of the spirit, at whatever level people may be, and to bring them to a higher level that engages their own inner resources. There is a time and reason for attending to and filling their mate-rial needs, and also for sensitizing themto higher needs and, with the conviction learned from Jesus, inviting them to higher joy: "But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Mt 6:33). Review for Religious Reality may seem to fly in the face of this assurance, but can-not negate it altogether. People like Paul, who by God's grace knew a deep joy in penury as well as in plenty (Ph 4:11-13), show the truth of Jesus' words. In declaring that God has a higher claim on people and fills a deeper need than ordinary earthly liv-ing makes them concerned about, Jesus was not being naive. Well aware of the problematic reverses of human life, he was aware too of the privileged reserves of the human spirit. And so he would train people in tested, mature happiness by his winning counsel: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows" (Mt 10:29-31). This stance leads us to the fourth move, namely, to encour-age and fortify people caught in suffering to rise above it and emerge in joy. Would this work in life? It can and does, because it did in Christ's life. Even though all through his public life he encountered opposition from many quarters and faced threats to his life from authorities like Herod, he carried on his work with joyous determination and courage that were the mark of his unflinching faith in God. When his disciples were sorely troubled by his uncertain future, he reassured them emphati-cally: "Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy" (Jn 16:20). He urged them to ask the Father for any-thing in his name and to count on receiving it so that their joy might be complete On 16:24). The fifth move will be to witness to the revelation of how exceptionally suffering people may anticipate their joy in their very suffering (as Jesus himself did), and not in spite of it. At the end of his life, when the worst of his fears were to overtake him, he made a celebration of his last meal, carried himself with joyous strength of an unusual kind, and imparted to his dis-heartened disciples his sure vision of their future mission of suc-cess with words of comfort: "I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete" (Jn 15:1 I). He concluded by asking the Father that his distraught disciples might have his own joy made complete in their very selves (Jn 17:13). From his personal experience he could witness to the joy of the persecuted poor, not only in principle by declaring them Janumy-Februal~ 2000 Dominic ¯ Evangelization as Religious Mission of ,yoy blessed (Mt 5:10-12), but also in practice by bringing public recognition to people who were quietly but surely joyful, such as the poor widow who made an offering to God of all her sav-ings with sure, spontaneous, though unglamorous, joy (Mk 12:41- 44). The most moving story of this kind that I know is this: A woman took a priest to her home to" show him a secret of hers. Hidden in a corner was her bedridden eight-year-old son, with the body of a child and the head of an adult, with a darting tongue like a snake's. Seeing the sight he groaned; but she did not hear it, for she was saying, "Father, I have looked after this child for eight years now. He knows only me. I love him very much. Almost no one knows about it." In speaking thus warmly of her son, she did not hesitate to speak happily about her God as well: "God is good. God is our Father.,,s The more such secrets are known, the more joy will abound on the earth! The sixth move in evangelization is to declare, after due dis-cernment, how the good and glad program of God for humanity is being carried out even at the social level. Christ began his min-istry of joy at Nazareth, making precisely such a discerned dec-laration to his townsfolk. More than Jesus' proclamation of the good plan of God for their welfare, what pleasantly surprised them was the accompanying announcement of its effectiveness then and there in the very workings of their society (Lk 4:21). All through his later ministry, too, he was intent on making peo-ple recognize the growing social implementation of the divine plan carried on through the mediation of works of gladness done by himself (Lk 7:18-22 and 11:20) and like-minded others, whether among his explicit followers or unattached admirers (Mk 7:1-9, 9:11-12 and 38-40, and 12:34; Lk 10:i0-11 and 18-19). In our evangelization, therefore, we need to be on the watch to dis-cern and broadcast the divine reformation and revolution willy-nilly taking place in the world, thanks to our cooperative works, small or big, and those of many, many others, done--in the spirit of the Servant of Yahweh--quietly, steadfastly, and effectively (Mt 12:19-21). Even as we rejoice and lead others to rejoice in the magnalia Dei present in contemporary society, we also know and cannot deny the ungodly contradictions that afflict our web of life covertly and overtly. The best move in this situation--and this is the seventh and last move in our task of joy--is to channel into our world the spirit of the Book of Revelation, namely, a mood of Review for Religious faith and hope: faith in God revealed in the great works of joy already experienced, and hope in God preparing greater works, of which our mind has not conceived but of which there has been an earnest within our experience. One of the most fervent expres-sions of such an experience is the ancient song that nevertheless sounds new: "Though the fig tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vines, though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food,.yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation" (Hab 3:17-18). Mary, Mission of Joy What is the Magnificat but the above ancient hymn sung in a new melody? Surprised by joy, Mary celebrates God in her new song for all his works of gladness wrought in her and her society of the lowly, down through the ages. She rejoices in her own deeds of happiness, too, which God inspired her to perform for the benefit of the lowly and indeed of all humankind. She inspires and urges all those interested in similar works to become part of the hopeful, joyful movement to which God gives increasing momentum for his glory and our bliss. Following her Son in all matters of life, she precedes us religious like a wise guide in all matters, even in our evangelical mission. Notes ~ See Review for Religious 57, no. 6 (November-December 1998): 605-620. 2 Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, I Say unto You, Vol. 2 (Pune, India: Rajneesh Foundation, 1980), p. 172. 3 Rajneesh, I Say unto You, pp. 217-218. 4 Reddy (1895-1958), a convert, renounced his professorship in a Jesuit college in Tamil Nadu and became a pilgrim beggar and vagrant preacher. See J. Cherupallikat, Witness Potential of Evangelical Poverty in India (Immensee, Switzerland: Nouvelle Revue de Science Missionnaire, 1975), pp. 117-121. s See Leonardo Boff, The Lord's Prayer (Indore, India: Satprakashan Sanchar Kendra, no date), p. 88. January-Feblvtary 2000 finding God ROBERT % COSTELLO Discovering God in Gaps Joseph Cardinal Bernardin influenced millions of peo-ple. As I read accounts of his life and watched the tele-vision coverage of his death and funeral, I was intrigued by a paradox. Cardinal Bernardin wrote, shortly before his death in November 1996, that his last years were the best and worst of times. He said he loved being Joseph to his people and seeking to build bridges between diverse church elements. He told of struggling to free himself from a "need" for success, a "need" to avoid criticism; he told of struggling to trust. He said he was whipsawed by groups asking him to carry their diverse banners. Then came the shocking conspiracy to brand him for sexual misconduct. After displaying immense courage amid the harsh publicity, he gained a growing respect and influence during the slow onset of the cancer that brought his death. Joseph Bernardin's influence peaked in his vulner-ability to the plot to defame him, his care for his false accuser. His example suggests a paradoxical experience in leadership, one which raises engaging questions. Are there implications for church leaders in the cardinal's Robert T. Costello SJ, onetime professor of psychology at Rockhurst College and former provincial superior of his order's Missouri province, currently does retreat work at the Guelph Centre of Spirituality; Box 245, Station Main; Guelph, Ontario; N1H 6J9 Canada. Review for Religious behavior? Is there even a hint for a spirituality for others beneath the dramatic circumstances he found himself in? Several experi-ences of mine have suggested an answer. The Southdown Institute is a residential treatment facility for priests and religious and offers monthly workshops for provincials, diocesan chancellors, and council members return-ing for aftercare with former residents. Asked to be a party to those sessions while on staff, I found myself filtering their expe-riences through memories of previous ~:esponsibilities of mine. This led me to sense that Bernardin's curious enhanced power had meaning for other leaders in the church. The leadership participants spoke of their stress at having to make choices about subordinates while pulled between conflicting values and options. They had to decide between what was empathic and tolerant on the one hand and firm and objective on the other. So it seemed to them. I describe this situation as "being in a gap" between an objective managerial function and an empathic pas-toral inclination. It is as though there is no one to turn to when a decision must be made. The cardinal was in a contradictory sit-uation or gap between defending his personal reputation and addressing what he learned were the spiritual needs of his accuser. I believe that this experiential dilemma, this gap, is worth exploring. What is involved in a church leader's experience of the gaps in administration? What Is a Gap? I define the gap as the tension a leader experiences in choos-ing between opposing goods such as compassion and impartial-ity. Should one postpone a difficult decision until there is more information, follow an intuition, or get on with a community's organizational needs? I consulted journals to better understand a paradox I felt was present in gaps. I also shared my quandary with three peo-ple presumably well versed in gap pressures. A general's assis-tant said that the gap issue deals with a leader's spiritual sensitivity to find God in the stressful situations. An assistant to the late Pedro Arrupe likewise suggested that gaps involve the spiritual meaning one disc6vers in the ministry of leadership. The provincial of a large community recalled being pulled by uncertainty and yet needing to act with determination. These January-Februa~7 2000 Costello ¯ Discovering God in Gaps responses added to my interest in the paradox that unintended influence emerges when a leader experiences a "centrifugal" effect from weakness and strength. Church leadership is a hybrid role of prophet and executive, of inspirational guide and money manager, a role which is bound to involve the kind of gaps we are discussing. It is different from the role of a business or professional leader (Nygren and Ukeritis, 1993). Empathy is an obvious part of the job description, but so is resolute confrontation. Workshop participants at Southdown spoke of pride in their organization's history, joy in their work, but also pain in conflicted relations with members. They said the stress was to be patient and challenging with fragile personalities while remaining focused on pressing tasks like building commu-nity consensus. One participant recalled that a lawyer's advice about a personnel issue seemed heartless but persuasive. Such circumstances required taking valuable time to address inappro-priate behaviors, being supportive of the person but still pursu-ing larger organizational issues. The research data of Nygren, Ukeritis, et al. (1993) broad-ened my notion of the gaps church leaders encounter. The authors uncovered nearly a dozen pressures which both pull and restrain religious leaders. For example, there is a strain between cultural individualism on one hand and the gospel values calling to relationships on the other. They wrote that leaders should be partners in the process of renewal, not initiators. Leaders also needed to establish mutual relationships. Their research found that generosity in some members was being eclipsed by self-pre-occupation. They noted that fewer religious espoused a prefer-ential option for the poor because of responding to personal calls for self-determination, making assignment difficult. This litera-ture, however, did not address an aspect of the leader's experi-ence I sensed in the life of Cardinal Bernardin and recalled, in a way, from my own years as a provincial. I found myself curious about his power. Eventually I had a clearer sense that there were unique tensions or gaps in the power differentials of leaders and community members. I originally had an unexamined, even patriarchal, conception of power: it produces effects. Thus the religious leader buys or sells property, approves vows. She can influence events in for-eign countries. Power makes things happen for individuals and a community and can be a unilateral influence. I also mistakenly Review for Religious suspected that leadership's authority was in the office or person. I believed that ideally Bernardin's considerable power would leave him unaffected if he exercised it adroitly. In .other words, good leadership could, should, and would produce a win-win result. I recalled, though, having nagging doubts after making some deci-sions. Those are what I was coming to recognize and identify as my gap experiences. A second conception of power grew out of curiosity about how the cardinal remained so influential aJ~er the conspiracy to besmirch his reputation collapsed. There was power and influence in how he allowed himself to be unaf-fected. I could understand people admiring his humility, but the pro-found impact his dying had on people puzzled me because I thought media frenzy would stain his integrity and reputation. I finally saw that there was power in how he allowed himself be affected. Power was being both active and passive, doing and receiving. When a Southdown workshop participant recalled a member's death from AIDS and the scandal which developed, I found his empathic reaction powerful. Gradually I saw that this second conception of power was a pas-sive reality that makes church leadership both personally demand-ing and spiritually challenging because church structure expects spiritual meaning to be acknowledged. Authority, then, seemed somehow to be a mutual influence. As the publicity swirled about him, Bernardin's stature seemed to increase with each gentle assertion, of his innocence and his belief that somehow the truth would appear. He pressed on with his plan to develop greater harmony in the Catholic Church of the United States while continuing to empathize with his accuser. He was in a wrenching gap. After he was exonerated of sexual impropriety, he threw himself into work only to be diagnosed With terminal cancer, but that is another story and a different stressful situation. Nygren, Ukeritis, et al. say that leaders viewed their source of power as residing either in themselves or in others. A leader who assumes personal authority is able to be assertive, while a Church leadership is a hybrid role of prophet and executive, of inspirational guide and money manager. January-February 2000 Costello * Discovering God in Gaps leader who considers the source of power to be in others becomes more interdependent or tentative. Note here that these sources of power are not mutually exclusive and inevitably result in the internal struggles (gaps) that are at issue here. For example, a leader who stands on his or her own authority and is objectively assertive in dealing with members may generate resistance and be labeled autocratic. A leader who sees his or her power as derived from others can become paralyzed by members who disagree and resist consensus. A conception of passive power I found most enlightening was that of Bernard Loomer (1976). He described it as relational power. His concept helped me understand the paradox of Cardinal Bernardin: giving and receiving influence. This kind of. power is not an either/or capacity, like deciding to act or not act in a certain way. With Loomer's guidance I will digress on two faces of power: Power results from being influenced and Power preserves rela-tionships. Power as being influenced is not a contradiction. One workshop participant spoke of selling a building that had great symbolic value for her community and openly sharing the pain of it, thus leading the community to "get through it." A second par-ticipant spoke of compassionately confronting the stony silence of a member who violated a fiduciary relationship. Such gap expe-riences are clearly intense--but how are they powerful? The Challenge of Gaps Gaps challenge leaders to expand in "size," that is, to make room in their minds and hearts for opposing realities, such as the limits of human adaptability juxtaposed with situational demands. Gaps stretch leaders, and the power is displayed in the manner in which they embrace what is needed but only possibly achievable. Gaps pull for courage and commitment to the uncer-tain benefit of another, and this edifies and empowers. Cardinal Bernardin exercised power by being mortified on CNN over the accusation thrown at him of sexual abuse. He gent-ly absorbed the humiliation of being asked on television if he was sexually active. He also showed the size of his heart by refusing to countersue his accuser, while at the same time working (in what must have seemed another world) to build consensus among divergent elements in the church. Size is prodigal power because Review for Religious it demonstrates that stress is absorbed for the uncertain benefit of others. The cardinal's power was shown also by his refusing to unleash a legal assault on the conspirators with his available resources and by his believing that this conspiracy could not crush him. Size deals with the interior authority of the person; I find it godlike. A second face of power is manifest in someone who actively preserves relationships. In Loomer's view here, power is the capacity to sustain the mutuality of giv-ing and receiving. Individuals with per-sonal problems often refuse .such mutuality by erecting rigid boundaries as a way of securing whatever power they have. Bernardin's relational power consisted in the months of effort he spent trying to establish a vulnerable connection with his accuser, not in any brandishing of his status, with its vast legal resources that would only have cre-ated a wider gulf. In the end, both men contributed to and were nourished in the relationship because of thee inequalities of power. This was for me a surprising real-ization: one of the greatest influences anyone can have on another is being influenced by that person. Therein lies the power available in gaps. As I spent time musing about this issue, I came finally to a new understanding of some of my leadership experience. I grasped that my deep pain over the shrinkage of religious life was sad-ness over others' "poor discernment" or "lack of courage": "If only those departing had consulted more astute advisors, they could have fallen out of love and remain and resolve their issues" ¯ . . "If only they had more grit, things could be as they were-- and we have such need of their gifts!" I was helpless in the face of diminishment, but also hopeful there could be unimagined surprises in it. And yet I conceived these gap experiences as noth-ing more than stress due to my personal limitations. Cardinal Bernardin believed that meeting his accuser just might set the man free. He actually went to the man, faced his understandable resentment, brought about reconciliation while pressing on with the archdiocese's business. That demonstrated Gaps pull for courage and commitment to the uncertain benefit of another, and this edifies and empowers. Jannary-Februa~y 2000 Costello ¯ Discovering God in Gaps his size. The cardinal seemed detached from the scandal, and it appears his anchor was in spiritual meaning he attached to this ordeal. He "knew" the truth would appear, that he was innocent and it was possible somehow to be vindicated. He recalled that Jesus pledged his life in the interest of others in the face of their mis-understandings and abandonment. This was the quintessential experience of absorbing the stress in a gap for the benefit of a dream or a commitment. It was relational power. The paradox I sensed in Cardinal Bernardin's life connected with two other men whose conversions influenced me: C.S. Lewis and Ignatius Loyola. Lewis wrote that as a child he was "stabbed" by intense feelings of joy. He seemed obsessed with recapturing this experience and spent years trying to re-create it by exploring the riches of the arts and nature. He suspected he was trying to cook up emotional thrills. After years of frustration in this quest, he concluded he was seeking the wrong quarry. He had confused the affective experience of joy with its object. The sought-after emo-tion was only a cheap reminder or a footprint of a presence. An extraordinary realization. There was no other answer because all his introspection dissatisfied him until he accepted that the value of joy was in its object, in something else, in a presence--in God. While admitting I am on uncertain ground, for me Ignatian detachment means that in leadership as well as life we must hold ourselves in a kind of balance before all things, insofar as we have a choice. In the present context, whether a gap ended with pos-itive feelings would not be the issue; rather, it would depend on which alternative led the cardinal to greater self-donation and compassion. This detachment, no matter how experienced inter-nally, calls forth a more loving response to life's circumstances, which is a presence even if experienced as stress. In my view, this interpretation describes the experience of gaps religious leaders often have when detachment produces negative feelings which demand that they increase in size. My mistake was to attribute stressful feelings to the "cost" of leadership, nothing more. I had focused on my experience of stress, not its object. I think, as well, that Ignatius considered the actual feeling in spiritual consolation to be unrelated to a venture's success or failure. This was enlightening in the face of how hard it is to associate the stress or occasional bitterness in gaps with anything like God's confirming presence. I had supposed that God is sup-posed to be present in consolation (involving joy), not in uncer- Review for Religious tainty or regret (due to my painful limitations). I recall a con-soling sense of satisfaction after a community meeting that went well--who would not feel deep joy in a win-win situation? But sit-uations of angry conflict that emphasized one's own poverty in coping with it seemed altogether different, as they did for par-ticipants at the Southdown meetings. As I was learning, though, Ignatian consolation can coexist with stress and uncertainty when there is a conviction of possible benefit for others. The conflicted stress that people in leadership positions experience seems to be located between what is possible for them and what is unimaginable. Leadership routinely deals with possibil-ities and constraints in people or situa-tions, and so gaps are inescapable. My own experience and comments of others at workshops convince me that Ignatian detachment and consolation give these gaps further meaning: gaps are a time of the Spirit's presence in the stress. Ignatian consolation is an affective experience directed toward God and the world and away from self, an experience that can be stressful--as when one hopes that one's own experience of a difficult interpersonal exchange may just possibly be for the good of the person and the situation. No person in history staked as much as Jesus on the merest possibility that fidelity to his convictions could be redemptive for people, notwithstanding experience to the contrary. The stakes were so high because one side of the gap meant Jesus could be deluded while the other side presented only a flimsy possibility that the kingdom he desired would ever eventuate. The stake seemed to involve the exhilaration of wagering it all, staying in the gap, believing and hoping in the possible. From this perspective, the continuing power of Jesus is the unbounded size he mani-fests because there is room in his heart for all. More humbling than finding oneself in such a gap is a sus-picion that some leaders get about themselves. They wonder whether they seek to walk this way of possibility or rather are sought by God to walk it. In my reflection I admitted, without comprehending why, the possibility of their being sought. And Ignatian consolation can coexist with stress and uncertainty when there is a conviction of possible benefit for others. January-February 2000 Costello ¯ Discovering God in Gaps that makes all the difference when they make their stake to walk the way of possibility to the end, because they believe this service will be redemptive., for someone. Just like Christ's stake. References Bernardin, Joseph Cardinal. The Gift of Peace. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1997. Lewis, C.S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1956. Loomer, Bernard. "Two Conceptions of Power." Process Studies 6, no. 1 (Spring 1976). Nygren, David J., CM, and Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ. "The Religions Life Futures Project: Executive Summary." Review for Religious 52, no. 1 (January-February 1993): 6-51. Nygren, David J., CM, Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ, et al. "Religious- Leadership Competencies." Review for Religious 52, no. 3 (May- June 1993): 390-417. Ordinary Time Hoarfrost ages the discarded Christmas trees. Fog mutes the soul, and dampness chills the heart. In ordinary time we wait, like puffed-out birds, upon a frozen limb of time and seek for solace in the hearing of the Word. Ed Block Review for Religious DENNIS J. BILLY Devotion to God the Father in Religious Spirituality Ln some parts of the Catholic world, this article may draw w readers and perhaps outright protest. Among some reli-gious today, "Father" as referring to God might well be under-stood as an ideological catchword linking a speaker or writer, regardless of his or her intentions, with a slew of suspected atti-tudes (clustered around "patriarchy") about which questioning and disapproval would likely arise. Confronting Our Experience In such situations the anger evoked by an uncritical refer-ence to God as Father can be intense and highly vocal. A reaction to such anger could itself be a mirror image of the original--but in the opposite direction. "Every action has an equal and oppo-site reaction," as the saying goes. If care is not taken, this coun-tervailing process of action/reaction can spiral out of control and leave members of the believing community "poles apart." In such instances, division and animosity replace the dialogue and mutual respect that should characterize the believing com-munity. We should be saddened by such results, but not surprised. Human beings are weak and fragile. Even with the best of inten- Dennis J. Billy CSSR delivered this paper (here somewhat revised) in spring 1999 at the Institute of Spirituality of the Angelicmn in Rome. His postal address is Accademia Alfonsiana; C.P. 2458; 00100 Roma; Italy. Janua~y-Febrt~my 2000 Billy * Devotion to God the Father in Religious Spirituality tions, they can easily allow rancor and strife to get the upper hand in their lives. The same holds true for the communities people form, even religious ones. As the world gets smaller and smaller, I would not be surprised if the local Christian commu-nity and the local religious community reflect more and more of these complex and highly charged emotional tensions. Such is the nature of a world where technological advances have made mass communication practically instantaneous and where the communication media purvey religious sentiment for a society increasingly definable as a consumer market. Anything goes, if it will sell--better still if it will sell quickly. Package it well enough and you will get a large enough following to support your ideas. Besides, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. Right? If so, then we can call God whatever we please. Why not? I would be astonished if, among the readers of this journal, there is not a wide spectrum of strong emotional responses to my topic. Indeed, some of us may experience the full range of these intense emotional reactions in our own hearts. Some of us may have no problem whatsoever about referring to God as Father. Some of us may feel a certain ambivalence about the term and not quite understand why we feel the way we do. Some of us may feel guilty for feeling that way. Some of us may be confused and uncertain and may wonder h6w a simple phrase like "Our Father" can evoke such strong and conflicting emotional reac-tions. And some of us may be dead set against using such a term, regardless of what we say at Mass and regardless of what Scripture and Tradition, the pope, the magisterium, and even Jesus have to say about it. A reason for the vast array of reactions may be the ambiva-lence (and, in some cases, outright hatred) some people harbor toward their own fathers. Social historians speak of the weak-ened role of fatherhood in Western society due to tremendous upheavals brought about by the Industrial Revolution. As Western society became industrialized during the 19th and 20th centuries, the population gradually shifted from rural, agricultural areas to the cities and their outlying areas. Fathers went off to work in fac-tories, sometimes traveled long distances to get there, and returned home tired and hungry at the end of a long day with little energy for anything else. Over the years.this resulted in a culture with largely absent and disengaged fathers, who spent most of their time away from home and who had little direct Review for Religious contact with the inner workings of family life. Their job was to provide shelter and to put bread and butter on the table. Nothing more; nothing less. The image of the distant and detached father reading his evening paper, smoking his pipe, sipping his evening pint, oblivious to the needs of those around him, especially his children, is deeply embedded in many people's minds. In this century, advances in technology alleviated the situation some-what, but have created new demands on people's time and energy. These same advances, moreover, have brought much of the world under the sway of both the positive and the negative influ-ences of Western culture? If that is not enough, some people had fatherless childhoods because of war and disease. Imagine growing up without a father. People may not show it externally, but some of them have grown up feeling devastated, feel-ing abandoned by their fathers and perhaps even by God. Today households exist where the father or at least a strong fatherly influence simply does not exist. One wonders what calling God "Father" might mean in such a home. Of course, when fathers fail to take their roles seriously, when they neglect their children or abuse them with physical and psychological violence, even sexual misconduct, there is another problem about calling God "Father." Tensions grow and family situations worsen. No wonder that some people find it difficult to address God as their Father. Why should they think God would be anything but detached or remote or even violent toward them? How would you feel if you were in their shoes? Perhaps you already are. This is just a sampling of the wide range of feelings our topic can evoke. If we wish to understand what devotion to God the Father means for religious spirituality today, we need at the out-set to recognize and confront the wide range of sad experiences of fatherhood that people have had and do have. If we do not handle these problems regarding human fatherhood, theologians may look into possible new names for God and talk about them engagingly, but the names will very likely fail to make that all- We need to recognize and confront the wide range of sad experiences of fatherhood that people have had and do have. January-February 2000 Billy * Devotion to God the Father in Religious Spiritlutlity important journey from the mind to the heart. Proposed names that seem "theologically accurate" and "politically correct" are not likely ever to fit the mystery which sustains us and the world we live in from one moment to the next. If the words we use for God in prayer are somehow false, then the images they call up and our prayers themselves are likely to go awry. Defining Our Terms What does devotion to the Father mean in religious-life spir-ituality today? We have looked at various tensions to which use of this name for God gives rise in different people. Now we will clarify some of the terms of the discussion. To begin with, I follow Thomas Aquinas's understanding of "devotion" as "a ready willingness to give oneself to the service of God"; it is an act of religion, one of the allied virtues of jus-tice, and manifests itself in people's deep desire to serve God in whatever way asked of them (see ST2a-2ae.82.1 and 2). I use the word Father not in the Roman sense of paterfamilias (that is, "the patriarchal head of a household"), but in the Aramaic sense of "Abba" (that is, "Pap'a") that Jesus used to express the loving, compassionate face of God. This term has deep roots in the Christian psyche and expresses what experts in male spirituality refer to as "the deep masculinity" of God.2 Jesus himself explains this v.ery well in the Gospel of Luke when he says, "Be compas-sionate as your Father is compassionate" (Lk 6:36). By religious I refer to the way of life recognized by the Catholic Church that seeks to follow Christ through life in community and by the pub-lic profession of the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.3 This way of life has deep roots in Christian history, belongs to the charismatic dimension of the church, and forms an integral part of its life and holiness. By spirituality, in many ways the most elu-sive of the terms I am dealing with, I mean "how individuals or groups understand and carry out the ultimate meaning of their life." It can be discussed on three levels--the experiential, the doctrinal, and the analytical--and embraces both theoretical and concrete, practical issues.4 To quote a circular letter of Joseph W. Tobin, the Redemptorist superior general, "spirituality is con-nected with basic and often unsettling questions: Who are we? Why are we? How are we to live?''s Having clarified 'my terms, I can now express the question Review for Religious posed by my topic in the following way: What are the practical consequences of lifestyle and identity for those of us in the church who seek to give ourselves in service to God, our merciful and compassionate Father, through life in community and the public profession of the evangelical counsels? This question yields no simple solution. It is very difficult and complex, one that holds no instant solution, but must be pondered and contemplated by each community of religious and by each individual religious over and over and over again. I offer some guidelines to help in this process. Naming the Mystery Before we begin to do that, however, we must note the lim-itations of human language and its inability to exhaust the mys-tery of the divine. Language conceals as much as it reveals, perhaps even more. As Pseudo-Dionysius reminds us in The Divine Names: "God is . . . known in all things and as distinct from all things. He is known through knowledge and through unknowing. Of him there is conception, reason, understanding, touch, perception, opinion, imagination, name, and many other things. On the other hand he cannot be understood, words can-not contain him, and no name can lay hold of him.''6 The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§370) affirms this when it reminds us that we are created in God's image and not vice versa: "God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective 'perfections' of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband." In other words, the names we give God express something of who God is, but also fall infinitely short. Kataphatic (or "posi-tive") theology and apophatic (or "negative") theology go hand in hand. God is "Abba, Father," as Jesus teaches us, but also "our loving Mother," as the 14th-century anchoress Julian of Norwich reminds us in her Showings, and "inmost ground," as Meister Eckhart proposes in his German works.7 God can be referred to by these and a host of other religious appellations, some of which we can readily identify with, others not so readily. Perhaps it is only the "coincidence of opposites" which best expresses the mystery of God, who is known in the midst of our unknowing and who cannot be confined by our meager attempts to express the inexpressible. Janua~. -February 2000 Billy ¯ Devotion to God the Father in Religious Spirituality Theological language is fundamentally analogical in nature. That is to say, any word we use when speaking about or naming God expresses, at one and the same time, both a proportional likeness and difference. This holds true even for the word which the Word made flesh himself used to address God. Jesus calls God "Abba, Father," not to tie God down, define him, create an image of him in our heads, or (worse yet) exhaust his mystery, but to assure us that compassion and love rather than confusion and chaos lie at the heart of existence. This is precisely what the Spirit tells us when it cries out "Abba, Father" deep within our hearts and intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words (see Rm 8:15-27). Something rings true in our hearts when we call God "Abba, Father." We know that God is very much more than this two-syllable word can convey, but somehow it seems all right. We sense that God hears us, understands us, and assures us that all shall be well. A Revealed Religion Why is this so? We already have a received a glimpse of the reason above when, referring to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§370), we noted that we are created in God's image, and not vice versa. Notice the passive voice. We are created. It is not we who do the creating. God is not a function of our language and systems of thought. We do not somehow "create" God by the names we give him or the theologies we concoct to express his divine mystery. If this were true, then theology itself would just be a sophisticated form of anthropomorphizing. In fact, God takes the initiative and reveals to us the nature of the divine. The ini-tiative is not for us to take; we are receivers. God uses human instruments, of course, which themselves are weak and fallible, but he takes the initiative. We must not forget that Christianity is a revealed religion. When it comes to naming God, it recognizes that human reason and human imagination can only go so far. On our own, all we can come up with is the recognition of the weakness of human lan-guage to express the inexpressible and the necessity of using many names so as to

Issue 55.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1996. ; lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and.apostolic Christian lives. The articles in the journal are meant to be informative, practical, or inspirational, written from a theological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOPPEMA@SLUVCA.SLU.EDU Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP 1150 Cedar Cove Road ¯ Henderson, NC 27536 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. 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Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Iris Ann Ledden SSND Joel Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1996 * VOLUME55 Q NUMBER6 contents directions 566 583 The Dialogue of Conversion: Toward Jubilee 2000 Jeffrey Gros FSC proposes ways in which religious communities can participate in the ecumenical dimension of preparing for and celebrating the bimillenary jubilee of the incarnation. A Way of Being Church: Journey, Serve, and Evangelize Erik Karl Riechers SAC explains the Union of Catholic Apostolate as a Pallottine family model for sharing a spirituality and ministry. models 593 Frances Cabrini: A Woman for Today Rita E. Goldman paints a w~rm and human portrait of Frances Cabrini as we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of her canonization. 601 The Cistercian Martyrs of Algeria, 1996 M. Basil Pennington OCSO relates the story of the seven Cistercians who were abducted and killed in Algeria. Review for Religious life and death 613 619 Death Questions and Life Questions Cathy Arata SSND builds upon her apostolic experience in E1 Salvador in facing the hard questions of life. Prophetic Sorrow a Sign of the Times Beverly Anne LoGrasso OSU presents the Ursuline community's grief response to the rape and murder of two of their sisters. consecrated life 625 640 Full of Grace: Another Look at the 19th-Century Nun Dolores Liptak RSM relates the congregational stories of the 19th-century American sisters who transformed negative images and made of their own lives powerfully attractive invitations for service. "Objective Superiority" in Vita Consecrata Dennis J. Billy CSSR critiques the phrase "objective superiority" and presents an interpretation in the context of both Vatican II documents and Vita consecrata. 564 646 651 departments Prisms L.,'¢~,-s Canonical Counsel: Canon. 127 Technical Requirements for Advice or Consent Book Reviews 666 Indexes to Volume 55 November-December 1996 prisms Life and death issues are always with us. At times they touch more poignantly into our experience. Traditionally the November liturgical calen-dar is~ associated with death since we begin by remem-bering all the faithful departed and through the Sunday Eucharists we face somber scripture readings about the end times. December's liturgical calendar, on the other hand, looks more to life, celebrating Mary's conception as the "immaculate one" within a hope,filled Advent sea-son which culminates with the star-bright birth of Jesus our Savior. Prisms provided by life and death issues-have us face the God- and faith-questions in our lives. They are prisms necessary if we are to value realistically who we are, who we are becoming, and what we do, what happens to us. God provides us with many other prisms which help us see and appreciate the everyday richness of our lives and ministries as Christian men and women. Some people seem to little appreciate that we all use prisms to view life, accept values, and relate to God. Perhaps many of us fail to make use of the variety of prisms available through which to develop a more ade-quate and vibrant understanding of God, self, church, and world. Rather, some seem to choose to look at life through a single monochromatic lens or through a spattered one that allows only darkness and light and voids the rich sub-tlety of dawn and sunset beauty. Christmas presents us with an ever startling prism through which we see God's presence to ourselves and our world. We celebrate God's dialogue with us through the Word by whom all things came into being and in whom we find life. In listening to John's majestic pro- Review for Religious logue about the Word becoming flesh, I find the imagery of prisms and of dialogue all of a piece. John Paul II says, "By dialogue we let God be present in our midst; for as we open ourselves in dia- 'logue to one another, we also open ourselves to God." Dialogue-- entering into the presence of the Word--is similar to the various prisms of creation which allow us to truly seek and find a labor-ing God active in our world. Paul VI, too, had boldly proclaimed that "dialogue is a new way of being church." Drawing upon the imagery of the Word made flesh, he was reclaiming evangelization as an essential ele-ment of living ~the Christian life. Just as some people close them-selves from appreciating God's pervasive love that is visible in creation only through a variety of prisms, we can be people closed to the call to be church through dialogue. We can talk only to those people who think exactly as we do. We can read nothing that would challenge 6r broaden our mind-set. We can ,enter into conversation not to listen or to learn, but only to accept agreement or refute and "win the day." Not only evangelization, but life itself is being closed down--with other~ and so with God. It can happen to any of us--bishop, priest, religious, or layperson--who may claim the possession of truth in such a way that dialogue is neither possible nor desired. Every Christmas morn faces' us with this question: How do we find the Word in a manger--today? Like shepherds on the watch or like teachable magi, are we avail-able to an alien messenger's voice for direction or to a light from afar to help guide our way? As we approach the third,.millennium, John Paul has indi-cated that dialogue encouraged by the church is fourfold: the dia-logue of life found in people's sharing as neighbors, the dialogue of actioti collaborating for a world more humfin and more divine, the dialogue of sharing the riches of offr spiritual experience and helping one another find the Absolute, the dialogue of special-ists exchanging theologiFal insights to deepen understanding and appreciation of religious heritages and spiritual values. No one of us can remain aloof today from at least some aspects of this fourfold dialogue. Dialoguemprivileged prisms in our Christian responsibility to be neighbors, ecumenists, and evangelists! All of us who dialogue with you our readers in each issue of this journal pray that you be blessed with many grace-illumined prisms .coloring your Christmas season. David L. Fleming SJ November-December 1996 directions JEFFREY GROS The Dialogue of Conversion: Toward Jubilee 2000 Zeal for the unity of the church is central to Roman Catholic spirituality. As Christians move, toward the cel-ebration of the opening of the third millennium, we have been called to gospel, renewal in all dimensions of church life, especially church unity: "Among the most fervent petitions which the church makes., is that unity among all Christians of the various confessions will increase until they reach full communion.''1 For religious this is a particularly opportune moment for service in the church. Prayer, conversion, and spiri-tual renewal--to which religious have long known them-selves to be consciously called--are essential for understanding and engaging in the church's ecumenical commitment: "Concern for restoring unity pertains to the whole church, faithful and clergy alike. It extendS to every-one, according to the ability of each, whether it be exer-cised in daily Christian living or in. theological and historical studies.''2 This is a special time .for renewal of commitments already made and for deepening the knowledge, dialogue, and prayer that will serve the unity for which Christ prayed. This .essay will suggest how religious communities, especially communities of contemplative and retired per- Jeffrey Gros FSC writes from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs; 3211 4th Street, N.E.; Washington, D.C. 20017. Review for Religious sons, can participate in the ecumenical dimension of preparing for and celebrating the bimillenary jubilee of the incarnation (see Pope John Paul's apostolic exhortation dated 25 March 1996, Vita consecrata §44). After the brief introduction, we will discuss~ (1) the jubilee theme and its preparation, (2) a schedule of prayer, (3) a program of spiritual reading, and (4) the ministry of hospitality for dialogue. Of course, the social-justice and evange-lization elements suggested for jubilee preparation also entail ecumenical dimen-sions and possibilities. The reception of the results of ecumenical dialogues is a key element in the new evangelization of which Pope John Paul so frequently speaks. With the publication of Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, religious communities have been challenged to set up commissiofis within their institutes and appoint coor-dinators for ecumenical leadership.3 Obviously the tasks of such a commission and coordinator can begin with seeing to the ecumenical component of initial and continuing formation and with applying the directory's suggestions to hospitals, schools, retreat centers, social-service and advocacy, programs, and the many other are~is where religious provide leadership and witness. Vim consecrata further spells out ways that religious can contribute to church unity (§§2, 100, and 101). However, the publication of the apostolic letter Tertio millen-nio adveniente, with its detailed program leading up to the year 2000, gives such commissions an opportunity to design a prayer cycle and educational program that can enable all, especially retired religious, to participatei a.ccording to their station in life. Obviously, diocesan ecumenical officers and local ecumenical agencies can be of great help in such planning and' implementa-tion in the communities. The specificity of the Holy Father's pro-gram lends itself to rich adaptation in local communities. The publication of the encyclical Ut unum sint, with its enthu-siasm and rich spiritual emphasis, provides a significant resource for religious community reflection. As Pope John Paul notes in the The publication of the encyclical Ut unum sint, with its enthusiasm and rich spiritual emphasis, provides a significant resource for religious community reflection. November-December 1996 Gros ¯ The Dialogue of Conversion . encycl!¢.al: "A new task lies before us: that of receiving the results already achieved," which "must involve the whole people of God" (§80). The five years in preparation provide the church an oppor-tunity to pray and reflect over the results offered to the church for reception: "With regard to other Christians, the principal docu-ments of the Commission on Faith and Order [of the World Council of Churches] and the statements of numerous bilateral dialogues have already provided Christian communities with use-ful tools for discerning what is necessary to the ecumenical move-ment and to the conversion it must inspire" (UUS §17). These statements can find their way into the spiritual reading, prayer, and discussion of religious communities during the course, of the years of preparation for the jubilee celebration. The Jubilee Theme In the pope's letter on the jubilee, he emphasizes the social-justice implications of reordering society implicit in the theme selected, Leviticus 25, which recounts the biblical jubilee in which captives and slaves are liberated, land redistributed, and relations among God's people reordered. In addition to unity among Christians, conversion to a' new way of viewing society and widespread study of the church's social teaching are essential ele-ments. The World Council of Churches has already selected this same text, °under the theme "Return to God, Rejoice in Hope," for its fiftieth jubilee, to be celebrated at its 1998 assembly in Africa, In the first section of the pope's letter, he addresses the ques-tion of God's will .for the church, remarking that ~'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today," and in the second section he lays out his own philosophy of Christian history, which is based on the theology of the incarnation. Within this theological and his-torical context, he elaborates in the third section his vision of the jubilee preparation and, in the fourth, its specific stages. We will enumerate some of the ecumenical challenges and resources that come into play on the road toward the realization of this hope. We present the stages of preparation. There are five specific stages proposed for the years between the letter's publication and the jubilee. The first phase is remote preparation, 1994-1996. It includes reflection on sinfulness and the need of repentance, iden-tification of the difficulties on both sides of the sinful divisions in the church, preparation of a program of prayer for the Holy Review for Religious Spirit's gift of unity, "the promoting of fitting ecumenical initia-tives," and repentance for acts of violence and intolerance. This will entail careful historical study and reconciliation of memories (UUS §2). For this, members of religious orders and institutes may wish to look into their own histories to discern what role their predecessors may have played in the negative his-tory of relations among churches and religious groups. They can be led by the examples of religious orders (Oblates and Jesuits) during the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the European discovery of the Americas. Also there will be attempts to deal with the religious indifference, the widespread loss of percep-tions of transcendence, and the crisis of obedience that are the experience of our time. Finally, there will be an attempt to create an ecumenical martyrology of common heroes in the faith who have suffered and whose commitment to the cross of Christ can bring us into deeper unity with one another (UUS §84). Again, religious orders and institutes may figure prominently on these lists, particularly members who gave their lives in the past fifty years in the common struggle against communism and totalitar-ianism. This remote preparation will be followed by three years devoted to specific themes: (1) 1997 will be devoted to Christ, recalling the common baptism in which all Christians share and which is the root of .the real, if yet imperfect, communion .that supports our common pilgrimage toward full unity. (2) 1998 will focus on the Holy Spirit .fostering the many charisms of the peo-ple of God, linking Christians of the northern and southern hemi-spheres, and giving strong impetus toward church unity. This will also be the year of the World Council Assembly. Catholic engage-ment in this jubilee celebration and its preparation can be integral to the program of the churches moving together toward the year 2000, (3) 1999 will be devoted to God the Father, with a focus on penance, the preferential option for the poor, the dialogue of cul-tures, and women's rights. In this year the Holy Father suggests an interreligious focus, especially with our fellow monotheists, Jews and Muslims. Here the leadership of Pope John Paul is well ahead of the church as a whole,.with his pastoral visits, his gath-erings of religious leaders in Rome and Assisi, and his Vatican documents and addresses on dialogue.4 Finally, the jubilee itself is to be planned "and carefully pre-pared in an attitude of fraternal cooperation with Christians of November-December 1996 Gros ¯ The Dialogue of Conversion other denominations and traditions, as well as of grateful openness to those religions whose representatives might wish to acknowl-edge the joy shared by all the disciples of Christ" (TMA §55). Certainly such an ambitious project ~will take skill in dialogue and outreach at ever} level of Catholic life, building on the thirty years of developing bonds of trust and affection among the churches. Religious have a significant contribution to make on this spiritual journey. ~, Prayer Cycle in therJubilee Preparation ¯ Some will participate actively in the planning and designing of the jubilee events and the engagement of the Catholic and ecu-menical communities in the dialogues, prayer opportunities, and 'study that will contribute to reconciliation. However, all religious can participate in prayer, which is at the very center of ecumeni-cal activity. In this section we will suggest particular themes according to the years leading up to the jubilee and, in the next, themes for spiritual reading which can enhance the prayer. A province or community can ask some of its members to work with some ecumenical partners to develop a set of petitions for prayer ,during the course of each year, and possibly to draw on the prayer resources of the partners.'If it is feasible, a religious com-munity can invite a leader from another church, or even a number of members of the congregation, for common prayer and reflection. Such prayer arrangemen.ts can be more or less detailed, depending on the prayer styles and flexibility of different communities,s During the time focused on early preparation and repentance, the encyclical Ut unum sint and the apostolic letter Tertio millen-nio adveniente can be reviewed to develop prayer intentions, read-ings, and themes. The themes of charity and conversion,the common martyrology, and the healing of memories all provide material for prayer of .thanksgiving, repentance, and petition to dispose the community .for the journey toward the jubilee cele-bration andthe fostering of closer Christian relationships, Specific prayers and readings on the communion (koinonia) among the churches and the goal of full communion can be drawn from World Council resources.6 General agreements on such themes as Scripture and Tradition, Eucharist and Ministry, Authority and Teaching, and Mary can provide a prayerful preparation for more specific intentions as the jubilee draws closer. Review for Religious The year 1996, because it calls specifically for the Roman Catholic Church to recall its own failures and to repent its own complicity in the divisions among Christians, might well focus on the African American churches and the peace churches (the Brethren, Hutterites, Mennonites, and Quakers). Slavery and the continuing racism and violence in American society make it par-ticularly appropriate to pray.with and for these two groups of churches in repentance, confession, reconcilia-tion, and thanksgiving.7 The historic peace churches have been persecuted by members of almost all the churches, including Roman Catholics, because of their refusal to compromise with state-sponsored and church-legitimated violence. We should not only pray for and with these Christians, but also let our prayers and actions for peace benefit from their spirituality and the discipline of their nonviolent lifestyle. Because these churches are small, it may not be easy to find members in each community, but their spiritual literature is rich and widely available. Christ, our common baptism, and the grace we share with other Christians will be emphasized in 1997. During this year, the 450th anniversary of the Council of Trent's, Decrees on Justification, it is hoped that Roman Catholics and Lutherans can proclaim, in a binding joint declaration, a common understand-ing of Christ's justifying grace received in faith by Christians. If such an agreement on grace, sin, merit, and faith were to be suc-cessful, it would be a great contribution to our common spiritual life and a basis for effective movement beyond the 16th centur)i's condemnations. Prayer for and with the Lutheran churches, for the success of such an agreement and for the influence it could have on the life of church members, and quiet meditation on the meaning of God's love in Jesus Christ, as proclaimed especially in Paul's Letter to the Romans, can make this a year that sees our commitment to Christ renewed and our full .communion with the Lutheran churches realized. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will also be considering proposals for full communion with Episcopalians and with three Reformed or Calvinist churches: Presbyterian, United Christ, our common baptism, and the grace we share with other Christians will be emphasized in 1997. November-December 1996 Gros * The Dialogue of Conversion Church of Christ, and Reformed Church in America. These hopes and proposals for reconciliation will suggest opportunities for prayer and reflection too. Wherever Christ's will for the unity of the church is being realized, spiritually sensitive Catholics will be prayerfully attentive. During this year we can als0 include in our prayers the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Assyrian Church of the East. These three traditions all share with us the sacraments and bishops in the apostolic succession; a common Trinitarian and Christological faith, some elements of which have been clarified only recently in ecumenical dialogue; and a common understanding of the catholic demands of full communion in a visible, sacramental church. Existing tensions, however, especially in Eastern Europe .but also occasionally in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, call for sensitivity, repentance, and reconciliation. Prayer for particular Orthodox and Catholic churches around the world, for their peace and reconciliation, is an important contribution to Christ's will for unity. The rich liturgical traditions of the Christian East can provide resources for community prayer and celebration for and with these churches. During 1997 we can also focus prayer on our relationship with Episcopalians and Anglicans worldwide. We share many spir-itual gifts. The dialogue has moved forward with unexpected pos-itive results, so much so that in 1994 the Holy See could say that "no further work" was necessary at this time on the theology of Eucharist and ministry, indicating that the agreements produced to date and the subsequent clarifications show a common faith as regards these two areas of our life. Obviously, the question of women's ordination and under-standings of authority and papal primacy are still under discussion. The Archbishop of Canterbury indicated, on behalf of the Anglican communion, a willingness to accept Pope John Paul's 1995 invitation to talk about how the papacy can be renewed to better serve the unity of the church. Regarding all the progress made to date, there is much for which to be grateful; for the broad common heritage of spirituality, there is much to celebrate; and, in anticipation of future steps toward full communion, there is much for which we must pray. The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer provides many resources for prayer in our religious com-munities as we yearn for the day when full Eucharistic communion can be celebrated together. Review for Religious The year 1998 will be characterized by the celebration of the Assembly of the World Council of Churches. This is an oppor-tunity to make use of the Bible-study and prayer materials that will be produced for the occasion.8 This will also be a year dedicated to the Holy Spirit, to the role of the laity, and to enhanced rela-tions between peoples in the northern and southern hemispheres. It will be a year to raise up special prayers for the Roman Synod for the Americas and its contributions to Christian reconciliation and a year for leadership by laypersons in ecu-menism. There are local ecumenical confer-ences and agencies that can provide partners in getting prayer materials ready to help com-munities focus on the churches' common wit-ness in their immediate areas. In particular, with the year dedicated to the Holy Spirit, religious communities may wish to pray with and for various Protestant churches with which the Catholic Church is committed to full communion. United Methodists, Presbyterians, the United Church of 'Christ, Disciples of Christ, and the Reformed Church in America all participate in dialogues with the Roman Catholic Church with the hope of full communion. Most of these churches have participated with the Catholic Church in the liturgical move-ment and have common prayers and liturgical texts that can form the basis for prayer services. Their local representatives and mem-bers of religious communifies could profitably share with one another their common or different experiences and perceptions of their church life. Our relationships with some other churches look, at this time, more toward mutual understanding than toward full sacramental communion. The year 1998 should provide opportunities for prayer for and with Baptists, Pentecostals, and other independent Evangelical churches. More often than with them, we may find ourselves prayingJbr them and for their conversion to an open communication and dialogue with the Roman Catholic and other Christian churches. However, some of these Christians may be willing to pray with us even if there are few other areas of col-laboration to which they would be open. Pope John Paul suggests that 1999 be dedicated to the Father The year 1998 will be characterized by the celebration of the Assembly of the World Council of Churches. November-December 1996 Gros ¯ The Dialogue of Conversion and to interreligious dialogue. We can pray particularly for Jews and Muslims and engage in common prayer when this is possible. While there are some fine resources available for Christian and Jewish prayer, little has been produced for local use in interfaith worship.? Care should be taken to produce any materials jointly with those with whom prayer is planned. The diocesan ecumeni-cal officer can assist. As with Christian groups, this can be a time of reflecting on the sad heritage of past relationships (here, for example, the cru-sades, the inquisition, the holocaust) as we move through repen-tance to reconciliation and solidarity. This is a time when one can raise i~rayers to God for other families of faith and draw on some of their traditions, like Hindu yoga and Buddhist meditation, to enrich our own Christian prayer life. Also during this year, prayerful reflection on the poor, on the roles of women, and on the maternal aspects of God can nourish the spirituality and prayer life of communities and individual religious. Finally, the year 2000 is devoted to the anniversary of the incarnation, with the Holy Father hoping for a major ecumenical gathering in Jerusalem, an interfaith gathering (possibly at Mr. Sinai), and planning a Roman Catholic Eucharistic gathering in Rome. During this year, thought and prayer can look towards the harvest time, when the years of ecumenical dialogue and prayer yield their fruit: a thoroughgoing ecumenical council of Orthodox, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Christians celebrat-ing full communion. The fruit of much prayer and study can show itself in local prayer meetings and events of celebration. On the first Sunday of Advent there will be a celebration of reconciliation in the United States for several Protestant. churches that will come together, after forty years of dialogue, to become the Church of Christ Uniting (COCU). Prayers for and with these churches for the Holy Spirit's blessing on this venture will be impor~tant for all Christians. During this period before the event, the Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Methodist, African Methodist Episcopal, Christian Methodist Episcopal, and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches and the United Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, and the International Council of Community Churches will be deciding whether they are ready for this step toward full communion. Catholics can join with these Christians in prayer as they walk the path towarO unity. Catholics can be with them in longing for Review for Relig4ous the day when more Christian churches join in similar celebra-tions of full communion. Spiritual Reading in Preparat~ion for the Jubilee As a time of prayer before the great celebration of the incar-nation, these five years can include reflection informed by read-ing that serves the same goal of deepened conversion to Christ's will for the unity of the' church. The practical suggestions here will touch three levels of reading: church documents, ecumenical doc- ¯ uments, and more general spiritual-reading resources. Partners from other churches and communities, if they are familiar with their own spiritual traditions, can provide appropriate sugges-tions to meet particular spiritual needs. While there are many church documents that can provide understanding and stimulus for our prayer life, only four recent texts will be suggested here. The most useful may be the encycli-cal Ut unum sint because of its spiritual core and the enthusiasm with which it is written. Like all of the encyclicals of Pope John Paul, it includes much that is.familiar to those following the ecu-menical movement over the'last thirty years. However, if a para-graph or two are taken for meditative reading each day, with reflection on how the pope's comments relate to one's own expe-rience~ and how one is challenged by the values he lays out, this text can be of significant help. The Holy Father's emphasis on renewal of the individual and the church, on the centrality of prayer and dialogue to nourish prayer, on the dialogues of con-version and charity, on the centrality of love and truth, on the reception and celebration of gifts from others, and on openness to repentance and change, all provide profound opportunities for conversation with God about his will for us and for the church. The apostolic letter Tertio millennio adveniente is of a different character. Its first two sections, on theology and history, are rather dense. Careful reading, however, and even exploring of events and ideas laid out here and in the rest of the letter will be a help-ful orientation as one begins these five carefully programmed years of reflection and prayer. Some of the anniversaries recalled in the second section of the letter will lead us to want to read about certain segments of the Christian community, about certain saints and Christian leaders, and about the development of the church in different cultures. OUr prayer life can be nourished by November-December 1996 Gros * The Dialogue o~ Conversion biography and Christian history as we carry our heritage toward the future. Some may find the other two documents less spiritually nour-ishing since they have a more specific purpose. For those, however, who would choose to reflect on them prayerfully, they have a sig-nificant contribution to make. The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism is a more formal document, with theological and juridical content. For those who are involved in leadership or who wish to reflect on the position of the Catholic Church, this text is foundational. The sections on Ecumenical Formation and on Communion in Life and Spiritual Activity pro-~ vide important bases for reflecting on one's community's and one's own spiritual formation and on ministry in the light of what God is doing in the church. The apostolic letter on the churches of the East, Orientale lumen, will help, during the year 1997, in ini-tiating reflection on Christological understandings that have emerged in dialogues and on the spiritual riches of this half of the tradition catholic?° Much of what one finds in this text is also outlined in Ut unum sint. From our dialogues with other churches, we are fortunate to have very rich results to nourish our spiritual reading and our spiritual lives. Though some of these are technical texts, all of them are oriented toward bringing us closer to Christ and his mysteries and to one another in the church God has willed for us. The reconciliation which they are meant to serve is as deeply spiritual as it is theological and institutional. Therefore, it is use-ful for every religious house and spiritual renewal center to have a library where these ecumenical results are available for reading and reflection.11 These documents should facilitate for us a pro-cess of spiritual .reconciliation by giving us a deeper appreciation of the gifts of the other Christian churches and help us make the unity to which they witness a part of our own spiritual life. For each year coming up, there are significant resources for our reading and reflection. In 1996, getting to know the African American and peace churches can enrich our own faith and com-mitment to justice and peace in our spiritual lives.12 In 1997, deci-sions will be before the Catholic and Lutheran churches concerning the doctrine of grace, a focus on Christ's saving love that can renew all Christians.~3 This theme of justification by faith has produced some important spiritual-reading volumes in English.14 The Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue has already Review for Religious produced some marvelous results that enrich our sacramental understanding.~5 We are fortunate to have the texts of the Orthodox, both Eastern and Oriental, available.~6 For special attention in 1998, various documents already recommended and the specific preparatory materials for that year's World Council Assembly provide ample resources. In this year many could well reflect on the history and future of the churches together in the World Council.17 An extensive set of materials on Christian-Jewish and interreligious dialogue has been developed for reading and reflection; it can be especially useful during 199928 For more general spiritual reading, there is a variety of resources available. For 1996, books on conversion, ecumenical journeys, rec-onciliation, and ecumenical spirituality are widely available29 The African American and peace church traditions provide rich prayer and meditation resources for 1997.20 Spiritual biographies are a way of understanding the spiritual journeys of early and later Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant Christians. Lives of Luther and resources from Orthodox and Anglican spiritual writ-ers can enrich one's sensitivity and appreciation for these tradi-tions. 2 ~ In 1998 (and earlier too) a wide variety of Bible-study resources will be available from the. World Council of Churches. That would be a year to reflect on the spiritualities of John Calvin, John Wesley, and Roger Williams and on the Christian commu-nities of which they were leaders.22 As a result of Thomas Merton's influence and the East/West monastic dialogue, religious are per-haps more acquainted with some interreligious resources than they are with such ecumenical onesfl3 In any case, 1999 provides an opportunity to deepen and broaden our reading in various living spiritual traditions of world religions.24 Approaches to other believers can, moreover, enrich our understanding of and rela-tionship to fellow Christians of other churches.~5 Finally, the jubilee year itself can be a time of reflection on the hopes of the whole Christian community for an ecumenical coun-cil that will truly unite Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant churches.26 Our prayer life can be nourished by biography and Christian history as we carry our heritage toward the future. Noventber-Decentber 1996 Gros * The Dialogue of Conversion The Ministry of Hospitality Institutional and theological efforts have their contribution to make toward visible unity. More importan( are the spiritual resources that foster zeal for God's will for the church. But the relational dimension of ecumenical spirituality can be realized only by people's concrete experience of the "dialogue of conver-sion" of which Pope John Paul speaks so eloquently in Ut unum sint. These five years provide an opportunity for any.community, no matter how mobile or sedate, to invite fellow Christians of other churches in for prayer, a meal, and possibly a discussion, depending, on people's time and interest (see VC §101). If more care can be given to such an invitation, communities can share some common reading before, the visit and can invite a Christian leader, her or his spouse, and even some members of their church. The ecumenical officers of the diocese can be of particular assis-tance in making these contacts and advising on appropriate ser-vices and programs. Pope John Paul outlines the basis for this dimension of the ecumenical spirituality: , If prayer is the "soul" of ecumenical renewal and of the yearning for unity, it is the basis and support for everything the council defines as dialogue. This definition is certainly not unrelated to today's personalist way of thinking. The capacity for dialogue is rooted in the nature of the person and his dignity. As seen by philosophy, this approach is linked to the Christian truth concerning man as expressed by the council: Man is in fact "th~ only creature on earth which God willed for itself"; thus he cannot "fully find him-self except through a sincere gift of himself." Dialogue is an indispensable step along the path toward human self-real-ization, the self-realization both of each individual and of every human community. Although the concept of dialogue might appear to give priority to the cognitive dimension, all dialogue implies a global, existential dimension. It involves the human subject in his or her entirety; a dialogue between communities involves in a particular way the subjectivity of each. (UUS §28) Religious, with their experience of community and renewal, of dialogue and governance since Vatican II, are in a particularly advantageous position to model and expand this dimension of ecumenical spirituality in preparation for the jubilee. As we Christians move toward the third millennium with hopes of full communion growing ever stronger, we support our Review for Religious prayer with the disciplines of spiritual reading, meditation, com-mon worship, and dialogue. In Vita consecrata the Holy Father calls upon religious to notice their excellent opportunity to con-tribute to the experience of koinonia, which lies at the basis of hopes for full communion among the churches: "A great task also belongs to the consecrated life in the light of the teaching about the church as communion . Consecrated persons are asked to be true experts of communion and to practice the spirituality of communion as 'w.itnesses and architects of the plan for unity which is the crowning point of human history in God's design.' The sense of ecclesial communion, developing into a spirituality of communion, promotes a way of thinking, speaking, and act-ing which enables the church to grow in depth and extension" (VC §46). The first thirty ~,ears of Roman Catholic ecumenical involve-ment have been characterized by getting to know our ecumenical partners and understanding their churches, theology, and spiri-tualities. The theological dialogues have been most productive. In 1997 we are beginning.a third phase of the dialogue,27 This spir-itual journey from dialogue to decision is a spiritual resource that needs to be available to all Catholics. As our relationship with the Lord deepens in preparation for the celebration of his incar-nation, so "in the deep personal dialogue which each of us must carry on with the Lord in' prayer, concern for unity cannot be absent. Only in this way, in fact, will the concern fully become part of the reality of our life and of the commitments we have taken on in the church" (UUS §27). Notes ' John Paul II, Tertio millennio adveniente ("As the Third Millennium Draws Near"), Origins 24, no:' 24 (24 November 1994): §16 (hereafter Ta4A). 2 John Paul II, Ut unum sint ("That All May Be One"), Origins 25, no. 4(8 June 1995): §19 (hereafter UUS). 3 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, Origins 23, no. 9 (29 July 1993): §§50-51. 4 Red}mptoris missio, Origins 20, no. 34 (31 January 1991): §29. s One might suggest a prayer for each year. For example, the Magnificat for 1996 (repentance), the Te Deum for 1997 (Christ), the Veni Sancte Spiritus for 1998 (Holy Spirit), and the Nicene Creed for 1999 (God the Father). November-December 1996 Gro~ ¯ The Dialogue of Conversion 6 Thomas Best and Gtinther Gassmann, eds., On the Way to Fuller Koinonia (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1993). Gtinther Gassmann, ed., Documentary History of Faith and Order: 1963-1993 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1993). 7 The Office of African-American Catholics provides a kit, Love One Another, including prayer materials that can be used for such services (U.S. Catholic Conference Publishing Services; 3211 4th Street, N.E.; Washington, D.C. 20017). Other prayer materials, designed by the African Methodist Episcopal, Christian Methodist Episcopal, and African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches. Liberation and Unity, for ecumeni-cal Lenten use, is available from Consultation on Church Union; Research Park; 151 Wall Street; Princeton, New Jersey 08540. ~ Available from: World Council of Churches U.S. Office; 475 Riverside Drive;New York, New York 10115; tel. 202-870-2470. 9 H. Schlesinger and H. Porto, Prayers of Blessing and Praise for All Occasions (Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third publications, 1987). Leon Klenicki and Bruce Robbins, Jewish and Christians: A Dialogue Service about Prayer (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1995). ~o Orientale lumen, Origins 25, no. 1 (18 May 1995). 11 Lukas Vischer and Harding Meyer, eds., Growth in Agreement Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level (New York: Paulist Press, 1984). Jeffrey Gros and Joseph Burgess, eds., Building Unity (New York: Paulist Press, 1989) and Growing Consensus (New York: Paulist Press, 1995). Also the volumes noted in n. 5 above. 12 William Watley, Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1992). Marlin Miller and Barbara Nelson Gingrich, eds., The Church's Peace Witness (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1994). 13 H. George Anderson, T. Austin Murphy, and Joseph A. Burgess, eds., Justification by Faith (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985). Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, eds., The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide? (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990). 14 Jared Wicks SJ, Yearning for Grace: Luther's Early Spiritual Teaching (Philadelphia: Coronet Books, 1969) and Luther and His Spiritual Legacy (Wilmingtom Michael Glazier, 1983). George H. Tavard, Justification: An Ecumenical Study (New York: Paulist Press, 1983). is William Purdy, The Search for Unity (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1995). Christopher Hill and Edward Yarnold, eds., Anglicans and Roman Catholics: The Search for Unity: The ARCIC Documents and their Reception, (London: SPCK/CTS, 1994). 16 John Borelli and John Erickson, Orthodox and Catholic in Dialogue (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir Seminary Press/Washington, D.C.: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1995). Ronald G. Roberson, ed., Oriental Orthodox-Roman Catholic Pastoral Relationships and Interchurch Marriages (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1995). Paul Fries and Tiran Nersoyan, Christ in East and VVest (Macon: M. ercer University Press, I ~87). Review for Religious ~7 W.A, Visser't Hooft, The Genesis and Formation of the World Council of Churches (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982). 18 "Dialogue and Proclamation," Origins 21, no. 8 (4 July 1991), "Interreligious Dialogue," Living Light 32, no. 2 (Winter 1995), Eugene Fisher and Leon Klenicki, eds., In Our Time: The Flowering of Jewish- Catholic Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1989). 19 For the Conversion of the Churches, by Groupe des Dombes (Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 1993). Dianne Kessler, Lorelei Fuchs, and Gillian Evans, Encounters.for Unity (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1994). Michael Hurley, ed., Reconciliation in Religion and Society (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994), and Timothy J. Wengert and Charles W. Brockwell Jr., eds., Telling the Churches' Stories: Ecumenical Perspectives on Writing Christian History (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1995). Louis Dupr~ and Don Saliers, eds., Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation andModern (New York: Crossroad, 1989), and E. Glenn Hinson, ed., Spirituality in Ecumenical Perspective (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993). 20 James Washington, Conversation with God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African Americans (New York: HarperCollins, 1994). Daniel Liechty, ed., Early Anabaptist Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1994). 21 Bengt Hoffman, ed., The Theologica Germanica of Martin Luther (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), and Roland Bainton, Here I Stand (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991). William Wolf, Anglican Spirituality (Wilton, Connecticut: Morehouse Publications, 1982). Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (London: Mowbrays, 1979) and The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology (London: Faber and Faber, 1966); Georges Barrois, ed., The Fathers Speak (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1986). 22 J.L. Richard, The Spirituality of John Calvin (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1974). Alexander Ganoczy, The Young Calvin (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1987). Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995). Frank Whaling, ed., John and Charles Wesley (New York: Paulist Press, 1981). Edwin Gaustad, Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1991). 23 Thomas Ryan, Prayer of Hear.t and Body (New York: Paulist Press, 1995). 24 Aloysius Pieris SJ, Love Meets Wisdom (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988). William Johnston sJ, The Still Point (New York: Fordham University Press, 1980). Patrick G. Henry and Donald K. Swearer, For the Sake of the World: The Spirit of Buddhist and Christian Monasticism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989). Anthony de Mello SJ, Sadhana: A Way to God (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1979). M. Thomas Thangaraj, The Crucified Guru (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994). Achiel Peelman, Christ Is a Native American (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1995). Leon Klenicki and Gabe Huck, eds., Spirituality and Prayer: Jewish and Christian Understandings(New York: Paulist Press, 1983). Bernard Lee, The Galilean November-December 1996 Crros ¯ The Dialogue of Conversion Jewishness ofyesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). The Paulist Press's Classics of Western Spirituality series includes many Muslim and Jewish titles. zs Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural. Research, Confessing Christian Faith in a Pluralistic Society, (Collegeville, 1995). 26J.M.R. Tillard, A Church of Churches (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1991). Aram Keshishian, Conciliar Fellowship(Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1992). John Zizioulas, Being as Communion; Studies in Personhood and the Church, (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985). Lewis Mudge and Paul Crow, eds., "Toward the Year 2000: An Ecumenical Celebration," Midstream 24~ no. 4 (October 1987). 27 John Hotchkin, "The Ecumenical Movement's Third Stage," Origins 25, no. 21 (9 November 1995): 353-361. I Am the Bread I am the Bread baked of the Father's fine flour, molded in Mary by Spirit's pure power. I am the Bread Bethlehem born, kneaded and nailed, scorching with scorn, rising from death and the dead. I am the Bread. Come, eat me, hold me, share me, held by death, never. Living forevert. We are the bread. Jean Miriam Donachie SC Review for Religious ERIK KARL RIECHERS A Way of Being Church: Journey, Serve, and Evangelize Together I~rhere is any one way of describing the quandary of modern atholic life, I would suggest this: that we are groping for a way of being church. Small Christian communities, lay-associate programs, lay-formation programs, justice movements, secular institutes, and a host of other ecclesial forms all seek practical, concrete ways of living the reality of church. It is to ecclesiology that people generally go for a deep under-standing of the nature and purpose of the church. Yet a second, com-plementary avenue is open to us, namely, seeking in our.own praxis of church life specific principles that other ecclesial groups could apply to themselves. It is a good thing to celebrate our own local church history and Spirit-filled growth, but it is regrettable that oth-ers derive litde profit from it when we neglect to share it with them. Here I intend to share the exl~erience of the Union of Catholic Apostolate (UAC). While its experience is not automatically adapt-able to the church at large or even to every institute of consecrated life, the UAC has learned some essentials that could easily serve the entire people of God, helping it on its way of being church. One Way of Being Church: The Union of Catholic Apostolate When people first hear about the UAC, they almost Erik Karl Riechers SAC last wrote for us in March-April 1995. His address is Pallottine Faith Enrichment Centre; 6 McMillan Avenue; Red Deer, Alberta; T4N 5X8 Canada. November-December 1996 Riecbers ¯ A Way of Being Church always assume that they are being introduced to yet another form of third-order spirituality, that of the Pallottine Fathers and Brothers. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The UAC is a radical and very challenging break from the model of spiri-tuality that led to the third orders. In the 1980s the conservative theory of "trickle-down" eco-nomics became popular. The concept was simple. If great wealth and prosperity could be produced at the top levels of society and the state, then benefits and positive effects would trickle down to lower levels. The idea of third orders might well be described as "trickle-down" spirituality. The concept was that an order would have a rich and vibrant spirituality and that, after a time, this spiritual wealth would be shared by other religious with a similar interest or direction. These would be the second orders. Finally, lay people would want to share in the founding spirituality, and some of it would trickle down to them, allowing them to par-ticipate in some derivative fashion, but never fully and certainly not in the same sense as the first order. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this model, and it is not my intention to belittle or ridicule it. However, for the Pallottine family it leaves a great deal to be desired, for it fails to recognize the element that is always at the heart of our UAC spir-ituality: that all Christian men, women, and children are called by name to an apostolic life. This vocation, this life, does not trickle down from the Pallottine Fathers and Brothers, nor is it but a shadow of someone else's spirituality. The calling of Christians is directly from God, not delei~ated to them by the hierarchy. Their spirituality, therefore, must be as unique as their vocation, and not just an offshoot of the spirituality of another person or group. The UAC is a concrete expression of Vatican Council II's teaching on the universal call to holiness that insists that "all the faithful are invited and obliged to holiness and the perfection of their own state of life" (Lumen gentium §42). Imagine a great shimmering pool. For this pool's water a num-ber of tribes have various needs. Yet each of them goes to the common pool in order to satisfy those needs. The tribes procure the water and carry it home in distinctive containers, yet each has taken life-giving water from the same source. Some will use the water to cook, others to drink, others to wash the grime from their bodies, while yet others intend to douse the plant~ that will grow to still their hunger. Review for Religious The image reveals to us the way in which the UAC approaches Pallottine spirituality. The pool is Pallottine spirituality, and its contents are the ideals, intuitions, and insights of Vincent Pallotti. Every group of the UAC is distinctive and has a unique need for what is within the common pool of Pallottine spirituality. The Pallottine Fathers and Brothers go to that pool and realize its spiritu-ality in their own unique way. The Pallottine Sisters draw from the pool and use what they have drawn from its depths in their own par-titular fashion. Every group, lay or religious, goes to the same life-giv-ing source, goes to Pallotti, and comes away with its own manner of letting that life flow through them. We know ourselves to be one, for our thirst has led u~ to the same pool, and we acknowledge that we are all nourished from a common source. Yet we know ourselves to be unique, for that invigorating fountain of spirituality is cre-atively used to nourish many forms and variations of life in the Spirit. When we look across the world at all the expressions of the UAC, we see a web of communities, a grand alliance of spiritual-ity, and a confederation of Christians. Despite our wide diversity and exceedingly different experiences of life, we support one another as communities and individuals and share those experi-ences. This has been our ultimate strength, the power that is born of a genuine solidarity. For when we gaze upon the countenance of our Pallottine brothers and sisters, we recognize first and fore-most the people who stand beside us at the pool of Pallottine spirituality, who share our thirst, and who share our way of slak-ing it. In that gaze lies the certain knowledge that we are not alone in life. In our family no one receives a scrap from the mas-ter's table, because we all have an equal seat at that table. Despite our wide diversity and exceedingly different experiences of life, we support one another as communities and individuals and share those experiences. A Way of Forming Church I am often asked: What does the UAC offer people? I believe November-December 1996 Riechers * A Way of Being Church " that there are a number of interwoven answers to that question, each of them a principle applicable--though in varied ways--to the experience of being church. The need for spiritual growtb.~Many people today have a grow-ing awareness that their spiritual lives need more than a bare min-imum, that these lives of theirs have failed to grow beyond the confines of the catechism classes of their formative years. They come to the realization that children's catechesis does not suffice in a world of adult problems, and they begin to experience the need for development toward a responsible adult faith. Yet often they then face a second problem, namely, that they can get many bits and pieces in workshops, seminars, and adult-education classes, but that there are few places where they can get a comprehensive formation in Catholic, spiritual living. The UAC is a place where we begin to solve this problem through four movements. In the UAC we assist one another in coming to an adult faith in an adult church. Our manual of formation, titled Called by Name, offers a systematic approach to spiritual growth. Here we move the believer from the sporadic to the systematic. Called by Name takes a thorough look at eight great facets of spirituality: (1) God's infinite love and mercy and its effect in our lives, (2) the presence and work of God in human time and history, where we might experience this God, (3) the sheer power of the word of God, (4) communion as the antidote to loneliness and polarization, (5) the unrelenting call to embark on the mission with Christ, (6) the covenant according to which God creates, a homeland for Christians, (7) community that gathers under God's grace, and (8) hope and unity that,sustains and drives the Christian life. Each of these themes is tackled from three different angles. First, from the point of view of Catholic spirituality, we link our-selves with the Great Tradition and the wealth that Scripture, Vatican Council II, and Christian experience have to offer us. Here we move the believer's faith from adolescence to adulthood. Second, from the point of view of Pallottine spirituality, the members of the UAC experience the wonderful depth and richness of Vincent Pallotti's approach to God and the faith. Here we move the believer's spirituality from the common to the concrete. In this part of our formation, we make a transition from the common spirituality of all the people of God to a specifis form of realizing this spirituality in our concrete lives, the specific form of Pallottine spirituality. Review for Religious Finally, we learn together how we can integrate what we have learned into a life of prayer as members of the UAC. Employing the rich resources of the Tradition and the Pallottine heritage, we explore many forms of prayer in order that individuals may find a prayer method suited to their temperament and need and that all together we may discover the splendid variety of oppor-tunities to raise our minds and hearts to the living God. In this final part of a chapter's formation, we move the believer from prin-ciple to prayer. Hand in hand with this desire to grow in faith beyond the bare-bones basics is the need to sustain Christian life and aposto-late. In order to be church we must keep the flame of faith alive in our hearts, to "confirm our call and election" (2 P 1:10). This, however, has become an increasingly daunting task in today's society. Many people who are committed to liv-ing out their Christian commitment in the world suddenly find themselves facing unre-lenting pressures from their colleagues, friends, and acquaintances to conform to social norms that con-tradict their faith commitment. When they choose to go to Mass rather than the picnic, to be people of generosity rather than gos-sips, and to offer compassion in the place, of criticism, they often discover that the reward is outright ridicule for living in such a way as to be a "sign of contradiction." Unfortunately, no one wants to be contradicted. When Christian life is lived with pas-sion and zeal, it says to the people who live what is an otherwise unchallenged lifestyle that we would beg to differ. Yet, while this is a hard reality to live through, it is not the crux of our problem. It is hard enough to keep the flame of faith alive in our hearts without the added burden of trying to do this as a solo per.formance. People are looking for support in their lives, in their struggles. It is easy enough to fall away from the Way of Christ, but hard to resist the many temptations and avoid the pitfalls constantly presented to us on that way. Therefore, many people are experiencing the need to find a place where the spiritual life they have formed can be sustained and strengthened. The UAC is a place where people can find a spiritual homeland for Hand in hand with this desire to grow in faith beyond the bare-bones basics is the need to sustain Christian life and apostolate. November-December 1996 Riecbers ¯ A Way of Being Church themselves. It offers the chance to speak of our faith, the daily struggles that affect it, and the many experiences and encoun-ters at work, rest, or play that challenge it. The UAC is the place where committed Christians share the many ways in which their faith can be lived as parents, professionals, business people, and citizens of the nation. It is the place where we heed the admo-nition of the Letter to the Hebrews: "Keep encouraging one another so that none of you is hardened by the lure of sin" (Heb 3:13). In the UAC we offer one another courage by teaching one another the joys of fidelity, giving one another a hand when we stumble along, speaking of our hope in moments of despair, and walking the way together, even when the path leads through dark-ness. Then, and only then, do we consider our Christian call to be fulfilled. Encouragement is the UAC's way of keeping the hearts of our brothers and sisters from being hardened.~It is all too easy to point out the lure of sin, to make people aware of the dangers lurking on every side that threaten to devour them whole if they are unwary. In the UAC we choose the harder Way of encourag-ing one another, resisting easier ways. This way is much harder because it demands that we get involved. The members of the UAC are committed not just to spreading faith, but also to keep-ing it alive in one another, and that means being committed to one another. It is the way of our Pallottine spirituality not just to point .to solutions, but to be part of the solution, part of the heal-ing. When we are lost, it is a pleasant thing to find someone who can give us directions. It is, however, without doubt a better thing when that person offers to guide us directly. Together to Evangelize A guiding motto of the UAC has been "Together to Evangelize." Over the course of the last years, three components have helped our reflection on our role within the New Evangelization: the scripture passage of the road to Emmaus, the person and charism of Vincent Pallotti, and the call to mission. So that we may be guided yet again to the place ~of renewal for .all the Pallottine family, I take a word from Reinhold Niebuhr as a lantern to light our path. With piercing insight this great Protestant theologian wrote: Review for Religious Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our life-time; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, no matter how virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. Let us bring this word to Emmaus experience, to Pallottine perceptivity, and to people who are together for evangelization. "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; there-fore, we must be saved by hope. "Two despairing disciples walk away from a life once brimming over with aspirations, hopes, and dreams. To follow Christ--ah, here was the achievement of a life-time, an endeavor worthy of discipleship, an undertaking for which you could put your life on the line and leave your "fishing nets lying on the shore." In .Christ they thought they had found the One worth investing their entire lives in. Their words speak of their hearts' discontent: "But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel" (Lk 24:21). And why not? After all, this man's words gave wings to the hopeless spirit, set sinners' hearts a-soaring, and suffused beaten men and women with vibrant new life. Here was a prophet "mighty in word and deeds," whose power calmed waves and curbed fears, sent healing grace rippling through the bleeding woman and peace to the demoniac's shattered soul, The dream of liberation from the heavy foot of Rome, glory for God and royal dignity for themselves, was vividly real; it was a dream wor-thy of a lifetime of sacrifice. It was a dream not to be! "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime." Pallotti clearly concurs. "On my own I can do nothing; with God I can do everything." What Pallotti sees with a clarity begot-ten of grace is that no effort of ours, regardless how noble, how ideal or how cloaked in dignity, will find fulfillment in our lifetime. Our effort, strength, stamina~ and speed will first thrill us and then tantalize us with their obvious inability to coerce complete-ness out of our life's work. God alone can deliver more than we may manufacture. God alone can write an ending beyond our endings. "Not the intellect., not the will., not worldly goods ¯. not riches., not honor., not dignity., not promotions, but God." With Pallottine conviction we profess that God alone is our hope: "therefore, we must be saved by hope." Born of this Pallottine conviction is the UAC's task for the November-December 1996 Riecbers ¯ A Way of Being Church Z---ygOJ New Evangelization. We must turn to the busy world with its many worthwhile pursuits and offer it the hope that comes from God alone~ Otherwise the worthy work of our people will become their downfall, as they rdalize that no fulfillment is forthcoming in their lifetimes. You can go out and combat poverty with leonine ferocity, but, for every Ethiopian fed yesterday, a Somali starves today. You can dedicate yourself to nobly terminating racism, and do it with a Schwarzeneggerian swagger, but today's apartheid-free South Africa yields its ~place in the news to a genocidal Rwanda. Gorbachev tears down walls for freedom; elsewhere someone loots the bill for terrorists. Desmond Tutu seeks to set his people free with the South African Truth Commission's airing of stories buried too long and too deep; others, far away in various direc-tions, distort ,the truth in hate-mongering rhetoric. Into this world we have been sent. To these men and women we must speak of the God of infinite love who can give every worthwhile human endeavor the blessing of a consummation that human history will relentlessly, ruthlessly deny it. We are together to evangelize so that people may be saved by hope. "Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith." The Emmaus-bound disciples have tasted beauty, truth, and goodness in their time with Christ. "Before God and all the people', (Lk 24:19), Jesus revealed the beautiful heart, that wel-comes children; the true heart of the teacher lecturing tirelessly, openly, and authoritatively in temple and boat, on mountain and plain; and the good heart weeping for Lazarus in the tomb, heal-ing the centurion's servant, and shielding Mary from the harangu-ing of her harried elder sister. Now they stand in a puzzlement born of betrayal. For this beauty, truth, and goodness called Christ has been condemned to death and crucified. Moreover, even the empty tomb, the vision of angels, and the women's confident assertion that Jesus yet lives is now nonsensical to the disciples. The resurrection with the gaping truth of the tomb, the celestial beauty of an angelic news flash, and ~the gripping goodness of tidings that Jesus is 'risen from the dead~all remain meaningless because the only context these two know is death .and destruction with their definitive finality., "Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate, context of history." Review for Religion's Pallotti continually points to faith as the only context big enough to allow us to make heads or tails out of life's maddening complexity. If the span of our days is all we have, if the psalmist's seventy years (or eighty for the strong) are all we have for com-prehending life's events, then no avenue save futility and absurdity is open to us. Vincent Pallotti prescribes faith in the God of infi-nite love as the antidote: God's infinity offers a context in which we can live beyond the immediate experience. While Pallotti himself does not understand every why and wherefore of God's will, he has faith that God is not to be outdone in generosity. Puzzled and likely hurt by the rumor-mongering jealousy that made his pastorate in Spirito Santo a nightmare lived in waking hours, and eventually caused an unjust and unjus-tifiable suppression of the UAC, Pallotti has faith in the inex-haustible mercy and mystery of God, which will open up the present hour of harrowing agony to a meaning beyond the momentary. Here we find the UAC's second task in the New Evangelization. We must teach faith as a means of finding mean-ing beyond the momentary. The immediate context of history has to be broadened to the eternal horizon of faith, which is God himself. The now is simply not enough. Try as we may, the death of children by abuse does not make sense in our immediate context alone. What does truth mean in our day when wealthy people may purchase enough legal persuasion to win verdicts of "not guilty," while ordinary people of low or moderate incomes may find themselves convicted after minimal arguments for the defense? Can the immediate context alone help us cope with the drunken driver who walks away, unsteadily but alive, from the crash that claims the life and aspi-rations of the teetotaling pedestrian? Unlike Disney movies, lost dogs do not always find their way home, mermaids do not always find princes, beasts do not always marry beauties, angels are not always in the outfield, and some Cinderellas die in grinding poverty without ever making it to the ball. We must spread faith in God, for his rising from the dead is the only possibility of writing a conclusion beyond the otherwise absolute, limiting finality of human life. We are together to evan-gelize so that people may be saved by faith. "Nothing we do, no matter bow virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love." A final glance at the road to Emmaus revealsto us the truth of this Niebuhrian statement. November-December 1996 Riechers ¯ A Way of Being Church The disciples are doing a virtuofis thing. They are talking about all the things that happened in, Jerusalem, seeking a shred of meaning, a fleeting glimpse of God, in the morass their lives have become. Yet they do not accomplish anything until Jesus interprets everything for them. Pallotti once wrote, "My Jesus, anyone who does not love you cannot live." Why not? Because, if people do not love, they do not reach beyond .themselves, for love is self-transcendende. If we never reach past our narrow needs and greeds, we remain alone; like the gospel grain of wheat. But those who remain alone do not live. Out of this divinely, revealed and inspired love, Pallotti would have us move from self to neighbor. It is this infinite love that drove him to found the UAC. This love is the constitutive ele-ment of the UAC. This love is what Pallotti would have us rekin-dle. This love, however, we cannot accomplish on our own. We must receive it from the God of infinite love. As the UAC we find in this experience our last task for the New Evangelization. A clear-eyed view of the world shows us a devastating truth: We cannot go it alone; we must be saved by love. The rugged individualism of the 1980s has decayed into the ragged loneliness of the 1990s. The myth of ever-expanding opportunities and limitless futures has collided headlong with the era that downsizes everything, including compassion. The peren-nial quest for self-discovery has not relieved our people of their confusion. They must be saved by love. And we must be together to evangelize so that it may be so! There you have it. Our journey has been hard, but happy, touched by love and laughter, sprinkled with songs and tears. It is the price to be paid if we would find a way of being church. In the end of all our journeys, we can only hope that this rendering of a passage of Virgil's Aeneid (1.198-203) may be true of us: "And the time will come when it will gladden our hearts to recall these first trying days and the difficult things that we did, not each of us striving alone, but all of us working together." Review for Religious RITA E. GOLDMAN Frances Cabrini: A Woman for Today What if Mother Cabrini had been born in 1950 instead of 1850? What aspects of her life would be different? Personally, I think none. She was a true daughter of the church, and I am sure she would have welcomed the era of Vatican Council II. Even in her day she was considered forward. When she wanted Missionaries in the title of her religious congregation, she was told only men were mis-sionaries. At that time there was in Italian no feminine form of the masculine word missionari. A certain Father Marinoni, the director of the Foreign Mission Seminary, said, "It is not even in the dictionary." But she persisted. In Italy her sisters came to be called Missionarie del Sacro Cuore di Gesi~. We often think of saints as human beings far above ourselves, not realizing that in their lives they experienced their humanity in ways that we could recognize from our own lives. Perhaps it is the way the saints have been writ-ten about that leads us to think they were not truly human beings like ourselves. Many years ago lives of saints were written in very flowei'y, complimentary terms. The books Rita E. Goldman retired from United States foreign service in 1989 after assignments in Liberia, Nepal, Burma, Cameroon, and Romania. Since then, besides some volunteer work with Holy Cross sisters in Israel and with Mother Cabrini's sisters in Chicago, she has been involved in the RCIA program of her parish, St. Frances Cabrini. Her address is 3041 North Country Club Road, Apt. 220; Tucso.n, Arizona 85716. models November-December 1996 Goldman * Frances Cabrini 5.94 tended to portray only their "saintly" attributes, making the per-' sons seem not human to us when we read about them. In this article I hope to present Mother Cabrini as a real person, one very much like us. In fact, several prelates and business associ-ates who had known her were surprised when she was canonized. They said that in many business transactions she did not behave like a saint--she often pounded the table to make a point and would raise her voice in a heated exchange! Mother Cabrini was a modern woman. Her interests were extensive, and she certainly did not adapt 'readily to the role expected of late-19th- and early-20th-century women religious. She was a business woman and world traveler, keenly aware of the currents of thought in the world of her time. In fact, after her meditation, prayers, and Mass each morning, one of the first things she did was read the morning newspapers. This was before radio and television came upon the scene. I have no doubt that, if Mother Cabrini were living today, she would be turning on the radio or the TV to get her daily news of what was going on in the world. She would have loved the instant communication that exists today--in her day "instant" communication was onl~ the tele-graph and, later, the telephone. On 30 October 1952 Mother Cabrini was posthumously named "The Italian Immigrant of the Century" at a gathering of the American Committee on Italian Migration. Mother Cabrini was singled out because of her "unselfish devotion to humanity" and because "her accomplishments stand as monuments for all to behold and put to shame those people whose bigotry helps raise the cry of intolerance toward the immigrant." If Mother Cabrini.were living today, she would be in her element in regard to the immigrant. In our day there continue to be refugees, political, refugees, immi, grants, and displaced persons; they often make headlines. This has been a century of immigration. In the early 1900s it was the mas-sive immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Today it is immigration 7from Central and South America, Vietnam, China, and the war-torn areas of central Europe. Mother Cabrini's Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus are in the forefront in helping today's immigrants just as Mother Cabrini was. Maria Francesca Cabrini was bor.n on 15 July 1850 in a small village in Lombardy, Italy. Her parents were pious and devout, and little Franceswas certain she wanted to be a missionary. She was the tenth of eleven children, of whom seven met early deaths. Review for Religqous Only Magdalena (who was retarded), Rosa, Giuseppe, and herself lived to adulthood. As a child Frances used to launch paper boats filled with vio-lets into a stream nearby, pretending the violets were missionar-ies going to foreign lands, especially China. As a teenager Frances applied to two religious communities for admission, but each refused her because of her frail health, a problem she bore throughout life. In 1870 she lost both of her parents; she was twenty. Her sister Rosa had become a public school teacher, and Frances followed her in this. When she was twenty-four years old, her pas-tor and bishop, valuing her desire to serve, asked her to lend a hand for a few weeks at a poorly run orphanage. These "few weeks" that lasted six years were a time of great suffering and prepared Frances for the work she would eventual.ly do. The local bishop offered her his backing: "You always wanted to be a missionary. I know of no such order of women. Why not found one your- ~ self?" So in 1880 she and seven young women con-secrated themselves to God and took religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.~They called themselves Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, They took over an abandoned Franciscan monastery in the town of Codogno, not far from where Frances was born. Maria Francesca Cabrini now became Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, ready to conquer the world for Christ. During the next few years, Mother Cabrini expanded her order in Italy, opening many houses and accepting new vocations. But she was still intent on doing missionary work. In 1887 she met Pope Leo XIII, who, even though he was aware of her desire to do missionary work in China,-persuaded her to go to America to assist the many Italian immigrants there who were in dire need. He said to her: "Not to the Orient, Cabrini, but to the West. Your China is the United States." At the time of her death in Chicago in 1917 at the age of sixty-seven, Mother Cabrini had founded sixty-seven hospitals, orphanages, and schools in .the United States, South and Central America,. and Europe. After her death other foundations were made in Africa, Asia, and Australia. .From an early age, after a frightening experience of near If Mother Cabrini were living today, she would be in her element in regard to the immigrant. November-Deconber 1996 Goldman ¯ Frances Cabrini drowning, Frances had a real fear of water. Yet, even with this fear, she in her missionary travels crossed the Atlantic Ocean some twenty-three tiines, going to the United States and South and Central America. The only times she really had for "rest" were during these ocean voyages. Most of her correspondence was done at these times, including long letters about her travels written to her sisters back in Italy. Mother Cabrini's favorite sub-ject when she taught school was geography, and this is very much reflected in the travel letters she wrote. She certainly researched and read beforehand about the places where she was going to start a mission. It was in reading the book of her Travels that I came across the real Mother Cabrini, and I would like to quote some passages from these letters to show how human and like us she really was. Did Mother Cabrini know and speak English? The answer to that is yes. During her second voyage to New York in 1890, she wrote: "The sisters tell him [a friendly man on the boat] in English what he has not understood from me. He is very intelligent, and from the expression on my face he understands what I intend to say. He asks me to speak English as well as I can, and he helps me with some French words, saying he can understand. Sister Bernardina is going to make a novena for me to obtain the grace to speak English, and assures me she will obtain it. What do you think of it? 1 fear the day of judgment will arrive before 1 learn English." During the voyage from Genoa to New York in 1894, Mother Cabrini related the following: "Yesterday a waiter told me how sorry he was that he could not speak Italian so that he might ren-der the sisters better service. He wants me to act as interpreter, but my knowledge of English is limited, barely enough to prevent me from losing my way or dying of hunger." Sister Mary Louise Sullivan, however, in her Mother Cabrini: Italian Immigrant of the Century (1992), says: "Mother Cabrini read American newspapers daily when she was present in her houses in the United States. The Chicago Tribune was on her desk each day. She knew what you were talking about when you spoke to her in English and would sometimes reply gently in English when you tried to address her in halting Italian. She could become quite angry and would raise her voice when upbraiding a sister in her native Italian." Some of the humorous incidents she related were, in con-junction with the roughness of the ocean during some of her voy- Review for Religious ages. On her second voyage to New York in 1890, she wrote: "Poor sisters! At every movement of the boat they think we are in a great storm. Sister Eletta would like to have the boat stopped, at least during meals. I told the steward this just to make him laugh. He is so kind." On another occasion she said, "During this tempest not one of the sisters was frightened; all remained quietly in bed, ready to perish quietly, but under the bedclothes." On the voyage from New York to Le Havre in 1899, she wrote: "What a terrible night we have passed! The steamer seemed to jump and fly out of the water. At other times we thought it would capsize . At about 9 a.m. the rocking began again. I was still in bed and could not get up, and the stew-ardess asked if we wanted some break-fast. I told her to bring us some coffee. It was the first time I had ever had anything brought to my bed, and the poor coffee reached me at a very bad moment. No sooner had it been poured out than cup and coffee pot, by a sudden jerk of the steamer, were spilled over my bed. I was forced to get up whether I liked it or not." On her trip to New York in 1890, Mother Cabrini had a com-mon experience for one who is fair-skinned. (Mother Cabrini was very fair and had blond hair--remember she came from northern Italy.) She wrote: "Meantime the heat is like summer. For three days I looked like Bacchus. My forehead is very red, even pur-ple, and this redness is spreading all over my face. At first I thought it was erysipelas. I did not like the prospect, for I should have had to retire from the open, and fresh air is life to me. Happily, however, the doctor said the redness was the effect of the air and of the water which was spraying on my face . Today the skin has begun to peel off my forehead and nose. I am chang-ing like a serpent." Mother Cabrini mentioned language difficulties more than once. In 1898, going from Liverpool to New York, she wrote up this anecdote about Sister Frances, who knew English but not much Italian: "The other day, for instance, she wanted to say cauliflower in Italian, which is cavolf!ore, but her rendering made "I always close the porthole before I go to bed, as I would rather put up with the heat than receive a surprise visit from a fish." November-December 1996 Goldman ¯ Frances Cabrini it 'fiore-cavalli,' which is 'horses-flowers.' By expressing herself in this roundabout way, she was doubly charitable, for 'she gave me the opportunity of a good hearty laugh." That same year Mother Cabrini recounted her experience with the London underground: "We entered a small station. Having gotten our tickets, we stood with many others in what appeared to us a room, waiting to proceed, when suddenly we felt ourselves descending into the earth. Then there was a stop, and we found ourselves in a large subway, lighted by electricity. People began to run as if they were running for their lives, and without saying a word. So we too followed and took our places in the train, or rather trains, for there was a line of carriages which could not be counted in the light, for it was like night so deep down. We had hardly gotten into our compartment'when the train moved off, and, as quick as lightning, we found ourselves in the center of the city, having gone all the way underground. At the station we entered a lift, though owing to its large size it did not seem to be a lift. Then we rose and came out into the daylight." Mother Cabrini related the following on her 1900 voyage from Genoa to Buenos Aires: "At dawn this morning we arrived at M~laga . I thought I would like to make a little visit to the town, and, as everyone was buying the raisins of Mfilaga to take to Buenos Aires, I also secured a box as a memento of the place. But I had better luck than the others, who went into smart-look-ing shops to get theirs, where they had to pay more for the box than for the raisins. I, however, fixed my eye on a donkey coming down a small mountain, loaded with boxes of the celebrated grapes of that mountain. In the evening everybody returned with their beautiful and elegant boxes, and I with my rustic box . At table someone offered us a bottle of M~ilaga wine, find I, wishing to reciprocate, sent to the cabin to get one of the botdes that Mother Augustine had placed there. They asked if it was Mfilaga, 'Yes,' I replied, 'this is Mfilaga.' They enjoyed the joke, drank the.wine, and were surprised at its exquisite taste. They could scarcely believe that such good wine came from Piedmont." On this same 1900 voyage, Mother Cabrini wrote about her cabin: "It is very nicely situated in that part of the steamer where the rocking is little felt, and there is a porthole to the west which I can open at will. I have to keepit closed from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m., as the sailors clean the ship during these hours and throw water about heedlessly. The water often enters through the portholes Review for Religious and causes much inconvenience to those who are not expecting it. I always close the porthole before I go to bed, as I would rather put up with the heat than receive a surprise visit from a fish." All that has been said above will give you some idea of the modernness, and the humor, of Mother Cabrini. Perhaps we can visualize her today walking the corridors of the various institutions she founded, giving comfort and solace to those she meets. Or we can see her walking the streets of New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and all the other cities in both the United States and Central and South America where she founded missions, visiting the homes of Italian immigrants and asking about their lives and their children, assisting them in all the ways that were at her disposal. She did all these things in her life, but we might ask ourselves what made Mother Cabrini tick. I would say the love of God and serving him in his people was the driving force behind all Mother .Cabrini did. She literally left everything in order to find God more perfectly and to serve human beings.God gave her the graces and she generously corresponded. From her earliest days she had this "vision" of mis-sion, and she sacrificed all in order to carry it out. This involved constant interior self-denial, not the bodily mortifications of some of the saints, but a continual going against self in order to conform more perfectly to the will of God as she saw it in her regard and for the institute she founded. It was her contemplation, her communing with God, that gave her the energy to do all she did for others. But most of all she was a woman of faith. She had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and firmly believed that he did everything--she was just an instrument. The following passage in the Constitutions of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus expresses very well what made Mother Cabrini tick: "Mother Cabrini lived her experience of church with missionary fervor which captured her from the first Frances Cabrini was moved to action by the spirit of the Gospels, the word of the church expressed by the Holy Father, the cry of the suffering, the misery of the poor, ~ the tragedy of the abandoned. November-Decevnber 1996 Goldman ¯ Frances Cabrini moment she knowingly gave herself to God. It became the moti-vating force of her life. Strengthened by the Lord, nothing hin-dered her--not even the boldest undertakings--as long as it was justified by the greater glory of God and by her commitment to bring Christ to the world. Frances Cabrini was moved to action by the spirit of the Gospels, the word of the church expressed by the Holy Father, the cry of the suffering, the misery of the poor, the tragedy of the abandoned. Her courage and zeal, rising as they did from her loving communion with the Heart of Christ, impelled her to make her own St. Paul's motto: 'I can do all things in him who strengthens me.'" In proclaiming someone a saint at the conclusion of the care-ful process of canonization, the church tells the faithful that this person is worthy of imitation. The saints are our heroes, certainly more worthy of imitation than film or rock stars. In this brief essay I hope in some way I have shown you the humanness and modernness of Mother Cabrini. I hope, too, thatI have dispelled the notion that saints inhabit such a rarefied realm that they have no relevance for us. Mother Cabrini is very human and very approachable. She lived a life very similar to ours, in our century. She coped with many of the frustrations that we do, but with bet-ter motives, a better =attitude. We too can become saints, but it will take a lot of faith and a lot of love, not only of ourselves but of our neighbor. Knowing Mother Cabrini, we can ask her to help us attain this goal. By praying for her to assist us, we are asking a woman of our own times, a woman who understands what it is like to live in today's world. Icons i hear icons weep in our city their kingly gift of myrrh trickles down making holy faces glisten-glisten into sorrowing sorrowing the sorrow we refuse to bear Lou Ella Hickman IWBS Review for Religious M. BASIL PENNINGTON The Cistercian Martyrs of Algeria, 1996 )n 26 May 1996, from one end of France to the other, all across the land the bells tolled. It was a rather somber note for the glorious feast of Pentecost, Thousands stood in silence around the Eiffel Tower. It was a moment of remembrance, of pain, of joy, of awe. And yet in some ways it was strange that this should be tak-ing place. Since the early days of 1992, after an unpopular gov-ernment canceled an election it was slated to lose, blood had flowed freely in Mgeria. It was estimated that as many as fifty thousand had died in the guerrilla warfare, including at least a hundred citizens of other nations, some forty of them from France alone. Eleven priests and religious had been among those slain. But now, with the kidnapping and subsequent horrifying slaugh-ter of seven Trappist monks of Our Lady of Atlas, suddenly France and the world stopped to take note. Why? Because this was not just another moment in ongoing bloody events. It was a moment of exquisite love: "Greater 10ve than this no one has, than that one lay down one's life for one's friends."' These seven were, as the Trappist abbot general expressed it, "martyrs of love." Consciously, deliberately, these men remained among a chosen people to give an unfaltering witness of love, knowing full well what would be the probable outcome of their witness. M. Basil Pennington OCSO, a contributor to our pages since 1972, writes from St. Joseph's Abbey; 167 Spencer Road; Spencer, Massachusetts 01562. November-December 1996 Pennington ¯ The Cistercian Martyrs Who Were These Seven? The seven monks of Our Lady of Arias who gave their lives in a witness of love were, in fact, quite typical of today's Cistercians. They came from varied backgrounds, mostly the middle class, from different parts of France. Most of them began their monas-tic journey a bit later in life, after having served God's people in other ways. They entered three different French monasteries, but each in some way heard the call to go live a witness of love among the Muslims. In response to that call, they came together at Our Lady of Atlas Monastery, Tibhirine, and formed a "school of char-ity" under the tutelage of Father Christian de Chergd, the prior. All who knew the small community noted how closely these men were bonded in a true friendship. We are not surprised, then, when we learn that, as a student at the Carmelite seminary of Paris, Father Christian wrote his thesis on Christian friendship, a friendship that stands out by reason of its delicacy and its spir-itnal depth. Father Christian, .like others of the seven, first came to know Algeria and, its people during his military service. For twenty-seven months he was stationed there with significant administra-five responsibilities in service of the local population. He returned later as a monk to be another kind of presence, to give another kind of witness. After his ordination as priest, Father Christian had served for a time as chaplain at the great Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre, but his own heart sought something more. This he pursued at the ancient Cistercian Abbey of Aiguebelle in the foothills of the Alps in southeastern France and then, after some preparation with the White Fathers at Rome, with his Trappist brothers at Tibhirine. Christian was fifty-nine when he found the fullness of love he had always sought and laid down his life for his friends. Brother Luc Dochier, at eighty-two, was the senior of the " community. He was a medical doctor and brought this valuable skill not only to the community but also to people all around. The monastery's dispensary, which was tied in with the health department of the region, was the best for a hundred kilometers around. For all his learning--and he remained ever an avid reader ready to share with the brothers what he read--he was at heart a very simple man. The love of God was central, and love of neigh-bor consumed his working hours as he ministered to all who came. Father Cdlestin Ringeard, twenty years Luc's junior, was Review for Religious Brother's right-hand man. He was a man of energy and color. As a priest of the diocese of Nantes, his ministry had been in the streets; his flock, the alcoholics, the prostitutes, the gays. Like Father Christian, he had seen service in Algeria. In the medical corps he cared for the "enemy" as well as his own. With Brother Luc he cared for them again. Father C~lestin had entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Bellefontaine, in Maine-et-Loire, not far south of Paris. Bellefontaine is the motherhouse of Spencer. It was from there that in March 1984 he set out for Algeria with two others, Brother Michel Fleury and Father Bruno Lemarchand. Brother Michel was from a peas-ant family in Loire-Atlantique. He first heard the call to serve Christ in the poorest of the poor. He joined the Fr~res du Prado, who saw their life as living a "modern Trappist life in the midst of the poor." But soon enough Brother felt drawn to the fullness of the traditional Trappist life. When he joined the brothers at Our Lady of Atlas, he was given the task of com-munity cook. Michel was a simple man, a gentle man, yet very discrete. Curiously, when the abductors took the monks off, Brother managed to carry with him his monastic cowl and leave it along the route, giving the pursuers the sole indication of the direction in which the monks had been taken. Father Bruno, in a sense, no longer belonged to the commu-nity of Our Lady of Atlas. In 1990 he had been sent with three others to start a new little community of witness in Morocco near Fez. He had returned to Atlas a few days before the incursion of the guerrillas in order to take part in the election of a prior. He had brought with him to monastic life a rich background:. He had been a professor and then the head of the College of St. Charles of Thouars. His first experience of Algeria had come early in life when his father was assigned there as an army officer. Two of the martyrs came from the ancient Cistercian monastery hidden high in the French Alps, Notre Dame de Tamie. Born in the region, Brother Paul Favre-Miville was the son of a The monastery's dispensary, which was tied in with the health department of the region, was the best for a hundred kilometers around. November-December 1996 Pennin~ton ¯ The Cistercian Martyrs Savoyard blacksmith. It took him a long time to find his way to the monastery, but he came with skills that enabled him, when he got to Our Lady of Atlas, to set up a good irrigation system that served monk and neighbor alike in the cooperative gardens. His confrere from Tamie, Father Christophe Lebreton, at forty-five, was the youngest of the community. Coming from a family of twelve children--he was the seventh--he seemed to come naturally to monastic life. He was of a poetic nature, very much the lover, who expressed himself well in words, both in his journal and in poems. A mixed group, indeed, like that found in any Cistercian monastery, drawn together by a vision, a transcendent vision cen-tered on a particular, in this case, being a presence of Christ among a people that doe~ not yet understand who this incarnate God of love is. The Background Story The story actually begins over sixty years ago when the monks of Aiguebelle conceived the idea of implanting among the Muslims of Algeria a small community of monks who could be the praying heart of the Christian community in that country and also witness to Christ's love by their own lives of love. They found a site about forty-five miles south of the nation's capital, Algiers, near the city of M~d~a (Lemdiyya) at a place called Tibhirine. Although the community was fully committed to the traditional Cistercian con-templative life, along with many other third-world communities it extended monastic hospitality to providing some medical care for those who came to the monastery door. And, continuing the earliest Cistercian tradition, the brothers who worked the farm and gardens shared their expertise with their less fortunate neigh-bors, enhancing the human condition of these very poor people. As there was no possibility of local vocations, recruits had to be constantly sought in the form of volunteers from the Trappist monasteries of France. Thus the community enjoyed the enrich-ing presence of monks from a number of abbeys. In general, life was quite peaceful in the little monastery, though disturbed at times by the recurring wars. The latest period of disturbance began in December 1991, when the government suddenly canceled elections in which it seemed the fundamentalist Islamic party, the Islamic Salvation Review for Religious Front (FIS), would win control. The FIS formed a guerrilla force and was promptly outlawed. An even more radical group then formed in the mountains, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). It was this group that warned all foreigners to leave the country, and it began to indulge in periodic acts of terrorism. As the community of Atlas gathered to discuss what they should do in the face of this new warning and threat, they realized they were not the first Cistercian community to face such a chal-lenge. This was the case with the com-munities of Huambo and Bela Vista in Angola, Butende in Uganda, and Marija Zvijezda in Bosnia. For the monks of Atlas, the question became more acute when an armed band of the GIA, the "brothers from the mountain" as Father Christian called them, visited the monastery on Christmas eve in 1993. The guerrillas wanted to oblige the monks to collaborate with them through medical aid, economic support, and logistical help. In response the prefect of M4d~a offered the monks armed pro-tection and the possibility of moving from the monastery to a protected area. Through community discussions and votes during the following days, the monks decided to remain at Atlas, to decline armed protection so as to remain a sign of peace, and to reject any form of collaboration with the armed group except medical aid given only in the monastery dispensary. Father Christian sought to express the monks' position in a letter to the chief of the GIA, Sayah Attiya: Brother, allow me to address you like this, as man to man, believer to believer. In the pre~ent conflict in which our country is living, it seems to us impossible to take sides. The fact that we are foreigners forbids it. Our state as monks (ruhbfn) binds us to God's choice for us, which is prayer and the simple life, manual work, hospitality, and sharing with everyone, especially with the poor . These reasons for our life are a free choice for each one of us. They bind us until death. I do not think that it is God's will that this death should come to us through you . If one day the Algerians judge that we are unwelcome, we will respect their desire to see us leave. With very great regret I know that we will continue to love them all, as a whole, and that includes you. The community enjoyed the enriching presence of monks from a number of abbeys. Novonber-Deconber 1996 Penning'ton ¯ The Cistercian Martyrs When and how will this message reach you? It does not matter! I needed to write it to you today. Forgive me for having written in my mother tongue. You understand me. And may the only One of all life lead us! Amin. As the danger increased, in June 1994 the apostolic nuncio invited the monks to come and live at the nunciature. The broth-ers did not judge the time had come yet to abandon their monastery. When, on 23 October 1994, two Spanish Augustinian nuns were murdered at the entrance of the parish church, Father Christian wrote to the abbot general: The'communities of men seem to be standing by their option to remain. This is clear so far for the Jesuits, the Little Brothers of Jesus, all the White Fathers. It is also clear for us. At Tibhirine as elsewhere this option has its risks. That is obvious. Each one has told me that he wants to take them, in a journey of faith into the future and in sharing the present with neighbors who have always been very close friends of ours._The grace of this gift iis given to us from day to day, very simply. At the end of September we had another nocturnal "visit." This time the "brothers of the mountain" wanted to use our telephone. We pretended to listen in, then emphasized the contradiction between our way of life and any kind of complicity with what could harm the life of another. They gave us assurances, but the threat was there, supported by arms. (13 November 1994) On 16 December, after more cflreful and prayerful discussion, the brothers again took a vote to confirm their decisions. At this time the archbishop of Algiers, Henri Teissier, thanked them for taking the risk of prolonging their presence and their witness, telling them how significant was their presence of prayer and daily work in Tibhirine for the whole Christian community of Algeria. He thanked them for their fidelity and courage. The Testament of Father Christian It was during the previous Advent of 1993 that Father Christian had composed his "Testament," to be opened only after his death. This was done on 23 May 1996 when his and his bro,thers' passing was announced. There is no doubt but that this testament will be cherished as one of the great spiritual classics of the 20th century-- though surely that is not what this humble and transparent monk would ever have intended. Let us share it,with you in full: Review for Religious When an A-DIEU is envisaged. If it should happen one day--and it could be today--that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my church, my family, ¯ to remember that my life was given to God and to this country; ¯ to accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure; ¯ to pray for me--for how should I be found worthy of such an offering? ¯ to be able to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones that have been allowed to fall into the indifference of anonymity. My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any .case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I am an accom-plice in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, and even in that evil which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time comes, to have enough lucidity to beg forgiveness of God and of my brothers and sisters in the human family, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down. , I could not desire such a death~ It seems to me impor-tant to state this. I don't see, in fact, how I could rejoice if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder. It would be too high a price to pay for what will be called, perhaps, the "grace of martyrdom" to owe this to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam. I know the contempt in wtiich the Algerians as a whoie can be held. I know, too, the caricatures of Islam which ,encourage a certain Islamism. It is too easy to give oneself a good conscience in iden-tifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideology of its extremists. " For me, Algeria and Islam are something different: they are body and soul. I have proclaimed it enough, I think, seeing and know-ing what I have received from them, finding here so often that direct line bringing the gospel that I learned at my mother's knee, my very first church; finding it precisely in Algeria, and already in the reverence of believing Muslims. My death, obviously, will appear to justify those who Novevnber-Deconber 1996 Pennington ¯ The Cistercian Martyrs hastily judged me naive or idealistic: "Let him tell us now what he thinks of them!" But these .must know that at last my most insistent curiosity will be satisfied. For this is what I shall be able to do, if God wills: immerse my gaze in that of the Father to contemplate with him his children of Islam as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, fruit of his Passion, filled with the gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness in playing with the differences. For this life lost, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God, who seems to have wished it entirely for the sake of that joy in and in spite of everything. In this thank-you where, once and for all, all is said about my life, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you, 0 my friends of this place, at the side of my mother and my father, of my sisters and my brothers and their families--the hundredfold given as he had promised! And you, too, my last-minute friend, who would not have known what you were doing; yes, for you too I say this thank-you and this a-dieu--to commend you to the God in whose face I see yours. And may he grant to us to find each other, happy thieves, in Paradise, if it please.God, the Father of us both. Amen.t Inshallah.t Algiers, 1 December 1993 Tobhirine, 1.January 1994 Christian Has ever an executioner been addressed so lovingly: "my last-minute friend . , . I see your face in the face of God. may we find each other in Paradise"? The "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" of the Master is echoed with a fullness rarely heard in the long annals of discipleship. Greater love than this no one has. The Time Approaches Two more nuns were shot in Algeria on 3 September 1995. Ten missionaries had now been slain. After the funeral Father Christian wrote a letter to the abbot general in Rome: The celebration had a beautiful atmosphere of serenity and offering. It brought together a very small church, whose Review for Religious remaining members are perfectly conscious that the logic of their presen(+ must include henceforth the possibility of a violent death. It is for many a new and radical plunge, as it were, into the very charism of their congregation., and also a return to the source of the first call. For all that, all of us clearly desire that none of these Algerians, to whom our consecration binds us in the name of the love which God has for them, ever wound this love by killing any of us, any of our brethren. Lord, disarm me and disarm them. A few months later Father Christopher wrote these prophetic lines at the end of a poem: Finally, my friends, let's get it straight: I belong to him and follow his steps to the fullest truth of my Easter. On the night of 26-27 March 1996, Mohammed, the layman who helped the monks, was roused from his sleep--he lived with his family in a cottage at the gate of the monastery--by the "brothers of the mountain." They said they came for Brother Luc, the doctor, to take him to care for some of their men who were wounded. They crashed through into the monastery. When they demanded that Brother Luc come with them, Father Christian refused to allow it in view of Brother's age and serious asthmatic condition. With this the armed band rounded up all the monks they could find. Fortunately two were sleeping in another building and escaped capture, as did the priests and sis-ters in the guesthouse. The seven monks were carried off into the night and nothing further was heard of them until a London Arabic newspaper, A1 Hayat, published extracts from a communication of the GIA dated 18 April. It said that the emir did not recognize the aman, the protection that his predecessor accorded the monks; that it was illicit because the monks "have not ceased to invite Muslims to be evangelized, to display their slogans and symbols, and to com-memorate their feasts with solemnity." He went on, "Monks who live among the working classes can be legitimately killed . They live with people and draw them away from the divine path, urging them to be evangelized. It is also licit to apply to them what applies to lifelong unbelievers when they are prisoners of war: murder, slavery, or exchange for Muslim prisoners." Only later did the French government acknowledge that on 20 November-December 1996 Pennington ¯ The Cistercian Martyrs April the GIA had made a tape on which they required the seven monks to speak as proof that they were still alive. This tape was delivered to the government a week later. There were rumors of secret negotiations. But the monks would not have wanted to win their freedom at the cost of the lives of others, which would cer-tainly have been the case if the captured GIA terrorists were released to wreak more violence. The Martyrdom Although there had been some ambiguous statements from the French government in this regard, President Chirac stated formally on 20 May that there would be no negotiations with the terrorists regarding an "exchange of prisoners." This seems to have settled the mfitter. On 23 May, Radio Medi 1 in Tangiers read extracts from a GIA communiqud announcing that the seven monks had been beheaded on 21 May. Some doubt as to the verac-ity of this report lingered. But the French government, now admitting it had received the earlier secret communication from the GIA, confirmed the authenticity of the radio report. On Thursday evening, 23 May, in a powerfully symbolic act watched by millions on television, Cardinal Lustiger of Paris extinguished the seven candles which, in the presence of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders, he had lit seven weeks earlier as a prayer and a hope for the release of the seven monks. Muslim-Christian Relations The se'~en monks of Our Lady of Atlas had dedicated their monastic lives to furthering the growth of healthy and life-giving relations between Muslims and Christians, who shared faith in and worship of the God of our common father, Abraham. At first impulse one might say this sacrilegious butchery had decimated their life's mission. But in fact, according to the paradoxical logic of an all-loving God, it gave it a whole new impetus. Rabah Kebir, the leader of the Islamic Salvation Front, who had earlier demanded of the GIA the release of the seven monks, now spoke out most forcefully: "I strongly condemn this criminal act, which runs absolutely contrary to the principles of Islam." Kahdidja Khalil of the High Council of French Muslims went further: "We strongly condemn this savage and barbaric act. It is Review for Religious forbidden in the holy Koran to touch 'all servants of God,' and that means priests and rabbis as well." The High Council had issued a fatwa, a solemn religious decree, declaring the monks' abduction illegal and calling for a day of fasting to pray for their release. In his address on Pentecost to the faithful in the piazza of St. Peter's, Pope John Paul II said: "Despite our deep sorrow, we thank God for the witness of love given by these religious. Their fidelity and constancy give honor to the church and surely will be seeds of reconciliation and peace for the Algerian people, with whom they were in solidarity." Also on Pentecost Sunday, in a symbolically powerful gesture once again, Cardinal Lustiger relit the seven candles before the high altar of Notre Dame Cathedral as a sign of reconciliation, declaring that the monks had not died in vain, but rather "for life, for love, and for reconciliation." The Funeral The fullest confirmation of the sacrifice of the seven Trappist brothers came on 30 May, only a few hours before the abbot gen-eral's arrival in Algeria for the celebration in honor of the martyrs. That morning the mutilated remains of the seven monks were found in a heap beside the road not far from Mtdta. They had evi-dently been interred for a time at some other location. The remains were placed in very simple wooden coffins and taken to the military hospital in Algiers. There the abbot general had the sorrowful task of identifying the remains. On the same day as the remains were found, Cardinal L~on Etienne Duval, the father of the church in Algeria and a great friend and supporter of the monks, completed his life's journey at the age of ninety-two. His funeral Mass on 2 June would be one with the Mass in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Africa for his seven sons and brothers. The Holy Father sent Cardinal Francis Arinze to represent him and preside. The two surviving monks of Our Lady of Atlas, Fathers Jean-Pierre and Amedeus, stood at the altar with him, as did the archbishop of Algiers and the Trappist abbot general and procurator general. In the sanctuary were the cardinal archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Lustiger, three other French bish-ops, and five ministers of the Algerian government. Seven of Father Christopher's brothers and sisters were present. November-Dece~nber 1996 Pennin~ton ¯ Tbe Cistercian Martyrs Cardinal Arinze in his funeral oration amplified the words the Holy Father had used on Pentecost: "The monks suffered unheard of violence . They gave all men and women an exam-ple of total sacrifice in honor of God and religion . The monks of M6d6a established friendly relations with their Muslim neigh-bors. They offered their services, especially in the field of medicine . They also contributed to the development of spir-itual dialogue and in this way gave evidence that sincere Muslims and Christians are able to gather together and mutually enrich each other also in the sphere of the spirit." Two days later, on Tuesday, 4 June, a small party was trans-ported by helicopter to M6d6a and on to the now deserted monastery at Tibhirine under heavy military escort. The remains of the brothers had been brought there the day before. The Muslim villagers, who loved the monks and had so often benefited from their ministrations, had dug the seven graves in the ceme-tery by the monastic church. The funeral service within the church was simple and brief, that at the graveside even more so. No news media or outsiders had been allowed to come. The brothers were laid to rest with those of their community who had gone before. If these Trappist brothers have been singularly blessed in receiving the grace of martyrdom, in their heroic victory are not we all also singularly blessed? Their witness of steadfast faith and a love that does not flinch in the face of death not only inspires us, but wins for us the grace to follow their example, each in our own calling. We have all been baptized into the death of Christ. We live that death so that in death we may enter into his risen life, We can rejoice in the cruel death of these men because we know and believe they h~ve truly entered into that life, the life for which they longed with all their being. Review for Religious CATHY ARATA Death Questions and Life Questions Nila, short for Petronila, was a woman approaching fifty years of age when I first saw her, but to look at her one would have guessed that she was in her mid-sixties. There was little pleasure in her life, no leisure, lots of heartache, and plenty of hard work. It was now the end of September, and she had been suffering from a severe case of hepati-tis. Her doctor had told her many times that what she needed most was rest, but the doctor had no idea of the circumstances in which she lived and moved and had her being. Nila and her husband, daughter, and son lived in a small isolated village with fifteen other families. The vil-lage has no water and no electricity and is a steep, ardu-ous climb from anywhere else. All the houses are adobe, with tin roofs and earthen floors. There is no school, no health clinic, no store of any kind. To get her daily supply of water, Nila had to walk downhill for about fifteen minutes and then t.rudge uphill with a five-gallon jug of water on her head. She usually did this three times a day. When the housekeeping chores were done, she went to the stream to do the family wash. On the days that she needed firewood, it was another long walk to gather the wood and then return home carrying up to fifty pounds of it on her head. I had seen Nila a few weeks before. Her yellow eyes Cathy Arata SSND worked in El Salvador for seven years. Her present address is 6401 North Charles Street; Baltimore, Maryland 21212. November-December 1996 life and death Arata ¯ Death Questions and L~e (~uestions gave ,no doubt that she did indeed have hepatitis. But that was back in July, and now we were entering October. It was about 7:30 in the evening, and I had just driven into the village where I live. As I was getting out of the car, someone told me that Nila had just been carried down the mountain in a hammock and that she was seriously ill. At first I did not pay much attention. It had been a long day and I was tired. I wanted only to get into my lit-tle house, close the door, and not be bothered. I was also impa-tient at the expectation that I would go and visit her. Well, I did go and was taken off guard by what I saw when I arrived at the place where they had taken. Nila. It was a small one-room adobe house, dark inside with a candle or two burning. The family, too poor to have closets, had boxes of clothing piled on tables along the wall. There were three simple wood-frame beds; on each one sat three or four children. Nila was in the mid-dle of the floor on a straw mat. She was, I guess you could say, semiconscious, writhing in pain. The small house was crowded with neighbors who had come to gawk at her. Close to where she lay, there were ten or twelve chickefis scratching on the floor for a morsel to eat. I was angry and frustrated with all the people who were stand-ing around "doing nothing," probably because of my own com-pulsive need to do something. So, when Nila's brother asked me if I could drive her to the clinic about three miles away, I readily agreed to do so. I went for the car, and the men began to lift Nila into the hammock in order to carry her to a spot where I would be able to meet them with the car. It was about 8:30 p.m. and the clinic was closed. In E1 Salvador all doctors and teachers have to give one year of com-munity service after their schooling. The doctor of this little vil-lage was a government doctor and was not happy to see us when we went to her home to tell her we had a patient who needed help. She was undoubtedly as tired as I, and she angrily said, "Why didn't you come during hours?" But she relented. Nila's brother and her older daughter literally dragged her from the car to the clinic because, although she was still alive, she was dead weight. Recognizing immediately that she needed a hospital, the doctor was harsh and cold and scolded us for not coming sooner. Nila died the next day in the hospital in Ilobasco, a small city about an hour and a half away. Her older son, a guerrilla.during the war and now a member of the newly formed National Police, Review for Relig4otts was with her. He borrowed money to buy the simple, crude wooden box in which to carry her back to the village. The box, with the remains of Nila, was placed on the back of an old pickup truck and driven over a dirt road much in need of repair. The news of Nila's death jolted me because I was taken off guard, not only by her death, but also by my own coldness and lack of compassion. That evening, when I arrived at the house where the wake was to be held, most of the community had already gathered, and, as was the custom, the men were outside playing cards and drinking homemade liquor while the women and children were inside praying and singing devotional hymns. The coffin was in the middle of the floor, in the exact spot where I had found Nila two nights earlier. It had survived the journey from Ilobasco and was now surrounded by flowers of many kinds which the neighbors had brought from their gardens. Most of them were placed in "vases" of Nestl~ instant-milk cans. A candle burned at each corner of the coffin, which was so constructed that a small piece of glass made Nila's face visible. But, because the house was so hot, steam had formed on the inside of the glass, and her face could not be seen clearly. The chickens were scratching around, but no one seemed to notice. After all, it is not unusual to have chickens roaming through the house. Two pigs came in and were shooed away. As we prayed the rosary, my mind flashed to Jefferson City, Missouri, where at the same moment Mary Margaret Johanning, our former SSND international leader, lay dying. I could not help comparing the way Nila died and the way Mary Margaret was dying. Both women were too young to die, and both believed fervently in an all-loving God. Perhaps that is all they had in common. It seemed obvious that, as Mary Margaret died, her God was present to her in the doctors and nurses who tried to lengthen her life, using all the newest technology that medicine has to offer. God was present to her too in the hundreds of cards and notes she received from her sisters around the world. Above all, The news of Nila's death jolted me because I was taken off guard, not only by her death, but also by my own coldness and lack of compassion. November-December 1996 Arata ¯ Death Questions and Life Questions God was present in her devoted family and host of loving friends who accompanied her in her dying. And Nila? Was God present as she writhed on the earthen floor surrounded by chickens looking for a morsel to eat? When her husband arrived at the wake drunk and vomiting, swinging his .machete in the air, was God there too? Was God outside with the men who were drinking and playing cards? It seems as if God treats us all very differently, and for a long time I have been angry with this God of ours. I have been resent-ful and frustrated that God is not the God I think God should be! God should not allow such things as Nila's cruel poverty and harsh dying and death, nor should God allow wars and concen-tration camps and bullets and bombs and mortars that carry atroc-ities beyond human imagining. God should put a moratorium on those things insurance companies call "acts of God," such as earth-quakes, floods, typhoons, and hurricanes. I have been resentful toward myself, too, because I am pow-erless in the face of such evil. My resentment has shown itself in my impatience, my coldness, my frustration at not being able to do what God is not doing: changing unjust structures, wiping out poverty, replacing wars with lasting justice and peace, and con-trolling the forces of nature. The past few months I have been gifted by my community with some sabbatical time: time to step out of a very active min-istry spanning thirty-three years and reflect on the meaning of those years, time to pause long enough to quiet my own com-pulsive need to right the wrong in the world and, in the silence and space, allow God to intimate to me that I was forgetting who I was and that I was assuming the role that was properly God's! Most of my questions, though, remain: Why such evil in the world? Why such a disparity between those who are poor and those who are rich? Why such a disparity of natural resources from country to country? Why th

Issue 47.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 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. REVIEW 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 Sept./Oct. 1988 Volume 47 Number 5 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to R~.wEw EOR R~.LtGWOUS; 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 REVIEW ~o~t REI.IGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are 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. The Social Dimensions of Religious Ministry Joseph P. Daoust, S.J. This is a slightly revised version of Father Daoust's well-received address on August 13, 1986, to the thirtieth national assembly of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men. He has been his province's assistant for social ministries and higher educa-tion. At present he is on sabbatical in Africa and Asia and has no fixed residence, but he may be addressed at Jesuit Provincial Office; 7303 W. Seven Mile Road; De-troit, Michigan 48221. In a terrifying image of where our civilization is leading us, a prominent Italian writer envisions Western 'man (and woman) becoming like an earth-worm: a simple organism having only mouth, intestines, and anus, do-ing nothing but ingesting, digesting, excreting. ! It is an image of pro-ducing in order to consume, and consuming mindlessly in order to move what has been produced through our societal '.~'gut." Any kind of con-sumption will do, just as the earthworm moves any kind of soil through its intestinal tube. Indeed, that is how the earthworm (and Homo con-sumens) moves ahead in dark, dank, endless underground burrows-- consuming, producing, excreting. When indigestion sets in because of overproduction, war serves as a purgative,°consuming the detritus of ex-cess lives and goods, relieving the constipation of our maniacally pro-ducing and consuming system. Such is one vision of what we are doing to ourselves as a society. There is another vision of what society can become: [God] will reign over many peoples and arbitrate for mighty nations; and they shall beat their swords into pl6wshares,.and their spears into prun-ing hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit, everyone under his vine and un- 641 649 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 der his fig tree, and none, shall make them afraid; for the mo~th of the Lord of hosts has spoken it (Mi 4:3-4). In this vision, peace comes when each peasant has enough of the earth's goods for simple sustenance and can sit in quiet contemplation of the goodness of a just and beautiful world. All of this is achieved by learning God's ways and walking in God's path.2 Neither of these visions is fully realized in our world today. There are forces at work leading toward the first; the Spirit of God continues the age-old struggle to draw us toward the second. We are called as citi-zens of this age, as Christians, as religious, to invest our lives in help-ing our society make the ancient Deuteronomic choice: "I set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live" (Dr 30:19). Life is what the reign of God would bring about in our midst; the flowering of a society of justice and peace. The reign of God has profound social consequences. Justice and God's Reign: Scriptural Considerations in Scripture the reign of God is inextricably linked with social trans-formation. When Israel came to know Yahweh, it was as a God who heard their groaning in slavery and delivered them out of bondage (Dt 10:18-19). Remembering their own deliverance by God, the Israelites were bound in covenant not to oppress the poor or weak in their midst (Ex 22:21ff.). For Yahweh is a God who hears the cry of the poor (Ps 34:6). Again and.again Yahweh intervened through the prophets to call Israel back to this elemental demand: Is not th'is the sort of religious p?actice that pleases me?--it is thb Lord Yahweh who speaks--to break unjust fetters and Undo the thongs of the yoke, to let'the oppressed go free., to share your bread with the hun-gry and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be na-ked and not turn from your own kin? Then will your light shine like the dawn and your wound be quickly healed over. Your in.tegrity will go be-fore you and the glory of Yahweh behind you (Is.58:6-8; see also 1: 16, 10:1, 42:5). The religions and gods of the ancient Near East were primarily con-cerned with the legitimation of the established order of things3 (a func-tion still all too current today!), Imperial power, divinely ordained class structures, codes of behavior which reinforced "the way things have al-ways been"--these were the trappings of (eligions whose gods could be captured in images, located in certain sacred places, and therefore con-trolled. The divine power was thus subject to purchase (propitiation), Social Dimensions of Ministry / 64:3 able to be administered and routinized so as to support society's estab-lished ways of proceeding. Israel in the Old Testament is constantly tempted to refashion God in controllable images. Royal leaders and wealthy classes are portrayed as the initiators of this "whoring after' other gods" so as to legitimate their oppression, wars, and sumptuous ways. What distinguishes ancient Israel from surrounding societies is the constant intrusion of an imageless God, who refuses to dwell in temples or in"gold idols fashioned and controlled by the powerful. Yahweh dwells only ineffably on high, and with the lowly (Is 56: 15). Israel's God is dis-engaged from the ways of worldly power and identifies over and over again with the marginal, the dispossessed in society.'~ Indeed the iden-tity of this imageless God cannot be captured in traditional religious ways, but is expressed only by what Yahweh does--primarily acts of so-cial liberation: I am Yahweh . . . who delivered you from bondage (Ex 20:1), who loves j,ustice (Ps 99:4), who sees justice done for the orphan and widow, who answers the poor and needy (Ps 86:1 ), who chooses the weak (Dt 7:7), who reduces princes to nothing, and annihilates the rulers of the world (Is 40:23). Jesus spends his public ministry extending the good news of God's compassion and reign to all. It was a scandal to his contemporaries that he especially~ included suspect classes (shepherds, publicans, tax collec-tors), social outcasts (lepers, prostitutes, adulterers, Samaritans), and the poor. He went to his death coffsciously assuming the role of the Suffer-ing °Servant of Yahweh, knowing that this was the only way to bring about the reign of his Father. Some sought his death because he reso-lutely presented an unconventional, iconoclastic face of God Ioying the outcast, the db'wntrodden, the poor--"He has blasphemed.'~ Others sought his death because' his proclamation of God's justice threatened the social order.5 The Scriptures, then, portray a God who cares passionately about jus-tice, indeed even a "pain-embracing" God6 who acts in solidarity es-pecially with the oppressed and the marginalized. Christ in his ministry and message seals this revelatioh of God constantly acting in the world so as to bring about its transformation. The Gospels close with Christ risen inviting us down through the ages to "Follow me." Justice and God's Reign: Cultural Considerations Down through the ages the Church has wrestled with that impera- 644 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 tive with varying degrees of success. Like the Israelites of old, the Church is often tempted to replace the radical, transforming call of the Gospel with something more palatable to the cultural and social powers that be. Oppressive divisions of wealth and power, wars to protect these divisions, sumptuous living for some and dire poverty for others--these still need legitimation as of old. The idols which legitimate today are ide-ologies, social and economic theories, materialism and consumerism apo-theosized as a way of life. Idolatry in a literate society is more likely to use words than precious metals to achieve its effects. But religion is still being domesticated so as to legitimate and maintain, rather than confront, these idolized patterns of injustice. One hundred fifty years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville visited America and found our culture and social institutions permeated with a new idea: Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citi-zen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself . They form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands . Each man is forever thrown back upon himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.7 This individualism intersected congruently, then as it does now, with the competitive pursuit of self-interest, defined in terms of material well-being. But de Tocqueville found these social "habits of the heart" coun-terbalanced and modulated by a strong tradition of biblical faith, with its emphasis on self'-sacrifice for the common good, supported by the re-publican virtues of our early democracy: public duty and civic equity. Modern commentators have found these modulating forces to be with-ering, and individualism, competition, and rampant pursuit of material self-interest becoming exclusive social preoccupations.8 Individualism, like any other human creation, has much to recommend it, much human value. But when it becomes absolute, unquestioned, unfettered, it dis-torts and truncates human interaction. Its idolization creates and sustains injustice in society on a mass scale. Recent studies of American life and religious values have shown the distortions that unfettered individualism produces ir~ our cultural patterns of faith and religion.9 Historically., the disestablishment of religion America may have helped compartmentalize religious faith away from public social concerns. But religious individualism has been the moving force for the privatization of religious faith and practice. Social and cul- Social Dimensions of Ministry / 645 tural patterns of our society have been immunized from religious critique or challenge in the faith of many. Religion is felt to deal only with per-sonal or family issues; it intersects with public policy only to challenge it if' it intrudes on these narrow issues. Other social policies and struc-tures, individualism itself, materialism, the competitive economic envi-ronment- all are beyond the competence of religious critique. God and faith have no relevance in the marketplace, the business or political world, or anywhere outside the "soft" inner realm of the personal and the familial. In fact, religion blesses "the way things are" in these secu-lar real-world social settings. It legitimates them and the results they bring about, as effectively as the compartmentalization of religion to tem-ple worship and sacrifices did in ancient Israel, with consequent uncon-cern for the oppressed, the hungry, the poor. Religion is seen culturally by most as an idiosyncratic choice, a strictly personal preference or conviction as to which "brand" each per-son would like to "consume." And American consumers of religion largely choose a faith distorted by cultural forces so as to give them res-pite from social chaos and from a sense of social destiny beyond their control. They do this by retreating inward, to focus on the inner self, or by retreating outward, to externally imposed structure coming, they be-lieve, directly from God. The first of these privatized patterns of religion, the dominant U.S. cultural preference, is the retreat inwards to the inner self. ~0 Personal ex-perience of one's inner self is the one secure basis for religious mean-ing. Self-realization, personal growth, is the highest aspiration. There is a great similarity to the goals and language of psychological therapy. Re-ligious practice is spiritual utilitarianism: "What's in it for me?" Spiri-tual experience is primarily individual and prescinds from the world and its problems. The world and even God are seen in terms of their impact on this inner self. Morality is individualistici commitments to others, to the world, are transient: "s(~ long as it feels right or helps me grow." The Church can be reduced to a kind of spiritual Kiwanis Club or psy-chological. therapy group in the individual's pursuit of self-fulfilling ex-perience. The second pattern of religious individualism is no less privatized. It is more prevalent among the less affluent, or among those whose self-image is not strong enough to found religious meaning there. Faith is placed in sources of meaning external to self and the real world. God speaks from "outside'"the ordinary world (and the inner self), directly giving rules and tenets which, if they are rigidly adhered to, will bring 646 / Review~or Religious, September-October 1988 about salvat.ion of the obedient individuai--there is little hope for the world. Fundamentalist adherence to biblical texts, magistral father fig-ures, or traditions gives meaning and some sense of security in a bewil-dering social Order. Morality is personalistic rather than societal; it deals with interpersonal and family relations in clear, simple answers; it leaves unchallenged the sociocultural setting in which these are played out. The world, society at large, is either beyond question or beyond salvation. In either case, faith has little to say to it. ., Both of.these cultural patterns of religion, therapeutic withdrawal to the inner self and sectarian withdrawal to external structure, are the prod-uct of individualism. It is individualism retreating from confrontation with a chaotic, seemingly uncontrollable social environment. Material-ism, competitive pursuit of self-interest, ruthless power pervade the secu-lar realm of business, politics, the media. Recent rapid shifts in social structures and paradigms destabilize a cultural setting already inhospita-ble to traditional religious values. Individuals, frightened, isolated, pow-erless, withdraw from the imperatives of biblical faith which might re-quire them to confront these social forces to work for the new creation of God's reign. A religion of inner escape or outer control seems to of-fer a haven from the heartless world. But both forms of religion lack the ability to integrate the self and/or God with the surrounding society. Per-sonalized religious experience supplants the "mighty acts of Yahweh" as the basis for belief. And such faith is fragile, fading when the per-sonal experience fades. There is only a faint hold on commitments, to faith itself and to the other-centered giv.ing which builds on faith. Church, rather than being the fundamental sacrament of God's insertion into the world, becomes a community of convenience or of protection from the world. In solipsism or sectarian withdrawal, religion stands apart from worldly matters. It is a pale shadow of robust biblical faith: the faith of a people on mission from a world-transforming God. This description of American religious behavior is not just the way millions.of lay believers of all religious backgrounds practice their faith. These are tidal forces affecting the faith life of all of us as members religious orders and congregations. We are equally tempted to withdraw from the fullness of biblical faith into therapeutic blandness or rigid struc-turalism. We too can live more easily with these idolized forms of relig-ion, which neither do justice nor admit the injustice of such unconcern. Religious life itself can become an enclave for self-realization or secu-rity, safely compartmentalized away from the rigors of God's call and mission to a troubled world wracked by social sin. Which one of us has Social Dimensions of Ministry / 64"/ not felt keenly the longing to huddle, Jonah-like, even in the belly of a whale, rather than face Nineveh? Justice and God's Reign: New Directions But also in our lifetimes as religious, we have witnessed a remark-able movement of God's Spirit. It is transforming the Church and relig-ious life, calling us again to our biblical roots. The God who cares pas-sionately about this world, who hates idols and the injustice they le-gitimate, is neither absent nor sitting quietly in a culturally designed com-partment. Embracing the pain of the poor and the marginalized, God broods over our bent world "with warm breast and with ah! bright wings." ~ In Vatican II, the Church chose to position itself as a people in serv-ice to the world, seeking to transform it in the biblical image of God's justice. ~- The 197 ! Synod of Bishops specified this further: J~stice and participation in the transforming of the world fully appear to us ~s a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel, or, 'in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation (Justice in the World, no. 6). The social teaching of the Church has gone~ beyond a reformist long-ing for organic, static society. In ,.magisterial teaching and theological de-velopment there is the commitment to struggle for and with the margi-nhlized to achieve justice. The spiritual is not compartmentalized from the affai'rs of this world, but integrated as a critical, driving force to shape '~'a new earth where justice will abide.''~3 In'theory and in prac-tice, from Medellin to the Philippines, in our inner cities and in recent pastoral letters of U.S. Bishops, we have witnessed the Church exercis-ing the ancient 'special love of Yahweh for the poor. ~4 Our challenging mission is newly clear, as are the many social forces which oppose it. It is the mission of our "pain-embracing" God, it is the mission of Christ see~king the reign of God.' It is fresh and new in our age, and as old as the prophets: "This is wfiat Yahweh asks of you, only this: to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God" (Mi 6:8). What Justice Requires But what does it mean to do justice'? or to transform the world? or change social structures? The justice which flows :from faith in Yahweh has a dynamic, trans- 648 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 formative quality. Subtle philosophical distinctions may be appropriate for impartial, uninvolved observers. But there is a simplicity and stark-ness to biblical justice questions, which are raised in God's name from peasants (Amos, Micah), slaves (Moses), and exiles. ~5 The royal circles of Egypt, Jerusalem, or Rome are preoccupied with questions of pros-perity (how to get more) or security (how to keep it). The prophetic voices from below demand that freedom, sustenance, places of dignity in the community be given (back) to every one Of God's chosen people. Everyone has a right to these goods, as a birthright from God who cre-ated and gave them all to the community in the ~fi~:st place. God will act to make things right again if those in power will not listen. The primary expectation of God from Israel is the doing of justice, in this sense sharing with or restoration to those on the margin of society: the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor. Every other ethical norm or covenan-tal requirement flows from this reading of social reality. There is to be a redistribution of social power and goods to achieve a society where all can sit under their own vine and fig tree, with no one to trouble them. Or as gentle Mary puts it in Luke: "[God] has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly. The hungry he has filled, with good things, the rich sent empty away" (Lk 1:52-53). The pastoral letter of the U.S. bishops, Economic Justice for All, contains an eloquent articu-lation of what justice requires in our times. The scriptural section of that letter is especially worth meditating upon, to touch i'nto our faith as the force which moves us to justice. The religious reality described there can be summarized as the community of the human race--the community in which and through which God creates each of us as individiaals-- building community. This community is given all of creation to enjoy, and God's love be-sides. In response, God asks in covenant that the community be com-mitted to care for one another, that they show the same resilient love (he-sed) and solidarity toward each other that God has Shown them, The touchstone of this solidarity, from the time of the prophets, has been whether the community cares for those at the margins of society, those without power to demand a share of what the community has been given by God. This preferential option for the poor is as ancient and as crucial to the covenant as Yahweh's earliest commands to Israel concern-ing the widow, the orphan, the stranger in the land (Ex 22:20; Dt 10:.18). In fulfillment of the covenant, the community needs to do more than distribute food and clothing to the poor~ It has to bring ,them in from the margins, allowing them to participate in the creative life of the commu- Social Dimensions of Ministry nity. Then they can provide for themselves in dignity and will no longer be marginalized. In this, the pastoral letter goes beyond the usual em-phasis, in Catholic practice, on works of charity. These are seen to be insufficient since the poor have a right to a creative place in society, not just to be passive recipients of our largess. Bringing the marginalized into full participation in community life will, of course, build up the community itself. It will then be more able to show solidarity to those still at the margin, bringing them into fuller participation, and so forth. The cycle of response to the covenant is also the cycle of the community regenerating and building itself up as a soci-ety of justice. The ~uli religious insight is that, in this dbing of justice to one another, God is made present, is found, is worshiped at the cen-ter of this communal re-creation. Faith and justice reinforce each other, even merge, as God moves us to transform our society. This cycle de-scribes positively how God cails us through justice to renew the face of the earth. But there is also resistance to the Spirit of God; it creates injustice in the structures of society and reverses the cycle of creating a commu-nity of justice. A community can tear itself apart by denying meaningful participation to the poor, ignoring the increasing masses of the margi-nalized, replacing communal solidarity with relentless pursuit of self-interest. This injustice the Spirit of God calls upon us to confront, for the Spirit "convinces the world concerning sin and justice and judg-ment" (Jn 16:8).~6 A practical example may clarify how social structures can resist trans-formation. Some one hundred fifty years ago, the Jesuits in Maryland owned slaves. When Jesuit authorities in Rome remonstrated with them over this situation, the American Jesuits responded that the slaves were being very well cared for and, indeed, would likelY suffer much worse if they wei'e given their freedom and turned loose in American society. The Jesuits of Maryland missed seeing the social structure--slavery-- which needed to be transformed, and focused on the personal dimension of care the slaves received. It seems so evident now, but to those en-meshed in the toils of unjust social structures, they often seem "natu-ral," "the way things are,", unquestionable and unconfrontable. The U.S. bishops of the last century were also unable to confront slavery as an institution until the Civil War settled the question for everyone. ~7 One wonders if the terrible price of that war would have been paid had the churches and religious .people of the land not resisted, by and large, the call of the Spirit to transform the structure of slavery. 650 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 While it is clear that God can work to bring good even from wars and great social cataclysms, this is not the way in which the Spirit of God desires to achieve the transformation of the world. The model of the Suf-fering Servant of Isaiah becomes normative for us in the cross of Jesus. Justice is a constitutive element of what the reign of God is about, but "suffering with" the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized is the man-ner of achieving God's jus.tice. We are called to follow our "pain-embracing" God, and our crucified Lord, in confr6nting the evil of this world. It is a manner far different from ou~ ordinary human institutions of violence, vengeance, and material power. God's ways are not ours, and God's just,~'ce cannot be fully achieved w. ithout a~lopting God's ways. Principles of Ministry for the Reign of God If I have been at all clear, it seems to me that two principles flow from what has been developed thus far. I would like to make these two principles explicit, go on to a couple practical strategies for implement-ing them, and then conclude with three sets of questions for considera-tion. What God has done for us and what God asks of us create a first prin-ciple. An essential part of the reign of God is justice, specifically the jus-tice which flows from living out a faith in Yahweh, faith in Jesus. There-fore, followers of Christ should have a concern for justice as a central focus of all their ministries. There are not justice ministries separate from other ministries, any more than there can be ministries separated from faith. Faith and justice are the complementary core of all Christian min-istry. Secondly, the "pain-embracing" love of God, especially inclusive of the marginalized in soc.iety, characterizes the ministry of Jesus "even unto death, death on a cross." The followers of Jesus are missioned to work for the reign of God in like fashion: through experiencing the strug-gle for justice "from below," at the sidle of the downtrodden, accept-ing the conflict or defeat which that entails, believing in the way of the Suffering Servant who is the Lord. Practical, Strategies The following suggestions are practical strategies for implementing these two principles. They are not new, but they might be helpful~ 1. Reflection on mihistry, and particularly on the justice dimension of ministry, should be based on experience. We experience the living God in ~'the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men [and women] of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way Social Dimensions of Ministry / 651 afflicted.'? ~8 Christ dies and rises again for us in sharing the struggles and visions of real people. Experience draws us beyond ideologies and preconceptions; it energizes us for our quest for the reign of God. But the experience must be reflected upon. Stream-of-consciousness ministry may be personally vivifying, but it does not help us understand the social forces that create what we experience, or how we habitually respond. Social analysis can gradually remove the limitations of our cul-tural blinders and make us more critically aware of the social structures which must be transformed to "make clear the way of the Lord" (Mr 3:3). But so~zial analysis is often sterile, immobilizing, unless it is joined with faith and reflection on what God is saying to us. Relating both our experience and our analysis to the wellsprings of our own faith life en-ergizes us to act, and inspires us to discern how to act, for the reign of God. Our ministry is, then, m~ade reflective and revivifieO. And it gives us. further experience, which can be further reflected upon, leading to fur-ther inspiration and discernment. And so on. Many of you will recognize this process for reflection on ministry. It has been variously called the hermeneutic circle, the circle of praxis, or the pastoral cycle. 19 It is a methodology for moving steadily and re-flectively toward more authentic ministry. It may sound a little ominous at first, with terms like "social analysis" and '.'theological reflection." But it can be done very simply. It has been effective among illiterate peas-ants. 2° All of us ought to be able to do it. As a strategy for ongoing re-flection on ministry, it is.best when done communally, as a form of com-munal discernment. 2. In all ministries, there is the opportunity to experience the joys, hopes, griefs, and anxieties of ordinary people. But at least in orders like the Jesuits, most ministerial settings provide scant opportunity to come into contact with the poor and the marginalized. This should not mean that these ministries are exempt 'from the imperatives of justice-seeking or that they are unable to carry out ministry for the reign of God authen-tically. Ministries such as education or pastoral work with middle- and upper-class publics can seriously commit themselves to the work of con-scientization for the reign of God. These ministries deal with those who exercise power and influence over "the way things are"; their publics can bring about or at least come to tolerate changes in the social order which lead toward justice for the marginalized. It is a crucial element of the mission of all these ministries to communicate the call of the liv-ing God for solidarity, especially with the marginalized, and to urge con- 659 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 sistently that social injustices be transformed to bring about the reign of God. But particularly in these ministries, the lack of any lived experience of the poor or oppressed strengthens ct]ltural-religious tendencies toward therapeutic blandness or conformist externalism. We should attempt to build into these ministries, and into the lives of their publics, some ex-perience of real people living at the margins, victims of unjust social con-ditions. There are immersion programs, social-service projects, inte-grated discussion groups, and other forms of contact between people whom our social structures tend to isolate from each other. Such ex-periences will often be episodic, ephemeral, perhaps even seem voyeur-istic. But they can be honed to a finer edge of reality if they are carried out in cooperation with people who are in consistent, full-time ministry or presence among the poor. Within religious congregations we can leaven all our ministries by missioning some of our best people to ministry among the poor, asking them to share with all of us the insights and challenges of their lived ex-perience. The enlivening experience of God present at the margins can be corporate, shared by brothers or sisters in widely divergent ministries, if conscious efforts are made to foster such sharing. For this leavening to occur, it is important that the religious we mission to ministry among the poor be among our best, mainstream people willing and able to in-teract with a wide range of our corporate membership. My experience has been that we too often allow the lone rangers, the disaffected, the angry, or the difficult to wander off in ministry to the poor. Or we so isolate good folks sent into difficult ministries of social justice that they burn out quickly. As religious communities we can become more effec-tively present with the poor, with consequent enriching of all our apos-tolates, if we will take care to engage in such ministry corporately and reflectively. Mere presence among the marginalized does not guarantee any re-flective stance, in terms of either social analysis or theological reflec-tion. There is ample evidence of religious, ministering regularly among the poor, who never question the social structures which afflict their peo-ple. Or worse, they adopt a benevolent one-way relationship of "giv-ing" to the poor, rather than living with and learning from them about the reality of God. To counter these tendencies, itis helpful to be in con-tact with those engaged in the direct ministry of social change, challeng-ing some aspect of social injustice from an integrated faith perspective. As a full-time occupation, religious ministry for social change is rare Social Dimensions of Ministry / 653 this country. There is every indication that God's spirit is calling us, through the Church, to make it more prevalent. But it is unlikely to be-come a dominant mode of ministry in any religious congregation. That does not mean that a few good men or women could not be missioned, in each of the larger ~ongregations, to engage in this newly urgent min-istry. Not only will this serve social transformation for the reign of God; it can helpail our ministries become more competent to deal with the so-cial and theological questions most pressing in our society. Small or large religious congregations can relate to interreligious social-justice centers in most major cities of the United States. And individuals in any minis-try can become advocates of social change in one area or another, as par-ticipants in coalitions of concerned people devoting time and energy out-side their ordinary works to transforming society.2~ There should be no religious congregation so burdened with maintaining historical com-mitments that it cannot find ways to mission at least some key members to collaborative or part-time work for social justice, so as to leaven the entire ministry of the group. In this strategy, then, every ministry can participate in some level of social action for the reign of God: conscientization of the more afflu-ent and powerful, ministry of presence and social service among the marginalized, direct ministry for social change of unjust social structures. Having all three levels of social ministry within a congregation, if there is communication and cross-fertilization among them, can enrich the mis-sion of all for the reign of God. Even where all three levels are not pos-sible, much the same effect can be achieved by collaboration with other religious and lay people committed to working for the transformation of society. No matter which ministries are present within a congregation, all must become imbued with a central concern for social justice. The reign of God and the love of Christ draw us all to this. Some Questions for Consideration Let me turn now to three sets of questions, for which, I assure you, I have no answers. But they may be worth wrestling with in thinking about the future of religious life. I. Most religious congregations had as part of their founding charism a special concern for ministry among the poor.22 Most of our congrega-tions several generations ago ministered mainly among the poor in Amer-ica: immigrant Slavs and Germans, Italians and Irish, still on the mar-gins of American society. Why now are the vast majority of American male religious working in ministries for the more affluent? Was it a form 654 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 of ministerial "bracket creep," where we drifted up the income ladder along with the traditional publics we served, moving with them in from the margins of American society? If we were to decide anew about where to focus our ministries, what might the Spirit call us to do for the reign of God? 2. Most young men and women coming into reiigious life have been formed by American sociocultural conditioning. They look to religion to foster their own self-realization or to shelter them from the world's turmoil through external authority. Our older veterans of religious life are subject to these same alluring siren songs of American cultural relig-ion. Doour models of early and continuing formation, with their empha-sis on psychosocial development or on external structures of religious life, challenge cultural limitations of religious belief and practice? How much therapeutic self-nurturing or sheltering in external authority do we allow? How can we transcend these tendencies in order to instill full bib-lical faith, which integrates God, society, and self? How form religious for mission, to join our suffering, pain-embracing God in transforming the world? 3. The last set of questions is not mine. They come from Archbishop Weakland when he was asked how Jesuits could help implement the so-cial vision of the Economic Pastoral. :His response went something like this: (a) You Jesuits have a lot of access to the powerful in society. They are your alumni, counselees, fellow board members. You turn to them to support~your own works. Will you use that access to power on behalf of the marginalized and their agenda of justice? (b)You Jesuits have ex-perience of the third world, knowledge of the marginalized. Will you bring that forcefully into the consciousness of the American people, who are so woefully ill-informed about the struggles and attitudes of the poor? (c) There are many good young people, in business, the professions, or factories, who are dissatisfied with what our society offers. They want to remain lay men and women, but long for a way of life, a vision, more consonant with the Gospel. Can you imagine, and then image credible lifestyles and life goals for these lay Christians? Archbishop Weakland's q'uestions are generalizable, I would think, for almost any religious con-gregation. Conclusion ¯ I would like to observe, in conclusion, that fait.h does not seem to be a question at the margins of society. Faith in God is very much alive in the third world and in the inner city. There the overwhelming ques-tions are those of justice. Faith seems most fragile and in doubt in the Social Dimensions of Ministry / 655 sterile, cluttered tunnels of our earthworm society of affluence. Faith with-ers here, though we overnurture it with self-concern, though we fence it in with our fears. But faith in the living God is a wild thing. It thrives at the margins, where struggle and hope for God's justice blaze brightest. If we go there, our own religious life may be rekindled, as we join our God in renewing the face of the earth. Let us go, then, without guilt or rage. Let us go in joy because our God draws us, calls us to join the struggle there for the transformation of the world. There, too, we shall meet the love of our lives, Jesus the Lord. NOTES ~ Alberto Moravia, The Red Book and the Great Wall (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968);' pp. 12-21. -~ Mi 4:2. See Walter Brueggemann, "Vine and Fig Tree: A Case Study in Imagina-tion and Criticism," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 43 (1981): 188-204. 3 See W. Brueggemann, '~OId Testament Theology as a Particular Conversation: Ad-judication of Israel's Socio-Theological Alternatives," Theology Digest 32:4 (1985): 302-325. This excellent study of the conne~ztion between Old Testament theophany and justice in the social order was the Bellarmine Lecture at St. Louis University in 1985. I am indebted to it for many of the insights in this scriptural section. 4 See Norman Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh (Orbis, 1979), chapter 49: "Mutual Reinforcement of Yahwism and Social Egalitarianism." 5 Jn 11:48-51. See Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads (Orbis, 1978), pp. 201 ff. 6 The term is Brueggemann's. See his "A Shape for Old Testament Theology: Em-brace of Pain," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 47:3 (I 985): 395-415. 7 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, first published 1835-1840. Quota-tion is from Anchor Books edition (1969), pp. 506-510. 8 See J. F. Kavanaugh, Following Christ in a Consumer Society (Orbis, 1981), or his address to this Assembly in 1985: "Religious Life and Leadership in the Con-text of American Culture." From a different perspective, see Daniel Bell, The Cul-tural Contradictions of Capitalism (Basic Books, 1976). 9 An outstanding example of such studies is Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart (Univ. of California Press, 1985). I have relied upon it heavily for this section: ! cannot recommend it highly enough. Another recent study of religious and social trends concurs with much of Bellah's findings: see J. Chittister and M. Marty, eds., Faith and Ferment (Augsburg/Liturgical Press, 1983). ~0 See Bellah, op. cir., pp. 235ff. ~ The phrase is from G. M. Hopkins's poem, "'God's Grandeur" (1877). ~2 See especially Gaudium et Spes, nn. I-3 and passim. ~3 Gaudium et Spes, n. 39. See C. Curran, "Catholic Social Ethics: A New Ap-proach'?" Clergy Review (Feb.-Mar. 1985). 656 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 ~'~ On the history of the preferential option for the poor, see D. Dorr, Option for the Poor: A Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teachings (Orbis, 1983). ~5 See Brueggemann, Parks, and Groome, To Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Hum-bly: An Agenda for Ministers (Paulist Press, 1986), a fine series of reflections on the Micah text and on justice. m6 See Pope John Paul ll's two recent encyclicals on sinful social structures, Domi-hum et Vivificantem (1986), no. 56; and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1988), passim. ~7 See Doris Gottemoeller's talk to this Assembly in 1985: "Challenges to Relig-ious Leadership from a Changing U.S. Church," p. 7. ~8 Gaudium et Spes, no. 1. 19 As developed, respectively, by Juan Segundo, The Theology of Liberation (Or-bis, 1976); by Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppzessed (Herder & Herder, 1970); and by Holland & Henriot, Social Analysis (Center of Concern, 1984). The last has a simple, practical treatment in chapter I. 20 See Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname (Orbis, 1979). 2~ Examples nationally include: Amnesty International, Bread for the World, Catho-lic Worker, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Interfaith Action for Economic Justice, Just Life, Network, Pax Christi, to name only a few. There are countless local and regional grouPs as well. 22 From a brief survey of the self-descriptions of U.S. male religious groups listed in the latest vocation guide, Ministries for the~ Lord: A Resource Guide and Direc-tory of Catholic Church Vocations for Men (Paulist Press, 1985), this seems to be true for the great majority of nonmonastic religious congregations of men. I'd Love to, Lord, But. Paul Wachdorf Father Wachdorf's "Leading People into Prayer" appeared in our May/June 1988 issue. His address remains the same: University of Saint Mary of the Lake; Munde-lein, Illinois 60060. In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 4, Jesus returns to his home town of Naza-reth, goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and reads from the prophet Isaiah: The spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore, he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and release to prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the Lord (Lk 4:18-19). These words give a tone and a direction to the public ministry Jesus was about to begin. In 1971, the Synod of Bishops meeting in Rome produced a docu-ment entitled Justice in the World in which they state: Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemp-tion of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation (Justice in the World, Synod of Bishops, Second General Assembly, Nov. 30, 197 I). The teachings and the ministry of Jesus and the teachings of the Church have consistently proclaimed that action on behalf of justice is not simply an option, not just a matter of personal preference or inter-est, but is an integral part of the gospel message and the Christian life-style as we are called upon to live it. 657 Review for Religious, September-October 1988 Given the crucial importance of this ministry in the Church and in the world today, I would like to reflect on my own journey into and ex-perience of the ministry of social justice from two viewpoints. First, I will look at some of the common resistances people encounter in them-selves as they hear the gospel challenge of social justice. Then, I want to examine some possible steps which people might profitably pursue to help them break through their resistances and respond more fully to the challenge of social justice. Intellectual Assent vs. Active Participation For the past seven years I have worked with the social justice pro-gram at Mundelein Seminary. Prior to that, I served in a parish for six years. During my years in a parish, I always gave intellectual and verbal assent to the principles of social justice. After all, how could I as a priest do otherwise? But as I look back on those years, I realize that my no-tional assent was not often translated into real and different patterns of behavior. Practicing what I preached about social justice was no simple task, although I did not realize that at the time. Resistances, Excuses, Rationalization~ After my appointment to the seminary, I was elected as the faculty representative for our Peace and Justice Committee. Frankly, I was not enthused about this appointment. But since ! felt somewhat insecure in my new environment and in my new work, it seemed to be an offer I could not refuse. I began to think about my commitment and involvement, l won-dered, "What am I supposed to do?" Soon I recognized within me sev-eral resistances, excuses, and rationalizations. In the past, they had kept me from becoming involved in the ministry of social justice in any sig-nificant way. I wanted to say yes to the Lord and to respond to the call of social justice. But my excuses kept getting in the way. At that point, I realized that 1 would have to critique my resistances with honesty through dialogue and prayer. Otherwise, my resistances would effec-tively block me from ever becoming involved in any way at all. Prophets Are Not Popular Quickly, I recognized the first resistance. Prophets are not popular. From Old Testament times to the present day, men and women who sting the conscience of a nation, a people, or a Church become unpopular. They are often criticized; they have their motives questioned; and they are pushed to the fringes of society. I'd Love to, Lord, But. / 659 ! remember very clearly an incident that happened as I was growing up. In the early 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King led a march through my neighborhood, a white Catholic stronghold, to Marquette Park. I remem-ber standing on the corner on which my parish church and rectory were located watching the march. There were hundreds of white people lin-ing both sides of the street. Many of them were shouting, cursing, or throwing things at the marchers. Two of the priests came out of the rec-tory and began telling the people to go home and leave the marchers alone. Some of the people responded by cursing at the priests and tell-ing them to mind their own business. I saw a man spit on one of the priests. The following Sunday at Mass, the priests spoke out in favor of the marchers and their cause and spoke against the behavior of the bystand-ers, many of whom were good parishioners, pillars of the church. A few people at the Mass got up and walked out. Those days, I helped count the Sunday collection. That week and for a few weeks afterward, the col-lection went down significantly. I have never forgotten that incident. I still admire the courage of my parish priests. At the same time, I am aware that my later reluctance in seminary and in my initial years of priesthood to become involved in the ministry of social justice or to preach about justice issues was strongly influenced by that experience. In my initial involvement with the Seminary Peace and Justice Com-mittee, I soon came to a basic understanding. ! must be willing with com-plete honesty to critique that part of myself that desires to be popular and to be liked by others. Otherwise, I would never say anything controver-sial or would never speak out or would rarely take action on behalf of issues of social justice. Poverty is Messy and Unglamorous A second resistance for me rests in a simple fact. Poverty is messy and unglamorous. For the past seven years I have volunteered on a part time basis at an overnight shelter for the homeless. Many of the people who come to spend the night there are not "pretty." They are dirty; they smell; they are often sick; some have head lice; some are alcoholics; some belong in a halfway house or mental institution. I have always been fortunate enough to grow up and live in a clean, healthy, and comfortable environment. Throughout much of my life I have been isolated and insulated from the poor and the homeless. I rec-ognized another need for honest critique. I needed to confront that part of myself that wants life always to be nice, comfortable, and pretty. Oth-erwise, I would never become involved. 660 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 Myths, Stereotypes, and Prejudices A third resistance for me consists in myths, stereotypes, and preju-dices. Our culture is filled with them--about racial, ethnic, and relig-ious groups and about the poor and those who work for and with them. "The poor are lazy and would rather be on welfare . If they really wanted to, they could better themselves . They like being poor. See how happy they are . People involved in social justice causes are un-patriotic . All social justice organizations are communist inspired." The list goes on and on. I cannot go to a social gathering without hearing at least one joke that plays upon racial, ethnic, and cultural stereotypes. At times, I have told and laughed at those same jokes. I needed to confront and honestly critique my own myths, stereotypes, and prejudices. Otherwise, I would never become involved. Social-Justice Ministry is Disturbing There is a fourth resistance. I find this ministry disturbing. Working in the area of social justice has forced me to critique my own lifestyle, my attitudes about material possessions and wealth, and my use of the world's resources. I must admit that I like the good life. Conspicuous consumption is the name of the game in American society. In my early years of priest-hood when I was no longer a poor student but had a regular salary, I re-ally enjoyed having nice things. They compensated for my "great sac-rifice" of celibacy. I needed to honestly critique my own desire to live the good life and my tendencies toward materialism. Otherwise, I would never become involved. Fear A fifth resistance for me is fear. I found within myself a whole clus-ter of fears. I believed that if I worked with the poor and on behalf of social justice, I would be injured, harmed, or abused in some way. When I spent my first night at a shelter for the homeless, I was thor-oughly convinced that I was going to get head lice. TV news broadcasts and newspaper articles have always been filled with stories of crime and violence among the poor and in the inner city. When I was in college, I was robbed at gunpoint by two young black men. That experience re-inforced an attitude that had been drilled into me in all kinds of ways in my neighborhood: all black people are dangerous and to be feared. I needed to critique with honesty and courage that part of myself that de-sires security and safety at all costs. Otherwise, I would never take the I'd Love to, Lord, But. / 661 risk of becoming involved. An Overwhelming Sense of Poverty and Injustice in the World There is a final resistance. When I consider the extent of poverty and injustice in the world, I feel overwhelmed. I say to myself: What can one person possibly do to make a difference? My efforts will be futile and a waste of time. The work is innately frustrating. I will continually run into brick walls and have to deal with bureaucratic red tape and unsym-pathetic people and institutions. Progress is often measured in inches. You live with little or no sense of accomplishment. I realized that if I was not willing to honestly critique my own feelings of being over-whelmed and my own desire for instant results, then I would never be-come involved. Overcoming Resistances ~ It was not easy for me to look at my resistances. It is no easier to-day. Life seemed to be more pleasant when I closed my eyes to the re-alities of poverty and injustice as they existed all around me. Even after seven years of working with our Peace and Justice Committee, I find that I can still bring out of my storehouse old and new excuses which warn me to "back off," to rest because "I have done enough." As I con-tinue to come in touch with each of my resistances, I am aware that there are various steps that I have to enter into in order to overcome them. MyNeed for Challenge A first step is to allow myself to be challenged by others. I found myself challenged recently in a way I least expected. My sister who is a registered nurse and a certified nurse midwife recently volunteered to work for two years in Papua New Guinea as a lay missionary. I asked her why she wanted to do this. She told me that she was aware of the many talents, gifts, and blessings God had given her throughout her life. She felt that serving as a lay missionary was one way in which she could best express her gratitude to God. As I listened to what she had to say, I felt a lot of pride and admira-tion for my sister. At the same time, I felt a bit embarrassed as I realized that my own commitment to serving the poor at times looked pale in com-parison. I need people like my sister to challenge me and to keep me look-ing at my resistances. I need people like my sister to inspire me and to keep me in touch with my desire to bring to others the Good News that Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel of Luke as he began his public ministry. They need to say little. Their lives are bold proclamation. 669 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 As important as they are, such challenges are ~not enough for me. I have an amazing capacity to ignore or rationalize away the challenges that come from outside of me. To break through my resistances, I need to pray, to dialogue With others, and to simply begin. MyNeed for Prayer A second step for me is to bring my .resistances before the Lord in prayer. I begin by naming as honestly as I can my fears, my doubts, and my inner resistances. I express to God in my prayer what I am feeling and why I am feeling it. I ask God to break through my denial, to re-move from my eyes the scales that blind me to the,breadth and depth of my resistances so that I can see them for what they are. I place my resis-tances in the hands of God and invite God to respond. Here begins what I call the zone of discomfort in my prayer. To say to God "thy will be done" rather than "my will be thine" is~very fright-ening. What if God reveals to me something 1 do not want to see? What if God asks me to do what I do not want to do? At this point, I must qui-etly and patiently wait for God to respond, trusting that the God who loved me into existence will not abandon me or ask me to do anything that I am not capable of doing. MyNeed for Dialogue Prayer leads me to a third step. I need to talk to another person about my resistances. St. Ignatius in his Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, Week I [326] talks about the evil spirit as a false lover who "acts in or-der to keep his own suggestions and temptations secret, and our tactics must be to bring out into the light of day such suggestions and tempta-tions to our confessor or director or superior" (David Fleming, S.J., The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A Literal Translation and A Contem-porary Reading [St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978], p. 213). Resistances need to be brought into the light of day so that they can be seen for what they are. When I do not talk to another person about my resistances, I find that they can gain power to control me, even after I have brought them to prayer. I can easily deny them or sweep them un-der the carpet. In hones( dialogue with another, I am given the gift of freedom of choice. In honest dialogue with another, I find challenge, new perspective, affirmation, support, and the courage to begin. My Need to Begin A fourth step is to begin. At Mundelein Seminary, there is a Spiri- l"d Love to, Lord, But. / 663 tuality and Justice group composed of faculty and students. Each mem-ber of this group has chosen a concrete action to pursue during the school year in some area of social justice. People have chosen to fast, to work at a soup kitchen or a shelter for the homeless, to deaccumulate their pos-sessions and to live more simply, or to pursue the Pax Christi vow of nonviolence. The premise behind this group is that we live ourselves into new ways of thinking, valuing, and behaving. The way to begin is robe-gin. The way to break through and break down our resistances is to be-gin doing something, no matter how small or insignificant. I have chosen the Pax Christi vow of nonviolence as my action for this year. In the sh"ort time that I haqe pursued this, I have already be-gun to experience ways in which my thinking, my attitudes, my values, and my behaviors are changing. I can feel my resistances to living out this vow b(eaking down in the very act of acting. The words of Mother Teresa are most applicable here: I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. Just one, one, one. You get closer to Christ by coming closer to each other. As Jesus said: "Whatever you do to the least of my breth-ren, you do to me." So you begin . ! begin. I picked up one per-son. Maybe if 1 didn't pick up that one person, 1 wouldn't have picked up 42,000. The whole work is only a drop in the ocean. But if I didn't put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less. Same thing for you, same thing in your family, same thing in the church where you go. Just begin . . . one, one, one. (Source unknown) MyNeed for Support A final step for me is my need for ongoing support. My commitment to working for justice in the world is fragile and tenuous. I find that I need ongoing challenge to help me keep looking at and dealing with my resistances. I also need the support and affirmation of others to keep me going when I experience moments of discouragement and frustration. The Spirituality and Justice group of which I am a part provides me with opportunities for ongoing challenge, prayer, dialogue, and action. At our initial meetings, we spent time praying about the commitment we hoped to make. We broke into dyads to talk to another about why we chose to be a part of this group, about the action we were planning to pursue, and about the fears and resistances we were experiencing inside of us as we prepared to begin. We came back into the larger group to share the fruits of our dialogue. We concluded with shared prayer. At this point, most of us in the group have chosen and have begun 664 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 to pursue an action. We see future meetings as an opportunity for us to take time for solitary prayer as we continue to bring our actions before God. The meetings help us to share in aone to one way and in the larger group the impact that our action is making on our thinking, valuing, and behaving. The meetings offer support and prayer for and with one an-other in our actions. Here we give witness and challenge to one another as we keep looking at and confronting our resistances. Conclusion The journey into the ministry of social justice is challenging, diffi-cult, and painful. There are many ~tesistances that cooe from within and without. There are many starts and stops. It is a journey that cannot be successfully negotiated alone. There can be no authentic journey with-out God and fellow travelers. My experience is that the journey is well worth the effort for my good and the good of others. May the Spirit of the Lord be upon us in our quest to "bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and release to prisoners." Understanding Novitiate Formation Wilkie Au, 'S.J. Father Au has just completed six and a half years as novice director. He is writing a book tentatively titled Acquiring Habits of the Heart: Holistic Religious Forma-tion. He may be addressed at Loyola Marymount University; P.O. Box 45041; Los Angeles, California 90045. Vatican II,s call for the renewal of religious life set into motion a radical reexaminatio.n of the purposes, processes, and structures involved in the formation of candidates for religious life. The aggiornamento of John XXIII required that those responsible for religious formation make the adaptations needed to prepare religious candidates fora lifetime of dedi-cation and service in a rapidly changing world and Church. Because sen-sible adaptation depended on having a clear sense of what objectives were sought, much of the discussion among formation personnel (forma-tores) in the postconciliar years centered on the purposes and goals of the different phases of the formation process. Consequently, the noviti-ate or initial formation in many orders was thoroughly evaluated in light of the renewed understanding of religious life in the modern world, and many dramatic changes followed. Nevertheless, more than twenty years later the question is still being asked today: "What should be the overriding aims and objectives of the novitiate?"~ According to Father Gerald Arbuckle, S.M., a former as-sistant general of his community, many formation personnel today agree that the experience and the efforts to adapt the novitiate program accord-ing to the requirements of Renovationis Causam have not always been as successful as they would have wished. Many are still uncertain about what to do in the novitiate. Many questions remain: "Should there be a one,to-two-year novitiate? . When should the formative apostolic ex-periences take place and what should they accomplish? . How much 665 666 / Review for Religio. us, September~October 1988 separation, if any, from the world around them should novices experi-ence?" In brief, many questions about the aims and objectives of novi-tiate formation persist.2 Today the drastic drop in the number of those entering the novitiate adds further reason for adaptations in novitiate formation. To be accept-able, these adaptations must, however, retain the essential goals of the novitiate. Precisely what these needed changes are and how they are to be implemented will depend on concrete circumstances of place and per-sonnel. But, more importantly, before any sensible adaptation can be made, it is imperative that there be a clear rearticulation of the basic goals of novitiate formation. Otherwise,. there is the danger that our ad-aptations will be misguided and essential aspects of novitiate training be inadvertently°lost. The purpose of this article is to articulate an under-standing of novitiate formation, based on my si'x years of experience as director of novices of the Jesuits of the California Province. It is my hope that this article will stimulate and contribute to a discussion of novitiate formation at a time when formatores throughout the world are attempt-ing to deal with the adjustments made necessary by, among other things, declining numbers. While this article will. reflect Jesuit documents and my ,own experi-ence working within a Jesuit novitiate (with a group averaging between twelve to fifteen,new candidates every year), I am hopeful that other re-ligious groups of men and 'women working with smaller numbers can dis-cover in my comments what is universally true of the novitiate process in general. In a word, I believe that any novitiate program that purports to embody the spirit of Vatican I1 must include three essential aspects: (1) vocation discernment; (2) religious, socialization; and (3) Qngoing in-dividuation. These three overlapping purposes of the novitiate must, in my opinion, be retained no matter what adapta!ions, are made to accom-modate changing circumstances. What follows is a discussion of these three major goals of the novitiate. Vocation Discernment The objective bf vocation discernment in the novitiate is to help nov-ices come to a peaceful awareness and a free acceptance' of God"s will for them in regard to their state of life. Candidates come seeking help in discerning wh(ther God is indeed calling them to a lifelong commit-ment to tile service of Christ with this particular religious group. Sev-eral considerations are helpi~ul in providing this assistance to them: Confirmation of a Call versus "Weeding Out" The nOvmate must be Viewed as a positive process, as a concrete aid Novitiate Formation / 66"/ to those trying to test out their call to religious lif~. The novitiate should not be designed or perceived as a "weeding out" system, something ,like the basic training of an elitist military unit or the strenuous audition for a coveted part in a chorus line. The novitiate process would be vitiated at its core if it were to be seen as a systematic attempt to test candidates by deliberately placing artificial obstacles before them and screening them on the basis of their ability to overcome these obstacles. The de-structive and dysfunctional consequences of this negative view of novi-tiate formation can be documented in the "horror stories" of many older religious. In addition to the regrettable pain and htirt inflicted on peo-ple, a negative approach ~to the novitiate is fundamentally flawed because it encourages fearful and anxious novices to circumvent, rather than in-vest in, the complex process of discernment. Vocation discdrnment requires an openness and attention to one's in-terior movements, especially in prayer, and an honest disclosure and dis-cussion of these movements in spiritual direction. These attitudes of open-ness and honesty cannot exist in the kind of atmosphere of fear and threat which a "weeding out" approach inevitably produces. Furthermore, such an approach focuses too much attention on external requirements that need to be met in order to survive, like ~'hoops one has to jump through" to make the grade. Dangerously distracting, such a pre-occupation with "making it" can seriously jeopardize the integrity of one's discernment process. Good discernment relies heavily on a per-son's ability to hear the voice of the Lord speaking deeply in the soli-tude of one's heart and in the concrete circumstances of one's life. In light of this, the novice director can be most helpful by imitating the posi-tive role of Eli, the priest, who directs the young Samuel to the place where he is instructed to respond to the Lord's summons by saying, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening" (1 S 3:1-9). The Dynamic of Election and Confirmation The term "election"' was used by lgna~tius of Loyola to designate the choice made by a person seeking the will of God regarding some con-crete matter in his or her life. For the last four centuries, Christians have found the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius helpful in making an elec-tion, especially when trying to determine how they should serve Christ. For Ignatius, such a determination was best done in the context of prayer, for "prayer is the place where we sort out our desires and where we are ourselves sorted out by the desires we choose to follow. ,,3 The spiritual discernment that takes place in the novitiate results in an election regard-ing the direction one's vocation should take. Besides providing direction, Review for Religious, September-October 1988 however, the election process in the novitiate also seeks to test out the depth and freedom of a person's desire to serve Christ through the life of the vows. The Exercises were designed by Ignatius to help in "preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attachments, and, after their removal, [in] seeking and finding the will of God in the disposition of our life for the salvation of our soul."4 In a Jesuit novitiate the Exer-cises are usually made in the course of a thirty-day retreat soon after en-trance. This experience provides the context in which the Jesuit novice director helps the individual novice either to make an election regarding his vocation or to reaffirm his previously~ made decision to be a Jesuit. Those who make an election to pursue the Jesuit way of life must then generously engage in the novitiate process with the hope that the Lord will clarify and confirm their desire. Thus, vocation discernment in the novitiate involves a two-year period of' monitoring one's deepest desires and ascertaining whether the desire to serve the Lord as a Jesuit perdures and deepens throughout the course of the novitiate. If this desire per-dures, the novice can then express this desire through the first vows of a Jesuit. Michael J. Buckley, S.J., describes these first vows as an offering, following upon an election, made in perpetuity, very much like the initial election of the Exercises. Like this offering, they are con-tingent upon the subsequent confirmation by the Lord, worked through a human being's personal religious history over the next ten or fifteen years.5 Until he takes his final vows many years after the novitiate, "the Jesuit lives in a period of probation, testing whether the first offering of his life to God [through first vows] is accepted and confirmed by divine providence."6 Buckley summarizes this Ignatian dynamic well by explain-ing "the way in which one moves toward finding and giving his life over to the will of God" within the framework of the Spiritual Exercises. There isthe initial offer of a choice to God our Lord, an offering which is made according to a time for making an election and which is then presented before the Lord . What the dynamic of the election looks for after the moment of offering is the subsequent confirmation'by God. Election as a religious history, as an experience of Providence, devel-ops over time between these two major events: the time of human offer-ing and the period of confirmation by God.7 Clearly, then, the objective of vocation discernment in the novitiate is to help novices determine whether the depth and direction of their Novitiate Formation / 669 heart's deepest desires move them to make a self-offering of themselves through vows. Absolute clarity and certainty regarding the future can-not be expected at the end of the novitiate period, since the person's self-offering must await "the subsequent confirmation by God." As Buck-ley eloquently states, For a man who follows God, who listens to God throughout his serious experience, the future is unknown and mysterious--not unlike God him-self. And he moves into this mystery without prematurely forcing clar-ity because his experience of God directs this movement.8 The Test of Existential Validation Colloquially stated, the test of existential validation asks novices this question: "Does the shoe fit?" This is an important question for voca-tion discernment, and it must be asked on a regular basis. While the Ig-natian election helps novices find God's will for them in the deep de-sires of their hearts, the test of existential validation enables them to dis-cover God"s will in the concrete details of their lives. The method of existential validation is basically very simple. When they first enter, the novices are asked to live the life of a Jesuit as if they have already taken the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Then they are asked to pay attention to the "fit" throughout the course of their novitiate. In other words, they are asked to "try on the shoes of being a Jesuit" and check for the fit as they actually walk in those shoes. In their concrete experience, do they find that living the vows in an actual Jesuit community is life-giving and productive? Do they dis-cover that, with the passage of time, there is an increasing congruence between what they want for their lives and Jesuit ideals? As they grow in knowledge of what being a Jesuit involves concretely in this histori-cal time and place, do they find a match between what they desire and what life in the Society of Jesus offers and requires today? Another aspect of existential validation involves testing the authen-ticity of one's desire. This is done mainly by checking for the congru-ence between what one professes to value and desire and how one actu-ally chooses, decides, and behaves. Although all human beings live with a discrepancy between the ideal and the real, drastic and consistent de-viations from the norms and aspirations of religious life should make one question the genuineness and depth of one's desire to be a religious. Though painful and disruptive, getting in touch with authentic desires can be a liberating experience. Furthermore, while self-reporting is an important means for gather- 670 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 ing data in the process of existential validation, the feedback of the re-ceiving community is also very important in testing out the existential fit between the individual novice and the peculiar charism of a particu-lar religious institute. Vocation discernment in the novitiate must ascer-tain not only if a person desires to take on religious life, but whether he or she has been given the gift and charism to live that life. A realistic assessment of this capability is a crucial aspect of vocation discernment. For example, from the concrete evidence of a person's life, can it be judged that the Lord has given the aspirant to an apostolic religious com-munity the following prerequisites: -- the ability to live in community with relative peace and joy? -- the capacity to love with celibate chastity in a non-exclusive man-ner? -- the.freedom to live with simplicity and detachment? -- the ability to be mobile and available to be sent anywhere on mis-sion? The underlying presupposition of this line of inquiry obviously is that one's God-given abilities, personality, and inclinations can indicate in helpful ways the precise form and manner in which one is being called to serve Christ. Not to pay serious attention to these concrete indicators is to disregard an important aspect of vocation discernment. Vocation Shortage and a ~,ranny of Numbers I would like to make a final comment regarding vocation discern-ment in the novitiate. It seems to me that the declining number of candi-dates c~n create a ,~ituation in which vocation discernment is not engaged in with seriousness and detachment. The disordered desire to keep the few that come can jeopardize and short-circuit the discernment process. At a time of drastic diminishment, external pressures to hang on at any cost to the few that do enter are sometimes exerted by formed members of the community. This pressure, as well as the interior unfreedom of formatores themselves, can impede a thorough discernment process.9 Fur-thermore, unconsciously treating novices with a "precious few" men-tality can lead to a form of coddling that would be unhelpful for relig-ious formation and spiritual growth. Religious communities that have had only a few candidates during the last decade and at present experience only a trickle from year to year are particularly susceptible to this dan-ger. Religious Socialization: "Habits of the Heart" The term "religious socialization" has been popularized by John Novitiate Formation / 671 Westerhoff III in discussing the question of how elements of religion and faith ,~are transmitted from one generation to another. While he does not apply the term to the formation of religious candidates, nevertheless, it seems to capture quite well one of the essential purposes of the noviti-ate, that is, the handing on of a religious tradition and lifestyle to per-sons desiring to enter the life of a religious group as fully participating members. Religious socialization, according to Westerhoff, is a process consisting of lifelong formal and informal mechanisms, through which persons stistain and transmit their faith (worldview', value ~syst~m) and lifestyle. This is accomplished through participation in the life of a tradition-bearing community with its rites, rituals, myths, sym-bols, expressions of beliefs, attitudes and values, organizational pat-terns, and activities.~° As defined by Westerhoff, religious socialization is a lifelong proc-ess and thus does not exactly describe the novitiate, which (to the relief of all involved) is limited to one or two years. Technically speaking, re-ligious socialization is equivalent to the whole process of formation, which more and more is being viewed as a lifelong affair. Because of ongoing liturgical renewal, biblical and theological reflection, and the rapidity of changing conditions of our times, religious have been urged to commit themselveS seriously to "continuing formation." ~ Neverthe-less, the ~oviiiate is the initial phase of the lifelong process involved in the assimilation of members into religious life. Viewed as such, Wester-hoff's notion of religious ~ocialization provides a useful way of under-standing an essential purpose of the novitiate. Adaptations of novitiate formation must be guided by the essential goal of religious socialization. The basic question raised by the task of handing on the tradition Of religious life to new aspirants is this: What is tO be~handed down and how? What values, beliefs, mores, and ways of proceeding has the receiving community judged to be of perennial worth, such that they should remain permanently .definitional of the group? To employ a phrase of Alexis de Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century French observer of democracy in America (a phrase recently popu-larized by a national bestseller), what are the "habits of the heart" that the receiving community deems absolutely essential for maintaining its group life with integrity and vitality'? In "habits of the heart" Tocqueville included "notions, opinions, and ideas that 'shape mental habits'; and 'the sum of moral and intellectual dispositions' " as well as habitual practices with respect to such things as religion. ~- Once the receiving community has come to a clear consensus on the 672 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 content which it wishes to transmit, then it must decide on the most ef-fective means for this transmission. The question of how to raises a num-ber of considerations which every novice director must ponder if the no-vitiate program is to have any intelligible rationale. Some of these im-portant considerations will be discussed below. The Question of Contact and Separation For the sake of effective religious socialization, there often arises the question of what contact novices should have with family, friends, those in ministry, and formed members of their own religious order. Arbuckle has provided a very useful framework to reflect on this question. ~3 Re-lying on anthropological data regarding initiation rites, he proposes three-stage process for the novitiate, which, according to him, is essen-tially an initiation rite: the stages of separation, liminoid, and the incor-poration or reaggregation. Stage I emphasizes separating the novices from the ordinary life they have left behind in order to dramatize the radicality of the transition from lay life to religious life. While this stage may be brief, the separation also symbolic. The symbolism must express to the candidate that in order to respond to the call of the Lord there must be a withdrawal from the world of "or-dinary" living with its roles and interests, its speed, and its distraction. The symbolism must convey the message that to follow the radical de-mands of the gospel message one must be prepared to "leave father, mother, brothers, sisters, and all things" for the sake of the Lord. 14 To convey this new dramatic reality, novices should, at this stage, be separated physically and geographically from other members of the group who have already gone through the passage of initiation. Not to separate them, "when the aims of the initiation process are so different from the aims of postnovitiate training, is to make the realization of the novitiate aims impossible to achieve."~5 The second stage, called liminoid (from the Latin, limen, threshold), requires the kind of seclusion that fosters strong investment in commu-nity building. It is precisely in the context of a vibrant community life that the novices are to experience the "habits of the heart" which the receiving community wish(s to transmit to its new members. This is the time for introducing the novice to the unique spirit of the institute, peculiar charism within the Church, and its characteristic way of proceed-ing. By so inculcating its spirituality, mores, history, and tradition, the receiving community aims to bond the new member to its past and thus Novitiate Formation / 673 to provide a foundation for the novice's identification with the group. According to Arbuckle, this second stage of relative seclusion should last about a year. The third stage is that of incorporation or reaggregation, a period when novices are reconnected with the religious family outside the no-vitiate. This stage should be as long as or even longer than the liminoid stage. Basically a time of "evaluated pastoral experience," this stage is to be seen as an integral part of the novitiate process. Arbuckle ex-presses the aims of the third stage by citing paragraph 25 of Renovationis Causam: Besides gradual preparation for apostolic activities, they [that is, the ex-perimental periods outside the novitiate] can also have as their purpose to bring the novice into contact with certain concrete aspects of poverty or of labor, to contribute to character formation, a better knowledge of human nature, the strengthening of the will, the development of personal responsibility and, lastly, to provide occasions for effort at union with God in the context of active life.~6 In my opinion, Arbuckle's three-stage approach provides a rich and comprehensive understanding of the novitiate process, as Well as a sound basis for determining the question of the amount of separation and con-tact that would be helpful for novices. That there be some kind of alter-nation between separation and contact has also been clearly endorsed by others. For example, the Jesuit decree on novitiate formation states: Although entrance into the novitiate should entail a real separation from the life previously led in the world, superiors should nevertheless pro-vide that the novices, while consistently maintaining a spirit of recol-lection, should have sufficient social contact with their contemporaries (both within and outside the Society). Likewise the necessary separation from parents and friends should take place in such a way that genuine progress in affective balance and supernatural love is not impeded. IV The Arbuckle model is useful because it enables the novitiate to ef-fectively bond new members to the religious group, which is the goal of religious socialization. The bonding is both with the past (the commu-nity's traditions and history) and with the present (its present members and ministries). By means of form'al and informal contact, then, the re-ceiving community links its new members to its group life. The Question of Structure and Nonstructure It is my opinion that both structure and nonstructure have important and different functions in the process of religious socialization. The no- 67'4 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 vitiate process must include times for both. Structured time is important for thi~ development of the habits and skills necessary for sustaining a lifetime of religious dedication. This time of structure is the period tra-ditionally known as "common order" during which the novices's day is regulated according to a schedule with definite periods for communal and personal prayer, for work around the house, for conferences and classes with the novice staff, for individual study, and for apostolic in-volvements. Because the development of habits such as those that con-tribute to a faithful prayer life and spiritual discernment requires regular repetition and practice, structured time for such training is important in novitiate formation. Equally important is time for more freedom and less structure in the novitiate learning process. These times of nonstructure provide an op-portunity for the novices to test out to what extent, they have internal-ized and appropriated what they have sought to learn during times of struc-tured learning. For example, has the individual novice found himself or herself able to faithfully sustain a regular prayer life when away from the structural supports of the novitiate? To foster personal responsibility among novices for their own development, the Jesuits' 3 i st General'Con-gregation stated that "a necessity is that the no~,itiat~'s way of life be not so rigidly determined that the novices, lacking in all initiative, can hardly ever practice spiritual discernment, or even obedience itself, ex-cept in the form of a passive and impersonal submission."~8 The non-structured periods of the novitiate allow the novices as aspiring religious to find out truthfully and behaviorally what changes in their lives and at-titudes have actually taken place as the result of their training in the limi-noid stage. Therefore, I believe that a rhythmic alternation between struc-tured and nonstructured time is an essential dynamic of the novitiate learn-ing process. The Question of Experience and Reflection Another important learning dynamic in the novitiate involves the com-bination of experience and reflection. This mode of learning, variously called experiential learning or praxis, calls for the novice's active engage-ment in learning experiences and a subsequent reflection upon those ex-periences, with an eye to what insights and knowledge can be.,gleaned from them. This form of experiential learning is applicable to many ar-eas in which novices are called to grow, that is prayer,t9 interpersonal relationships,2° and ministerial effectiveness. The goal sought through this mode of learning is, in the words of the Jesuits' 33rd General Con-gregation, "a transformation of our habitual patterns of thought through Novitiate Formation / 675 a constant interplay of experience, reflectipn, and action.' While experiential learning can be a powerful form of learning, there is always the danger that it can lead to anti-intellectualism, if it is not carefully applied. Experience is the indispensable raw material of expe-riential learning. But it remains unprocessed--that is, raw material-- without the equally important process of reflecting on the experience. The danger is effectively obviated when serious effort an~d sufficient time are devoted to dwelling on the experience in such a way that ideas and principles are abstracted out of it and feelings are symbolized. In addition'to serious reflection, there is a further requirement of ef-fective praxis. To be used intelligently, experiential learning must be grounded in a well-thought-out theory of experience. As John Dewey warned in 1938, "The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. Experience and education cannot be directly equated to each other."zz Mere insisten~ze on the necessity of experience, there-fore, is notenough. In Dewey's words, "Everything depends on the qual~ ity of the experience which is had."z3 Therefore, to use the experiential mode of learning in the novitiate effectively,formatores must ensure (!) that the quality of the learning experiences engaged in by novices be se-riously evaluated and (2)that the novices, with the assistance of a skilled facilitator, give sufficient time and attention to follow-up reflection on their experiences. The Ongoing Process of Individuation The third major aspect of novitiate formation calls for the ongoing fostering of the personal growth of candidates. While the agenda of the receiving community is stressed in the process of religious socialization, the individuation process respects the agenda of persons in their individ-ual growth process. Since it is the case, more and more, that candidates enter the novitiate at such diverse ages and at such different points of p.er-sonal development, novitiate formation must seriously recognize individ-ual differences and aid individuals to move ahead, not regress, in the de-velopment of their selfhood. After all, the ability to give of oneself in self-donation presupposes that one first possesses a self. According to Carl Jung, the process of individuation is a gradual growth toward whole-ness and harmony, involving the progressive differentiation and detailed development of all parts of the human personality. Since individuation is a lifelong project, entry into religious life cannot halt its progress with-out stunting the healthy maturation and development of religious as hu-man beings. 6"/6 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 Since Vatican II, religious have been strongly ehcouraged to take con-tinuhl human growth seriously and to take care that their commitment to religious life does not impede their prior responsibility as human beings to a~tualize their God-gi~,en potential. In the eyes of an increasing num-ber of c,~ontemporary theologians, the motivation for continuous human growth is clearly a religious one. Human life'is seen as a gift fr6m the Fi~ther. At the same time, God couples the gi~ft of life with a challenge to person~s to be cocreatorsof their lives, freely fashioning their lives into "something beautiful for God." In this ongoing process of human de-velopment,~ the Lord of creation and the human works Of his hand col-laborate. Therefore, for the person who seeks to respond to God's in-itiative, a commitment to continuous growth'is not only a choice, but requirement. To deny the inner impulse t.oward continuous growth is tan-tamount to not responding to God, because, in the words of Gregory Baum, "as d.estiny, as summons, as love., God is present in man's mak-ing of man."~-4 John Haughey, S.J., states that the refusal to take seri-ously one's vocation to be a cocreator with God also takes on a moral dimension. When the refusal to choose leaves the work of God's hands unfinished, then this peculiar kind of inaction takes on a moral dimension. Why.'? Because the unique way of manifesting some aspect of the fullness of God that every person is born to manifest remains potency. Refusal to come to the point of decision, choice, or commitment can leave some-thing of creation itself unfinished and hence God's glory incomplete. This constitutes evil at the level of:being itself. An individual thwarts the purpose of God's creating him by refusing to exercise the cocreator-ship that he could exercise. That which is called forth by God is ren-dered void by man.25 Consequently, religious life and novitiate formation must reinforce among no'vices the importance of continuing their commitment to the proc-ess of individuation as they are simultaneously socialized into the group. Growth in spiritual maturity depends heavily on integral human devel-opment. This truth has long been captured in the Scholastic adage that "grace builds on nature." Leo P. Rock, S.J., a former novice director, applied this truth 'to novitiate formation in a pithy way: "Grace does not substitute for nature, but fulfills it. Healthy, sane personality develop-ment is the most fertile soil in which grace can take root and grow. Growth in religious life can best happen in the situation which best fos-ters personal human growth.''26 The following considerations may be helpful toformatores as they consider how to best foster such prerequi- Novitiate Formation / 677 site human growth in the novitiate: The Developmental Nature of Human Growth Human growth takes place in stages, with each stage presupposing and building on preceding ones. As deveiopmentalists put it, these stages are. invariantly sequential. A person cannot, for example, go from stage one to stage four by skipping the intervening stages. This principle thus requires t~at every individual novice be met where he or she is on enter-ing the novitiate, and then helped to proceed ~forward, stage by stage, from tha.t personal starting point. This is especially important because per-sons entering religion today .vary so much in age, background, and de-velopment. An undifferentiated treatment of novices would prove to be an unenlightened and eventually frustrating appr6ach. Another key consideratibn is that, as a Jesuit formation document puts it, "human development does not proceed at the same pace in eve-ryone." z7 This fact calls for adaptation of the process to individuals. Therefore, in. fostering growth in the novitiate, it seems important that the focus be kept on the individual and the particular~areas of his or her life that stand most ready for development at any particular time. Force-feeding of any kind not only risks dging violence to people, but will ul-timately be countbrproductive in leading to any kind of significant, long-term learning. Personal Responsibility and Religious Obedience The renewal of religious life since Vatican II has certainly challenged men and women to understand and qive the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in ways that do not impede personal maturity and psycho-logical health. Twenty years ago Jesuit John Courtney Murray spelled out this challenge in a talk to fellow Jesuits. He warned that religious obedience poses a real danger to personal maturity if it fosters the abdi-cation of personal responsibility for one's life and choices. Obedience is a perilous"path to personal maturity, according to Murray. This is be-cause the vow of obedience, if poorly lived out, produces people "who to a degree are purposeless, their lives not consciously and strongly pat-terned, not inwardly directed toward a determined goal with all the or-ganized power of the whole self.' ,28 Religious can succumb to the trap posed by obedience by being pas-sive and overly submissive to authority figures in order to gain accep-tance and approval or to enjoy a kind of infantile dependence free from the anguish of personal decision-making. Those who manifest these and othe'r forms of immature behavior often rationalize their way of acting Review for Religious, September-October 1988 in spiritual terms, thus disguising and denying what they~ are actually do-ing. When they say that they "just want to follow God's or the supe-rior's will," it is sometimes simply a rationalization to justify their to take responsibility for themselves.29 This becomes obvious when the superior clearly has no strong feelings or particular preference about wfiat should happen and in fact would like the religious to assume some independent initiative and to indicate a clear preference. Realizing this threat to maturity, ihe document on Jesuit formation makes clear that "the more the noviceg are stimulated to assume respon-sibilities with prudent and discerning charity, the more successfully will .they acquire Spiritual maturity and the more freely will they adhere their vocation."3° A correlative document on Jesuit obedience states that mature obedience is unattainable apart from the constant cultivation a spirit of initiative and responsibility.3~ A Discernment Model to Develop Responsible~Obedience To foster personal responsibility within the framework of religious obedience, I have used the following eight-step model to teach novices a way of practicing dis~zernment: Step 1" Identify the decision to be made or tl~e issu~ to be resolved. Step 2: Examine the underlying values or concerns (human, Chris-tian, religious, and Jesuit) involved. Step 3: Take time to pray over the matter, paying attention to how one is being drawn or led in prayer. Step 4: Discuss the matter with a spiritual director. Step 5: Dialogue with the superior and engage in a mutual search for God's will in the matter. Step 6: Strive for a state of lgnatian "indifference," that is, a state of inner freedom and equipoise which allows one to accept whatever decision or resolution would be for God's greater glory. If a person is unable to achieve "indifference," discussing the matter in spiritual direction can bring valuable self-knowledge and clarity about how best to proceed in the search for God's will. Perhaps, more prayer and dia-logue with the superior regarding conflicting values and perspectives may be needed before a peaceful closure and decision can be arrived at. Step_ 7: Accept the superior's decision with ,trust in God's. provi-dence at work within the dynamics of religious obedience. Step 8: Stay open to the emerging data of ongoing experience to check for confirmation. In a study of lgnatian obedience, John Futrell, Novitiate Formation / 679 S.J., states that "the principal means of confirmation of the decisions of the superior., are the mutual contentment of himself and his com-panion and the proof of living experience.' ,32 If there is serious doubt "that the superior's decision truly reflects God's will, the process of ,prayer, consultation, and dialogue must begin again. This discernment process promotes personal responsibility and growth because it requires the full engagement of the novices. In com-ing to a decision, they must work with.their religious superior, rather than have things fully decided or resolved for them from above. Step I requires them to invest in the process of defining the parameters of the issue from their personal point of view. Step 2 involves a process of val-ues clarification in which they state the values that are at stake in the de-cision. Steps 3 and 4 give them the chance to critique these values, both alone in prayer and together with a spiritual director. Steps 2, 3, and 4 press them to ask an important twofold question: "Am I free to pursue my values.'?" and "Are my values worth the pursuit?" By requiring them to come to some kind of tentative stance or decision before dialogu-ing with the superior, these steps promote their sense of selfhood, which is largely shaped in the process of personal decision-making. Finally, if attained, the spiritual attitude of Ignatian indifference provides them with the inner freedom which guarantees that their act of autonomous choice can be integrated with religious obedience. For, in the end, indifference allows them to accept whatever is decided with a sense of adult respon-sibility and commitment to the way of evangelical obedience. Summary Reflections Before ma~king a concluding recommendation, it might be helpful to summarize what has been proposed here: I. Adaptations in novitiate formation must always be guided by the three, essential goals of the novitiate: vocation discernment, religious so-cialization, and ongoing individuation. 2. Novitiate formation as it relates to vocation discernment must be seen as a positive aid concerned with the confirmation of a call, rather /han as a negative process of "weeding out" candidates. The process of election monitors the will of God being expressed in the heart's deep-est desires, and the process of existential confirmation searches for the will of God manifested in the concrete circumstances of one's life. 3. Novitiate formation as it relates to religious socialization is the proc-ess by which a religious community receives new members and bonds them to the community's past and present by (a) sharing with them its tradition, spirituality, mores, and "habits of the heart" and (b)welcom- 680 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 ing them to its current fellowship and ministries. 4. Novitiate formation as it relates to ongoing individuation is the process by which the, personal growth and development .of individual nov-ices are fostered, even as the novices are being socialized into the com-munity. Towards this end the novitiate attempts to promote individual initiative and personal responsibility within the context of religious obe-dience. In light of what has been proposed above, I recommend-~that, wher-ever and whenever possible, communities with small numbers of nov-ices (for example, five or fewer) join together with,other compatible groups ~to form a larger formation community, Examples of compatible groups might be novices of different provinces of the same religious or-der (for example, an interprovinciai Jesuit or Dominican novitiate) o con-gregations with the same founding spirit (for example, Franciscans, Bene-dictines, Mercy Sisters, St. Joseph Sisters). In my opinion, the goals of religious socialization are. better accomplished in larger groupings and are very difficult to achieve with just two or three novices ~ibsorbed into a regular apostolic house. This is especially true of the liminoid phase of religious socializa-tion, which relies heavily on an experience of community. During period, novices are meant to acquire the religious values,mores, and spiri-tuality of the group by experiencing daily life in a vibrant community, whose central ministry is the socializing of novices into religious This regrouping for the sake of forming larger formatiow communities can be on a full-time or part-time basis. A very successful example a full-time merger has been Loyola House in Berkley, Michigan, which houses the joint Jesuit novitiate program of the Chicago and Detroit prov-inces. Part-time collaborative programs have taken various forms. For example, for two straight years the Jesuit novices of the California and Oregon provinces joined together for two months to experience the Ig-natian Exercises together. Last year three Jesuit novitiates'pooled their resources and spent five weeks together to study the history of the or-der. Another example of such successful collaboration is the intercom-munity novitiate experience in such places as Los Angeles and Denver. Large and autonomous formation communities can provide S'everal very important dimensions of novitiate training that communities of or two novices cannot provide. Briefly, they are the following: Peer formation. In my experience, peer formation is an important as-pect of religious socialization, As novices experience together the dif-ferent aspects of religious life and share theirjfaith and religious experi- Novitiate Formation / 681 ences with each other, they are supported and "edified," in the best sense of the word. Spiritual conversation among novices regarding the story of their vocation, their experience in prayer and ministry, their strug-gles with the vows and with community living can provide much needed support and insight. Liturgical formation. Larger, autonomous novitiate communities are more likely to have a well-planned, coordinated liturgical life, which can be very important in the spiritual formation of novices. When there are only two or three novices living together, chances are that there will be no orga0ized liturgical life in the community. Instead, the novices may merely join in a convenient parish liturgy. When this occurs, the peda-gogical function of liturgy within formation is greatly diminished. Staffing and programmatic advantages. Because of the growing short-age of active members in practically every religious community in the United States, the search for qualified personnel for the various apostolic works of a community often invites a subtle competition among the vari-ous ministries. As a result, there is a danger that novitiate formation will get short shrift because of the very small number of novices being min-istered to. A larger group of novices in some kind of interprovincial ar-rangement would provide a stronger claim for greater investment by the community (a) in qualified formation personnel whose work is given full-time status and assured of some continuity and (b) in some regular and relatively fixed program of instruction for the training of novices. With-out this kind of investment, it is hard to expect that a person asked to be a part-time novice director for one or two years will devote the time and energy needed to understand the complex process of novitiate for-mation and to develop the skills and knowledge needed to do a good job. When left to function on their own, communities with just a trickle of novices tend to create a makeshift, ad hoc arrangement to handle the for-mation of the few. It seems that having several ongoing, large-group, com-mon novitiate programs which could accommodate novices from vari-ous communities that share the same charism or spirit of a founder would be helpful for meeting the need created by the drastic drop in recent years. None of this would be complete without a word about the inherent, not to say mind-boggling, paradox of religious life and growth. While we are called upon to use all of the knowledge and expertise at our dis-posal, it is the Holy Spirit who effects growth, who gives life, and whose gifts shape the soul--a Spirit who, much to the surprise, despair, and con-fusion of our best-made plans, still blows where it will. This does not Review for Religious, September-October 1988 relieve us of the responsibility of bringing what expertise we can muster to fostering human, spiritual growth. But it reminds us that it is the Holy Spirit, whose ways transcend all our human expertise and wisdom, often confounding them, who effects and shapes the growth we hope to facili-tate. NOTES ~ See Gerald A. Arbuckle, S.M., "Planning the Novitiate Process: Reflections of an Anthro.pologist," in REVIEW FOR REL~6~Ot~S (July/August 1984): 532-546. , 2 Ibid., 15.~ 532. ~' 3 Ann and Barry Ulanov, Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), p. 20. '* Annotation # I, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, translated by Louis J. Puhl, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola Upiversity Press, 1951). 5 Michael J. Buckley, S.J., "Final Vows in the Society of Jesus," in National Jes-uit News, vol. 10, no. 7, April 1981, p. 8. 6 Ibid., p. 9. 7 Ibid., p. 8. 8 Michael J. Buckley, S.J., "The Priesthood as a Religious Event," in The Berkeley Jesuit, spring 1970, p. 7. 9 "In all selection and testing of seminarians, necessary standards must always be firmly maintained, even when there exists a regrettable shortage of priests. For God will not allow his Church to lack ministers if worthy candidates are admitted while unsuitable ones are speedily and paternally directed towards the assuming of other tasks and are encouraged to take up the lay apostolate readily, in a consciousness of their Christian vocation." Paragraph 6, Decree on Priestly Formation (Optatam Totius), in The Documents of Vatican !I, ed. Walter Abbott, S.J. (New York: Amer-ica Press, 1966). ~0 John Westerhoff III and Gwen K. Neville, Generation to Generation: Conversa-tions on Religious Education and Culture (Philadelphia: United Church Press, 1974), p. 41. ~ Nos. 138-140, "The Spiritual Formation of Jesuits," in Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977), pp. I I 1-113. See also no. 23, "Companions of Jesus Se~nt into Today's World," Decree # I, Documents of the 33rd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1984), p. 50. ~2 Quoted in Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Com-mitment in American Life (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1986), p. 37. ~3 Arbuckle, op. cit., pp. 540-545. ~': Ibid., p. 540. ~5 Ibid. ~6 Quoted ibid., pp. 542-543. t7 No. 22, Decree 8, "The Spiritual Formation of Jesuits," Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, p. 104. Is Ibid., no. 19, p. 103. 19 For an explanation of how praxis or experiential learning is applied to prayer, see my "Teach Us to Pray," in Company: A Magazine of the American Jesuits, vol. Novitiate Formation / 683 I, no. 3, April 1984, pp. 8-10. 2o For a discussion of the experience/reflection dynamic in learning about interper-sonal relationships, see my "Particular Friendships Revisited," in Human Devel-opment, vol. 7, no. I, spring 1986, pp. 34-38. 2~ Decree I, -#40, Documents of the 33rd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus. 22 John Dewey, Experience and Education (London: Collier-MacMillan Company, 1938), p. 25. 23 Ibid., p. 27 (emphasis in the original). 24 Gregory Baum, "Reply and Explanation," in Ecumenist, vol. 9, Nov.-Dec. 1970- Jan.-Feb. ! 971, p. 18. z5 John Haughey, S.J., Should Anyone Say Forever: On Making, Keeping, and Break-ing Commitments (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1975), pp. 23-24. 26 Leo lb. Rock, S.J., "The California Province Novitiate: What We Do and Why," an unpublished paper, September 1973, p. 4. 27 No. 24, Decree 8, "The Spiritual Formation of Jesuits," Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, p. 105. 28 John Courtney Murray, S.J., " The Danger of the Vows," in Woodstock Letters, fall 1967~, p~ 42 I. 29 For a discussion of obstacles to mature religious obedience, see my "Dealing with Projection: Recognizing and Removing a Common Obstacle to Mature Religious Obe-dience," in Human Development, vol. 6, no. I, spring 1985, pp. 6-1 I. 30 No. 23, Decree 8, " The Spiritual Formation," in Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, p. 105. 31 Nos. II and 12, Decree 17, "The Life of Obedience." Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, pp. 164-166. 32 John C. Futrell, S.J., Making an Apostolic Community of Love: The Role of the 'Superior According to St. Ignatius of Loyola (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1970), p. 143. Some Thoughts on the Vocation to Celibacy Clifford Stevens Father Stevens has been, over the course of many years, a Trappist, a parish priest, an Air Force chaplain, an editor of The Priest, and a small-town pastor. He has pub-lished a novel, Flame Out of Dorset, about St. Stephen Harding, twelfth-century Cis-tercian. Last appearing in our pages in 1986, he writes from the monaste(y he founded: Tintern; Monastery Road; Oakdale, Nebraska 68761. The very foundation of the vocation to celibacy must be the complete free-dom from compulsion with which the choice of celibacy is made. Free-dom from external compulsion, in that no one can be forced by external pressures to choose the celibate vocation, and freedom from internal pres-sures, ascetic, moral, spiritual, which would make the choice of celibacy anything but a conscious, free choice, based on something within the vo-cation to celibacy itself. The choice of celibacy is not a rejection or de-nial of the excellence of marriage. ~ It is rather an affirmation of realities that transcend sexuality and marriage.2 This "anthropological" base of the choice of celibacy is a critical factor in celibate happiness, and that celibate happiness is based precisely on the facts that [ could find happiness in marriage, that in choosing celi-bacy3 ! am just as free to choose marriage, and that marriage has a good-ness and nobility all its own. There is a profound reason for this complete freedom from compul-sion based on the specific excellence of celibacy itself, and not in com-parison with something else. The profound reason is this. The gift of sexuality and its directedness toward intimate expression'~ in marriage comes, with our very creation, from God's goodness, his wis-dom, and his benevolence. It is an integral part of our humanity and our 684 Thoughts on Celibacy masculinity, and no power on earth can deprive us of it because it comes with the~very blueprint of our nature. (This article looks at celibacy from a masculine point of view, not because the feminine viewpoint is not im-portant, but becduse it is outside the author's experience.) The ,gift of sexuality, in fact, is the root reality of our bodily exis-tence and of our masculine nature, and has a power and a goodness that enriches human life immeasurably. However we want to describe it, you and I, men endowed with all the gifts of a masculine nature, are shaped and fashioned by every ripple and nuance of our living flesh for physi-cal intimacy with a woman. To hide this from ourselves in the name of celibacy would rob the choice of celibacy of half its meaning. The choice of celibacy can never be based upon a denial or ignoring of the inherent goodness of sexuality or the preeminent goodness of sex-ual intimacy in marriage,s Moreover, it is possible to possess one's sexu-ality in this full awareness of its essential goodness, in complete inno-cence, with a wholesome sense of dignity, freedom, wonder, apd joy in its possession and, with the same complete innocence, to look forward to and experience its joyous expression in marriage; or, if one is a celi-bate, to be profoundly appreciative of its joyous expression in marriage, with the same complete innocence.6 The choice of celibacy is not based upon a lack of appreciation for sexual intimacy in marriage or upon any conviction that the experience of marriage is in any way displeasing to God. These are simply unsound anthropological bases upon which to build a vocation to celibacy and, unwittingly, they can plant deep in.the recesses of one's motivation a time bomb ready to go off. It is unfortunate that in the history of Christian spirituality the voca-tion to celibacy has often been explained in terms that denigrate the value and beauty of sexual love in marriage. The impression is given that the choice of celibacy is somehow a flight from something radically unspir-itual and that the celibate looks upon conjugal intimacy as something be-neath his dignity, something that would mar his perfect purity. The choice of celibacy, if it is genuine, has nothing of this motivation about it, but is based solidly and squarely upon something more positive and something more exhilarating. Celibacy must be based on a profound appreciation for the gift of sex-ual intimacy as personal gift and endowment from God and as an inte-gral part of one's masculine inheritance. Nobility of soul does not fail to plumb and to appreciate the riches of masculine possibility which is the natural inheritance of an awakened and full manhood. Review for Religious, September-October 1988 This possibility, with all its splendor and enrichment, does not ex-haust the human possibility, but it does enshrine some of its noblest in-stincts, of the feelings and of the mind, and an intimacy that mirrors the very passion of God himself. As a celibate I set aside intimacy with a woman, with all its rooms of joy and beauty, only for a greater intimacy and its even more won-drous rooms of beauty, and its universe of joy. But in doing so, I will not deny the power, the significance, or the magnitude of the masculine expectancy that I set aside and turn away from. This intimacy, by what-ever name it is called, is riveted into my very flesh; the lineaments of this passionate preoccupation are traced and interlaced in the warp and woof of my very biology. The gift of manhood with all its passionate possibilities is one of the richest gifts of God. I set it aside freely, not with no appreciation for its beauty, and not with regret, but because I have stumbled on a greater beauty, a more powerful intimacy, and a more earth-shaking encounter. In the shadow of that intimacy and in the tremor of this expectancy, every other human possibility fades into insignificance. I do not hide from myself the shattering loveliness and singular beauty of the sexual intimacy that could be mine, but celibacy reaches out to something greater, fully as rich, fully as valid, and as fully a com-plement to my manhood as the rich experience of love in marriage. This is the sound anthropological base upon which the vocation to celibacy is founded. It may not be part of one's original motivation since, in the beginnings of a vocation, you are simply too busy and too taken up with the excitement of a new direction to reflect upon every element of your motivation. But ultimately what is implicit in your choice must be made explicit by thought, reflection, and personal exploration, and there must not be in the root motivation of celibacy anything resembling spiritual or moral snobbery or looking down on marriage. The choice of celibacy must be based upon some excellence in the vocation of celibacy itself, and not in mere comparison with something else. Only then can the specific excellence of the vocation to celibacy become part of your own life,~and--I am sure I do not have to repeat--thespecific excellence of celibacy is not the fact that you do not have a woman in your life or that you sleep alone. This is a necessary condition, but if that is all that celibacy means to you, you could end up being the most miserable of men, deprived of the crowning act of your masculine nature, the finest and noblest expression of your manhood, with nothing to take its place. That would be a deprivation of singular magnitude. Thoughts on Celibacy And this is something that we should never forget: As celibates we deprive ourselves of this crowning act of our masculine nature, the fin-est and most genuine expression of our masculinity that is sexual inti-macy in marriage. If that terrifying vacuum were not filled with some-thing that touched with joy the very roots of our manhood, the dep-rivation and emptiness would be almost too much to bear. This is one of the consequences of celibacy that has not often been touched upon, but it certainly explains some of the strange aberrations of clerical and religious life and some of the tragic consequences of an ill-motivated and immature commitment to celibacy. One of the major problems in the vocation to celibacy is that many celibates have not through deep personal reflection made explicit in their own minds what was implicit in their choice of celibacy and have ac-cepted, quite uncritically, an evaluation of sexuality in general, and of their own sexuality in particular, that is based on tenets of a Neoplaton-ist and Stoic anthropology embodied in an older type of spirituality. This evaluation notonly placed no value upon sexuality itself, but tended to denigrate as totally unworthy of the spiritual person the inti-mate expression of sexuality in marriage, thus negating the very mean-ing of sexuality and placing a negative judgment on the very possession of one's sexuality. Really, it all starts and ends there: What evaluation and judgment do you place upon the intimate expression of sexuality in marriage? If that judgment is a negative one, you can never really be com-fortable in the possession of your own sexuality. The true Christian evaluation of sexual intimacy in marriage, based upon the vision of sexual love embodied in the Christian revelation it-self, is that the intimate expression of sexual love in marriage is (i) the crowning act (in fa~zt, the primary and unique act) of one's manhood, (2) the finest, noblest, and most genuine expression of one's masculinity, (3) the unique expression of love between a man and a woman, (4) God's crowning gift to one's bodily existence, and (5) the gr,eatest earthly gift that God has given to the human race. This is implicit in the very choice of celibacy, even though that evalu-ation may not have been part of the conscious motivation when the choice of celibacy was made. Historically, the negative sexual tenets we have mentioned are part of a North African phenomenon that included Neoplatonism in Alexan-dria, the monastic movement in the same area, the spirituality of Eva-grius Ponticus, Tertullian, and St. Augustine (and the ascetic movement in the West), and the monastic spirituality of John Cassian, who reflected Review for Religious, September-October 1988 in his writings the sexual anthropology of the Alexandrian monastic move-ment. A healthier anthropology can be found in the robust passion for life in the classical Greek tradition, reflected in the best of Plato and the monu-mental work of Aristotle, later embodied in the Spirituality of the Greek Fathers and in the philosophical achievements of Saints Albertus Mag, nus and Thomas Aquinas. That anthropology recognized the inherent goodness of our senses and our sense life, the inherent goodness of hu-man sexuality, and the innate and preeminent goodness of the intimate expression of sex in marriage. This view, however, was never embod-ied in "traditional" spirituality and had little influence on spiritual doc-trine. The work of Aquinas, however, bore fruit in many areas over the cen-turies even though some of his basic tenets were condemned by an older "Augustinian" sChool soon after his death in 1274. In the documents of the Second Vatican Council, particularly, Gaudium et.Spes, the Aqui. nas view was recovered, and we have in the council documents a posi-tive and wholesome anthropology of sexuality7 which should have a pro-found influence on future spirituality. NOTES ~ "Students should have a proper knowledge of the duties and dignity of Christian marriage, which represents the love.that exists between Christ and the Church." Op-tatam Totius, Decree on the Training of Priests of the Second Vatican Council, ed. by Austin Flannery, 0.P~., no., 10, p. 715. 2 "They should recognize the greater excellence of virginity consecrated to Christ, however, so that they may offer themselves to the Lord with fully deliberate and gen-erous choice, and a complete surrender of body and soul." ibid. 3 Celibacy seeks, on the basis of personal:experience and personal judgment, a con~ tinual intimacy with God and with divine things; it provides that personal solitude without which, for this p_articular individual, such continual intimacy with God would be impossible or unlikely. Celibacy is not chosen because there is any value in mere sexual deprivation, but because it is a natural step towards a lifestyle totally or domi-nantly preoccupied with the eternal and the divine. Celibacy bears witness in one's own person to the eternal dimension, to the reality and significance of the eternal in human life. '~ For the purpose of this article, sexuality and sexual intima~3, have these meanings: Sexuality is a gift of God that comes with the act of creation, a personal endowment that should be borne with a certain masculine dignity and yet worn joyfully~ and lightly. Our sexuality is inherent'ly good, and so, too, is the intimacy with a wdman to which it leads. Sexual intimacy is a gift of God that comes with the very blueprint of our nature, Thoughts on Celibacy in the sense that the pattern of that intimacy is molded into our very bodies. Sexual intimacy is part of our human and masculine inheritance, and its expression in mar-riage the very crown of masculinity and femininity. But while sexual intimacy is a gift to our person and our nature, its expression is meant to be embodied in a personal choice based on love, embedded in the marriage covenant, and to be the setting and inexhaustible source of the deepest human hap-piness. Sexual intimacy comes with our nature and our personhood. It is the living expres-sion of the noblest human love and is itself the image and mirror of God's own love for human beings. By celibacy we freely deprive ourselves of this most enriching gift,'this crown of our masculinity, for the simple reason that we, called by God, have other plans for ourselves. 5 The nature of the vocation to celibacy is not a denial of the inherent goodness and sublimity of married love, but an affirmation, the affirmation of something beyond the sexual and beyond the earthly, the affirmation of another relationship and the cul-tivation of that relationship as the main occupation of one's life. Celibacy is a dep-rivation, but it is a freely chosen deprivation of something seen to be part of one's own human inheritance and something preeminently good. St. Thomas links celi-bacy to the virtue of magnificence, a certain exuberance in living, a bursting of the bonds of the ordinary to reach out to the extraordinary. It is based on a hunger for the eternal and for an intimacy as real and as stunning as the intimacy of man and woman in marriage. See Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), pp. 145-180.' 6 Celibacy is part of the virtue of sophrosyne, touched upon in Aristotle's Ethics, with a fuller treatment in the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. The object of sophrosyne is the body, and those things that are of the body (soma, somatos). There are several levels or kinds of sophrosyne: (I) joy and pride in bodily being itself (simple sophrosyne), (2) joy and pride in bodily well-being (dignity), (3) joy and pride in bodily senses (liveliness), (4)joy and pride

Issue 20.1 of the Review for Religious, 1961. ; Volume 20 1961 EDITORIAL O~FICE St. Mary's College St. Marys, Kansas BUSINESS OFFICE 428 E. Preston St. Baltimore 2, Maryland EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITORS Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. Henry Willmering, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITORS John E. Becker, S.J. Emile G. McAnany, S.J. DEPARTMENTAL EDITORS Questions and Answers Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Woodstock College Woodstock, Maryland Book Reviews Earl A. Weis, S.J. West Baden College West Baden Springs, Indiana Published in January, March, May, July, September, Novem-ber on the fifteenth of the month. REVIEW FOR RELI-GIOUS is indexed in the CATHOLIC PERIODICAL IN-DEX. JOHN XXIII Devotion to the Precious Blood [The following is an English translation of the Latin text of the apostolic epistle Inde a prirais, which Pope John xxIiI issued on June 30, 1960, concerning the fosterihg 6f devotion to ~the Precious Blood of Christ. The original text oF the docu-ment is to be found in Acta Apostolicae Seitis, 52 (1960), 545-50.] From the first months of Our pontifical labors, it oc-curred to Us again and again--and our. solicitous~ and plain-spoken words have often been an indicatioh of Our future intentions--that when daily practices-of religious piety were to be discussed, We would invite the faithful to an ardent honoring of that reality which in a remark-able way manifests the mercy of God for the souls of men, for holy Church, and for the entire ~orld~. We would in- ' vite them, in other words, to a special veneration of the Precious Blood of Christ Jesus, our Redeemer and our Savior. ~' We Ourselves became accustomed to this devotion in the home in which We were raised. Even today it is with happiness that We recall that every day during the month of July Our parents used to recite at home the litanies of the Precious Blood. Following the apostolic exhortation, "Take heed"to yourselves and to the entire flock whereof the Holy Spirit has made you bishops for the ruling of the Church of God which he acquired by his own blood" (Acts 20:28), We have decided, venerable Brethren, that the principal and pressing duties of Our pastoral office demand that We first of all take care of sound doctrine and secondly that We provide for the right exercise and conduct of religious piety, both" in its public and its° private manifestations. For this reason it hag.seemed to Us opportune to exhort Our sons to consider the indissoluble bond which should link the two widely diffused devotions to the Holy Name of Jesus and to the Sacred Heart of Christ with the're-. ligious homage to be offered to the Precious Blood of the Incarnate Word which was poured forth "for man~ for a remission of sins" (see Mt 26:28). ÷ ÷ ÷ D~votion to Precious Blood VOLUME 20, 1961 4, 4, ]olm XXIH REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 4 Just as it is of the utmost importance that the liturgical action of the Church should be in full accord with the profession of the faith;since "the law of belief determines the law of prayer";1 and just as no forms of piety should be introduced which do not flow from the purest fonts of the truths of faith; so it is also right that the various types of devotions should agree among themselves. It is actually necessary that those forms of piety which are re-garded as the most important and which are more apt for the attainment of holiness should in no way disagree with or oppose each other. It is likewise necessary that the forms of piety which from the viewpoint of value and of use are of limited and minor importance should yield ground to those forms which contribute more to the ob-taining of the salvation that was accomplished by Him who is "the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a redemption for all" (1 Tim 2:5-6). If the faithful derive the driving forces of their personalities and the discipline of their lives from a correct faith and a sane piety, then they can be assured that they are thinking with the Church and that through their union of prayer and their charity they are clinging to that Christ Jesus who is the Founder and High Priest of the lofty religion which derives its name, dignity, and power from Him. Even if only a hasty glance be directed to the admirable new emphases that the Church has attained in the field and area of liturgical piety--and such emphases are in full accord with that salutary progress of the faith wards a fuller understanding of divine truth-~it becomes consolingly clear that in the last few centuries this Aposto-lic See has often and openly approved and recommended the three religious devotions We have already mentioned. Although these devotions had been introduced into the practice of Christian living by a number of the faithful during the Middle Ages and although they were after-wards propagated in various dioceses and in various re-ligious orders and congregations, yet it was necessary that the authority of the Chair of Peter should intervene in order that these practices might be declared to be in ac-cord with Catholic faith and that they might be extended to the universal Church. It will be sufficient to recall here that from the. sixteenth century Our predecessors had bestowed spiritual benefits on the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus which in the previous century St. Bernadine of Siena had untiringly propagated ~hroughout Italy. In honor of this Holy Name an Office and a Mass were first approved, then a litany.~ x See the encyclical Mediator Dei, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 39 (1947), 54. t See .4cta Sanctae Sedis, 18 (1886), 509. fewer were the benefits with which the P~oman Pon- :iffs promdted the devotion to the Sacrffd 'Heart of Jesus, devotion that was so greatly helped to its achievement its full and complete form and its universal propaga-aon by those matters whlcti~were~,made clear'to St. Mar-garet Mary Alacoque by Christ when He appeared to her showing her His Heart. With admirable unanimity the Roman Pontiffs have honored this religious practice not only by pointing out its power and its nature but also by declaring its legitimacy and by promoting its use through-out the entire world~a All this has been done in many public documents of the Church, the three most impor-tant of which are three encyclicals devoted' t6 this topic.4 As was only right, the consent and the approval of this Apostolic See were not lacking for the devotion to the Precious Blood of Christ, the remarkable promoter of which in the last century was St. Gaspar del Bufalo, priest of the Roman clergy. In this connection it will be remem-bered that at the command of Benedict XIV a Mass and an Office were composed in honor of the adorable Blood of the Divine Redeemer; Moveover, Plus IX, in order to fulfil a vow made to God at Gaeta, ordered this liturgical ¯ feast to be extended to the universal Church.5'Finally the Supreme Pontiff of happy memory, Pius XI, raised this feast to a double of the first class in order to per-petuate the memory of the jubilee which took place on the occasion of the nineteen hundredth anniversary of the' redemption of the human race. He did this because he was convinced that the increased solemnity of the feast would foster a deeper devotion to the~: Blood of the Re-deemer and that thereby more abundant effects of the same divine Blood would result for mankind. We were but~ following the example of Our predeces-sors when, in order that devotion to the Precious Blood of Christ, the immaculate Lamb, might grow an, d flourish, We approved its litanies as properly set forth by' the sacred .congregation8 and recommended to the entire Christian family the private and public recitation of the same by attaching to them special indulgences.7 Our de- 8 See the Of?ice o! the Feast of the Sacred Heart, Second Nocturn, Fifth Lesson. *The encyclical Annum sacrum in dcta Leonis, 19 (1899), 71 ft.; the encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 20 (1928), 165 ft.; and the encyclical Haurietis aquas in Acta Aposto-licae Sedis, 48 (1956), 309 ft. ~See the decree Redempti sumus of August 10, 1849, in the Ar-chives of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, decrees for the years 1848--49, folio 209. e See Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 52 (1960), 412-13. ¢ Decree of the Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary of March 3, 1960, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 52 (1960), 420. 4. 4. 4- Devotion to the Precious Blood VOLUME 20, 1961 4. 4. John XXIII REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 6 cision in th~is matter, pertaining as it did to the solicitude for all the churches (see 1 (]or 11:28) which is proper to the .Supreme. Pontiff, was prompted by the hope that in these days of great and pressing spiritual needs the faith-ful might continue to increase their respect for those three forms of Christian piety which We previously praised and that they come to see them as possessing a perpetually salutary power of effectively promoting the spiritual life. Since the feast and month are now approaching which are dedicated to the Blood of Christ, the price of our re-demption and the pledge of a salvation and of a life that will never fail, the faithful should meditate on this Blood with renewed fervor and should partake of it by more frequent reception of the sacrament of the Eucharist. Il-luminated by the light which comes from the profitable admonitions of Sacred Scripture and from the precepts of the holy fathers and doctors of the Church, they should recall how abundant and limitless is the power of this truly Precious Blood, "one drop of which is able to wash the entire world from every sin," as holy Church sings t.hrough the lips of the Angelic Doctors and as was wisely confirmed by Our predecessor, Clement VI.0 The power then of the Blood of Christ, God and man, is infinite; infinite too is the love which moved our Re-deemer to pour it forth for us. This shedding of His Blood began .eight days after His birth when He was cir-cumcised. Later it was shed more copiously when being in agony in Gethsemani, He prayed the longer (see Lk 22:43), when He was scourged and crowned with thorns, when He climbed the hill of Calvary and was there affixed to the cross, and when at the end His side was opened by a great wound which was to be the sign of the divine Blood that flows out into the sacraments of the Church. All these events show that it is not only fitting but even highly necessary that all the hithful, reborn as they have been in the streams of this Blood, should adore it in a spirit of religious homage and should honor it with their love. It is most salutary and entirely fitting that the worship of adoration which is due to the chalice of the Blood of the new ~fid eternal testamefit, especially when it is ele-vated in the Eucharistic sacrifice for the worshipful gaze of the faithful, should be followed by the reception of that Blood. This is possible, because in the sacrament of the Eucharist the Blood of Christ is received since it~is joined by an indissoluble bond to His Body. Joined in mind with the priest, the faithful who attend" Mass can In the hymn ddoro te devote. See the bull Unigenitus Dei Filius of January 25, 1343, as cited in Denzinger-Rahner, n. 550. most properly repeat to themselves the words which the priest says at the time of his sacred Communion: "I will take the chalice of salvation and I will call upon the name of the Lord . The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ guard my soul unto life e~ei:nal, Ameh." There can be no doubt that in this way the faithful, whenever they wor-thily approach the sacred synaxis, will receive a more abundant, share of those fruits of the redemption, of the resurrection, and of eternal life which the Blood offered by Christ "throu.gh the Holy Spirit" (Heb~9:14)~acquired fbr all the family of mankind:Nourished by the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ and sharing in that divine power of His which has raised up in the Church numberless ranks of martyrs, the faithful will find it easier to bear ~the labors and troubles of everyday life; and should it be necessary for the sake of Christian virtue~and the kingdom of God, they will even sacrifice their lives, for they will be burning with that ardent love which caused St. John Chrysostom to exclaim in his writings: "Let us come back from the table as lions, breathing fire, terrible to the devil, realizing who our Head i~ and how great a love He has shown for us . This Blood ~hen it is worthily re-ceived, drives out the devils and _calls to our side the angels and even the Lord of the angels.~. This Blood when it was poured forth Washed the entire world . It is the price of the world; it is that b~ which Christ bought His Church . These thoughts will moderate our passions. How long will we cling to present things? How long will we refuse to be aroused? How~lo.ng will we take no care of our salvation? Let us reflec( what honors God has be-stowed on us;.a.n.d then letus give thanks and give back glory not only by our faith but also by our deeds.''x° It is to be hoped that those ~ho are honored by the name of Christian will frequently consider the fatherly exhortation of the first Supreme Pontiff when he wrote: "Spend the time of your sojourn here in reverence, in the realization that you were redeemed not by gold or silver., but by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (I Pet 1:17-19). May they also.listen closely to the Apostle of the Gentiles when he says: "You have been purchased at a great price. Glo-rify God then and carry Him in your body" (1 Cor 6:20). If all the faithful take these texts to heart, then their way of life by which they should be an example to others will become more noble and more fitting. Thus it will come about that the Church, strengthened by such virtue, will carry out its earthly task to the profit of the human race. Men, peoples, and nations will be joined by a close bond of brotherly love, if they will yield themselves to the move- See Homily 46 on the Gospel o] John in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, 59, 260-61. + + + Devotion to the Precious Blood VOLUME 20, 1961 ments of the grace of that God who wishes all men to be ¯ saved (see 1 Tim 2:4), who has willed the redemption of them all in the Blood of His only begotten Son, and who hag called all of them to become members of the one Mystical Body whose Head is Christ. Civil society itself will thereby enjoy a serene peace; and human nature, which was created to the image and likeness of its Maker (see Gen 1:26), will become yet more worthy of God. It was to a consideration of this lofty dignity to which mankind has been divinely called that St. Paul exhorted those converted Jews who were too much attached to the institutions of the Old Testament even though the latter was but a dim figure and image of the New Testament: "You have come to Mount Sion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the companionship of many thousands of the angels, tb the comunity of the first-born who are now citizens of heaven, to God, the judge of all things, to the spirits of the just who have been made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to a sprinkling of blood that is far more eloquent than that of Abel" (Heb 12:22-24). We are certain, venerable Brethren, that Our fatherly exhortation, when communicated in the way you judge best to you.r people and your clergy, will be put into salu-tary and effective execution in a spirit of willing coopera-tion. Accordingly as a sign of heavenly gifts and as a pledge of Our special benevolence, We impart in full charity Our apostolic blessing to each and every one of you as well as to your flocks, especially to those who carry out Our desires with devoted alacrity. Given at Rome in St. Peter's, the thirtieth day of June, on the vigil of the Feast~ of the Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the year 1960, the second of Our pontificate. John XXIII REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS CHARLES A. SC.HLECK, C.S.C. The Sister in the Church When something good, nobie, and sublime is called into question or becomes obscure, it usually calls into existence an immense amount of thought,~reflection, and literature. Indeed, if we are to meet the demands of the situation fully and adequately, the whole matter of the entire reality must once more be subjected to a prolonged and meditative scrutiny. There is usually not so much a question of justifying its existence as there is of getting back to its roots, of elucidating and bringing into the light and clarity of the common vision the fundalnental and essential meaning of the institution in question. And this is especially true when this institution has been estab-lished by God or by His Church. What we feel in such a case is the need to see straight, or rather to see into the core and the heart of the reality itself. In the past such was true of several of the mysteries of divine revelation, the Incaination, fok example, the Trinity, grace, the divine motherhood. This calling of an institution into question together with" the consequent obscurity that almost destroys our appreciation of it has been common in our own day in the case of the Church herself, Mariology, the role of the laity in the Church, and Christian virginity or the religious sister in the Church. Consequently we witness today an outpouring of much labor, thought, and writing which, with more or less suc-cess, attempts in one way or another to penetrate into the divine reasons for the existence of such mysteries and their essential and basic meaning. And while each of these re-alities would certainly be a most interesting topic for our consideration, the one that is being singled out in the present .article is the institution of Christian virginity, or more precisely and exactly, the role of the religious sister in the Church. At the very outset we ought to note that one aspect of this vocation has rarely been called, into question or fallen into obscurity at least as far as the apostolic re- Thee Reverend Charles A. Schleck, C.S.C. teaches theology at Holy Cross College (seminary), 4001 Hare-wood Road N.E., Wash-ington 17, D.C. VOLUME 20~ 1961 9 ~. ~. sa,~, c.~.c. REVIE~ FOR RELIGIOUS lO ligious sister is concerned. And that is the utility, the contribution which such a vocation makes to one or other of the needs of our visible society. There are very few who would call into question the utility of the teaching, or of the care for the sick and the abandoned, or of the other spiritual and corporal works of mercy which form part and parcel of the various apostolates and missions entrusted to apostolic communities of religious women in the Church. In fact, the thought and the writing that has come forth in defense of the sister's vocation has tended to make this its principal and chief weapon. But when we come to another aspect of this vocation, one that touches the very soul of it and centers around the fundamental meaning of this vocation, then we find very few even among Catholics who understand what is perhaps the primary and basic mission of the sister in the Church. The proof of this, it seems, lies ih the fact that the question Ut quid perditio haec still remains in the minds of so many inside and outside the Church"To what avail is this loss of womanhood, this institution of virginity?" From the fact that this question mark still rematns and is even looming larger in certain areas of our country in spite of all the writing and speaking that has been done on the subject, we can conclude, without any kind iSf violence or exaggeration being done to the actual situation, that people by and large do not consider the collaboration in action with other institutions of so-ciety as a sufficient explanation of the vocation of the re-ligious sister. And that is a sobering thought; for these people are, perhaps, more right in their conviction or as-sumption than any of us ~ould be willing to admit. No, it is not the i'prose" of the sister's vocation that needs° clarification in the eyes of the world and in the minds of men, and perhaps even in tier own mind. It is rather the "poetry," so to speak, or the poetic symbolism of the life and mission of the sister in the Church that must be mole constantly and widely diffused both inside and ~outside the Church. For without that difftision we can not hqpe 'to make men see and love the vocation, the mission, or the role wl~ich God intends her to play in the Mystical Body Of the Church. We musi then ask ourselves the question: What is this "poetry" or this basic notion which lies at the very root of the sister's mission in the Chtirch? Only when we an-swer that question satisfactorily will we be able to di-minish and soften and, in the case of many, eliminate the objections which they raise against it. Only then can we hope to show those outside the Church and to very many inside, that the mission and the presence of the sister, far from being a block or an obstacle to the continuation of life, is itself a source of vitality and one of the most ex- cellent ins~truments by which the highest and most sub-lime form of life, if not perhaps begun, is nevertheless nourished, increased, protected, and safe-guarded, and most often formed and fashioned. The religious sister is ~v~fi tb the Church not:so much as a model or an image according to which other women must pattern their lives; neither is she given to the Church as a kind of living representation of the grace of the Christian life as it would .have been given Ito all. except by reason of some fault or' guilt on their part. No, she is given to the Church as a kind of sacrament,' a v,s~ble s~gn, a symbol of one, even of several mws,lble reahtles. To understand this assertion thoroughly, w,e need to re-call briefly the mysteries of the Trinity and of creation. In the first mystery, that of the Trinity, ~we know that God the Father communicates His own nature to God the Son, and these two persons~ commumcate this same nature to the Holy Spirit. Yet while all thre~ of these per-sons possess the one same divine nature, skill from our very limited vision this nature appears to take on differ-ent~ aspects when we consider one or other oflthese persons according to His distinctive properties or characteristics. We obtain a much clearer picture of the richness of each of the persons by linking up certain qualities or perfec-tions with which we are familiar, with one o~: other of the . divine persons. Thus itis by reason of the various kinds of processions which we find in this myster~ that we at- .~ tribute understanding to the Word of God Who proceeds by way of an operation of the divine intell~,ect; similarly we attribute love and affection to the Holy Spirit because He proceeds by way of an operation of theI divine will. In the second mystery, that of creation, God seems to have wished that His various perfections I~e manifested and shared in by many different creatures, each acc.ording to a very definite limitation, such that some would repre-sent Him more perfectly and more fully, than others. For only in this way could the fullness of His b~ing be made somewhat clear. When we focus our gaze on material creation, we see that only one creature came into being, made, as we are told, according to the lmage~ and likeness of God. Only one received a perfection or perfections which would enable it to know and to love ~;od, to share and participate in the most intimate opI e.rations of the Godhead. That creature was man. Or let ks say, it was human nature, possessed by two different~individuals who I reflect the riches of this nature in such d~ffe~ent ways that the fullness of the mystery of the human composite might stand'out the more clearly and might m,rror more per-fectly the riches of the Godhead. For we must not forget that man and woman also belong to those th.ings of which it was said by the Apostle: "From the foundations of the 4. ÷ ÷ The Sister in the Church VOLUME 20, 1961 II C. A. $chl~cl~, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS world, men have caught sight of His invisibl~ nature, his eternal power and his divinity as they are known through the things he has made" (Rom 1:20). In something of the way in which the divine nature was shared in by two person~ other than the Father, proceed-ing from Him and yet personally manifesting and empha-sizing different aspects (at least according to our imperfect vision), so too in the mystery of the human composite we see one nature shared in by two individuals who mani-fest in their whole make-up the distinct perfections of the rational creature. And just as the Word of God is the one to whom we attribute the intellectual operations of God while the Holy Spirit is the one to whom we apply the affective operations of God, so too (I do not mean to say that the parallel is entirely exact) man is the one in whom we see manifested more visibly the operations of the mind and the duties of the intellective side of our being, while woman is the one in whom we see manifested more visibly the operations of the will and the duties of the affective side of our being. Since all created beings are sent into the world as signs or "sacraments" in the broad sense of this word, and since man is an image of the Trinity, we might say that man and woman are visible signs and symbols of the intellec, tire and affective operations and perfections of God. Man is a sign or a "sacrament" more especially of God as truth, and woman is a sign or "sacrament" more especially of God as love. In a sense, then, we might say that man reflects more the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word, while woman is more the reflection of the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Now while it is true that the original plan of God was interfered with and that it was set right again only when the two persons proceeding from the Father were sent in mission to men, still it is precisely here--in relation to the fall and the two missions necessitated by it--that the "poetry" or the "sacramental" role and meaning of the religious sister begins to appear in all its dignity and sublimity. For when we consider the mystery of these two divine missions, we see that the Son of God was sent in mission to instruct men and to teach them the way of salvation. His function was to preach by word of mouth those mysteries and that knowledge of God which had been hidden from the foundation of the world. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, was sent in visible mission only very briefly and for a different purpose. For He was sent both as a sign and as a kind of mother-principle. He was sent as a sign of sanctification, a sign of what the interior renovation which takes place within the soul in the state of grace actually is. In fact, the very creatures under which He appeared manifested this role: the dove and the fire. The one, the dove, manifested the innocence of sanctity, its caution, its fruitfulness, and its silence; while the other, the fire, manifested love and the knowledge proper to love, the wisdom of the heart. Moreover, the Holy. Spirit was sent as a kind of.mothe~:prlnclple, a pi~i~i~i~ '~f re-birth, to mold the human race into a new creature. This was the work He was to continue in a silent and hidden manner by acting as the soul, the vitalizing force and power of the Church, giving birth and life to the family of God. While it is true, then, that in the mystery of the Trinity the Holy Spirit is in a sense passive, since He is the term of a divine procession but not a principle of any further divine procession, still He does not remain passive. Rather He becomes active, most active, together with the Father and the Son in the work of sanctification or of what we might call the Trinification of the members of the family of ~God. This role of the Holy Spirit has certain affinities with the role of woman. Although, of the two individuals pos-sessing human nature, she embodies the characteristics of receptivity, acceptance, and submission, this does not mean that she is inactive or merely passive. The case is far otherwise. She receives or accepts, but only to give flesh and-blood, so to speak, to what she receives, to clothe it with the more sublime qualities of human nature. By reason of her entire being--her body, her soul, her powers of understanding, her capacity for affection, her aptitudes, and her inexhaustible devotion--she is made to mother the human race, to know it in all of its depths and.heights, its crudities as well as in its sublime potentialities. Thus, she has been endowed by God with a maternal instinct to form someone for family life, whether it be for the human family or for the family of God. In fact, this func-tion is one that she is not free to side-step; she is not free to isolate herself or to make her life self-cente~ed. For she exists for humanity; she is at its very foundations, not so much to direct and govern it, but rather to give it birth and to direct its initial steps in the pursuit of the human race's common goal. Woman exists, moreover, as an inspiration for all to seek the things that are above; likewise she is a sign of what this higher life actually is. She was given to man as a~companion, a helpmate to enable him to attain the sub-lime end for which he had been destined. And when she realizes the potentiality that lies within herself, she acts as a focal point or as an exemplar for the human race. Hence in the present economy of our existence, the divine idea of a complete human nature as something that trans-cends all difference of sex is better translated by woman than by man,, not only because her beauty excels that of ÷ ÷ ÷ The S~ ~ the ~hurch VOLUME 20, 1961 ~. A. $cltleck, ~.~. . REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 14 man, but also and especially because she presents an idea that is remarkable for the contraries which it unites-- somewhat as the activity of the Holy Spirit is presented to us in the Sequence for Pel~tecost, something like the ac-tivity of grace itself. For feminine nature presents us with an idea that is simple, yet very profound. She appears as one in whom we find a mingling of grace and gravity, of a smiling yet deep seriousness, of enjoyment and sacrifice, of song and silence, of purity and fecundity. It is in Mary' that we find the most perfect realization of this womanly' perfection. How the rest of womankind has realized this ideal and performed her role can be very readily seen by scanning the pages of history,, both sacred and profane; She has often led man away from God--she has often performed the role of the first Eve; and yet she has often led man back to his God---she has performed the role of the second Eve. Her influence ~has accompanied man. to near perfection, and it has also plunged him into an abyss of hate and despair. In fact, we can say that the destiny of man in his relationship with God depends to a great extent upon the silent directive force and power of wo-man, befit good or evil. Whether it be for good or evil de-pends very much upon her veil of mystery, her unassum-ing surrender to goodness and her willingness to share her time and her qualities with man in a spiritual or in a physical sense. Without her cooperative participation, the totality of human existence would become distorted and sterile. For her role in human existence will always be that of a bride, of a woman moving within the realm of man, not rejecting her veil which is a sign of her ac-ceptance, of her l~at mihi, not struggling to attain that which is properly man's, but surrendering her whole be-ing in an effort to make her contribution to the end result which is the unity of the human race with God. Like the Holy Spirit with whom she has a certain af-finity, woman is not only passive or receptive. She is com-municative, in fact, essentially communicative; and .like the person of love whom she represents, she tends to be-come dit~usive, 'to create or to prepare [or the members of the human family the best that this family contains in the depths of its own being--life, freshness, the poetry of love, fidelity, service, and care. It is only when woman actually lives or incarnates in her own life these characteristic marks of the Holy Spirit that she arrives at the fulfillment of her mission in crea-tion. And it is only in and through her arrival there that she attains that vision proper to wisdom, one that reaches from end to end seeing all things and judging all things according t° their proper place in the divine plan. It is only in the measure that she fulfills her role that she will be enabled to see the needs of souls, the needs of the Mys- tical Christ, and the destinies of the humffnfamily. For in proportion as her affective nature becomes more and more purified, she Will become more and more like to the person of the' Holy SpiriLwho, is personal love in the mystery of the Trlmty; and she-will be g,ven~that gift which is part and parcel of her vocation--wigdom and the divine vision which this implies. For as h~r'affections become purified, she learns~o .center herself and her life in God who will constantly infuse intd her a deeper love which is perfected by one 'of~His most precigm Sifts w~sdom. Thus we can say that'only in proportion as there grows in the woman the untarnished innocen~e~0f Mary the girl, will there also' grow in her the. deep compas-sionate gentleness and wisdom and.vision of Mary the mother, enabling her like Mary to cover the world with a silent and still co-redemption. Consequently, we can say that ~oman's vocation and mission is to imitate and continue partially at least and in a visible way the mission of the Holy Ghost--to mother the human race inits relatidnship with God by showing men that God isoa God of lov~ and that it is man's duty to find God not go much by r~ducing Him to our level of thought and limitatiofis, 'but rather/by going out of ourselves and in the" darkness Of a deep faith ~and trust, loving beyond what we see. M6reover, she was meant to be a perpetual sign to man of what the soul in the state of grace is--the bride of the L6rd. If this is the fundamental role of woman by her very nature, we should exPect that any furthervocation which she might be called upon"by God td exercise in the divine plan would not depart from this. Rather we would expect it to call her to a more perfect fulfillment of this funda-mental and basic role or vocation; for grace, as we hav~ so often heard, builds upon nature. It should come-as no surprise, then, that w~ should conceive of the religious vocation which lies at the very basis of the sister's way of life as a dall or an invitation from God much more than as an arbitrary decision on the 15art of a woman to enter the religious life. It is;' we might say, a special glance 'or grace which God Himself directs towards certain souls whereby He lifts thein from the realm of His common love and elevates them t6 that of His special love. We can say that if a woman goes out of the world in attempting to realize a religious vocatibn, she does not do so arbi-trarily; she does so onl~ in :response to an invitation by which God addresses her by'her first name, going beyond the common love which He shows otherg'and embracing her with His ~pecial love. A sister gods out of the world (and ~this is implied in the religious life) only became she has been given an-other task by almighty God/For she is given- to the Church The~ Sister in the Church VOLUME 20; 1961 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 16 and to mankind, not so much as a type or figure as we mentioned above, but rather as a sign in much the same way as the Holy Spirit was given to the world in His visible manifestation as a sign. And because she is given to the Church as a sign, her whole life must be, as it were, a kind of graphic picture or parable. For in her there was meant ~o become lifelike and instantly visible what in all others is usually kept secret and hidden. In her what is innermost in the Church of God is turned outward; and the City of God, which lies so concealed in others, becomes the town which is set upon the mountain--visi-ble for all to see. I am speaking, of course, of the life of man with God. It is this role which the sister constantly plays in the Church; we see it in the habi~ she wears, in the houses she lives in, the bearing which marks her per-son, and in the very disposition of her life. Her mission and vocation in the Church was meant to publish this truth: that this woman belongs entirely to God, that she lives only for Him and only with Him. This is, it seems, what the vocation of the religious sister was meant by God to signify; and the external marks which set it off from all other vocations (something like the plate of pure gold worn by the high priest of the Old Tes~tament) indi-cate immediately that the one belonging to this yay of life is set apart for the Lord. God knew that by reason of the fall the observance of the first and greatest commandment--to love God with one's whole heart and soul--would be most difficult to keep. For the mind of man, wounded by original sin, would tend to look downward; his heart would tend to become immersed in the things of time even though he be ordered to an eternal destiny. The sublime idea of union with God would be recalled and brought to birth in him only through what he saw or only through what he would in some way sense. God knew that if know.ledge would be had only through the instrumentality of the senses, through contact with visible things such as the spoken or the written word, then love would be recalled to man and begotten in him only t~hrough what he would in some way sense, only through some visible instrument; and in this case the love that would be recalled and be-gotten in him would be a share and participation in God's own love itself. It was for this reason that God instituted Christian virginity, and the Church ~gave this institution a very definite form in the religious life; *for the sister was to be a sign or a "sacrament," that is, a visible sign of an in-visible reality. It was one of the best possible ways of realizing and of answering the cry of the psalmist, "We no longer see the signs," which you have placed before us, Lord. While a sister is a sign of many things---of the fact that God exists, of the fact that He can touch a soul in a most intimate way, of the fact that He can ask a soul, or rather demand of 'it as it were~ 'to live for Hi~n ~lone-- still the sister is above all according to the divine~plan a sign of a yet greater mystery, 'For her mlssxon was set up by God to signify that He is love, that He is one who loves and can be loved. She was meant to indicate perpetually, not so much in her own individual person as in the insti-tution which she incarnates, that man is called to experi-ence God's personal love, that a human soul is called to be the bride of the Lord. This explanation is not just ~ sentimental, metaphor; it is something, which fias been constantly re-echoed in the literature of the Church--in the figure of the Church herself as the ,immaculate spouse of Christ, in the person of the bride of the Canticle of Canticles, in the figure of the chosen people as the Jerusalem or Sion of the Old Testament, in the.figure of Mary, and in the figure of the New Jerusalem who is said by St. John in the Apocalypse to be sent down from heaven by God all clothed like a bride who has adorned herself in readiness to meet her husband (Apoc 21:2). It is in fact rather clearly indicated there that the new Jerusalem is a figure of the Church and of the individual members of this Church, each of whom is called to be the bride of the bridegroom who is the Lamb (Apoc 21:9). There is, we might say, a common desire in the Church to see this heavenly Jerusalem or to catch some glimpse here on earth of the soul that is ready to enter into glory or who already participates in vision. In the sister that desire was to be fulfilled. For while it is true that the re-ligious profession taken together with the reception of both man and woman is essentially the same, a represen-tation of an eschatological state, nevertheless it is only in the case of tlie sister, because she is a woman, that one of the principal effects--the closest possible union with God---is brought out most strikingly and unmistakably. The man's consecration to God is considered to be a kind of second baptism, a ceremony in which his death to the world and his resurrection unto God is signified. But in the case of the woman, the ceremonies taken in their en-tirety form a kind of marriage rit~, a marriage in which she unites herself to the God-man as His bride. Conse-quently only the sister is able to signify in her very being and. person the marriage of the Christian with God, be-cause only she cfin be by nature a bride. The veil and, in some cases, the ring that she receives at the time of her profession were meant to be a perpetual reminder both to herself and the world that there is another world of r.eality that lies far beyond the surface vision which takes up the thoughts and the attention of the majority of men. 4- + The Sister in the Church VOLUME 20, 1961 17 ÷ ÷ ~,. A. $chleck, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 18 The excellence of this marriage over that of the sacra-ment lies in the immediacy of the union with Christ the God-man as well as in the permanence of the bond that is established at that time. For we kno~ that in the re-ligious profession a woman unites herself' immediately to Christ, whereas in Christian marriage, She unites herself only. mediately to Him, through the intermediary of a human creature who represents Christ for her. The bond of the religious profession, moreover, is not dissolved at death; rather it is 'one that realizes its full meaning and significance not here on earth but only'in eternity since it is the reward of virgins alone tO follow, the Lamb whithersoever He goes in the everlasting hills. It is in this way that a sister is a visible and constant symbol to the world of the sublime privilege and destiny which rests upon all human souls--to be a bride in search of the bridegroom. Sublime though this role of the sister is, there is yet another one which is not merely attached to this destiny of being a bride of Christ, but is its natural outcome. We know that in and through human marriage the bride as-sumes the interests 'and the concerns of the ~bridegroom. Consequently, in the marriage signified by the'religious reception and profession of the sister, she assumes the in-terests and concerns of eternal love, of God who is infinite love. Thus her love is not only not annihilated by her profession, but it is given new life and becomes much more dynamic and extensive than that which is had be-tween two persons united to each other through Christian marriage. It is meant to assume the status arid proportions' of the love of the God-man Himself. If the bride reflects the interests and the concerns of the bridegroom, she does so in a very definite way in accordance with her own na-ture. Since this nature is feminine, she rel~resents God as love and she reflects the concern of God for souls in a ma-ternal way. in fact, we can say that the maternal office or role for which she is created is not only not annihilated in her profession but is brought to its highest and most perfect fulfillment because she exercises it over a greater number of souls and with respec~t to the highest life that can be given to a creature, a share in the life of God Him-self. This is as it should be. For a natural desire, one that is implanted in a creature by God Himself, must be capa-ble of being ftilfilled and must be fulfilled in some way or other if that creature is to realize its highest possible perfection. In calling the sister ~o her vocation, the highest voca-tion to which a woman could aspire in the Church, God will not--I think that "we can say can not---destroy this aspiration which lies deep in the very make-up of every woman. Rather He will bring it--He must bring it--pro- vided there is no'obstacle on her part--to its fullest and most perfect realization. To be pure and untouched~oand wholly consecrated to God and yet to have the heart and soul of.a mother is the unique wonder of Mary; and,it is also at the very heart and m);s'te~ 0f the sister's ,~6cation. It is a grace which is given to her initially in the grace of vocation itself, in much the same way as the fruit of the tree is given already in the very seed of the tree. And that grace will die or grow in the sister in the same measure or proportion as the grace of vocation dies or grows in her heart. It is of this also that a sister is a continuing sign or symbol to the world---that only a virgin motherhood is' compatible with~ a~_divine motherhood, that is, one that has as the whole purpose of its existence to lift up the souls of its children to :God, Just as Mary became filled with,grace and,superabundant 'in it, so to9 the sister is called to something similar--to be filled ~with grace but in such a way that she not only receives it but commtini-cates ,and diffuses it' to others as .a mother communicates and diffuses life to her children. Consequently, the.phrase which the Church in her liturgy.applies to Mary can also be applied in a certain sense to her: "And ~having the honor of virginity, you have also the joyof'motherhood," I think that it is true to say ,that only this understand-ing and presentation of the sister's, role in .the Church will make it more meaningful for her and restore it to its rightful place of: excellence~among the ways of life that lie"open to the faithful. For unless there is ~a deep faith and conviction in her marriage with Christ and in her spiritual motherhood, ~ the deeper motivating forces of, her vocation c~)uld easily remain somewhat obscured"and the consequent fruit of her apostolate diminished. And unless the missiofi' of the sister is presented to all the faithful during the years of their academic training and instruction,.espeCially in high schools and colleges, not by means of a ~¢il~d of "fly,by~nigh~" program but by one that openly juxtaposes it to marriage and presents it in all of its fullness, with its beauty, excellence, and joys, to-gether with its peculiar trials and difficulties, the question Ut quid perditio haec? spoken of above.will remain in the minds of a great many of the faithful and continue to ;. serve' as a parent,al objection to the very vocation itself: For all the attractiveness and beauty which this picture of the sister's mission in the Church might present, there° is one warning that might be voiced before c6ncluding, a-warning which becomes ever more necessary as the prog-ress of our technical civilization moves on with the.speed of an object drawn by the pull of gravity.And that is that 'the sister as well as the institution which she incar-nates must not fail to hold up the mystery of the cross-- in schools, in vocation literature, and above all in ,the The Sister in the C~hurch VOEUME 2~ 1961 19 4. + C. A. Schleck, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 20 actual living of the religious life itself. The presence of this sign of contradiction, its mystery, its sorrow and its joy, must always be the very basis of her way of life. For the essence of the religious life is "to go out from the world." Consequently, the religious sister is to bear in mind that here on earth she is called upon to fulfill the obligations of a bride and .a mother. The privileges and the rewards that shall be hers--that of "following the Lamb whithersoever He goes" and that of ~eeing "her sons coming from afar off and her daughters rising up at her side" (see Apoc 14:4; Is 60:3 ff.)--are reserved for eternity: These will be hers only if she has understood and accepted at the very outset of her religious life and has observed ever more faithfully during it the injunction of St. Ambrose: "The root and the flower of virginity is a crucified life.". It is this life, together with all that it implies in the case of the woman--silence and stillness and hiddenness especially--that is necessary not only for this vision to remain throughout her life but also for it to grow and to reach to new extensions and heights so that all the various lights and shadows of its beauty might appear in all their fullness, richness, and splendor. Such a vision of the "Word breathing forth love" as St. Thomas says (Summa tkeologiae, .1, 43, 5, ad 2), can be purchased only where there is lived and practiced prayer and disci-pline. These requirements have today made the vocation of the religious sister especially difficult. For the growing demands of her apostolate in the world along with the almost imperceptible infiltrations of elements foreign to her. vocation which such an apostolate often implies, could easily diminish and even destroy the possibility of retaining and developing this vision. If she remains faith-ful, however, to a constant and personal practice of these requirements, she will enable herself to fulfill her two-fold role, that of being a virgin in search of Christ and that of being a mother in whose conceptions no sin is passed on to the offspring, but only grace, only a share in the life of God Himself. Like freshly fallen snow on a mountain she will lift her gaze.only to God; and yet under the heat of the sun (which stands for the activity of'the Holy Spirit) she will melt and give life-giving water to those who dwell in the fields and valleys below. And he who drinks of this water shall never thirst, but it will become to him "a fountain of living water springing up unto life everlasting" (Jn 4:14). In conclusion we might sum up very briefly what we have attempted to give in these few pages. A religious sister leaves the world to become a sign or symbol, repre-senting God to men and men before God. For God loves humanity in her person, and in her person humanity gives its loving answer back to God. This, I think, is the mission given to the sister both by God and by the Church. When she returns to the world in the exercise of her apostolate, regardless of what this might be, she does so primarily as a sxgn, a symbol of the pasclial mysterxes, of tiuman na-ture's death to sin and resurrection unto God. In her case, this resurrection will be not so much unto light and knowledge as unto love. We know, that no apostolate, no vocation has any real meaning except in some relation to communication of life through light or through love. In the case of the religious sister it is in ke~eping with her very nature that the communication be more often predominantly through love; and even when it is through light, through the instruction of youth, it will be a spread-ing of vision in and through the warmth of love. Therein lies the "poetry" or the sacramental meaning and the divine design for the sister's mission, a mission whose fullness and richness and meaning must be made known to the world today; for it presents the solution to the needs of our day a constantly deeper interiorisation of doctrine and life, a flowering of the contemplative spirit, and an intense outpouring of charity and love. It is true that the world of today needs a rational theology; yet before it can become capable of this theology, it needs the vision which lies behind it, the vision wfiich made the very Summa of Aquinas seem like so much straw--the vision of eternal light that loves and is love. This role, this mission, this need for the presence of the sister in the Church has been very well indicated by a passage from one of the works of St. John of the Cross: 0 Lamps of fire, in whose resplendent light the deepest caverns where the senses meet,- erst steeped in dark-ness dire, Blaze with new glories bright, and to the lov'd one give both light and heat. Living Flame of Love, Stanza 3 This is the work of the Spirit and it is also the mission of the sister in the Church. And so in the end we come back to the beginning. The sister's apostolate or primary mission is very much like that of the Holy S15irit with whom she has a very definite affinity--to diffuse within the souls of men the gift of created love which is the com-mon bond uniting us with God and with each other in the friendship of divine charity or in the community of love which is the Church. If the sister fulfills tfi~t mission, on the day of her entrance into eternity she will merit to hear the words which the Prophet addressed to the new Jerusalem many centuries ago: "Arise, O Jerusalem, and stand on high, and behold the joy that comes to thee from thy God" (Bar 4:36; 5:5). 4- 4- The Sister in,- the Church VOLUME 20,, 1961 JEAN GALOT, S.J. Thanksgiving After Holy Communion, + ÷ + The Reverend Jean Galot, S.J. is Professor of Dogmatic Theology at Coll~ge Saint-Albert, Eegenhoven - Louvain, Belgium. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 22 In recent years it seems that some observers have no-ticed a decline in personal thanksgiving after Holy Com-munion. 1 The liturgical too;cement would seem to have led some of the faithful, including priests, to neglect any prayer which is not official, liturgical prayer, or prayer with a community flavor. On the other hand; the publi-cation b~y Father Karl Rahner of two articles on the theo-logical justification for thanksgivings gives us an oppor-tunity to reconsider this aspect of Holy Communion. We would like to do this not only from the standpoint Of prac-tice, but also doctrinally. Firstly, we shall ask what connection there is between thanksgiving and the Mass. In particular, is it correct to say that thanksgiving has only minor importance because Mass is it.self essentially a thanksgiving? Then we shall look at the reason usually given for making a thanksgiv-ing; namely, the continuation of the real presence of Christ in the communicant. But is this, in fact, the chief justification for the practice? Finally, there are some conclusions about the length of the thanksgiving and the manner of making it. Having a better understanding of Holy Communion and of its effects in us will lead us to see the attitude it requires of the communicant. By t~he end of this study it is hoped that the great im-portance of the matter in all religious formation will be ,apparent. This is the year of the Eucharistic Congress which has as its theme "Pro mundi vita" [For the life of the world], and it is also the fiftieth anniversary of St. Plus X's decree on the Communion of small children. It would be rewarding were the thoughts here outlined to contribute in any way to a fresh development Of Eucharis-, uc p~ety. . x This article originall~ appeared in Revue des Communautds Re. ligieuses, 32 (1960), 73-86. The translation is by Rev. D. Brigstocke, s.J. *"Danksagung nach der hl. Messe," Geist und Leben, 32 (1959), 180-89, 442-48. Thanksgiving Completes Our Participation in the Mass It is very t~ue that the whole Mass is a thanksgiving. The expression Eucharist~.makeS this clear. The word was applied by the primitive Church to the sacr~iment which Jesus instituted at the Last Supper; and the reason may be found in St. Luke and St, Paul: when He consecrated the bread, Christ "gave thanks" .(Lk 22:19; 1 Cot 11:24). It is the attitude which distinguished Christ at this capi-tal moment that has given its name~ to the sacrament. In memory of. Christ His '~disciples have likewise "given thanks" to God by repeating the gesture of consecration,3 ~How is this characteristic attitude to be interpreted? To give thanks is to thank God and to adopt the disposi-tions ofsomeone who has received everything from Him, and is glad to offer Him everything in return. At the moment of the Last Supper, Christ wished, to proclaim that He held everything from the: Father, hnd at,the same time He wanted to make a complete offering of Himself to the Father in a way .which would for ever perpetuate His oblation on Calvary. By this, thanksgiving, which is intended to be an act of total homage to the Father, the bread is blessed;~ it is consecrated because, being ,offered to God, henceforth it belongs to Him; it becomes the in-strument of divine blessings. The thanksgiving is an obla-tion, and the blessing of the bread is the sign of this obla-tion, its material symbol This is as much as to say that one must n6t have too restricted an idea of thanksgiving, confining it tO an outburst of gratitude alone. It signifies a return to God of what He has given to man. It is .a "Thank you" which is expressed by a profound offering of the self. If the Mass is to be called a thanksgiving, then it is within this very broad meaning of the word. Those who take part in the Mass have to acknowledge with. Christ that they h~ve received everything from the Father and that with Him they present to the Father all that has been bestowed upon them. They do this by uniting their offer-ing,' which should l~e as complete as possible, with that of the Savior, Does this mean to say that fervent.participation in,the Mass, with this attitude of thanksgiving, makes a thanks-giving after Holy Communion secondary or only slightly useful? We might notice that Father Rahner, while put-aFor the employment of the term Eucharist in the prim~itive Church an~d especially in St. Justin see P. Batiffol,'L'Eucharistie, la prdsence rdelle et la transsubstantiation, "l~tudes d'histoire et de th~o-logie positive," 2nd series; J.-A. ~Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia, I, 45 ft. ~In St. Matthew (26:26) and St. Mark (14:,22) the equivalent of "having given thanks" is "havin~,g blessed." 4, Thankagiving Holy vo,.u~E ~o. ÷ ÷ ÷ ~ean Galot, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ting in the first place the thanksgiving constituted by the Mass itself, maintains that thanksgiving after Holy Com-munion means much and is truly recommendable. And if one thinks of the personal participation by the priest or the faithful in the Mass, with all that this sharing de-mands, it cannot be said that thanksgiving has only sec-ondary importance. For its role is to complete partici-pation in the Mass, and to ensure the full fruit of this participation. In fact, participation in the sacrifice of the Mass reaches its culmination in Communion. This is the sacrificial meal. Certainly the sacrifice has its value on its own. Once the Consecration has taken place the essence of the sacri-fice has been accomplished, with its worth ex opere operato applied to the intentions for which the Mass is celebrated. But in the sacramental order the personal participation by the priest or faithful in the sacrifice of Christ remains essentially insufficient so long as it has not ended in Communion. This remains true, however fer-vent the will to unite oneself with the Offering and the Consecration.5 The object of Holy Communion is the full association in the Savior's sacrifice of those who are present at the sacramental renewal of this sacrifice. It unites them to Christ's offering in virtue of an efficacity ex opere operato different from that of the Consecration, and which completes the latter by acting in each com-municant individually. This sacramental efficacity may be explained in other terms by saying that here it is no longer the member of the faithful who tries simply to unite himself to the sacrifice of Jesus, albeit his efforts are sustained by grace; it is Jesus Himself coming to unite the Christian to His sacrifice. He comes to incorporate the individual with His sacrifice, and He does so by a divine power enabling the fa!thful to offer that which human weakness would have precluded. This sacramental incor-poration in the sacrifice may be translated in terms of thanksgiving: by Holy Communion Christ comes to in-corporate the faithful into His own supreme thanksgiving --a thanksgiving repeated at each Mass and which in-cludes the offering of His death. Christ associates the Christian with Himself, placing him in this situation of giving thanks. The sacramental efficacity of this incorporation, while it proceeds essentially from the divine strength of Christ, depends also upon the dispositions of the faithful. As with the rest of the sacraments, the effect ex opere operato of Holy Communion does not dispense the faithful from cooperating with grace. Christ gives Himself with His 5 Cf, the Council of Trent (DB 944) encouraging the faithful to sacramental communion at each Mass they attend. omnipotence, but the soul still has to open itself to Him and welcome Him. This attitude of welcome, this opening of the self and subjective fervor will have an influence upoh the fruits of Communibn. Here it is that we discern':the'i~nportance 6f'indi~,idual thanksgiving after Holy Communion. The Christian really has to "receive, Christ in such a way as to allow Christ to incorporate Him fully into His own sacri,fice. In order to be able to receive Christ in this way, one has to pay attention to Him, try to show Him the sentiments of welcome that He deserves, .and make ohe's own the thanksgiving that Christ brings with Him. This can only be achieved in those moments~ of recollection When a cer-tain intimate dialogue occurs. The time of thanksgiving after Holy Communion is the moment when all that has happened at the altar enters deeply into the soul of the Christian in order to transform it. At this moment the communicant yields himself to that immense giving of thanks which was the theme of the Savior's sacrifice. He commits himself personally to this thanksgiving by allowing Christ to penetrate to his. fur-thest depths, and by devoting all his powers as a man, his ability to reflect and to will, to the work of extending the Savior's reach within him. Thus, thanksgiving after Holy Communion is not a simple movement of personal piety which just happens to be added to a liturgical action in itself fully sufficient. It~is not a complement, with value only secondary. It is the reception and welcome of the liturgical and sacramental action, a welcome without which this liturgical action could not produce in the com-municant that which one has a right to expect. True--the thanksgiving is individual. It has to be, because it signi-fies a personal welcome given to the coming of Christ, and it has all the more worth in proportion as the depths of the personality are engaged. But this individual com-plement is claimed by Holy Communion and therefore by the liturgical action of the community which is the Mass. Besides, while remaining an act of the individual, the thanksgiving allows the member of the faithful to rise to a higher le~,el of community charity. It does this pre-cisely because in Holy Communion the Christian wel-comes to himself the love of Christ. . There is, therefore, no reason for neglecting thanks-giving after Holy Communion, or for holding that it is an act of private piety which we may omit at will. On the contrary, it is the ordinary completion of 'the Mass. Its importan.ce is not less for not being found among the prayers that the priest recites officially. By its very essence the thanksgiving has to be something intimate,~ a reaching-out and utterance of the soul; and as such it gua,rantees the full effect of the Mass in each of the faithful. + Thanksgiving A.~e~ Holy Commumon VOLUME 20, 1961 ~e~ ~, sJ. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Thanksgiving and the Real Presence of Christ For some time after Communion the sacramental pres-ence o£ the bod~ o£ Christ remains in us.~ It is difficUlt to decide the exact duration o£ this presence, but it does not cease be£ore the dissolution o~ the species. Accord.oing to some medical opinion, a small host in a healthy stom-ach does not corrupt before haft an hour.7 On the other hand, it is even more 'important to notice that this bodily presence o~ Christ in the communicant is given essentially £or a spiritual action, and more speCially £or a spiritual presence o~ Christ in u~. For Christ comes to nourish us spiritually. Father Rahner has good reason £or insisting upon the spiritual pregen.ce o~ Christ that Holy Communion produces. Thinking o~ the Eucharist, St. Paul Spoke about "spirit-ual food" and "spiritual drink" (1 Cor 10:3-4). He un-derstood the efficacity o£ the Eucharist as being o£ the spiritual order because, to speak more precisely, this effi-cacity was due to the Holy Spirit: "in 6ne Spirit we have all been made to drink" (1 Cor 12:13). According to these views, it is not the Bgdy or the Blood of Christ, as such, in their simple material reality, which operates in the communicant, but the Holy Ghost whom they bear. St. Paul was ectioing Christ's teaching. In the l~romise o~ the sacrament a's St. John recounts it, the Master had under-lined the spiritual nature o~ the etticacity of the Eucharist: "Only the spirit gives li£e; the flesh :is of no avail" (Jn 6:63). By itseff the flesh would be powerless to exert any sanctifying activity; it is only through the Spir!t that it can act in this way. In order to better understand the connection which exists between the Eucharistic body and the Holy Ghost, we should recall that the Body present in the Eucharist is the glorifie.~d Body o[_.the Savior. It is His risen Body. It is true that th.is Body is giv~en to us in a ~sacrifice. But the sacrifice, While it renews the offering of Calvary, renews too the completion of this offering and' its acceptance by the Father: :that is to~ say, the glorification o~ Jesus. That is why the Mass omme'mbrates not only the Passion~ but . e Father Rahner has put £orward a new theory~ according to which 'the real presence would cease [xom the moment of communicating, because from that instant the species of bread can no longer be con-sidered as food, being .no longer eatable. According to him there would begat this moment the equivale.nt of corruption of sp.ecies'. In' principle, however, tradition considers that physical corruption of ~ ¯ the species must occur before the real presence ~ceases. One might!! also add that the species of bread do. continue to be a nourishment' I even ~fte'r actual manducation, and so they remain the sign 6f the I real presence. Therefore the presence of the Body of Christ certainly I persists after the ~ctual°moment of communicating. ~ C~. Cardinal Gasparri, Tract. canonicus de Sanctissima Eucha- I ristia, (1897), n. 1194~ also the Resurrection and Ascension. Without the Resur-rection and the Ascension the sacrifice would be neither perfect nor consummated. Therefore, at the moment-of consecration it is the risen Body of Christ that becbmes present on the altar, and\in,.Holy Commufii61i~,iit is this risen Body which the faithful receive. Now the charac-teristic feature of the glorified humahity of Christ is that of being filled with the Holy Spirit,.and of b.eing able to transmit and communicate thissame Spirit.,At the Resur-rection the Body of Christ was tr~a~stormed and spirit-ualized by the Spirit. So it is that St. Paul considers the risen Christ as He who possesses the Hgly Spirit, and who bestows Him for our sanctification,s "The last Adam was made into a quickening spirit" 0 Cor" 15:45). This Pauline teaching is based on the testimony of the Gospel itself, which shows us in the risen Chyist Him who says.to His apostles, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (Jn 20:22), and above fill Him who sends, the Ho.ly Spirit to all the disciples on the day of Pentecost (Lk .24;49; cf. Act The reception of the glorious flesh of Christ in the body of the communicant produces as a consequence a general pervasion by the Holy Spirit. Before all let us notice that the Holy Ghost does not veil the presence-of Chr!st, as though He were an intermediary acting as a screen. On the contrary, He causes the ~piritual diffusion of this p~es-ence; it is He who causes the action and love of the Savior to penetrate the soul. It is through Him that the presence of Christ gr6ws deeper and more intimate. It is this spiritual action of the bodily presence of the Savior in the communicant that demands the latter's cooperation if that action is to be exercised fully. It fol-lows that this spiritual action requires the most fervent thanksgiving possible. We are now in a position to define more exactly the role of thanksgiving. For our part, i.t is the welcome to the bodily presence of Jesus as a presence which acts in a spiritual manner and thus penetrates the soul. It is, be-sides, traditional to think of thanksgiving along these lines: the Christian who has just communicated addresses himself to Christ present in his heart, Christ who. has reached and penetrated into his very soul. The communi-cant desires to make some answer to this spiritual pres-ence. This concentration of attention upon the spiritual presence of Christ should not lead to the conclusion that the bodily presence is without importance. The spiritual presence is bound up with the bodily presence:. ,we have recalled that it is the glorious Body of Christ that is the s Cf. F. X. Durrwell, La Rdsurrection de ]dsus, myst~re de salut, (Paris: 1949), pp.,196-23. 4- 4- 4- Thanksgiving Alter ltoly Communion VOI~UME 20, :1961 ÷ ÷ ÷ lean Galot, SJ. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 28 bearer of the Spirit. In th6 rest of the Sacraments there is an action by the Holy Spirit, together with an infusion of grace; the Eucharist is the only sacrament wherein we receive not only grace, but the author of grace. In it we receive the spiritual presence of Jesus after a fashion that ig quite exceptional, arising from the fact that this pres-ence is the immediate result of the presence of His Body within us. It is this bodily presence which guarantees the spiritual presence at its highest pitch, together with spiritual nourishment, Thanksgiving after Holy Com-munion has as its object the spiritual assimilation of the presence of Christ. The Duration of Thanksgiving According to what principle should we determine the lengt.h of thanksgiving? Father Viller writes, "It is nor-mal for it to last as long as the Eucharistic presence of our Lord remains in us.''9 But it is quite legitimate to enquire with Father Rahner whether this criterion is fully justified. To begin with, certain inconveniences arise when we seek to measure the duration of the thanksgiving by the duration 'of Christ's bodily presence in the com-municant. If, as Cardinal Gasparri states on medical evi-dence, a small host remains in the stomach for not less than half an hour, and a large one for an hour, then this p~i~sistence of the species will in any case require a very long thanksgiving. Besides, were this criterion to be adopted, it would be for doctors and biologists to decide upon the length of the thanksgiving. In addition to this, such a criterion does not appear to be founded on the true nature of the thanksgiving. The proper object of the latter is not the reception of the Body of Christ in the stomach, but the reception of the total Christ by the soul. We are not dealing with an assimilation by the body of the Body of Christ, but with a reception and assimilation "of His spiritual presence. We have tried to stress that the bodily presence of Christ is designed to give us His spiri-trial presence more comp.letely and immediately. Since the role of the thanksgiving is to open the heart or the soul to this spiritual presence of the Savior, its duration should be measured by the amount of time nor-mally needed if such'a welcome is to occur. It should be long enough to allow the person of Christ to exercise His action in the soul of the communicant and to fill it with His life in the measure that He Himself wishes. What 'must take place is a penetration of our intelligence and will and sentiments by this presence, and there must also be a personal effort to achieve this intimate relationship with Christ. No absolute norm can be given for achieving Communion (pratique), in Dictionnaire de Spiritualitd, II, 1282. this, simply because one has to take into account the sub-jective dispositions of each individual. But in general spiritual writers think that about a quarter of an hour is good measure for most. This isJong enough to ach,,ieve the degree of recollection whi~li ig n~ssary if profound con, tact is to be made. with the person of the Savior, and if the depths of the soul are really to be opened to Him. Certainly it would be arbitrary to declare that the last prayers of the Mass are a sufficient thanksgiving after Holy Communion, and that once the litUrgical action has been completed there is no need to prolong the prayer which should act as an echo to the.sacrament just received. On the contrary, itmay be said in general that the mere fact of following the prayers 6f the priest up to the ending of Mass is not sufficient to afford Christ th~ intimate and personal welcome which His Eucharistic. presence asks of us. It is to be regretted that there are those.who syste, m~tically favor the departure of the faithful as~.soon as Mass h~s ended. If there are many lives in wl~ich frequent reception of Holy Communion fails to produce the fruit that might be expected, may this not be because the welcome offered tq the Eucharistic Christ is not fervent enough, and because the thanksgiving which should lie the surge of a° personal. love is too brief and superficial? It has already been no-ticed that sacramental efficacity ex opere operato requires man's cooperation if it is to have its full effect. Father Rahner writes that this efficacity eX opere ope-rato cannot be increased by the thanksgiving, and that it simply depends upon the disposition of the soul at the moment of Communion. He adds that if this disposition exists it will in fact be manifested by a meditative and recollected thanksgiving,xo But if it is true that strictly speaking the thanksgiving does not augment the efficacity ex opere operato, it does none the less allow th.is effic~city to be. exercised in the fullest measure desirable. It is not only at the precise moment of communicating that 'the bodily presence of Christ produces its spiritual action. This is continued later. It will be fully efficacious to the degree that the soul yields itself to it in thanksgiving, attempting to respond by faith and love. The length of the thanksgiving does influence the efficacity of the sacra-ment, seeing that normally a certain time is called for if a welcome is to be considered fervent. It is therefore un-derstandable that the Church should recommend a thanksgiving which goes on after the Mass has ended. In this connection it is worth citing from Mediator Dei. As this encyclical is expressly concerned with the liturgy, it ~o Rahner op. cir., pp. 186-87. ÷ + + Thanksgiving A~ter Holy o~munio~ VOLUME 20, 1961 29 ÷ ÷ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 30 is particularly noteworthy that it should stress the per-sonfil thanksgiv.ing d~manded by the liturgy. When the Mass, which is subject to special rules of the liturgy, is over, ~the person who has received Holy Communion is not thereby freed from his duty of thanksgiving; rather; it is most becoming that, when the' Mass is finished, the person who has received the Eucharist should recollect himseif, and in intimate union with the divine Master hold loving and fruitful converse with Him. Hence they have departed from the straight way of truth: who, adhering to the letter rather than the sense,~assert and teach that, when Mass has ended, no such thanksgiving should be added, not only because the Mass is itself a thanks-giving, 'but also because this pertains to a private and personal act of piety and not to thegood of the community. But, on the contrary, the very .nature of the sacrament de-mands that its reception should produce rich fruits of Christian sanctity. Admittedly~the congregation has been officially dis-missed, but each individual, Since he is united with Christ, should not interrupt the hymn of praise in his own soul, "al-ways returning thanks for all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father" (Eph 5: 20). The sacred liturgy of the Mass also exhorts us to do this when it bids us pray in these . words, "Grant, we beseech thee, that we may always continue to offer thanks" (Postcommunion, Sunday Within the Octave of Ascension) " .and may never cease from praising thee" (Postcommunion, First Sunday after Pentecost), Wherefore, if there i~"no time when we-must not offer God thanks, and if we must never cease from praising Him, who would dare to reprehend or find fault with the Church, because she advises her priests (canon 810) and faithful to converse with the divine Redeemer for at least a~ short while after Holy Communion, and inserts in her liturgical books, fitting, prayers, enriched with indulgences, by which the sacred mlmsters may make suitable preparati6n before Mass and Holy Communion or may return thanks afterwards? So far is the sacred liturgy from re-stricting the interior devotion of individual Christians, that it actfiaily fosters and promotes it so that they may be rendered like to Jesus Christ and through Him be brought to the heavenly Father; wherefore this same discipline of the liturgy demands that whoever has partaken of thd sacrifice of the altar should return fitting thanks to God. For it is the good pleasure of the di;gin~ Redeemer to hearken to us when we pray, to converse witfi us intimately and to offer us a refuge in His loVing Heart. Moreover, such personal colloquies are very necessary that we may all enjoy more fully, the supernatural treasures that are contained in the Eucharist and, according to our means, share them with others, so that Christ our Lord may exert the greatest possible influence ofi the' souls of all. Why then, Venerable Brethren, should we not approve of those who, when they receive Ho!y Communion,~ remain on in clbsest familiarity with' their divine Redeemer even after the congregation has been"officially dismissed, and that not only for~the consolation of conversing with Him, but also to render Him,due thanks and praise and especially to ask help to defend their souls against anything that may lessen the efficacy of the sacrament and to do everything in their power to cooperate with the action of Christ who is so intimately present. We exhort. them to do so in a special manner by carrying out their resolu-tions, by exercising the Christian virtues, as also by applying to their own necessities the riches they have received with royal liberality. The author of that golden book The Imitation of Christ certainly speaks in accordance with the letter and the spirit of the liturgy, when he gives the following advice to the person who approaches the altar, "Remain on in secret and take delight in your God; for He is yours whom the whole world cannot take away from you" (4 [12).Xffr," ~" ,~ The Manner o[ Making the Thanksgiving The very first principle is that of personal liberty. The same way cannot Be laid down for everyone, and there is no universal formula. Wffat is important above all is that in this meeting with Christ the soul should express itself personally. One cannot, then, lay it down as a hard and fast rule that the best way to make a thanksgiying is to follow the priest in the prayers he says towards the end of Mass. Besides, taken from the point of view of giving thanks, it must be admitted that in the Roi'han Rite these prayers are very brief and only slightly' d.eveloped. Cer-tainl); at Masses where the congregation sings or pub-licly recites the pray+rs, this activity will be shared by tl~0se who have communicated. They 16ave till later the completion of their thanksgiving in a thore personal man-ner. But where neither hymns nor'prayers are expected from the congregation, each communicant is free to fol-low his own taste. On the c;ther hand it is quite possible that an individual will need educating in the use Of thig liberty. An obvious example is that of children, and the same may be "true of a number of the'f~tithful. In orderto help their thanks-giving a prayer may be recited or an intention placed before them. Care should always be taken to introduce va,riety in order to avoid monotony and routine. But if there is great freedom in the loving converse that a thanks-giving should be, there are still certairi principles which should guide .the exercise of this liberty. We suggest, at any rate, two such principles. _Firstly, thanksgiving is the kind o.f prayer .which is par excellence directed towards the person of our Lord inti-mately present. Indeed, as we have noticed, the Eucharist is d!stinguished from the other sacraments by this gift of the personal presence of Christ. It follows that after Com-munion we should be concerned to develop all that brings our attention to bear upon the very person of the Savior. Before all else.~ this person claims our ad~oration. In renew-ing his faitfi'in the presence of God now bestowed upoh him so intimately, the communicant adores the Lord with his whole soul; and proclaims before the Infinite Being that he is a creature and utterly depend~nt. But as this in-finite being is now his guest, the com~nunicant tries to converse with Him familiarly. He c~mverses with Christ who is the identi(al'Christ of the Gospel, the Christ who The Cath~oiid Mind, 46 (June, 1948), 363--64. ÷ +- + Thanksgiving Alter Holy Communion VOLUME :~0, 1961 ÷ ÷ ÷ lean Galot, $.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 32 enjoyed being in the company of men. The thanksgiving is the privileged moment in this personal dialogue. On the other hand it is no less important to recall that the thanksgiving is indeed the prolongation of the Mass and its completion in the individual soul. In consequence .there should be an effort to develop the dispositions which unite the soul with those of Christ in His sacrifice. Be-fore we go on to mention these dispositions, a word should be said about the Mother of God. MaTy can bring great help to the soul in its effort to unite itself to Christ's sacri-fice, just as she aids in the effort towards union with 'His person. The Blessed Virgin remains the model of per-sonal welcome to the Savior's presence, as well as of an intimate sharing in the redemptive sacrifice. She has a mission to draw souls along this way. It will be particu-larly helpful to have recourse to her in order to ensure a genuinely fervent thanksgiving. Among the dispositions which associate us with Christ's sacrifice is gratitude, for it has given its name to the Eu-charist. We have to own that we owe all to God our Father, and we should thank Him accordingly. It is to Him that we owe in the first place the immense benefit of Com-munion itself, and the gift of the Savior's body. Then comes offering. Once we have owned that all is the Father's sift there is the wish to.°ffer Him all in re-turn. The total offering that Christ makes in the Mass entails a total offering by the communicant. Thus'Com-munion prepares the soul for the sacrifices of the day ahead those sacrifices 3vhich are the effective seal of what has been offered at Mass. If it is possible to foresee certain sacrifices, it may be desirable to offer them in advance during the thanksgiving; thus the Christian will be helped to accept them in the right spirit when they come, a spirit of intimate union with Christ and the love which was carried to love's extreme limit. Thanksgiving gives the soul the opportuniiyto adopt an ideal attitude of gener-osity Which it will ~try to maintain when the difficult mo-ments do in fact arise. We should also-mention confidence and joy. Christ present in the soul is the glorious Christ, and his sacrifice was consummated in the triumph of the Resurrection. The thanksgiving should strengthen confidence in the victory the Savior h~is won, both in Himself and in others, and in such a way that the communicant is able to face more firmly obstacles to his personaFreligious life and apostolate. There should also be a renewal of spiritual joy. Coming from Communion the Christian should have a heart filled with enthusiasm and be manifestly happy, for he has just welcomed the triumphant Christ. Neither should prayer of petition be forgotten. The sacrifice of the Mass is celebrated in order to spread divine graces more abundantly upon men. The communicant ought to unite himself with the salvific will of God which, in Christ, inspires sacrifice. With the Savior he should de-sire the expansion and progress of His Kingdom; he will become more and more one. w~th the intima~t,e~desires of Christ in proportion as he makes his own the great inten-tions of the Church and asks for their fulfillment. At the same time the communicant entrusts his own private in-tentions to Christ, intentions that represent his own share of responsibility in the advancement of the Kingdom. He will take advantage of the Savior's presence in order to express his desires and hopes and to obtain their satisfac-tion. Finally, among those dispositions which we may expect the thanksgiving to develop is fraternal charity, that love of one's neighbor of which Christ's sacrifice is the perfect and extreme form. Ever since St. Paul the Church has loqked upon Holy Communion as the most powerful sac-ramental bond linking Christians, the artificer par excel-lence of the unity of the Mystical Body. Thanksgiving should contribute to the flowering of charity, both of that direct charity which concerns the people with whom daily life brings, us into contact, as well as 6f that more ample charity which goes out to the furthermost confines of the whole Mystical Body, and which is marked by a special goodwill towards our separated brethren. Such, then, are the essential dispositions which thanks-giving should develop. One could add others, or further stress certain aspects of those which we have mentioned. With Father Rahner we say .that all that is really pious may find its place in the thanksgiving, all that touches the heart of the communicant, his cares and his intentions. For the point is that thanksgiving may be seen as a kind of r~sum~ of Christian piety, of which it is the richest and most complete moment. In thanksgiving participa-tion in the sacrifice of the Mass~ reaches its peak, just as does union with the Savior's person. All the diverse, inti-mate attitudes of a man before God may therefore here be manifested in the deepest and most concrete fashion, with a most sincere personal impulse. Thanksgiving A]t~r Holy ommunion VOLUME 20, .1961 I~MILE BERGH, S.J. The Communicant's Our Father ÷ ÷ + The Reverend ~mile Bergh, S.J. is editor of Revue des Commu-naut~ s Religieuses and Professor of Canon Law at Coll~ge Saint-Albert, Eegenhoven - Louvain, Belgium. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 34 The Lord's Prayer expresses perfectly the-dispositions which should be found in the Christian who participates integrally in the H01y Sacrifice by sacramental Com-munion. It is certainly proper to think that at the mo-ment when our Lord actualizes in us in a special way His work~of salvation, He teaches us by His Spirit the prayer of redeemed sons. Le~ us then respond to this grace. Father! We are to call You by this name because Your Son, present in us, communicates to us His" divine life. May His Spirit make us taste Your paternal love. Our Father! We all form but one body, we who h~ive partaken of the same bread. In Christ we encounter all of Your sons. We will be always more brotherly toward them. We pray to You especially for our brothers, sep- "arated Christians, that they may participate ih our Eu, charist in the only Church of Christ. Who art in heaven! We believe firml~ that we have re-ceived the bread come down from heaven. Grant, our Father, that we may live close to You in spirit in the so-ciety of~the angels and saintS. Hallowed be thy name! The Eucharistic offering gives You perfect glory. YoUr holiness, Your power, Your love, all Youi attributes proclaim themselves in this mystery. W~ Unite our adoration to the Holy, holy, holy of the angels. We render You all honor and glory through Your beloved Son. Thy Kingdom come! Grant that from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof all people will offer this purest sacrifice to You, so that the entire universe may submit to the sweet yoke of the Lord Jesus. May His reign of truth and of life, of holiness and grace, of justice, of love, and peace extend itself by means of the Eucharist to all nations. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven! To receive communion is to participate in the obedience of Your Son. In everything He has done that which was pleasing to You. We give ourselves over to His will as He has given himself over to Yours for us. Make us, by the Spirit of Jesus, faithful and loving, patient and resigned. So 'the world will believe that You are Love, and the fiat of ~he earth.will echo the Amen i~f heaven. ~ . ~ Give us thi~ day 9ur daily bread! After the gift ~which You have just given us, the bread of eternal-life, can we doubt for a moment your Providence and not wait to re-ceive from it all the help for which our misery has need? Give us each day the bread of heaven. Give it to us in our last hour. Give it to all suffering humanity, for it is the guarantee of eternal happiness. Forgive us our. trespasses! By the ~mystery of the Re-demption, ~,hic.h has just renewed itself.,~f~ "us, by the power of the Body~and the Blood of Jesus, our Savior, purify us of our faults; give us deep contrition for them, pen~etrated with love and~fihal confidence. .~ As we forgive those who trespass against us! On the altar as at Calvary You pardon Your enemies. You have desired that we should reconcile ourselves Witti one another be-fore presenting our offering. Teach~ us to imitate You~ mercy w.hmh ng~ther judges ngr condemns, but pardons without tiring. By the charity which we draw from the Heart of Your Son may we be everywhere and always artisans of peace and union. Lead us not into tempthtion! We-ha~e been made mem-bers of Your Divine Son. Do not l~t us profane His most holy Body. We ate threatened on eve~ sid6,.,f0'r w'e are feeble and inconstant, imprudent and (owardl~. Welean solely on His strength and His 'love. YoUr S6.n could not be very powerful, were He unable to support U.S from one day to the next. But deliver us from evil! For one who has understood what Communion i~, tl~ere is but one evil" on earth: to lose or allow to grow cold by s~in the friendship of God. Deliver us from sin and fronl everythin~g-which leads to sin. Deliver poor. sinners fr6m their slavery.~ Amen! It is Your love which, after halving invented the marvels of the Incarnation" and the Redemption,. has crowned their magnificence with the ~ystery of the Eu-charist. We believe in-and w~ will always believe even more in Your charity. The Communicant's Our Father VOLUME 20, 1961~ MICHAEL NOVAK Saint East and West ÷ ÷ ÷ Mr. Michael Novak, a well known writer on various subjects, is cur-rently studying for a graduate degree in ~unhiivleorssoitpyh.y at Harvard REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS In these days of the re-unifying of East and West, the great John Chrysostom stands as a long-ago figure to whom both sides already turn with reverence and love. The Bishop John (3't47-~07) won the hearts of his people so wholly by his gifts of spirit and of tongue that they could not refrain from calling him as by a proper name: John of the Mouth of Gold. The saint and bishop is a crucial figure for the understanding of the meaning of the East. For he was Bishop of Constantinople in the time in which it was beginning to exert its power as the new center of the East. At the time of Nicaea in Byzantium was still inconsiderable. To the cultured world, it meant little save as the recent choice of Con-stantine for his eastern headquaiters. To the Church, it was again inconsiderable, compared to the great sees of An tioch and Alexandria which, with Rome, formed the triangle of influence in the first three centuries of Chris-tianity. But by ~81, at the second ecumenical council, Constantinople had squared the triangle by becoming the third great patriarchate of the East, and had in fact shouldered out her Eastern rivals to take second rank to Rome alone. Rome and Constantinople: two instead of four. The Emperors, of course, both of East~ and West, would be sympathetic to such centralization.' Magistrates and bishops, these were the focal points of leadership among the people (not as in our own day, when com-munications leaders, unions,, vocal professional classes, and so on, offer other focal points of leadership). To have the bishops aligned with the magistrates was then the simple key to unity and civil peace. To have one 'bishop in authority in each half of the Empire was to limit to two the locks in which to turn the key. In ~98, when St. John was raised to the patriarchal throne of Constan-tinople, the system was beginning to manifest what would be its classic workings. John Chrysostom had been ordained a priest and had been preaching at Antioch for a dozen years when he was kidnapped and borne away to Constantinople. He was kidnapped, so that neither he nor the people could . successfully protest--there was vigor and imagination to actualize cabinet decisions in those old days. How did John react to the outrage? There was no escaping the sit-uation. For the glory of God he set his hand to" the task with courage, then with joy: ., ~.' ~" Cardinal Newman's famous essay gives us perhaps the best image of this man Chrysostom, for whom the Car-dinal felt one of the most intimate ties among all the men of history. Why was John a great orator? Because he spoke in the measures of Cicero? to the public weal like Demosthenes? mystically like the ardent Origen? as a witness of the faith like Athanasius? s~,eepingly and cre-atively like the grei~t~Augtistine? humanly and commonly upon the Bible like the Antiocheans among whom he was trained? No, says Newman, he won the greatest ac-colade of any human orator because of his closeness to his people's heart. He spoke for them, adapted all his talent and his heart to their needs and characters. ~They crowded one another to hear him. He defended them. He loved them. Against those who plotted against him, the high in Church and Empire, the people were his strength: not at all because he was a demagogue, but be-cause he was a shepherd who knew his Own, whose own knew him. His greatest characteristic, the secret inner x~ord of his life, Cardinal Newman conceives, was his "intimate ~ym-pathy and compassionateness for the whole world,~ not only in its strength but in its weaknesses." His singular mark is "the interest he takes in all things, not so far as God has made them all alike, but as he has made them different from each other., the discriminating affection-ateness with which he accepts everyone for what is per-sonal in him and ianlike others., his versatile recogni-tion of men, one by one, for the sake of that portion of good, be it more or less, of a lower,order or a higher~ which has severally been lodged in them., the kindly spirit and-the genial temper with which he looks round at all things which this wonderful world contains." Out of such love, Chrysostom could approach his peo-ple with balm and sweetness evefi when ~he chastised. He hated and feared only sin; he was willing to die over and over for his people; he told them that. His own life was active and abstemious to infective measure. He did chas-tise; he made enemies. Impulsive and courageous both, he was not cautious with that talent of his: he spoke. The people loved him mightily for his courage and his single-ness. "His friends loved him with a love stronger than death, and more burning than hell; and it was well to be so hated, if he was so belovedT' When Theophilus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, enviously contrived with the of-fended Empress Eudoxia to exile John in 403, the first ÷ ÷ ÷ Saint ot East and West VOLUME 20, 1961 4. + 4. Michael Novak REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 38 exile, John could not be cautious even while his fate hung in the balance. He preached with great fervor to his people: "Christ is with me; what then have I to fear? . Already you are even more earnest than before. And when tomorrow you go out singing the litanies I shall be with you, for where you are, there also am I, and where I am there are you. Though separated in space we shall ever be one in spirit, for we form one body and it cannot be separated from its head . I am ready to give my life ten thousand times over for you . You have watched many days and nothing has moved you from your pur-pose. You have not been weakened by threats or by long-drawn- out waiting--you have done what I have always been w~anting you to do: set earthly things at naught, turned your backs on this world, risen above the slavery of the body. That is my crown, my consolation, my anoint-ing, my token of immortalityl" 1 Thus was John's union with his peop!e. His affection-ate heart poured out toward each of them, and they re-sponded. By a ruse, at the time of his second exile, he called for his riding mule at one side of the cathedral, then slipped out the other, lest the gathering crowds riot against the Imperial troops who led him off: John always thought of the people. In exile, too, on the far eastern shores of the Empire "in the loneliest spot on earth," John thought of them. He wrote them hundreds of letters, asking of their health, consoling, chiding, directing, beg-ging money for new missionary needs which he had come upon in his travels. John's first trait was compassion. His second was sanguinity: never have I had it so good, he writes shortly after he had nearly died, this frail man in his sixties, in toilsome travel; the cool air, the leisure, the care heaped on me have refreshed me. "My health was never better." His third characteristic was courage and impetuositymtogether with his goodness, these brought him to his exile and his martyrdom. To understand the malice and passion that could have moved Christians to send so good a shepherd to exile and to death, we must reflect on many aspects of the Chris-tianity and of~ the world in John's time. The peoples around the blue Mediterranean were now Christians only three hundred years or, much more accurately, only for two or three generations. The perfection of holiness, the expression in manners and institutions of the love and justice of the Lord, had hardly had time to be explored even mentally, f.ar less sink deeply by habit into the tissue and fibre of society. Elementary passions were fierce. Ways and means were direct. Monks--those whom Christianity might be suppo.sed most thoroughly to have transformed 1 Donald Attwater, St. John Chrysostom: The Voice of Gold (Mil-waukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1939), p. 126. II were known in several places to have torn enemies limb from limb with bare hands; their riots at Alexandria were a terror. The soldiers guarding Chrysostom at Caesarea risked murder and enslavement at the hands of Isaurian barbarians rather than face the mob of monks "Who de-manded that Chrysostom leave the' city. As f6~ tl~*hier-archy, Chrysostom-said he feared nothing as he feared the Bishops. Treachery that led to flogging, tearing with hooks, burning with torches as happened to one of Chrysostom's deacons, a gentle youngster runs through the history of this time as bright scarlet and yellow thread. We must understand the wildness of the. times, and the fierceness of even tl~e next many. centuries, if we are to understand the play of human passion ;ind barbarity upon which Christianity is called to ~zork. Violeni" im-pulses, cruel machiriations, fierce self-int~rest, still rhn rampant in ourselves; but we must make an effort to re-call the times when society itself more directly expressed thes~ evil movements, less effectively neutralized and hid them. Civil magistrates and ecclesiastics may not in the main be hny holier now than heretofore, but political forms, canon law, the persistent suasion of civilized con-ventions prevent their being as violent in their evils as once upon a time save where the primitive passions arise again under the ifnpulse of marching boots and songs and shouts. ~3nce this backdrop of primitive violence is set, still another note in Chrysostom's situation must be recalled. It is this. The glory of European_ civilization was in the fourth century pivoted not yet on Europe proper but still on Alexandria and Antioch and old Byzantium. The East bore the glory of human history. Greek was the great language of the Empire. Christ had come in the East. Greek philosophy was reborn in Origen, Plotinus, Por-phyry. The great councils of the Church were Eastern councils. The Near East flourished with libraries, splen-did cities, the roads and methods taught and fostered by the earlier Romans. The deserts of Egypt and the fast-nesses of Cappadocia and Caesarea heard in th~ still crystal nights the prayers of Eastern monks. Augustine was only now bringing glory to the Latin tongue; Benedict was not yet shifting the pivot of spiritual energy from Egypt to Subiaco. Western Europe was only now b~ing conceived: the East would bring her forth. In the violence of local jealousies and entanglements with the state, Chrysostom, the light of the East, could appeal to Innocent of Rome. The Pope and he could find solace in one another's reverence and love. East and West were not yet fighting against themselves, as mother against her daughter, as land blessed by the presence Of Christ against land chosen as the humble seat of Christian leader-÷ ÷ ÷ Saint o] East and West VOLUME 20, 1q61 ÷ ÷ ÷ Michael Novai~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 40 ship. Chrysostom appealed to Innocent; Innocent replied with love. But Innocent's powerlessness foreshadowed the doom that'was to come, as the torture and dispersal of his emissaries foreshadowed other injuries of each side upon the other in the centuries to come. These were still prom-ising times, at the end of the fourth century. Chrysostom's fame went around the world; Africa and Italy shared the suspense and pain of his exile, and waited upon his let.° ters. These were among the last generations of unity of sentiment between East and West. Like the mysterious column of flame that leapt up in the night from Chrys-ostom's pulpit and burnt his cathedral to the ground, as he took ship never to see Byzantium again, so the glory of the East was to feel the flame and fire of centuries of strife, long separation, and continued misunderstanding. Why was Chrysostom sent into exile? When he came to Constantinople as Patriarch, he had begun, as Donald Attwater says, to sweep the stairs from the top. He re-buked, encouraged, disciplined, set the example for his clergy. He spoke courageously against the rich, on behalf of the poor for justice' sake, on behalf of Christ for humility's and charity's sake. He rebuked vanities and thoughtless injustices. He spoke plainly to the Empress and her court. At a crucial moment he dared to speak impulsively of the vanity of wealthy women of the court, perhaps even deliberately to ring out adoxia (disreputa-ble) to suggest Eudoxia (the Empress). Theophilus of Alexandria had had little difficulty setting enemies in motion concertedly against him. Exiled once, brought back in glory shortly--in a harbor crowded as a city square, to shouts, to joy--he was soon exiled again, de-finitively. The reasons hardly mattered. Enemies he had. Richly slippered toes he had trampled on. The ardent affection of the people could not prevent the outcome. Why was Chrysostom sent into exile? It was not only for the reasons of state, the trumped-up charges, then the consequent intrigues, the pressures, the Imperial com-mands to make the charges stick. These were trivial, dispensable. If it had .not been these, it would have been others. Good men must be broken. This is the law of Christianity. Chrysostom understood it, explicitly. Chrysostom's great natural gift was his unequalled heart-enflaming tongue; by all the laws of Christianity, his tongue would have to be silenced. Chrysostom had to be sent into exile, to the 'farthest parts of the Empire, so that God's grace might work where he had worked be-fore, Silent now in tongue, his letters live for ages--letters exile forced on him. Chrysostom grasped the fact that the kingdom Christ came to bring has laws for its inner life which set history topsy-turvy. A historian seeing the incredible malice, jealously, and ferocity of religious leaders in these times might marvel, with contempt, that Christianity could achieve so little fruit, even~,among her own.W, i~.t~',hier-archy, favor, churches, energies,~Christianity seems to do so lattle, for all 1.ts lovely wor~ls, to give the race-new hfe. But Christianity is not hierarchy or social acceptability. It is not monasteries or many vocations or crowds in church. All these did not prevent, they caused, the tor-ture of Chrysostom to death. Christianity is sacrificial love. Christian life is sacrificed life. Hence persecutions must come. If they do not come from those outside Chris-tendom, they must come from the corruption or limita-tions in the organization itself. Indeed, saint will perse-cute saint°as St. Jerome and St. Epiphanius joined Chrysostom's enemies; as good Cardinal Manning and khe saintly Newman could hardly bear each other's com-pany without severe constraint. Sacrificial love is the in-ner life of the Church. All the turmoil at Constantinople --jealousy, scheming, lying, banishment, and torture for those who would not w6rship with the false successors-- all this was necessary to make the inner life of Constan-tinople's faithful fructify. Christianity simply cannot live without suffering. External standards and measurements have got, at times, to be set at odds. Only so can con-sciences be proved truly mature, strong, brave, bold, in the darkness of faith and selflessness. "There is no need to remind you, the teacher and shepherd of a great flock," wrote Pope Innocent to Chrysostom, "that everywhere and always good men are put to the test of meeting with injustice and evil . Rest securely then in your good conscience, honored brother, for that is the strength of all good men in the hour of~affliction." "Do not be scan-dalized," John wrote to Olympias, recalling the ~candal of the Incarnation and of all the Scriptures; "remember that things even more distressing happened in the days of the Apostles." Though disunity and injustice racked his see, though true Christians were driven from the churches while the cowardly or the vicious pretended to worship there, though he himself was driven ever further into exile, forced to travel and again to travel (an attempt by his enemies to murder him by physical exhaustion), still Chrysostom could die with his favorite phrase upon his golden lips: "Glory be to God. Amen." Chrysostom un-derstood Christian love. "Be true to yourself and no one can harm you," he wrote in a last short treatise which he sent Olympias. Conscience is the dwelling place of Chris-tianity, and sacrificial love is the life of conscience not duty, or conformity, or complacency, or obligation, or law. Purified will, enamored of persons, and a Person. Hierarchy, canon law, even the Holy Mass itself, the sacra-÷ ÷ ÷ Saint oI East and West VOLUME 20, 1961 41 ments these are but means. They are some of them in-dispensable means, to be sure, given by Christ. But the accent may as accurately be On means as on indispensable. The law is love. The Way is love. The fruit is love. And love means sooner or later darkness, trial, and suffering. If East and West are separate since the tiine of John, it is because all kinds of considerations have got the better of sacrificial love. Historically polemic has been preju-diced and fruitless, each side preferring personal empha-ses to self-sacrificial views of truth. Why do Roman Cath-olics in practice if not in theory, exaggerate the legalisms of the external Church out of all proportion to their Christ-given role? Because these aspects have been under severe attack for many centuries and, knowing their value, these people have not got accustomed to seeing their limitation they are means, not the goal. Why do Easterners resist the effort of unity? Because they do not wish to forfeit centuries of tradition by a too humiliating capi~tulation to Western points of view. There are count-less 6ther reasons: none of them are insuperable, save through lack of charity. The inner dynamism of Chris-tianity is toward unity. Disunity makes for inner anguish; quarrelling causes our intensest pain; selfishness and ac-cusation make witnesses "cry out to the Lord for mercy and for aid. Just so, the scandal of disunity is our trial and darkness. The inner life of the Church is Sacrificial love. That is why the first need of East and West, when we speak of unity, is to focus our eyes with mutual regard on men as lovable as St. John Chrysostom, pride of the East and of the universal Church. Our longing hhs got to be the same as his: to be consumed, like John of the Mouth of Gold, in thq paradoxical, interior ways of the Lord's love. Michael Nov~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 42 R. F. SMITH, S. J. Documents The documents wh.ich appeared in, Acta Apostolicae Se, d~s I(AAS) during August and September, 1960, will be summarized in this article. Throughout the article all page references will be to the 1960 AAS (v. 52). New Breviary and Mass Rubrics By the apostolic letter motu propriO, Rubricarum in-structum, of July 25, 1960 (pp. 593-95), Pope John XXIII announced a new code of rubrics for the Roman Breviary arid Missal and decreed the revocation of all statutes, indults, and customs contrary to the new code. On the following day, July 26, 1960 (p. 596), the Sacred Congre-gation of Rites duly promulgated the new code of rubrics and directed that their observance be begun on January 1, 1961. The new code~ is a long document of one hundred and forty-four pages (pp. 597-740) and is divided into three parts which deal consecutively with general rubrics, rubrics of the Roman Breviary, hnd rubrics of the Roman Missal. "° General Rubrics Part One of the new code, entitled "General Rubrics," ¯ consists of nineteen chapters. The first of these chapters notes that the document is intended only for the Roman Rite. Chapter Two defines the mean.ing of liturgical days and rules that all such~days are now to be divided into first-, second-, third-, and fourth-class liturgical days. Chapter Three divides all Sundays into first- and sec-ond- class groups. First-class Sundays are the Sundays of Adveht, Lent, and Passiontide, Easter, Low Sunday, and Pentecost; all other Sundays are.second,class ones. First-class Sundays take precedence over all feasts with the ex, ception of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. A second-class Sunday outranks a second-class feast and, when it occurs on November 2, displaces All Souls' Day. However, first- and second-class feasts of our Lord, ~when 4. 4. Survey oy Roman Documents VOLUME'20, 1961 R. F. Smith, $. ]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS they occur on a second-class Sunday, take over the place as well as all the rights and privileges of the Sunday; in such cases accordingly no commemoration is made of the Sunday. Ferials, Vigils, Feasts Chapter Four defines ferials as days of the week other than Sundays and divides them into four classes. First-class ferials are Ash Wednesday and the ferial days of Holy Week; all these ferials take precedence over all feast days and admit no commemoration except a privi-leged one. Second-class ferials are the Advent ferials from December 17 to December 23 and the Ember Days of Advent, Lent, and September. These ferials outrank sec-ond- class feasts and must be commemorated when out-ranked. Third-class ferials are all the other ferials of Advent, Lent, and Passiontide. Third-class Lenten and Passiontide ferials outrank third-class feasts, but third-class Advent ferials yield to such feasts. All third-class ferials, however, must be commemorated when out-ranked. All other ferials of the year are fourth-class ones and receive no commemoration when outranked. Vigils are divided in Chapter Five into three classes. The two first-class vigils, those of Christmas and Pente-cost, take precedence over all feast days; and the Vigil of Christmas, when necessary, takes the place of the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Second-class vigils, those of the Ascen-sion, of the Assumption, of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, and of Sts. Peter and Paul, outrank third- and fourth-class liturgical days; the only third-class vigil, that of St. Lawrence, is preferred tO fourth-class liturgical days. Both second- and third-class vigils, when impeded, are commemorated according to the rubrics governing such matters; these vigils, however, are omitted if they fall on a Sunday or a first-class feast or if their feast day is transferred or reduced to a commemoration. Chapter Six groups feast days into first-, second-, and third-clvss feasts. Only first-class°feasts have First Vespers; however, second-class feasts of our Lord have First Vespers whenever they replace a second-class Sunday. The rest of this chapter is concerned chiefly with those feasts which the law now requires to be inserted into particular cal-endars drawn up for the use of dioceses or of religious orders and congregations. Chapter Seven r~tains only three octaves, those of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. The octaves of Easter and Pentecost are first-class ones; that is, all the days of these octaves are first-class. The Christmas octave is a second-class one; the days within the octave are second-class, but its Octave Day is a first-class day. Chapter Eight lists the various seasons of the ecclesi- astical year, while Chapter Nine provides for the Saturday Office of our Lady. Chapter Ten considers the Major and Minor Litanies; it notes that, those bound to the Office no longer need to say th'e' ~itany of the Saints on the Rogation Days; it Mso giv~'sq6~al ordinaries ~he ~I56wer to transfer the Rogation Days from their usual place to three other successive days at a more appropriate time. Precedence of Liturgical Days Chapter Eleven gives a breakdown of the days of the ecclesiastical year into the four classes of liturgical days and gives the rank of precedence within each of the four classes. First-class liturgical days. include all first-class Sundays, feasts, ferials, and vigils as well as the days within the octaves of Easter and Pentecosti the Octave Day of Christmas, and All Souls' Day. Seqond,class litur-gidal days are all second-class Sundays, feasts, ferials, and vigils together with the days within the octave of Christ-mas. Third-class ferials and feasts and the one third-class vigil constitute third-class liturgical days, while fourth-class liturgical days include the Saturday Office of our Lady and fourth-class ferials. Chapter Twelve defines what is meant by the occur-rence ~of liturgical days, and the following chapter gives the rules to be followed when two or more liturgical days happen to fall on the same date. In such cases only first-class feasts may be transferred; all other feasts are either commemorated or completely omitted. Chapter Fourteen gives the procedure to be followed in the case of a per-petual occurrence of liturgical days. Chapter Fifteen reg-ulates the situation that arises when the Vespers of one liturgical day conflict with the First Vespers of the suc-ceeding day. If the days are of unequal rank, the Vespers of the higher day are to be said; but if the two days are eqtlal in rank, Second Vespers are to be said with a com-memoration of the other set of Vespers. Commemorations Chapter Sixteen divides all commemorations into priv-ileged and ordinary commemorations. Privileged com-memorations are made at Lauds and Vespers and in all Masses; ordinary commemorations on the other hand are made only at Lauds and in conventual and low Masses. Privileged commemorations are the commemorations to be made of a Sunday; of first-class liturgical days; of~ the days within the octave of Christmas; of the September Ember Days; of Advent, Lent, and Passi?ntide ferials; and of the Major Litanies (but at Mass or~ly). All other commemorations are ordinary. In Masses of first-class liturgical days and in sung non-conventual Masses, no commemoration~is to be made ex- 4. 4. 4- Survey Roman VOLUME 20, 1961 45 cept a privileged one. Second-class Sundays permit a commemoration of a second-class feast only; even this, however, is to be omitted if there is a privileged com-memoration. Other second-class liturgical days permit one commemoration, whether privileged or ordinary. Third-and fourth-class liturgical days permit only two commem-orations, Chapter Seventeen gives the conclusions to be used for the orations and commemorations of the Breviary and the Missal. Chapter Eighteen is concerned with the litur-gical colors; it gives episcopal conferences in mission" ter-ritories the power to change the liturgical colors when they are inappropriate for that particular region. Chapter Nineteen completes Part One of the document by its rubrics for Mass" and Office vestments; according to this chapter the folded chasuble and the broad stole are no longer to be used. 4- 4. ÷ R. F. Smith, S. ]. Breviary Rubrics Part Two of the new code of rubrics is entitled "Gen-eral Rubrics of the Roman Breviary." Chapter One of this part divides the recital of the Office into choral,~com-mort, and individual recital. Choral recital is that of a community obliged to choir by ecclesiastical law; common recital is that of a community (two or three persons are sufficient) not bound to choir. Chapter Two notes that the canonical hours are dis-tributed in a way intended to sanctify the natural day; nevertheless to satisfy the obligation of reciting the Of-rice it is sufficient if all the canonical hours are said in the twenty-four hour period allotted them. Matins (but not Lauds1) may be anticipated after two o'clock in the after-noon of the preceding day. In choral and common recital Lauds should be recited in the early morning and Ves-pers, even during Lent and Passiontide, in the afternoon. The same p.ractice is recommended for private recital. Compline is fittingly made the last prayer of the day, even though Matins of the following day have been antici-pated. When Compline is made the last prayer of the day m choral and common recital, the Pater noster is omitted, its place being taken by an examination of conscience ~of reasonable length; the Confiteor and the rest of Compline are then.recited. All of this is also recommended .for indi-vidual recital. Chapter Three then discusses the calendar to be followed by those bound to the Office. Chapter Four begins by listing three types of Matins. .The first type, consisting of three Nocturns, that is, nine Psalms and nine Lessons, is used on first- and second-class REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS lit is probable that in private recitation Lauds may still be 46 anticipated. feasts, on the lfist three days of Hply Week, on the Octave Day of Christmas, and on All Souls' Day. The second type consists of a single Nocturn of nine Psalms and three Lessons; it is Used on all Sundays except Easter and Pente-cost, on all ferials except the'q~t three days of Holy Week, on vigils, on third-class feasts; on'the days within the octave of Christmas, and at-the Saturday Office of our Lady. The [hird type of Mating, used only on Easter and Pentecost and throughout their octaves 'if composed of a single Nocturn of three P~Alms find three Lessons. The chapter continues by" considering th~ five kinds of Offices which are now ~6 b~ used in the recital of the Breviary. "I:l{e Sunday Officd i~xcluding th6 Office°for Easter, Pentecost, and the Sunday within the oc'tave of Christmas) is largely the same as formerlywith the excep-tion of Matins. At Matins are recited the nine Sunday Psalms, then the absolution Exaudi; the Blessings to be used are Ille nos, Divinum ~iuxilium, and Per 'evangelica dicta. The First Lesson is the same as the former First. Leg-son of the day's Scripture; the gecond~ Lesson is formed'by u~iting the former Second and Third Lessons of the Scripture; and the Third Lessoh ig the First Lesson of the Homily, that is, the former Seventh Lesson. The festive Office is used for all first-class feasts and is said in the same wgy as an~ Office of a double of the first clasg was formerly said. The semi-festive Office, used for second-class feagts, is said in the same°way that Offices of doubles of the sdcofid clasg'have been~recited since 1~55. The ordinary Office, that uged on third-class feasts and for the Satm'day Office of oui'Lady, is recited like the former simple Office except for s6me changes in the Les-sons. The First Lesson is the former First Lesson of the day's Scripture, the Second Lesson is formed by uniting the former Second and Third Lessons of the Scripture, and the Third Les~on is of'the feast. This Third Lesson is obtained by using the "contracted life of the saint_ in the former Office; or, failing that, by.~om.bining the Fourth~ Fifth, and Sixth I~ssons of the former'prope.r Office of the feast; br finally, if .t.~ae feast has no Proper, by using the former Fourth Lesson of the Common. The ferial Office, used on all fer'ials and vigils except the last three days o.f Holy"Week and the Vigil of Christmas, is like the former ferial Office with Lessons either of the H~omi!y or of t~e day's Scripture. The Dil~eren.t Parts o['~the .OOice ,, ,.+,. Chapter Five, which legislates for the various parts of the Office, makes several changes which "can be-noted here. All Hymns of the Office have only the conclusion given in the Breviary, all changes~ of the conclusion by reason of feast or season being now excluded. The com-plete Antiphon is always to be said in its entirety both ÷ Survey o~ ~ Roman Documents ;=VOLUME 20, 1961 ÷ ÷ R. F. Smith, S. ]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS d8 before and after the Psalms and Canticles of all the canonical hours. The Responsoria of Offices with three Nocturns are to be taken from the Proper or the Common as previously. In the.Sunday Office, however, the first Responsorium will be the one given after the former First Lesson; the second will'be that given after the former Third Scripture Lesson; and the third, when needed, will be the Responsorium formerly recited after the Third Lesson of the Homily. In ordinary Offices with Lessons taken from the day's Scripture, the first Responsorium will be that used after the former First Lesson, while the second will be that formerly used after the Third Scrip-ture Lesson. Ordinary Offices with proper Scripture Les-sons will use proper or o~dinary Responsoria in the° same order as given in the previous kind of ordinary Office. At Prime the Capitulum will always be Regi saecu-lorum and the Lectio Brevis is always to be the seasonal one. In private recital of the Office and when the Office is recited by those who are not deacons, the prayer or oration of the Office is to be preceded-by Domine, exaudi orationem meam with its response in place of Dominus vobiscum and its response. Preces feriales are to be said at Lauds and Vespers of the ferial Office on Wednesdays and Fridays of Advent, Lent, Passiontide, and the Sep-tember Ember Week. They are also to be said at Lauds on Ember Saturdays except on the Saturday within the octave of Pentecost. Chapter Six gives the directions for making the sign of the cross and for bodily posture during the choral and common recital of the Office. It is recommended that the regulations for the sign of the cross be followed also in individual recital.° Mass Rubrics Part Three of the new c~de of rubrics is called "General Rubrics of the Roman Missal." Chapter One gives some ¯ basic notions of the various kinds of Masses and notes that the phrase "private Mass'" should be avoided, since the Mass by its nature is always and everywhere an act of public worship. Chapter Two then considers the calendar to be followed in the celebration of Mass. Chapter Three siates that the conventual Mass, except on fourth-class ferials, must comform to the Office of the day and should be ff solemn Mass, or at least a high Mass. This chapter prohibits the chanting.of the Divine Office during the conventual Mass. Chapter Four is' con-cerned with Sunday and ferial.Masses, while Chapter Five discusses the Mass for feast days. This latter chapter al-lows a priest celebrating a non-conventual Mass to choose a proper Mass for a given feast from the section "for cer-tain places" rather than use a Mass formula from the Common. And in the case of non-conventual Masses, any of the Mass formulas in the correct category of the Com-mon may be used when there is no proper Mass for the feast. Votive Masses "' '" ~' Chapter Six, which deals with votive Masses, begins by general remarks on the subject. It permits all Masses of universal feasts of the Blessed Virgin to be used as votive Masses, excluding, however, Masses of the mysteries of hbr life with the exception of the Immaculate Concep-tion. Sequences are to be omitted in votive Masses and vestment colors should fit in with the votive Mass chosen. In the case of low, non-conventual votive Masses of the fourth class, however, the color of the Office of the day may be used; violet and black, however, are always to be used when demanded by the votive Mass chosen. The chapter then divides votive Masses into four classes. First-class votive Masses, which are those permitted on all litu

Issue 16.6 of the Review for Religious, 1957. ; A. M. D. G. Review for Religious NOVEMBER 15, 1957 Current Spiritual Writing . Thomas G. O'Callaghan The Intellectual Life of Religious Sister Emily Joseph Survey of Roman Documents . R. I:. Smith Persevering in Prayer . Mother Marie Vandenbergh Book Reviews Communications Questions and Answers I:::or Your Information Index for 1957 VOLUME 16 NUMBER 6 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS \7o~,~.~E 16 NOVEMBER, 1957 NUMBER CONTENTS FOR YOUR INFORMATION . SOME BOOKS RECEIVED . OUR CONTRIBUTORS . CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING-- Thomas G. O'Callaghan, S.J . THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE RELIGIOUS: PRACTICAL ASPECTS--Sister Emily Joseph, c.s.J . FATHER GALLEN'S ABSENCE . BOUSCAREN-ELLIS . COMMUNICATIONS . SURVEY OF ROMAN DOCUMENTS--R. F. Smith, S.J . PERSEVERING IN PRAYER-- Mother Marie Vandenbergh, R.C . BOOK REVIEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS: Editor: Bernard A. Hausmann, S.J. West Baden College West Baden Springs, Indiana . QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: 34. Simplification of the Habit . 35. Bibliography on Renovation and Adaptation . 36. Minimizing the Religious Exercises . 37. Anticipation of Perpetual Profession Not Permitted . 38. Using Personal Gifts for Masses . 39. Reciting the Formula of the Vows Collectively . INDEX FOR VOLUME 16 . 321 ¯323 323 324 337 341 341 342 343 350 366 375 377 378 379 ¯ 380 380 381 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, November, 1957. Vol. 16, No. 6. Published bi-monthly by The Queen's Work, 3115 South Grand Blvd., St. Louis 18, Mo. Edited by the Jesuit Fathers of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approval. Second class mail privilege authorized at St. Louis, Mo. Editorial Board: Augustine G. Ellard, S.J.; Gerald Kelly, S.J., Henry Willmering, S.J. Literary Editor: Robert F. Weiss, S.J. Copyright, 1957, by The Queen's Work. Subscription price in U.S.A. and Canada: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U.S.A. Please send all renewals and new subscriptions to: Review for Religious, 3115 South Grand Boulevard. St. Louis 18o Missouri. I:or Your Inl:ormat:ion Regarding Summer Sessions For many years we have been publishing announcements of sum-mer sessions. Our purpose in doing this is to help our readers to know where they may attend courses or institutes of special per-tinence to religious. Directors and deans of summer sessions who wish to avail themselves of this service should carefully observe the following points: 1) Only courses of special pertinence to religious should be listed. 2) The announcement should be limited to a single paragraph. The length of this paragraph is irrelevant, provided it contains only matters of special pertinence to religious. 3) The paragraph should be triple-spaced and prepared in such a manner that it can be sent to the printer without re-typing or editing. 4) There should be a reasonable minimum of capital letters, and no words should be typed entirely in capital letters. 5) The dates of the summer sessions or institutes should be clearly specified. 6) The best time for publishing these announcements is our March number. The deadline for this number is January 5. The next best time is the May number. The deadline for this number is March I. Plus XII on Self-love We receive many articles that refer to self-love as something opposed to love of God and love of neighbor, as something that must be stifled at all costs. No doubt, similar statements can be found in the writings of saints and in classical spiritual books. The basic mistake in such writings seems to be an unjustifiable identifica-tion of self-love with selfishness, or inordinate self-love. According to sound theology, self-love itself is good and a matter of divine precept. This was emphatically taught by Pope Plus XII in his address to psychotherapists (April 13, 1953), when he said: "From certain psychological explanations, the thesis is formulated that the unconditional extroversion of the ego constitutes the funda-mental law of congenital altruism and of its dynamic tendencies. This 321 FOR YOUR INFORMATION Review for Religious is a logical, psychological, and ethical error. There exists in fact a defense, an esteem, a love, and a service of one's personal self which is not only justified but demanded by psychology and morality. Nature makes this plain, and it is also a lesson of the Christian Faith. Our Lord taught, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' Christ, then, proposes as the rule of love of neighbor, charity towards onself, not the contrary." The Religious Habit In our January number (pp. 3-9), we published an article by Father Lee Teufel, S.J., which gave the results of a questionnaire on adapting the religious garb of sisters. Our May number (pp. 176-79) contained a lengthy communication from a sister, who criticized the attitude of those religious who had answered Father Teufel's ques-tionnaire. This sister also expressed the fear that seculars who read this article would be shocked. We have received four more communications on the same topic. All these communications are from sisters. Two defend Father Teufel and those who answered his questionnaire; and two defend the view expressed in the May communication. We should like to publish ali these letters, but we cannot do so for two reasons: (1) the communications are too long; and (2) the letters on both sides manifest too many misunderstandings of others' views and actions. Unless all write about the same thing, and do so briefly, there seems to be little use in continuing the discussion. Although we cannot publish the communications themselves, we believe we should mention, and comment on, some of the points brought out in them. One sister, for instance, protests that we showed poor taste in publishing Father Teufel's article--in fact, she thinks the Communists should feel happy about it. We leave it to others to judge our taste. It seems appropriate, however, to call attention to the fact that one of our purposes in founding this magazine was to have a medium through which religious could discuss their common problems. And since the change of garb advocated by the Holy See has many aspects that are common to numerous religious in-stitutes, we think this an appropriate topic for discussion in our pages and that those who take part in such a discussion are not showing any disloyalty to their own institutes. Perhaps the basic difficulty is really expressed in the other letter against Father Teufel's article, as well as in the communication 322 November, 1957 FOR YOUR INFORMATION published in May: namely, the fear that public discussion of this topic will disedify seculars. On this point, we should like to inform our readers that we try to limit the circulation of this periodical to religious and diocesan priests. We do not encourage other sub-scriptions, and we have very few of them. It is true that in some institutions the REVIEW is placed in the library where it is available to students and others. We are not responsible for this custom, and we should like to have it changed. SOME BOOKS RECEIVED [Only books sent directly to the Book Review Editor, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana, are included in our Reviews and Announcements. The following books were sent to St. Marys.] Lutero en EspaF~a yen la Am6~rica espahola. By Ricardo V. Feliu. Protestant Founders, 15 Whitehall Street, New York 4, New York. 90 pesetas (paper cover). Priestly and Religious Formation. By Edmund T. Dunne, C.SS.R. Clonmore and Reynolds Ltd., 29 Kildare Street, Dublin. 18/-. The Art of Teaching Christian Doctrine. By Johannes Hofinger, S.J. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana. $3.50. Ontologia. By Salvator Cuesta, S.J. Sal Terrae, Santander, Spain. 60 pesetas (paper cover~. People's Participation and Holy Week. Seventeenth North Ameri-can Liturgical Week, London, Canada, 1956. The Liturgical Confer-ence, Elsberry, Missouri. $2.08 (paper cover). The Image of God in Man According to Cyril of Alexandria. By Walter J. Burghardt, S.J. The Catholic University of America Press, 620 Michigan Avenue, N.E., Washington 17, D. C. $3.00 (paper cover). Praelectiones theologicoomorales Comillenses. Tomus IV. Trac-tatus de conscientia morali. Pars altera. Theoria de conscientia morali reflexa. By Lucius Rodrigo, S.a!. Sal Terrae, Santander, Spain. L'Apostolat. Probl~mes de la Religieuse d'aujourd'hui. Les edi-tions du cerf, 29, Bld de Latour-Maubourg, Paris. Memento canonique sur le noviciat et al profession religieuse. By Dom Pierre Minard, O.S.B. Editions Fides, 25 est, rue Saint-Jacques, Montreal 1, Canada. $2.60 (paper cover). OUR CONTRIBUTORS THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN is professor of ascetical and mystical theology at Weston College, Weston 93, Massachusetts. SISTER EMILY JOSEPH is head of the classics department at the College of St. Rose, Albany 3, New York. R.F. SMITH is a member of the faculty of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH is guest mistress at the Cenacle Retreat House, Route 1, Box 97-A, Rosharon, Texas. 323 Current Spiritual Writ:ing Thomas ~. O'Calhgh~n~ S.J. Sacred Heart ON THE OCCASION of the first centenary of the extension to the universal Church of the feast of the Sacred Heart, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical letter Haurietis aquas. The subject matter of this encyclical is devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, its scriptural and traditional foundation, its true meaning and place in the Church. The Holy Father assured us that this devotion is not only the most complete profession of the Chris-tian religion, but that it is also of obligation for all the faithful. Because of this importance of the devotion to the Heart of the Incarnate Word, there is a real need for a clear understanding of its true meaning. To read, reread, and study carefully Haurietis aquas itself is of primary importance. It might be mentioned here that in re.ading it one of the points to be observed is the constant emphasis which the Holy Father places on the triple love which the Incarnate Word has for each of us. He loves us with a divine love, with a human spiritual love, and also--perhaps this has never been stressed so much before-- with a human sensible love. The adorable Heart of Christ is the symbol of this triple love. As a help to the study of this encyclical some of the follow-ing articles, which comment on Haurietis aquas, could be read: M. J. Donnelly, s.J., "Haurietis aquas and Devotion to the Sacred Heart," Theological Studies, XVIII ( 1957), 17-40; P. J. Hamell, "Devotion to the Sacred Heart: Encyclical Haurietis Aquas," The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, LXXXVI (1956), 217- 241; G. Dupont, S.J., "Pius XII on the Cult of the Sacred Heart," The Clergy Monthly, XX (1956), 248-260, and also "The Cult of the Sacred Heart," The Clergy Monthly, XXI (1957), 161-171; C. K. Riepe, "Some Thoughts on Devotion to the Sacred Heart," Worship, XXXI (1957), 328-333; F. 324 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING Courtney, S.J., "Devotion to the Sacred Heart," The Clergy Review, XLII (1957), 332-342. The best and most scholarly of these articles is that of Father Donnelly. Two quotations from his article might be of interest. First, his statement of the purpose of the encyclical: "To elucidate the soul's journey back to God through the Sacred Heart, the heart of flesh, symbol of Christ's human (sensible and spiritual) love and of His divine love, and to show that such a path to God is deeply rooted in Scripture, tradition, and the liturgy of the Church--this is the purpose of the encyclical letter Haurietis aquas" (p. 39). The other quotation which we would like to cite from Father Donnelly is a commentary which he makes upon the following words of Haurietis aquas: Therefore the Heart of our Savior in a way expresses the image of the Divine Person of the Word and His two-fold nature, human and divine. In it we can contemplate not only the symbol, but also, as it were, the sum of the whole mystery of our redemption. When we adore the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, we adore in it and through it both the uncreated love of the Divine Word and His human love and other affections and virtues, because both loves moved our. Redeemer to sacrifice Himself for us and for the whole Church, His Spouse (N.C.W.C. translation). Commenting on this passage, Father Donnelly writes: . . this passage sets forth the whole theology of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, because any reader will at once see therein the following teaching. (1) There is question of the physical heart of the Savior. (2} This heart is in a certain sense an image of the Person of the Word and also of His twofold nature, human and divine. (3) We can see in this physical heart, not only a symbol, but, as it were, the epitome of the whole mystery of our Redemption. (4) We adore this physical heart. (5} In the very act of adoring the physical heart, we adore in and through this same physical heart (a) the uncreated love of the divine Word, (b) His human love (sensible and spiritual), and (c) all the other affections and virtues which the Incarnate Word possesses. (6) The reason for this is that His divine and human love alike moved Him to sacrifice Himself for us and the universal Church, His Spouse, that we might be redeemed from our sins. In the light of this passage, it is clear why the Holy Father calls the devotion the most perfect profession of the Christian religion (pp. 30-31). 325 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN Review fo~ Religious The Saints Gregory tells us in his Book of Dialogues that a certain nun, on going into .the garden, saw a head of lettuce and desired it; and, forgetting to make the sign of the cross over it she greedily bit into it; but forthwith she fell to the ground possessed by a devil. When the blessed Equitius came to exorcize her, the devil began to cry out, saying, "What did I do? What did I do? I was just sitting here on the lettuce, and she came and bit me!''1 This is one of those humorous anecdotes which during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance delighted the readers of the Golden Legend. This book is a collection of saints' lives, compiled during the latter half of the thirteenth century by the learned and saintly Dominican, Jacobus de Voragine. In the article from which we have cited the anecdote above--an article which makes for pleasant reading--William F. Manning points out that the distinguished Dominican hagiographer was not a simple and gullible soul. He was well aware that these accounts of the saints were a blend of fact, fiction, and humor. What Jacobus de Voragine was primarily concerned with was not the historical truth of these stories; he was much more interested in using them as examples--they were known as exempla during the Middle Ages--to illustrate pleasantly some moral or spiritual principle. His goal was not objective history, but to foster among the faithful a fervent love of, and devotion to, the saints and God. Considering the extraordinary influence which the Golden Legend has had in the history of spirituality, his work was a complete success. But books like the Golden Legend make the life of a modern hagiographer a very troubled one. In addition to the ordinary difficulties which any historian or biographer meets, the hagiographer has a few special ones of his own. These are discussed by Lancelot C. Sheppard in "Some Problems of a Hagiographer.'' If the biography of a saint is to be a true 1This quotation from the Golden Legend is cited by William F. Manning, "Humor in the Golden Legend," Cross and Cro,wn, IX (1957), 168. 2 The Li/e of the 8pirit, XI, 454-461. 326 November, 1957 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING and living portrait, the first problem of a hagiographer is to remember that he is "dealing with a man or woman in the world" (p. 456), and thus he has to pay attention to the ordin-ary things of everyday life. Otherwise he will be presenting "an unnatural wooden figure of his saint . . . no example or help to the ordinary reader, but . . . a hindrance to the develop-ment of the Christian life in the souls of many" (p. 457). Another problem is that which is occasioned by the miracu-lous events which at times take place in the lives of the saints. If something miraculous occurs in the life of a saint, it should be historically verified, and then it should be treated as a miracle, and not as a normal and everyday occurrence. Closely allied to the question of miracles is that of those other extraordinary phenomena--stigmata, etc.--which sometimes occur. Since some of these phenomena can be explained at times by natural causes, a hagiographer should be very hesitant in assigning to them a divine cause. Some of these observations of Sheppard are very just, but I am sure that he would readily admit that these prob-lems are much more easily mentioned than solved. In the same issue of The Life of the Spirit there is an interesting article by Donald Attwater on the martyrs of the early Church.3 In the Christian Church the cultus of the saints began with the veneration of these early martyrs. In fact, one of the first definitions of sanctity was based on the idea of martyrdom: the perfect imitation of Christ even to the sacrifice of one's life; or, as Attwater says, a man is "never so Christlike as when he wil!ingly goes to death for his Saviour . . ." (p. 441). This article is a series of short sketches of some of the early saints and martyrs--th'ose who suffered in the early persecutions, up to 313, and whose accounts are based on reliable documenta-tion: Ignatius ot: Antioch, Polycarp, Justin, Blandina, Cyprian, Perpetua, Felicity, etc. Although these sketches are most brief, "They are enough to show these martyrs as men and women, "The Early Martyrs," pp. 441-454. 327 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN Review for Religious not as puppets . . ." (p. 451). Indeed, they were men and women whose lives were centered, in a simple yet firm way, or~ God and Jesus Christ. They were ~fully conscious of being ~a chosen race, a kingly priesthood, a consecrated nation,' a society of which, in the words of St. Augustine, ~the king is Truth, the law is love and the duration is Eternity' " (p. 453). Why did Bruno of Hartenfaust leave the world and found the Carthusians? It was once piously believed that his decision, was occasioned by an event which took place during the funeral of a certain Canon Docr~s in Paris. The canon's only known failing was a worldly desire for literary fame, and yet he seems to have been damned for it. According to the legend, three times during the funeral the canon raised himself up; first, to announce that he had been accused; then, judged; and, finally, that he had been condemned to eternal damnation. Supposedly witnessing this, Bruno decided that the world was no place for him; so off: to the deserts of the Grande Chartreuse. All this is pious legend. The real reason and motive why Bruno sought the hidden life of solitude and rooted his order in contempt of the world is explained in a fine article by Dr. Borisz de Balla, a former Hungarian diplomat and at present an associate professor of history at Le Moyne College) Since the spirit of silent solitude with which the Carthusians have moved through the last nine centuries has kept them well hidden, an article such as this is most welcome. For in it Dr. de Balla uncovers the historical and psychological background of Bruno's vocation and clarifies the Carthusians' contempt for the world, which is merely a negative way of expressing their fervent love of God. The life of St. Thomas Aquinas was dedicated in an extra-ordinary degree to intellectual work. Since this was a most substantial part of his life, it must have been very closely linked with his sanctity. What was the connection between these two? In 4'~Contempt of the World," Cross and Crop, n, IX (1957), I1-23. 328 November, 1957 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING a very penetrating article Father Thomas Deman, O.P., shows how closely St. Thomas's knowledge was tied to his sanctity.~ The connection between the Angelic Doctor's knowledge and sanctity is not merely that he studied with a pure intention, nor merely that his intellectual activity demanded great abnega-tion. These things manifest more the link between effort and sanctity rather than between knowledge and sanctity. The far more interesting problem is in establishing the relation between these latter two, for in the connection of these two, according to Father Deman, "lies the ultimate secret of St. Thomas' sanctity" (p. 404). To summarize Father Deman's solution to this prob-lem would be to do it an injustice; but to recommend the study of it, especially to seminarians and theologians, would be far from unjust. F~nelon, onetime archbishop of Cambrai, although not a saint, was certainly an outstanding personality. Derek Stanford gives us in a two-part article a general overall view of his life, doctrine, writing, and great appeal.6 Even those who met him through his written word were charmed by him. " 'If F~nelon were alive today you would be a Catholic,' Bernadin de St. Pierre once wagered Rousseau. 'Oh, if F~nelon were alive,' Rousseau replied,, his eyes moist with tears, 'I should try to become his lackey in order to deserve to be his valet' " (p. 15). Perhaps the part of F~nelon's life which was most im-portant in the history of spirituality, and best known for that reason, is his rather bitter dispute with Bossuet, his former friend and bishop of Meaux, over the quietistic doctrine of Mme. Guyon. This was settled only by a papal brief from Pope Innocent XII condemning twenty-three propositions taken from Fenelon's Maxims of the Saints. To this condemnation he com-pletely and humbly submitted. Stanford's articles are a fine summary of the life of this man who was a cultured scholar, distinguished prelate, and grand seigneur. 5"'Knowledge and Holiness and St. Thomas Aquinas," The Life of the Spirit, XI, 394-406. 6"A Word for F~nelon," The Cler#y Relieve, XLII (1957), 14-25, 76-84. 329 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN Review for Religious Sin One of the basic needs in the spiritual life is to acquire a sincere detestation of sin, a real hatred of the evil which sin is. But what is sin? The Catholic faith has always considered sin as an offense against God. But what does it mean to offend God? Obviously sin cannot harm God himself; it cannot touch God or injure Him. The harm which is done by sin is done to man, not to God. Yet, how is this an offense against God? Father DeLetter, s.J., suggests a solution to this problem, a solution which in its full explanation depends upon the philo-sophical doctrine of relation.~ He writes: ¯ . . the sinner . . . by rejecting God's love, rejects the gift of that love, sanctifying grace. Accordingly, in this case, because of the relative character of grace . . . it is easy to see how the "malum hominis," loss of sanctifying grace, is at once "malum Dei," offence against God . The wilful destruction on the part of man of God's gift of grace is an offence against God . . . because grace is a relation to God, unites man to God; and so by refusing or rejecting grace man refuses or rejects God, to whom grace orientates and unites him (p. 338). It is basically this same problem which Father Lyonnet, S.J., tries to solve by studying the nature of sin in the Old Testament) Judging from the words used in the Old Testa-ment to designate sin, sin is not only an evil of man, malum horninis, but also malum Dei, insofar as it is against God, in opposition to God. "The sinner despises and contemns the commands of God, and therefore in some true sense God Him-self" (p. 78; translation ours). But going beyond the words used to designate sin and con-sidering sin in the whole context of the Old Testament, Father Lyonnet points out various ways of looking at sin as an offense against God. Sin offends God insofar as it harms man whom God loves and desires to protect as His very own. Sin is also 7"Offense against God," The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, LXXXVII (1957), 329-342. S"De natura peccati quid doceat V. T.," l~erburn Dornini, XXXV (1957), 75-88. 330 November, 1957 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING described as an offense against God insofar as it breaks the bond of conjugal love between God and His people, His beloved spouse. Thus sin is likened to adultery, God being the offended spouse. (Based upon this idea, God is portrayed in the Old Testament as a husband who cannot live without his beloved spouse; and, even though she is unfaithful, he pursues her with his merciful and forgiving love until she returns to him.) But in any understanding of sin the divine transcendence must always be preserved; sin never takes from God anything divine. But it does snatch away from Him man, whom God loves as the very apple of His eye. The Liturgy Those who are actively engaged in pastoral work in a parish will find food for serious reflection in an article written by Father Josef Jungmann, s.J., one of the world's most outstanding schol-ars of the liturgy.'~ The main theme of his article may be stated in his own words: "In the concrete community of the Church, which normally appears in the form of the parish, the liturgy does not represent merely one set of tasks, however holy, among many others. The Sunday and holy day Eucharist constitutes nothing less than the goal and ultimate meaning of all pastoral work here on earth" (p. 67). There is a fine article in The Life of the Spirit on the active participation of the faithful in the sacrifice of the Mass.1° The primary purpose of the article is to explain why the people should be active at Mass. The answer to this is based upon the proper understanding of the nature of the Mass and the nature of the Christian people. The nature of the Mass is that, being the principal act of the Mystical Body, it is a social, community act, in which all the faithful have their part. As regards the Christian people, by baptism they were made members of the Mystical Body of Christ the Priest; and by the character im- '°"The Liturgy and the Parish," l#ors/~ila, XXXI (1957), 62-67. 10j. D. Crichton, "The Mass and the People," The Life of t/~e 8~irit, XI, 548-560. 331 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN Review for Religiou.~ printed on their soul at baptism they share in the priesthood of their Head. These ideas are developed in the first part of this article, while a second part suggests ways of educating the faith-ful to take an active part in both the dialogue and high Mass. When Christ at the Last Supper said, ~This is My blood of the new covenant, which is being shed for many," what would the apostles understand by the words blood of the new covenant? Father Siegman, C.PP.S., the editor of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, discusses this question and in so doing offers a few points which might be helpful in understanding better the Sacrifice of the Mass.11 He shows that the words blood of the covenant, spoken by our Lord at the Last Supper, ~'must have suggested to the Apostles the sacrificial character of the rite that Jesus was performing. Blood that was shed had to be offered to God in sacrifice, as acknowledgment of His absolute dominion" (pp. 171-172), and also as an atonement for sin. Further, the apostles must have understood that the covenant, the pact be-tween God and His people, was now fulfilled. ~What Jahweh had done on Mt. Sinai was a beginning, a first aspect of the perfect covenant-act to be realized in the future" (p. 172), when this covenant would be ratified not by '~the blood of goats and calves," but by the blood of Christ (Heb. 9:12). Finally, this fulfilled covenant would have meant "community of life"(p. 172), Christ the victim sharing His life with His apostles. A few months ago there was published in Worship the translation of an address which Father Athanasius Miller, O.S.B., secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, gave last De-cember at the Biblical Institute in Rome.l~ His concern in the paper was to discuss the problem "whether or not a harmony can be established between the psalms on the one hand, and a Christian prayer and a Christian devotion to the psalms on the other" (p. 334). Since the book of the Psalms is pre-Christian, H"The Blood of the Covenant," 7"he American Ecclesiastical Re,view, CXXXVI (1957), 167-174. 1'-, "The Psalms from a Christian Viewpoint," l'Forship, XXXI (1957), 334-345. 332 November, 1957 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING many priests or religious, whether in reading the Office or in using the Psalter for private prayer, have difficulty in giving the psalms a Christian character and interpretation. Their devotion suffers in attempting to make an Old Law prayerbook into a Christian prayerbook. Father Miller's answer to this problem may be summed up in his own words: Thus the psalter is for the Church of the martyrs a Christ-book. Its songs center around the Kyrios raised on the cross, whether she speaks of Him, or to Him, or He Himself speaks to the Father: "The psalm is a voice speaking of Christ; the psalm is the voice of the Church speaking to Christ; the psalm is the voice of Christ speaking to the Father." It was left to the ingenious hand of Augustine later to combine all these aspects into one: "The psalm is the voice of the whole Christ, Head and body": Psalmus vox totius Christi, capitis et corl~oris (p. 340). In an address, given May 1, 1955, to members of the Chris-tian Association of Italian Workers, the Holy Father instituted the feast of St. Joseph the Worker and he assigned it to the first day of May. This new feast took the place of the Solemnity of St. Joseph. In this exchange, however, nothing was really lost; in fact, much was gained. In order to show this, Father Francis J. Filas, S.J., an authority on the theology of St. Joseph, examines and comments very simply and intelligently on the text of the Mass and Office of the new feast.1:~ Of particular interest are the few remarks which he makes about "father Joseph" (p. 296). This com-mentary on the Mass and Office of St. Joseph could be used ior "points" for prayer by those who desire to "Go to Joseph." "In the providence of God, for the greater glory of God, to know Jesus and Mary better and to imitate St. Joseph more closely, may this new feast of St. Joseph the Worker be a promise of even greater liturgical honors to come" (p. 303). 13,'The Mass and Office of St. Joseph the Worker," The /lmerican Ecclesi-astical Re~ie~, CXXXVI, (1957), 289-303. 333 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN Review fo~ Religious Priestly and Religious Vocation What is a vocation? How do I know if I have a vocation? The answer to these questions is given by Father Columba Ryan, O.P., in three helpful articles.14 A good part of the matter of these articles is a commentary on the important apostolic con-stitution Sedes Sap¯len¯tla15e. The Holy Father had written in this document: ". the divine vocation . . . consists of two essential elements, one divine and the other ecclesiastical." Father Ryan uses these words of the Pope both as a point of departure and also as a suggested division of the matter of his articles. The first article considers the divine element, the divine call, but looked at from the side of God, as God's signified will. The second article examines this same divine call, but insofar as it is a grace received in a man's soul. The final article treats the ecclesiastical element of a divine vocation, the ecclesiastical call, and that which is closely associated with it, the necessary qualities which ought to be found in the aspirant. In regard to the first element of a divine vocation, the invitation of the soul by God, this is so necessary that without it the foundation of the whole structure will be lacking. Whether it be a call to the priestly life, or the religious life, or both combined, the initiative must come from God; without it there is no vocation. Because of this Father Ryan reiterates and comments upon the strong warning of the Holy Father about forcing or alluring or admitting to the religious or priestly life those who do not show the true signs of a divine vocation. But if these signs are clear, if God's loving will for a man is that he be a priest or a religious, there arises a problem: What is the obligation of following this signified will of God? There is some obligation, says Father Ryan, but this obligation falls not so much upon the acceptance or rejection ot? the voca- 14Vocations and Their Recognition," The Life of the Spirit, XI, 217-223, 258-263, 517-527. 15 The English translation of this document may be found in gEVlEW FOg LIGIOUS, March, 1957, 88-101. 334 November, 1957 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING tion as "upon the deliberations preceding . . . [the] decision . . an obligation in the line of the virtue of prudence" (p. 223). Let us observe that one should be careful about insisting upon this obligation with the young, since they could easily confuse what is of counsel and what is of obligation in this matter. In the second article Father Ryan takes up the problem of how we may know whether there is present in the soul the grace of a vocation. The most we can do is to "detect it by signs of its presence, by the outward effects which it produces" (p. 259). The signs which he indicates are: a conscious and felt attraction to religious or priestly life; an obscure drawing towards it, perhaps with a sense of duty attached, but without attraction; such a drawing, accompanied by positive repug-nance for the life in question; a calculation, from the recognition that a man may have from his whole providential setting, that he ought to follow such and such a life; the sense of the emptiness for him of any other life (p. 259). These signs are not a proof of a vocation; in fact, they are often counterfeited. Many of the observations which the author makes about these signs, their counterfeits, and the faulty motives behind the latter, are well worth careful study by those who are engaged in the work of vocational directing. Besides the divine call there must also be, in order to have a divine vocation, the ecclesiastical call, that is, being called by lawful ministers of the Church. No person with a genuinely divine vocation can fail to be received by legitimate superiors. This does not mean that every first refusal of ecclesiastical superiors proves the lack of a true vocation. But it does mean that against the refusal of a superior there can be "no ultimate appeal to some subjectively experienced call of God as a con-clusive proof" (p. 519) of a divine vocation. An ecclesiastical superior must determine whether a can-didate possesses the necessary qualities. What are these? Father Ryan classifies them under three headings: "first, qualities of health, physical and mental; secondly, general character and dis- 335 THOMAS G. 0'CALLAGHAN position; thirdly, talents appropriate to the special vocation undertaken" (p. 521). In commenting upon these Father Ryan makes some very solid observations about emotional maturity, general strength of character, intelligence, docility, and affability. These articles will well repay careful study. The question of fostering vocations, a very important ques-tion these days because of the growing need of priests and religious, is discussed by Father Baier.1' In the fostering of vocations, one point which is to be carefully noted is that which Pope Pius XI mentioned in Ad Catholici Sacerdotii. In the ordinary course of divine providence, he remarked in this encyclical, the %rst and most natural place" where the God-sown seeds of vocation "grow and bloom remains always the truly and deeply Christian family." Another point which Father Baier mentions is that young Catholics do not understand the real meaning and excellence of the religious life. Too much attention is given to the "externals." '~If we want more vocations, we must tell young people about the 'inside' story of God's call. Only the inner meaning and the full significance of a vocation can inspire the qualities of enthusiasm, self-sacrifice and heroism for Christ" (p. 3:23). l°"Toward More Vocations," The llomiletic and Pastoral Revie.w, LVII (1957), 320-324. 336 The Int:elled:ual Li e ot: t:he Religious: Prad:ical Aspect:s Sister Emily Joseph, C.S.J. THAT THIS ARTICLE may have a practical aspect in substance as well as in name, I have presumed to borrow heavily from a source that has directed the intellectual progress of many scholars. The advice here presented comes from a man who was the outstanding humanist of his day; a man of letters as well as of action who figured prominently in the political, ecclesiastical, and diplomatic affairs of his times; a man whose profound learning, both religious and secular, lent a brilliance and charm to his spoken and written word. This man was the twelfth-century scholar, John of Salisbury, secretary of St. Thomas of Canterbury, author, poet, ecclesiastic, diplomat, and an intellectual of the first order. Among John's writings we find an account of certain at-titudes prevalent in the educational circles of his day--a day which, we note with a smile, John calls these "modern times." He deplores the tendency to specialization, the immoderate tribute paid to cleverness, and the influence of a segment of educators who would over-emphasize the "practical" at the expense of the humanistic studies. Then, paying tribute to his revered old teacher, Bernard of Chartres, John quotes the pair of fluid Latin hexameters in which Bernard neatly packaged his recom-mendations for scholars-to-be. John himself called these the "Six Keys to True Learning." As a practical aspect of the intellectual life of the religious, I give you John's six keys) First: mens humilis--a humble mind. Recently I came upon this definition of humility in an article entitled "Vocation of the Intellectual; Its Requisites and Rewards.''~' "Humility is a per- 1 All references to John of Salisbury are from his Policraticus, VII, 13 (ed. C. J. Webb). Z Whalen, Reverend John P., "Vocation of the Intellectual; Its Requisites and Rewards," The Catholic Educational Re~ie~, LII (Dec. 1954), 597-601. 337 SISTER EMILY JOSEPH Review for Religious sonal evaluation without personal interest . It is observing ourselves as part of the creation of God with an unjaundiced eye, neither allowing our egoism to exaggerate our vision nor our insecurity to underestimate it." Such an attitude is funda-mental, not only for the acquisition of the moral virtues but for the intellectual ones as well. It is the guarantee of an objective approach to the search for knowledge; it precludes an interpreta-tion of research findings which accords with one'~ own prejudices or inclinations rather than with the objective evidence. Above all, it is a safeguard against one of the most pernicious spiritual ills to which man is subject--intellectual pride. The second key: studium quaerendi--the eager, questing spirit. The phrase carries a twofold implication: first, a steady, zealous, self-sacrificing devotion to the research entailed by scho-larship; secondly, it betokens the inquiring outlook which is the hallmark of a scholar. It implies, too, the proper attitude toward the intellectual life. With regret, we acknowledge that this attitude, latent in everyone who has consecrated his or her life to incarnate Wisdom, fails, in many cases, to develop and in-fluence the religious. Some hold intellectual efforts and attain-ments suspect. By their attitude of aloofness they try to cloak their own apathy where research is concerned. Others contend that the present need of the Church calls for concentration on a vigorous social apostolate. Still others avow their respect for intellectual activity but modestly place themselves outside its periphery. That all might acquire a correct attitude toward the importance, both for time and eternity, of personal intellectual growth we would strongly recommend two classic works: Cardinal Newman's Idea of a University and Cardinal Suhard's peerless pastoral letter, Groi~lh or Decline? The third key which John recommends is vita quieta--a life of tranquillity. John's own life as a scholar was interrupted by ecclesiastical responsibilities which plunged him into incessant activity. He crossed the continent of Europe ten t:.mes on diplo-matic missions and such extensive traveling in the twelfth century 338 November, ~957 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF RELIGIOUS was only at the cost of much time and considerable inconvenience. Such a life is not compatible with the atmosphere that the scholar needs. His must be a well-ordered life---a life of dedication to intellectual pursuits. His energies must be concentrated upon this one end, not dissipated upon a multiplicity of activities, how-ever worthy each in itself may be. From his life all non-essentials must be (often painfully) pruned. One in whom secular tastes and worldly attitudes develop and foster a craving for recreation, for indulgence in entertainment provided by radio, television, or light reading, for needless travel and social contacts will find neither the inclination nor the time for intellectual growth. In a recent article in the NGEH Bulletin, Father Gustave Weigel, s.J., underlines the special responsibility of the college faculty, which he calls the "soul of the collegiate community," to foster the intellectual life. Exploring the meaning of the term, "intellectual life," Father Weigel contends that it is a life of contemplation. "The true intellectual," he says, "always seeks for essences and essences are not obvious . Hence the practi-tioner of the intellectual life is a contemplative." He maintains that "the intellectual life is the very essence of the college" and that contemplation is the essence of the intellectual life; and he intimates that there are dangerous attitudes, social and economic forces, that make incursions upon and destroy the vita quieta that is a sine qua non of scholarly pursuits? Closely allied to this third key is the fourth--scrutinium taciturn--a study room where silence reigns. Just as the silence of the chapel is most conducive to contempletion of God and His attributes, so for the scholar's contemplation there must be freedom from distractions, prolonged periods for undisturbed thinking. Here is a problem which superiors should acknowledge and try to solve. The religious whose teaching assignments, ex-tracurricular responsibilities, and community obligations exhaust 3 Weigel, Gustave, S.J., "Enriching the Intellectual Life of the Catholic Col-lege," NCE/I Bulletin, LII (May 1956), 7-21. 339 SISTER EMILY JOSEPH Review for Religious his or her physical powers and necessitate constant contact with students, institutional personnel, and externs cannot be expected to develop the intellectual life, regardless of personal inclination and intellectual endowment. Paupertas--poverty--is the fifth key in John's list. Our vocation, then, in which we are privileged to bind ourselves by vow to a life of poverty, ought to insure us this key without further worry. But does it? In the pursuit of higher education what is the end in view for the majority of religious who flock in such numbers to the universities? Is their goal those spiritual entities, knowledge and truth, toward which, like a shining beacon, they are willing to press on resolutely in spite of summer heat and winter snow, demanding professors and elusive research articles, frustrating language barriers and disappointing lab ex-periments? Or does a motive which is, at least in part, pragmatic and materialistic, namely, the determination to acquire a degree and thus satisfy certain educational standards and demands, com-mit them to a temporary and half-hearted educational episode which they dispatch with a minimum of research and a maximum of compensating recreation? All will acknowledge that the poverty of a monk or nun differs from the poverty of a derelict in the slums. How does the poverty of a scholar differ from the poverty of a religious? Or does it? Was John of Salisbury implying that this fifth key imposes upon the scholar a form of discipline and a degree of detachment that is unique and un-paralleled, which demands renunciations over and above those required by the vow of poverty? The last of John's six keys s~iows his penetrating wisdom: terra aliena. We might presume to interpret it rather freely to mean: ~Get away from home base." One of the most practical aspects of this question of intellectual growth is that of time. It is one of the limitations imposed upon us by our mortal state. Certain legitimate demands upon our time are inextricably associated with our observance of community life. Charity obliges even where temporary dispensations exempt. Religious 340 November, 1957 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF RELIGIOUS superiors, then, should take this into consideration and, to the extent possible, assign students to graduate studies in universities where they will reside away from home. Financial and other practical considerations may render this difficult. Still, anyone who has attempted scholarly study or writing will insist that this sixth key is oi~ prime importance. These, then, are the six golden keys which John of Salis-bury left us nearly eight hundred years ago. I repeat them, as they are found in the seventh chapter of his work entitled Policraticus." ~Iens kurnilis, studiurn quaerendi, ~dta quieta, Scrutiniurn taciturn, paupertas, terra aliena. I rather suspect that, were John listening to me, he would repeat what he said, referring to Bernard's hexameters: "Though I am not taken by the smoothness of the meter, I approve the sense and I believe it should be faithfully impressed on the minds of those seeking true learning." FATHER GALLEN~S ABSENCE Father Gallen, who answers questions for the REVIEW, has been in Europe for several months; and we are not sure when he will return. This is the reason why answers to questions have been delayed. Since we have no other canonist on our staff, we suggest that those who have canonical problems requiring prompt answers send their questions to a canonist of their own diocese. BOUSCAREN-ELLIS It is a little more than ten years since Fathers T. Lincoln Bous-caren, S.J., and Adam C. Ellis, S.J., first published their Canon Law: A Text and Commentary. The third edition completely revised is now available. This edition incorporates papal decrees and decisions issued since 1951 and adds current literature to the bibliography fol-lowing each chapter. It includes new material on the alienation of property and on secular institutes. Father Ellis, it will be remembered, was one of the founders of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS and was one of the active members of the editorial board until very recently. The book is published by the Bruce Publishing Company, 400 North Broadway, Milwaukee 1, Wisconsin. 980 pages. $10.50. 341 Com rnun icat:ions On Delayed Vocations Reverend Fathers: In accordance with the announcement in the May number of gEWEW FOg RELIGIOUS (p. 154), we are happy to send you the fol-lowing information. We are Dominican Sisters established for foreign mission work and for social and catechetical work in the United States. We are at present approved as a Pious Union by Cardinal Stritch. Our habit is the regular Dominican habit. We accept candidates between the ages of 20 and 40. We do accept widows or previously married women whose marriage was annulled or invalid, if they give signs of a true vocation. Mother M. Agatha, O.P. Missionary Servants of St. Dominic Rosary Mission House 656 West 44th Street Chicago 9, Illinois Reverend Fathers: In response to your note on Delayed Vocations, we wish to say that we would consider accepting the classes of persons mentioned in the announcement. Ours is a cloistered order. We have perpetual adoration. We accept candidates up to the age of 35, and even a little older if their health is good. If the spiritual directors who seek this information have possible candidates on the waiting list we would be glad to make their acquaintance. Mother Mary Edwina Franciscan Nuns of the Most Blessed Sacrament 2311 Timlin Hill Portsmouth, Ohio [EDITORS' NOTE: Regarding communications on the religious habit please see page 322.] 342 Survey.of Roman Document:s R. F. Smit:h, S.J. THE DOCUMENTS which appeared in the ~lcta ~lpos-tolicae Sedis (AAS) from June 1, 1957, to August 15, 1957, will be the subject matter of the present article. Page references to AAS in the course of the survey will accordingly refer to the 1957 AAS (volume 49). The Saints On May 16, 1957 (AAS, pp. 321-31), two days after the Pope had received in audience the recently liberated Car-dinal Wyszynski, His Holiness issued the encyclical, Invicti athletae Christi, in commemoration of the three hundreth anniversary of the death of the Polish martyr, St. Andrew Bobola. In the first section of the encyclical, Pius XII briefly sketches the life of the martyr. Born in 1591, Andrew entered the Society of Jesus at the age of 19. The future saint gave himself wholeheartedly to the conquest of Christian perfection, seeking only the glory of God. After his ordination to the priesthood, his life was devoted to the faith he professed. It was this love of his faith that led him to work in the eastern marches of his country where dissident churches strove to separate the faithful from the unity of the true Church. When the Cossack persecution of the Church broke out, it was this same love of the faith that prompted him to do everything in his power to keep Catholics from denying their faith and to reconcile those who under pressure of the persecutors had deserted their faith. It was, finally, the ~ame love of the faith that enkindled in him the courage to endure the fright-ful martyrdom which the Cossacks inflicted on him on the feast of the Ascension, May 16, 1657. In the second part of the encyclical, the Vicar of Christ urges the faithful to imitate in their own lives the faith and 343 R. F. SMITH Review for Religiou~ courage of Bobola. The need for similar faith, he notes, is especially great today, for materialism continues to grow and to seduce men by the mirage of an earthly happiness without God. No less necessary today is the courage of St. Andrew. Every Christian life must have something of the martyr in it; for a Christian gives testimony to his faith not only by shedding his blood for it, but also by a constant war against sin and by a complete consecration of himself and all he has to Him who is his Creator and Redeemer and who someday will be his eternal joy. The Holy Father concludes the encyclical with a special plea to the Polish nation that they of all men may imitate the faith and courage of their sainted compatriot so that Poland, today as yesterday, may be a rampart of Christianity. Three documents concern Mother Mary of Providence (1825-71), foundress of the Helpers of the Holy Souls. The first of these was a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites which was dated April 21, 1957 (AAS, pp. 374-76), and which stated that the beatification of the Venerable Servant of God could safely be proceeded with. On May 26, 1957 (AAS, pp. 339-44), Pius XII proclaimed her beatification and the day after (AAS, pp. 361-64) addressed a group of the Helpers of the Holy Souls who had come to Rome for the beatification of their foundress. In his allocution to them the Pontiff stressed the Blessed's devotion to Providence which led her to repay Provi-dence by rescuing souls from purgatory and by devoting herself to an active and universa! apostolate. The last document concerning the saints is a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, issued on April 9, 1957 (AAS, pp. 424-25}, and ordering that henceforth a determined part of the consultors of the congregation shall have consultative vote with regard to the official scrutiny of the writings of persons whose causes of beatification are introduced. The Eucharist Three documents of the period surveyed are concerned with the Eucharist. On May 19, 1957 (AAS, pp. 364-68), His 344 November', 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS Holiness broadcast a message to the Eucharistic Congress of Spain, which was being held at Granada, telling the faithful assembled there that in the Eucharist is to be found the same Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life for all men. He also reminded them that in the Eucharist there is the highest manifestation of that greatest of all truths: God is love. On May 23, 1957 (AAS, p. 370), the Holy Office an-swered the following question with regard to the concelebration of Mass: Do several priests validly concelebrate Mass if only one of them utters the words "This is My Body" and "This is My Blood" over the bread and wine, while the rest do not pronounce the words, but, with the knowledge and the consent of the aforesaid celebrant, have and manifest the intention of making their own the words and actions of the same celebrant? The Holy Office answered the question in the negative, since, as it said, by the institution of Christ only he validly celebrates who pronounces the consecrating words. The Sacred Congregation of Rites issued a decree on June 1, 1957 (AAS, pp. 425-26), dealing with the tabernacle and the manner of conserving the Holy Eucharist. The decree states that the pertinent norms of canon law (canons 1268-69) should be carefully observed. Moreover, the tabernacle is to be so fixed to the altar that it is irremovable. Ordinarily the taber-nacles should be affixed to the main altar, unless in certain cir-cumstances the veneration of the Eucharist can be provided for better elsewhere. Such circumstances are ordinarily found in cathedral, collegiate, and conventual churches where choir func-tions are exercised. Similar extraordinary circumstances can sometimes be found, the decree continues, in larger devotional centers where, because of popular devotion to some venerated object, the veneration due the Blessed Sacrament might be over-shadowed. The decree goes on to state that Mass should be habitually celebrated at the altar where the Blessed Sacrament is kept; and, 345 R. F. SMITH Review .for Religious in churches where there is only one altar, this should not be so constructed that the priest celebrates Mass facing the people, for in the middle of such an altar there should be placed a tabernacle for keeping the Blessed Sacrament. The tabernacle should be strong and secure so that all danger of profanation is avoided. When the Blessed Sacrament is in it, the tabernacle should be covered with a veil and a light should always burn in front of it. The tabernacle should con-form to the style of the altar and the church and should not differ too much from the style of tabernacles already in use. The tabernacle should represent a true dwelling-place of God with men and should not be adorned with unusual or misleading symbols. Finally, the Sacred Congregation notes that tabernacles that are off and apart from altars are strictly forbidden. More-over, with regard to the way of keeping the Blessed Sacrament or with regard to the form of the tabernacle, there is no presump-tion in favor of contrary customs, unless the custom is centenary or immemorial. Social Questions Speaking on May 3, 1957 (AAS, pp. 351-55), to a group of Belgians, the Holy Father underlined the necessity of better housing for a large number of people. Ten to twenty per cent of the total population of European countries, he pointed out, live in subhuman circumstances where they can not live a decent and truly human life. Such circumstances not only weaken health and physical stamina but also induce extensive moral damage: immorality; juvenile delinquency; loss of the desire to work; and revolt against the society that allows such subhuman conditions to exist. On May 26, 1957 (AAS, pp. 403-14), the Vicar of Christ addressed a group of Italian Catholic lawyers on the right way of giving assistance to those in prison. The Holy Father began his allocution by studying the presuppositions of all effec- 346 November, 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS tive aid to prisoners. The first of these presuppositions is con-. cerned with the relationship that exists between the punishment and the crime committed. Only the conviction that the prisoner is culpable can furnish a sure basis for all consequent aid. It must be remembered, the Holy Father stated, that even in con-crete situations the great majority of men have the possibility of regulating their personal conduct and hence of contracting obli-gations and responsibilities. This is the reason why morality and law are correct when they assert that in a given case cessation of free will must be proved, not the presence of free will. The second presupposition to be borne in mind when work-ing for prisoners is concerned with the suffering that is necessarily included in the punishment. A prisoner, the Pontiff remarked, is not comparable to a sick person; since the latter has no obliga-tion to suffer, it is right to seek to lighten his sufferings as much as possible. The prisoner, however, deserves to suffer, hence the removal of all suffering cannot be desired in the case of prisoners. The third and final presupposition to be considered cen-ters around the meaning and purpose of the punishment that has been inflicted on the prisoner. Since human punishment should in its own way imitate divine punishment, the Holy Father turned to a consideration of the meaning and purpose of the punish-ments inflicted by God on sin. The primary and essential pur-pose of divine punishment, he observed, is the reestablishment of the order of things violated by sin. By sin, man prefers him-self to God; by imposing suffering on the sinner, God constrains him to submit himself to the divine will and hence to restore the order he has previously violated. This, however, is not the sole purpose of divine punishment as far as this world is concerned. Often the punishments willed by God in this life are rather medic-inal than vindictive. They are meant to reeducate the sinner, to lead him to repentance, and to turn him toward goodness and justice. All these aims of divine punishment should be striven for also by human punishment. 347 R. F. SMITH Review .for Religious His Holiness then took up the manner in which prisoners can best be aided. The first aid to be given to prisoners is to know them thoroughly: their origin, their formation, their life up to the present time. Secondly, one should attempt to con-vince them that through their detention they can efface the errors of their past and remake their lives. Finally, one must love the prisoner. It is not sufficient to approach him with correct ideas and notions; along with this must go a love that is as comprehensive and devoted as is maternal love. In conclu-sion the Holy Father advises his listeners to look on prisoners as God looks upon them: in a spirit of justice tempered with mercy. Miscellaneous Matters On June 2, 1957 (AAS, pp. 433-603), Pius XII issued the Motu Proprio Cleri sanctita¢i, promulgating a new section of the projected Code of Canon Law for the Oriental Churches. This new section contains 558 canons and corresponds roughly to the second book of the Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church. The section deals successively with the following points: the oriental rites; physical and moral persons; clerics in general; clerics in particular from patriarchs to assistant and substitute pastors; the laity. The prescriptions of these new canons will go into effect March 25, 1958. On May t9, 1957 (AAS, pp. 414-17), the Roman Pontiff delivered a radio message to the Third Portuguese Congress of the Apostleship of Prayer held at Braga. In the message the Pope expressed his great desire to see the Apostleship of Prayer propagated among all catagories of persons in the Church. The principal part of his message, however, is concerned with what he called the proper essence and the secret of the immense effectiveness of the Apostleship of Prayer. This is nothing else than the practice of the morning offering of all one's actions and sufferings of the coming day for the intentions of the Sacred Heart and of the Roman Pontiff. This practice, the Holy Father 348 Nove~ber, 1957 ROMAN DOCUMENTS noted, is an elementary and simple one, but when motivated by a conscientious desire to live it out completely, it can revolution-ize a life. On May 20, 1957 (AAS, pp. 355-61), the Holy Father gave an inaugural address for the week of astronomical studies held under the auspices of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The body of the address is devoted to a summary of recent findings with regard to the nature of the stars, in the course of which the Holy Father accepts five billion years as a reason-able estimate of the age of the universe. At the end of the allocution the Pope remarked that that man is fortunate who can read in the stars the message they carry, inviting man to rise to the knowledge of Him who gives truth and life and who estab-lishes His dwelling in the hearts of those who adore and love Him. On May 10, 1957 (AAS, pp. 427-29), the Sacred Peni-tentiary published the text of two prayers composed by His Holiness. The first is a prayer to our Lady of Lourdes; an indulgence of three years can be gained by the faithful each time they recite the prayer with contrite heart. The second prayer is a prayer to be recited by physicians; physicians can gain an indulgence of three years whenever they say the prayer with contrite heart. On June 4, 1957 (AAS, p. 429), the Sacred Penitentiary announced that a plenary indulgence could be gained in connec-tion with the practice of the twelve Sundays in honor of the infancy of our Lord. The conditions for the indulgence are the following: prayers and pious meditations in honor of the mysteries of Christ's infancy on twelve consecutive Sundays of one's own choosing; confession; Communion; visit to a church or public oratory with prayers there for the intention of the Holy Father. 349 Persevering in Prayer Mot:her Marie Vandenbergh, R.C. I. Introduction CONCERNING IGNATIAN spirituality less has been writ-ten perhaps than about some other schools of perfection; nevertheless, there are enough articles and books extant on the subject to make one pause before adding to their number. Especially if one's years in religion are not many, will the query arise, "What do you have to contribute?" The answer is, "Not very much." The best to be hoped for is that being relatively lately come to the field of interior combat might lend freshness to one's point of view. The re-cently won scars of battle might generate a more sympathetic and generally helpful approach to the problems confronting beginners about to enter the lists. There are, conceivably, certain advantages that derive from having traveled far enough along the road of the interior life to get some perspective, but not so far as to have forgotten what it felt like to be just start-ing out. Furthermore, and more importantly as a credential, the Cenacle, keynoted by its motto, "Perseverantes in oratione," has, throughout its brief history of less than two hundred years, upheld in its constitutions an ideal of high spiritual excellence. However large the discrepancy between these ideals of the con-gregation and one's personal attainments, it is surely nonetheless permissible to set forth this heritage and let it speak for itself, at least in regard to one or two problems of beginners in prayer. The Cenacle Religious have an Ignatian Rule and are devoted to the work of providing retreats for laywomen and teaching Christian doctrine. It is not, then, surprising that St. Ignatius's book, The Spiritual Exercises, figures largely in our novitiate training, as well as all through our religious life. 350 PERSEVERING IN PRAYER We are told early in our formation that a Cenacle Religious must learn to love "the solitude of the heart" and "live in prayer as in her proper element." As means toward this spiritual growth, we are given, to quote a superior general, both "meth-ods" and "liberty." The "liberty" is that inspired by the Holy Spirit; the "methods" are those suggested by St. Ignatius--his "Spiritual Exercises." If his directives applying to the special circumstances of retreat time are set aside, there remains a remarkable body of instruction for those who wish to learn the science of the saints and for those who are constituted their guides. In this article we shall prescind entirely from the retreat relationship and, using the Exercises as a manual of spirituality, concentrate on the part methodical meditation is meant to play in our spiritual lives. II. Pro's and Con's The ultimate purpose of any sort of meditation, formal or informal, is to bring a soul to give itself to God by a process of instruction, reasoning, and resolution resulting in the formation of religious convictions and in great purity of life. Training in the use of formal meditation methods often starts with ready-made outlines, developing into personally prepared meditation outlines. This has two principal advantages. First, it prevents waste of time and energy to have something definite in mind to do when you go to your meditation. Second, as a result of the first, it helps develop the habit of prayer. Unless a girl has been living a modified rule of life in the world, the likelihood is that she has been praying "when she felt like it." Entering religious life she must learn to pray at a set time--whether she feels like it or not. A knowledge of prayer technique, i.e., an outlined meditation, will help her get started on days when she doesn't feel like it. It will keep her busy and trying to pray at times when prayer is more or less distasteful. Furthermore, fidelity to the attempt to "contact God," espe-cially when sensible consolation dries up, is a sine qua non 351 MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH Re~iew for Religious of real progress. This fidelity is a fruit of habitual use of a method. St. Teresa of Avila :lays down two rules for the would-be saint: refuse God nothing and never abandon the practice of prayer. Use of meditation methods can keep a soul from idleness in prayer time and prevent its giving up from sheer boredom with itself in time of dryness. There are, however, dangers to be avoided in the use of a method: strain and slavish fidelity to mechanics. While bridging the gap between the free and easy ~pray when you please" of life in the world and the regular, disciplined ~pray when you ought" of religious life, it is of paramount importance to avoid undue strain. The spontaneity of the soul's response to God must be safeguarded. It is that element of sweet familiarity with God which, as far as God's grace allows, makes of prayer the personal relationship it is meant to be. Undue efforts such as straining for ~success" in meditation, in-sistence on completion of the full meditation outline, or self-induced fixation of the imagination are sure to result in a ~broken head." Some such form of tension becomes a danger wherever emphasis on high ideals is combined with strict discipline. Ex-aggerated fidelity is one of the occupational hazards of religious life. Especially in the atmosphere of a novitiate, a spirit of holy emulation can make it contagious. To such an extent is this true that over-eagerness can be suspected of spoiling more voca-tions than laxity; for tension, though combined with all the good will in the world, has a paralyzing effect. In certain cases it persists as a chronic ailment through the early years of professed life, sooner or later, let us hope, to be outgrown. In extreme cases, however, the victim may be spiritually crippled for life. The cause of the difficulty does not lie, needless to say, in the traditional methods of prayer. The trouble arises when, instead of the neophyte's mastering the method, the method masters the neophyte. What was intended as a help toward union 352 November, 1957 PERSEVERING IN PRAYER with God becomes an end instead of a means and acts as a hindrance to that very union. The exasperating part of it is that often the victim of this malady, if questioned, would reply glibly that, of course, a method is a means, not an end in itself--and then go right on clinging inordinately to his little shell of prayer technique. In his mind, though he does not realize it, prayer formality has become an indispensible means to union with God; whereas authors and advocates of prepared methods intend them to be used tantum-quantum, just insofar as they help to attain this union. An inexperienced soul can become more attached to its method than to its God. It makes him feel so secure. If ever doubts as to his fidelity to prayer arise, he has only to point to his daily "two preludes, three points, and a colloquy." There, he feels, is concrete evidence that he has not been wasting his prayer time. He does not realize until much later, perhaps, that he has been slowly strangling his spiritual life. Retreat masters have dealt with this difficulty, books have been written about it; but still it can happen that a suffering soul will not recognize itself to be a victim of prayer-tension until the sterility of its meditation and its self-imposed rigidity threaten to kill its religious life entirely. Sheer starvation of soul is its inevitable result. In order to forestall this turn of events if possible, those in charge of the spiritual formation of young people exercise a great deal of vigilance. "I watched my young men like a hawk," said one novice master, "to detect signs of strain." As soon as they began to pray spontaneously and to speak familiarly with God, they were instructed to leave their prepared meditation outline for as long as they could pray without reference to it. "Be relaxed in the presence of God," was the advice they were given. There is a possible hazard, too, for people with a studious turn of mind. They, more easily than others, can be tempted to make a purely mental exercise of their meditation and never 353 MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH Review for Religious really pray. There is no real "contact" with God at all. This makes of meditation nothing but a sterile academic study instead of an affair of the heart that leads them to fall in love with their Lord Christ. III. Liberty of Spirit Besides these rather obvious dangers to be avoided in the use of meditation methods, there is a further point it might be well to discuss here. The principal charge leveled against tech-niques of prayer is that slavish fidelity to "two preludes, three points, and a colloquy" hinders a soul's progress toward God in the more simplified forms of prayer. The Spiritual ercises of St. Ignatius are often called upon to bear the brunt of such criticism. For some reason it has been difficult to convince the praying public that to advocate methods of prayer is not the same as to advocate slavish fidelity to them. St. Ignatius of Loyola, himself a contemplative and even a mystic, could hardly have recommended a spirituality which excluded such graces a priori. Anyone thoroughly grounded in Ignatian spirituality knows well enough that there is in it wide margin for originality and freedom. In the beginning of the life of prayer, however, the method is more in evidence than the freedom. The same is true of playing the piano. You learn the scales before you improvise. Benson, in his The Friendship o.f Christ, and Boylan, in This Tremendous Lover, point out that one's prayer life develops along the same lines as human friendship. In the early stages of mere "bowing acquaintance," formalities and conven-tional conversation topics like politics and the weather make up the larger part of the relationship. As the acquaintance deepens, there is growing mutual self-revelation, a sharing of tastes, of personal history, of hopes and fears. There is mutual interest in and support of one another's projects and plans. Should friend-ship ripen to the point of falling in love, the amount of con-versation is reduced to a minimum, and the silent language of 354 November, 1957 PERSEVERING IN PRAYER love takes its place. There is a ~honeymoon" stage, followed by inevitable trials and tests which strengthen and mature the soul. The maturing of married love has frequently been de-scribed as a process of transition from eros to agape, from selfish to unselfish love. A similar process goes on in the prayer life. Eventually prayer comes to the point where it lives by a continuous, silent sacrifice of self for the sake of the Beloved. Such prayer is a life of love and is consonant with a great deal of suffering and self-forgetfulness. Married couples who have lived and loved together for many years have no great need of words; they are content to share each other's silent company. Even so does the soul's happiness come to consist of being silent together with God. In human love this silent togetherness can be such a dear and deep and precious thing that when one partner dies, the other does not linger on much longer. The whole reason for living has disappeared. So in prayer one's whole self can come to be lost in God who is one's only reason for living, moving, being. IV. Variety of Method Although all comparisons limp, at least it should be obvious that in our friendship with the most wonderful Person in the universe we should expect growth and development and change. The purpose of the variety of methods provided by St. Ignatius is to allow for this most desirable adaptability to the attractions of grace. Furthermore, the key to this adaptation is St. Ignatius's direction, "In that point in which I find what I desire, there I will rest, without being anxious to proceed . . . until I have satisfied myself" (Addition IV). This varying of meditation methods to suit one's need of the moment is sometimes a matter wherein a well-meaning young person is too timid. Wisely reluctant to trust her own instincts unless they receive the approval of authority, a beginner must still remember that obedience is controlled initiative. With cer-tain personalities the emphasis must be on the control; with 355 MOTHER ~ARIE VANDENBERGH .Review for Religious others, on the initiative. During the years of religious formation especially, there should be the control of reporting to the novice mistress or superior on how one's time of prayer was spent-- this at intervals of at least two weeks--together with submission to her judgment as to one's success or failure. However, the temptation to cling to a method already approved simply for fear that any other will not receive a similar approval is a kind of human respect. Reduced to its ultimate form, this is hoping to please men at the price of failing to please God. God looks for our initiatives; indeed, if they are good, it is He who inspires them. The novice will do well to remember that she is being led by the hand in order to learn to travel the road alone. Over-dependence on the novice mistress is at least equally as bad as failure to have sufficient recourse to her guidance. Like a good physician, the novice mistress aims at making her ministrations unnecessary. Second year novices, other things being equal, should expect to need less counseling than in their first year, etc. It should not take long for a reasonably intelligent person to acquire enough facility in the use of prayer techniques to begin a little experimentation in method variations. The more personal and familiar our prayer becomes, the better it accomplishes its purpose of uniting us to our Lord and transforming us into His likeness. Of course, if we fall as it were naturally into one or other method, there is no great need to force ourselves to vary our approach--except occasionally to counteract monotony, weariness, boredom; in general, to avoid getting into an unthinking rut. Some people more easily think their way to God, and their meditations reflect this trait. Others lead with their heart. Some can study our Lord in the gospel text with a ready, but quiet, imagination. Some whose imagination tends to run riot, stirring up over-strong emotions, pray best by a loving attention to the presence of God--a simple, peaceful, wordless gaze of the soul focused upon its invisible Guest. 356 Novembe~, 1957 PERSEYERING IN PRAYER Sometimes our prayer is a kind of seeking, searching, asking, wanting. It is a quest for God, a thirst for God, a need for more and more of Him and His love and peace. This is another form of wordless prayer. We may come away from it with no specific resolution, with just an increased consciousness of our need for God, God alone, God first and foremost. It would still be a very good prayer. Some are able to speak familiarly with God, telling Him all the events and hopes and needs of their daily life. So long as there are moments of pause when we can listen to Him, this is a very helpful prayer. It should, however, be a conversation, not a monologue. Too many words can be a barricade between the soul and God. In our daily mental prayer one of these methods may pre-dominate or we may use a combination. On certain days, at certain times in our lives, our prayer methods will almost auto-matically take on certain changes of pattern, simply from neces-sity. As Father R. H. J. Steuart liked to say, the level of our prayer is the level of our lives. Chameleon-like, our prayer adapts to our presefit state of soul, of emotion, or of physical well-being. A real effort to pray when we are in a state of high excitement or deep depression will have a tranquilizing, stabilizing effect. When we are very tired, just to remain numbly in the presence of God is an appropriate prayer. Just to be with Him suffices for us then. The very sick can sometimes unite themselves to God only by the loving contemplation of a crucifix; sometimes even that is beyond them. A weak grip on a crucifix or rosary can symbolize their intention to pray, becoming an outward sign of the inward turning heavenward. When a person is in a state of dryness, interior trial, or is interiorly agitated by a difficulty from without, his prayer is a prayer of spiritual pain. The soul suffers; suffers, it may be, with little hope of respite, with no alleviating sense of vitality as sometimes accompanies a beginner's cross. Father Caussade 357 MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH Review for Religious considers it a great grace thus to "suffer weakly," unable to find satisfaction in the thought that one is bearing up nobly under one's cross. This state of pure suffering is extremely pleasing to God and highly profitable to the soul. A person's prayer in this state may be a continual interior Miserere, springing from a great sense of unworthiness and guilt, and in spite of having no specific blemish of conscience to which it may be attributed. Later on, depending upon the degree of purification already accomplished by this state, one's prayer may be an inner attitude of oblation, willingly offering one's suffering self in sacrifice to God. "Take, O Lord, and receive all that I am and all that I have." Lastly, when the purgation of suffering has nearly run its course, an attitude of adoration, of God-regarding prostration of soul, may begin to predominate. These are all methods of prayer which, explicitly or im-plicity, can be found in St. Ignatius's book, The F~xercises. In his very first annotation St. Ignatius gives the title of "spiritual exercises" to "all methods of preparing and disposing the soul ¯ . . to seek and to find the divine will," adding a little later on that "in these spiritual exercises it is more fitting and much better, in seeking the divine will, that the Creator and Lord Himself should communicate Himself to the devout soul . . ." (Annota-tion XV). As Father Peeters has pointed out, "The Exercises in their entirety are presented to us as a means of entering into con-tact with God." V. Discursive Prayer a Preparation for Contemplation Used properly and suitably adapted to the individual, these techniques of prayer are calculated to leave the door open for the divine initiatives by which God leads a soul through darkness into light. Fruitful meditations result in a generosity and purity of soul which dispose a person, insofar as it depends on him, to receive the graces of infused contemplation. In this "gift of prayer," as it is sometimes called, God's action, though imper-ceptible in itself, is powerful in its effects and may temporarily 358 November, 1957 PERSE~CERING IN PRAYER put an end to our ability to meditate discursively. The soul is reduced to a state which seems to be one of comparative inaction, weakness, and passivity. This is because God is taking the lead and the soul is willingly following Him. St. John of the Cross gives three signs by which the director may recognize the beginnings of passive union: impossibility of meditation, painful anxiety as to fervor, and dryness, wi~out consolation in God or in creatures. A soul accustomed to discursive prayer finds a most dis-concerting adaptation necessary when it arrives at the threshold of contemplative prayer. The main reason for the element of surprise is that we cannot possibly imagine ahead of time what the direct action of God will be like or what precise form the purification will take. Secondly, it is a fairly common, though unwarranted, assumption that the habit of prayer increases ac-cording to the familiar pattern of a purely natural habit. But there is this remarkable difference between the habit of prayer and, say, the habit of playing the piano. In the latter case, repetition breeds facility, the habit increasing in kind; whereas the unpredictable element of the supernatural in the habit of prayer allows for an otherwise unaccountable psychological phenomenon. Dom Chapman in one of his letters puts it most clearly: "Progress in prayer is not (1) from troublesome discursive meditation to easy contemplation of a beautiful thought; and from weak affections to fervent and strong affections, but (2) from easy discursive meditations to the impossibility of medi-tating at all (except by ceasing to pray), and from easily warmed affections to no affections at all--to aridity, that is, and to 'night.'" The paradoxical fact about meditation is that we expect it to become easier and easier~'and instead it becomes harder and harder, then "nauseous or impossible." Dom Chapman says in another letter, "Meditation is usually necessary in order to induce souls to love God and to give them-selves to Him. But at that point--when it begins to be reached 359 MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH Review for Religious --the power of meditation usually stops and something better begins." It is not our purpose here to analyze the ~something better," but to indicate the point at which there must be a radical change in our technique of prayer. That St. Ignatius envisaged the possiblity of such a transi-tion is evident in his F~xerc[s~s, pronouncedly in the contrast between Annotations IX and X. He presupposes knowledge of the different phases of prayer in his instructions to the director, though he includes nothing specific in regard to passive prayer in his instructions for the retreatant. The reason for this is primarily historical, for the Jesuit founder had been called up before the Spanish inquisitors two and three times to have his writings examined for teaching a false mysticism. In such cir-cumstances it was better not to put everything he knew into print. Secondarily, there is a reason for his reticence that to some extent still applies. This is simply that it is almighty God who decides when and if a soul is to enter upon the way of contempla-tion, and it is the director who decides whether or not this has actually been the case. St. Ignatius allows for the possibility of a soul's discontinuing discursive prayer in his instruction that it rests where it finds satisfaction. He expects the director to do the further instruction when the need arises. Naturally, a soul is not incapable of recognizing in itself the symptoms mentioned by St. John of the Cross. But no man is a good judge in his own case, and far too often wishful thinkers in the spiritual life have attributed to almighty God phenomena that were actually the natural products of their own faculties and pas-sions, the result, say, of insomnia or indigestion, or in some cases the work of the devil. Hence the need for solid guidance. In the text of the F~xercises, St. Ignatius divides the retreat into four ~weeks" which correspond roughly to the purgative (first week), illuminative (second and third weeks), and unitive (fourth week) ways so often mentioned by spiritual writers. He 360 November, 1957 PERSEYERING IN PRAYER makes a noteworthy distinction between the treatment to be ac-corded souls suited only for the meditations on the purpose of life, on sin, and on repentance customary in the first "week" and the treatment of souls capable of the greater service of God asked of them in the ensuing "weeks." He has two sets of "Rules for the Discernment of Spirits," applying to the age-old principles whereby the director decides if a soul is being influenced by the good or the evil spirit or by its own self. The rules for souls of the first-week category are rules for beginners in the spiritual life, i.e., either souls struggling to break with habits of mortal sin or innocent souls just learn-ing how to meditate. (Discursive meditation is good for both alike.) The rules for the second week are for the more pro-ficient. Their application extends indefinitely onward into the heights of union with God. This marked difference between the advice St. Ignatius would give beginners and the advice suitable to the more advanced shows plainly that the author of the Exercises took it for granted that the time would come when a radical change would take place in the soul's activity. In other words, he allows for the fact that discursive meditation in many cases develops into something very different, while taking into con-sideration the instances where it does not. "If Ithe retreatant] be a person who has been little versed in spiritual matters and . . if he betrays impediments to making further progress in the service of God our Lord . . . , then let not the person giving the Exercises converse with him upon the rules of the second week for discerning various spirits, because in the pro-portion that those of the first week will benefit him, those of the second will do him harm, because they contain matter too subtle and too high for him to understand" (Annotation IX). St. Ignatius never intended his methods to be set above the valid inspirations of grace, though some of his devotees have at times given that impression. His admonition, "It is 361 MOTHF~R MARIE VANDENBERGH Review for Religious not to know much, but to savor the matter interiorly that fills and satisfies the soul," certainly shows that he meant meditation to be used in such a manner as to pave the way for the simpli-fying process God so often undertakes in the prayer of the generous. A person who remembers this advice will find Igna-tian spirituality an excellent preparation for "the gift of prayer." By way of further example we might point out that a soul formed by the asceticism of St. Ignatius is told, when prayer is dry and disgusting, to prolong it somewhat beyond the usual space of time; when prayer is sweet and easy, to resist the temptation to linger longer. This discipline breeds the detach-ment from even spiritual delights and the perseverance through times of desolate prayer that are the necessary preparation for higher gifts of God. This teaching trains a soul not to give up when ~he going gets tough and, contrariwise, not to make sweetness or facility the criterion of its success in prayer, safely guiding it between the Scylla and Charybdis of its spiritual Odyssey. VI. Adapting the Exercises to the More Proficient Throughout the Exercises there is a noticeable progres-sion of thought, an ascending scale of higher and higher moti-vation, designed to overtake a soul at whatever point it has reached in its journey toward God and guide it further, as far as the grace of God permits. St. Ignatius, though unwilling to speak to beginners about the conduct of the more advanced, did not believe that an earnest soul who has made some progress should be allowed to think that there is no other sort of prayer possible except discursive meditation for "ordinary" Christians and mystical phe-nomena for the saints. This is a common misconception castigated by Father M. Eugene Boylan, O.C.S.C., in his practical little vol-ume, Difficulties in ~ental Prayer. Although St. Ignatius in Annotation XI exhorts the retreatant "so to toil in the first week as if he did not hope to obtain anything in the second," 362 November, 1957 PERSEVER,ING IN PRAYER he does not intend this to mean that a soul should be kept in ignorance of the fact that there is something further to attain, especially if he is generous in striving to correct his defects and to remove the obstacles to his further progress. The sign St. Ignatius gives as an indication to the director that it is safe to instruct a soul in the ways of more advanced spirituality is the discovery that the soul ~is assaulted and tempted under the semblance of good," because this is characteristic of a per-son who ~is exercising himself in the illuminative way" (Anno-tation X). Sometimes in the providence of God it is not very long before the neophyte needs to know what lies ahead for him. When a soul, then, has reached the degree of purity of life where its temptations are not of a ~gross and sensual nature," or when discursive meditation is ceasing for some legitimate reason to be profitable, it is time for him to learn what the future may hold in store. Then, if his prayer begins to dry up, there will be less danger that he will do himself harm by violent efforts to ~pray as I used to," not realizing that there can come a time when a person who says, ~I can no longer meditate," must learn to pray another way. What is the part to be played by methodical meditation during the confusing transition period when the soul is not as yet accustomed to its new role as patient rather than agent? Dom Chapman's advice at this point was always, ~Pray as you can and don't try to pray as you can't,t'' With some persons, the transition between discursive prayer and passive prayer is' abrupt. With others it is gradual, periods of passivity being interspersed with times when meditation is possible to some degree. There is likely to be danger of illusion in refusing to meditate when it becomes possible, even as there is danger in making violent efforts to meditate when it is not possible. Here one's early training in outlined meditation becomes very useful, for the safe course seems to be to make an initial try at medi-tation when beginning the time of prayer, but to rest content if the trial proves a failure. The habit of turning to a preo 363 MOTHER MARIE VANDENBERGH Review for Religious pared outline is a safeguard, in spite of the fact that more and more the method of "doing something" must be replaced by a method of ~doing nothing," of learning to take one's cues from God, God working within the sanctuary of the soul. Sometimes a soul finds it helpful to pray, as it were, by means of an attitude of soul, of humility, supplication, and self-oblation. For such a soul has received ~the call of the King," inviting those who wish to distinguish themselves ir~ God's service to follow their Lord in poverty and suffering. If a person cannot make the offering of himself and all he posses-ses to serve the kingdom of Christ, he obviously has neither the grace nor the capacity for the sacrifices necessary for further progress in the prayer life. If he has made the offering, he must be prepared to fulfill it literally; for, stripped of even the spiritual armor in which he trusted, he will suffer unbearably in the experience of his poverty in the sight of God. This, however, is the way God must treat a soul in order to make it pliant in His hands. When a person has learned how to remain tranquil under the direct action of God, he has learned how to pull in the oars of meditation-technique and let ,:he breath of the Spirit fill his sails. He has learned how to launch out into the deep. Let it be noted, though, that, if the soul may ~pull in the oars," it does not throw them away. As Father 1~. H. J. Steuart put it, "You don't tear down the staircase just because you have arrived at the top." Father Boylan makes the sage re-mark that we must have "the humility" to return to discursive prayer when the facility for it is restored. In many an instance the course grace takes after passive stages have done their work is to restore the discursive ability in combination with the infused contemplation that is the fruit of the purification the soul has undergone. It would be a tempting digression to go more into detail in regard to the rules for discerning spirits, but that would be beyond the scope of this article which set out to be no 364 November, 1957 PERSEVERING IN PRAYER more than a general survey. The point we have tried to em-phasize is that in the text of the Exercises can be found the evidence that St. Ignatius, though he teaches methodical prayer, by no means intended to limit souls to it if they were drawn by God to something simpler. He definitely planned the F~xercises to prepare and dispose a soul to find more quickly the will of God in its own regard--and devotion to the will of God is one of the marks of a contemplative soul. There are references in rules 2 and 8 of the second week to "consolation without any preceding cause" as being the work of God par excellence in the soul. There follow warn-ings against pseudo-consolation inspired by the devil and the illusions of auto-suggestion apt to follow upon actual and God-sent "consolation." These show how familiar St. Ignatius was--and how familiar he expected the director to be--with the hazards attendant upon even the most legitimate graces of infused prayer. Without doubt, Ignatian spirituality, rightly understood, is designed to prepare a soul for God's direct action, protect it during the dangers of the transition period, and safeguard it from illusion when it has accustomed itself to surrender to the will of God. Mother Marie Aimee Lautier, superior general of the Cenacle for nearly fifty years, stressed the function of prayer in our "mixed" vocation as "contemplative in action." "Masters of the spiritual life," she wrote, "teach that the soul called to perfection, after being exercised in the exterior practice of charity, is drawn by the contemplation of divine things to an interior conversion and purification, so that being wholly en-kindled and burning with divine love, it is impelled anew by the strength of this love towards creatures in order to give them of its fullness: 'The love of Christ impels us' (II Cor. 5:14). "Its charity, then, is quite different from what it was at the beginning; and its zeal which at first was the auxiliary of natural activity now becomes the disinterested fruit of love." 365 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious This same holy religious exhorted her daughters, "Ask for this precious gift [of prayer]; we must prepare ourselves to receive it, and we must await it with confidence. It is the gift par excellence of our vocation." Of course, the Cenacle tlas no monopoly on it. We are grateful, though, to have the strong guidance of St. Ignatius to help us achieve our goal. Book Reviews [Material for this department should be sent to Book Review Editor, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana.] THE FIRST JESUIT, ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA. By Mary Purcell. Pp. 417. The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland. 1957. 5.oo. In her preface to this delightful life of St. Ignatius, Miss Purcell says that if he were better known, he would be better loved and oftener invoked. Her own efforts are no small contribution to this happy con-summation. Too often St. Ignatius has been presented to us in the guise of what Father La Farge, in his forward, calls "a glorified efficiency expert," with the result that the lovable qualities of the saint are frequently overlooked, thus leaving him in these later days a figure more feared and admired than loved. "It is interesting to note," writes Miss Purcell, "how many people in so many different walks of life 'become fond of Inigo.' He seems to have had an easy and spontaneous manner, a nature that led him to make friends quickly. In the places where he lived, people soon got to know of him . He had an extraordinary flair for knowing exactly which ap-proach would win the heart of the particular individual or group he was contacting at any given time. And 'When he gazed at one,' writes a contemporary, 'while his conversation was benign, his eyes seemed to pierce the heart, to see all; conversing with him only once, you felt that he knew you through and through.' " It would seem that the reaction has well begun; and future biographers, taking their cue from writers like PSre Dudon, Father Brodrick, and Miss Purcell, will in the future give us an Ignatius 366 November, 1957 BOOK REVIEWS who, besides being a founder and a general, is also a fellow-pilgrim and a father. A preliminary glance at the bibliography might suggest that Miss Purcell has undertaken to write something more than a merely popular life of St. Ignatius, and the reader will not have gone very far before he realizes that there is a great deal of scholarship to it; and once he gets himself tangled up in the notes at the end of the volume, he won't have any doubt about it. Miss Purcell has gone to original sources, some of which may have been within easy reach, like the seventy-seven volumes of the ~lonumenta llistorica Societatis Jesu. But others must have been farther removed, like the diaries of the pilgrims who accompanied Inigo on his pilgrimage to Jeru-salem or about his time made pilgrimages of their own. There is a very thorough treatment of the Irish mission of Fathers Broet and Salmeron, but this reviewer feels that Miss Purcell is too sweeping when she calls it the only complete failure in the life of Ignatius. After all, they were not missionaries bent on the conversion of a pagan land. They were papal nuncios. They came, they saw, they returned. Uoila! Since they were papal nuncios, we might have wished that their visitation had been carried on with a little more leisure and something of the ceremonial becoming their exalted rank. But they knew they were putting their heads into the lion's mouth, even if St. Ignatius thought that Ireland was another Guipuzcoa when in fact it was what we should call today hardly more than a satellite state. The very fact that they survived, surveyed conditions, and escaped with their lives to make their report is by itself a considerable achievement and deserves to be regarded as some measure of success. Some readers will be very sceptical about accepting one or other of Miss Purcell's conclusions, for instance, that Inigo was "barely five feet tall" and that he was "red-headed." Consulting the sources given I can find none that warrants such a conclusion. He is described as being of "medium height" or "a little below medium." Barely five feet would place him in the under-sized class completely. One wonders how a man of such small proportions (even remember-ing Napoleon) could hope for any notable success in the use of arms on battlefield or jousting court, or expect to play Amadis to any Oriana. Yet we know that Inigo, the caballero, made no bones about aiming at glorious successes in both instances. 367 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious There is a text in the Monumenta which refers to the caput aereum, and although the term occurs twice in the same paragraph, the editors of the hlonumenta seem to be convinced that aereunt should be cor-rected to cereum, since it evidently refers to the wax effigy which was taken from the death-mask. His complexion seems to have been what we should today call blond verging on ruddy. Juan Pascual, who described him as he remembered meeting him on his way down from Montserrat, wrote of him as being "'no molt alt, pero blanc j ros, j de molt bona cara" (p. 83), which is the Catalan for "medium height, fair complexion, and handsome." Occasionally Miss Purcell is a bit unguarded and leaves herself open to misinterpretation, as when she says: "One cannot think of Ignatius of Loyola limping a little at times as he trudges from Rome out to Monte Cassino to give the Exercises to Dr. Ortiz and back again to see how Cardinal Contarini is faring in his contemplations, without recalling a veritable litany of great names . " The reader is not always ready to interpose a month or more between these two excursions; and, while Miss Purcell of course knows better, this sentence can easily give the the untraveled reader the impression that Monte Cassino is one of the outlying hills of Rome and that St. Ignatius was giving the Exercises simultaneously, but separately, to these two veritably great men, Pedro Ortiz and Cardinal Contarini. We do know that once he had three exercitants in retreat simul-taneously in different parts of Rome, a task which obliged him daily to trudge practically the periphery of the city, "limping a little," not only at times, but every step of the way. Limitations of space may be responsible for other false impres-sions as that in St. Ignatius's dealing with Father Simon Rodrigues, whom he did not threaten with "excommunication," or even dismissal, although he was fully prepared to proceed to this latter extreme if Rodrigues persisted in his refusal to leave Portugal and come to Rome, as his Father General had begged him to do in letter after letter. But, then, Miss Purcell did not write this book for specialists. She has given us a delightful picture of St. Ignatius, but an in-complete one. In fact, who would ever think of making it complete? For what she has given us we should be deeply grateful. The points here adversely touched upon are minor indeed and do not in the least impair the picture that is actually presented. The reader is 368 November, 1957 ~OOK REVIEWS given a fair and unbroken page to examine, typographically speaking; but he pays for this satisfaction in the added labor of tracking down references. But Miss Purcell's publisher is to blame for that; and, after all, it is for the most part only rugged reviewers or determined researchers who will have to bear that burden. Their growling should not be taken as an attempt to bite.--WH,LI,.\.x~ J. Youxc,, S.J. A WOMAN OF UNITY. By Sister Mary Celine, S.A. Pp 357. Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement, Graymoor, Garrison, New York. 1956. $4.50. A Woman of Unity tells the story of Mother Lurana of Gray-moor. The career of this "remarkable woman" is traced through her childhood, her searchings as a young woman for a life of perfect poverty in Anglican communities, her founding of Graymoor with Father Paul Francis, her reception into the Church with her com-munity in 1909, and her direction of the Society of the Atonement in her mature years. Mother Lurana is an inspiring personality; and in these days, when church unity is talked of more seriously than at any time since the Protestant Revolt, her life and vocation are of especial significance. It is most interesting to read of the humble beginnings of the Chair of Unity Octave at Graymoor during Mother Lurana's Anglican days and also to know of her dissatisfaction even then with the Anglican position on the unity and leadership of the Church: "In legislative bodies not so much as a committee of three can discharge its functions, unless one of the three presides in the chair of unity. It is a futile dream to contemplate a united Church on earth without a visible head. If every parish must have its rector, and every diocese its bishop, and every province its archbishop, how could the whole Catholic Church throughout the world exist as one fold without having one supreme or chief shepherd over all?" Mother Lurana conceived her life's task and the task of her society to be that of "repairer of the breach," to use one of her favorite ways of expressing her vocation to work for church unity. Sister Mary Celine, a member of Mother Lurana's community who knew her personally, has faithfully reconstructed her story from letters, official documents, and personal recollections. The biography proceeds in clear and chronogical sequences, and Mother Lurana is given ample opportunity to speak for herself in letters and exhorta-tations to the community. Sister Mary Celine brings the reader into the Graymoor community to share the joys and sorrows of the mother 369 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious foundress and the pioneer nuns. The book, however, has a tone reminiscent of the sweet and moralizing hagiography popular in an earlier day, a tone to this reviewer somewhat distasteful, and abounds in phrases and reflections which seem a little worn. On the other hand, even though in the pages of A Woman of Unity Mother Lurana loses a trifle of the vibrant humanity which must have been hers, she clearly has aroused in her biographer and all her religious daughters an admiration which is at once warm and contagious. As a matter of fact, it is difficult to see how anyone who knew her could help but admire the courage and spirit of this woman who braved all in order to lead others to the Chair of Unity. --JOHN W. O'~IALLEY, THE WORD OF SALVATION. Translation and Explanation of I. The Gospel According to St. Matthew by Alfred Durand, S.J., and II. The Gospel According to St. Mark by Joseph Huby, S.J. Translated into English by John J. Heenan, S.J. Pp. 937. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee 1, Wis. consin. 1957. $12.50. A translation of the famous Verbum Salutis series has been long overdue. Father Heenan is to be congratulated for making two of the volumes of this popular commentary available to English-speak-ing Catholics. The English version of both text and commentary is fortunately unabridged, and the translator has thoughtfully added a handy index for each Gospel. Father Heenan has preferred to reproduce the text of the Gospels with an eye to the French rather than to follow strictly any one of the standard English versions. But the words of the Gospel flow at least as smoothly as they do in the Confra-ternity edition, and to many they will have a more familiar ring. Some may be disconcerted by the alternation of you and thou in the text. However, the former is used consistently for the plural; and it seems that Father Heenan wisely opted for accuracy in this instance as in all other respects, since the main feature of the book is the commentary which closely follows the translation of the gospel text. The style of the English commentary follows the French quite well: simple, direct, concise, with occasional fluent passages. As for content, technical discussions are limited to a bit more than the minimum 370 November, 1957 ]lOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS claimed by the authors, but will prove to be of interest even to the layman in biblical studies. It should be noted that these few learned asides are written in non-technical language and can easily be handled by the average intelligent reader. They serve, too, to undergird what might otherwise be considered a pious commentary with little basis in historical fact. One cannot ignore history if one seeks a fuller understanding of the words of Christ. The Savior became incarnate for all men, but taught and toiled primarily for the lost sheep of the House of Israel. It was in their language, thought-patterns, and history that He voiced the Word of Salvation. This volume will go far to re-create for the preacher, student, and religious the atmosphere of the Gospel and its interpretation throughout the course of Christian tradition. It will be quite help-ful to those who prefer spiritual reading and meditation material which is more directly in touch with the words of the Gospel than is usually the case in a "life of Christ." The text and commentary are neatly divided into sections averaging about six pages of com-mentary for every five of ten verses of text. The apologetic value of the work should not be overlooked by teachers of high school and college. Father Smith Instructs Jackson, for all its merits, is often completely unacceptable to the college student or to the prospective convert whose chief difficulties lie in understanding the paradoxical words of Christ Himself. In this connection, Sodality study clubs (at least on the high school senior level) might use the Word of Salva-tion with much profit. May this excellent work see even more editions than its French original. It is to be hoped that the companion volume (Luke and John) will appear shortly.--CH.~RI, ES H. (~J~L~X', S.J. 8OOK ANNOUNCI:MI:NT$ THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 400 North Broadway, Milwaukee 1, Wisconsin. De Ordine. Tom. I. De Institutione. By Emmanuel Doronzo, O.M.I. Priests and seminarians will certainly want to read this monumental Latin work on the sacrament of orders. This first volume of more than a thousand large, closely printed pages begins with an eighty-two page introduction to the whole treatise which is to consist of seven chapters. The introduction is followed by the first chapter 371 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS Review for Religious which takes up all the remaining pages. This chapter is divided into three articles: the first on the existence of orders; the second on the sacramental nature of orders; and the last on the three grades of orders. There are exceptionally complete bibliographies and indices. The work gives promise in this first volume of being even more exhaustive than the author's justly renowned work on the sacrament of penance. Pp. 962 ~- 41. $19.00. Canon Law Digest. Annual Supplement Through 1956. By Lincoln T. Bouscaran, S.J., and James I. O'Connor, S.J. $1.75. CARMELITE SISTERS, Santa Teresita Hospital, Duarte, Calif. The Doctor's Widow. By William M. Queen. This is the first biography of Mother Maria Luisa Josefa of the Most Blessed Sacra-ment, foundress of the Discalced Carmelite Sisters of the Third Order. This congregation was born at the turn of the century and has two provinces, one in Mexico, the land of its birth, the other in California. Its expansion to California was one of God's ways of drawing good out of the evil of the persecution of the Church in Mexico. This inspiring book will be of interest to both religious and lay women since Mother Josefa was an exemplary wife before she became a religious. Pp 127. Cloth $1.00. The Soul's Elevation, by a Discalced Carmelite Father, a master of novices, is a meditation book for religious. In the introduction we find an explanation of meditation in which the author outlines both the Ignatian and the Sulpician methods. There is also a brief outline of prayer in general. In Part I there are eight meditations on the four last things. Part II contains nine meditations on the gifts of God to man. Part III devotes eight meditations to the Passion of our Lord. Part IV consists of three considerations on Holy Communion. There is also an appendix which contains "Mirror of the Good Religious" and meditations for the day of investiture, of first vows, of final vows, and of jubilee. Pp. 94. Paper $1.00. GRAIL PUBLICATIONS, St. Meinrad,Indiana. Follow Christ. No 18. This largepamphlet on vocation to the priesthood and the religious life, profusely illustrated with excellent photographs, deserves wide distribution. In it the questions which eighth grade boys and girls of today are actually asking about the important topic of vocation are answered by experts. It 372 November, 1957 [~OOK ANNOUNCEMENTS contains much information about seminaries and many religious orders and congregations for both men and women. Pp. 134. $0.75. SHEED AND WARD, 840 Broadway, New York 3, New York. Terrible Farmer Timson and Other Stories. By Caryll House-lander. Pictures by Renee George. Here are twelve stories for children which first appeared in The Children's Messenger of Lon-don, England. Children will be pleased with them and learn 'some very profitable truths without pain or effort. Pp. 152. $2.50. Soeur Angele and the Bell Ringer's Niece. By Henri Catalan. This is the third detective story by the author in which a Sister of Charity appears in the role of detective, and she does so without derogating in any way from her role as religious. The setting and characters are typically French. Pp. 179. $2.50. SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS, Mount Alvernia, Pittsburgh 9, Penn-sylvania. As a Living Oak. Biography of Mother Baptista Etzel, O.S.F. By Sister Mary Aurelia Arenth, O.S.F. There should be more, many more biographies of the men and women who have rendered out-standing service to God and religion. Such biographies would extend the sphere of influence for good which they exercised while living to the men and women of ~he present generation. We have the material; what seems to be lacking are authors to put it to good use. Hence we welcome the present biography with a great deal of satisfaction. It is the biography of Mother Baptista who was one of the pioneers of the Franciscan Sisters in Pennsylvania, and their third mother superior. That so many of the hardships of the pioneer days are now a matter of history for this congregation and that their sphere of influence has been so greatly enlarged is due very largely to her courage, vision, and fortitude. May this biography inspire many more souls to follow where she led; may it also inspire authors to gather material from the same fertile field, the pioneer religious in the United States. Pp. 133. $3.00. SISTERS OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN, St. Scholastica's, Glebe Point, Australia. The Wheeling Years. The Sisters of the Good Samaritan. 1857. 1957. Faith and reason prove the providence of God for His crea-tion. History illustrates it for the discerning reader. In The Wheel- 373 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS ing Years we have such an illustration. The book, made more graphic with drawings and many photographs, recounts the story of the foundation in Sydney, Australia, of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan just one hundred years ago. It tells the story of the first difficult years and their subsequent growth. Houses of the congregation are now found in the whole length and breadth of the island continent. This new congregation adapted the rule of St. Benedict to the needs and requirements of life on a continent at that time rapidly growing to the stature of a new nation. In this centenary publication we also find an account of their spirit, the training imparted to their members, and the work that they do for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Despite the many demands made on them at home, they have not been deaf to the call of the missions and have two foundations in Japan. We join with these sisters in thanking God for the innumerable graces of the past one hundred years. SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL, 2187 Victory Boulevard, Staten Island 14, New York. Holy Mass and Life. By Aloysius Biskupek, S.V.D. "The more the significance of the Mass is understood, and the more its power is used for the realization of the ideal Christian living, the more holiness there will be among the faithful." With these words the author sums up his book in the final chapter titled Conclusion. To offer adequate means to the faithful to attain this end was the motive which guided his pen. His explanations are clear, his exhortations persuasive, and his meditations on the unchanging prayers of the Mass even priests who have said Mass for many years would find helpful. There are twenty-three full page photographs of a priest at various parts of the Mass. Pp. 189. $2.50. 374 ( uestdons and Answers [The following answers are given by Father Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., professor of canon law at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland.] Why has the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS emphasized so frequently the simplification of the habit of religious women? The articles and statements in the R.EVIEW have been mere ex-planations of the principles of Plus XII and the Roman congregations. They have been relatively conservative, as may be seen from some of the following quotations. "The first is that of particular observances. Each of these, even the most material, should bear at least indirectly on the sanctification of the religious. We find a characteristic example in the habit. It is certain that in itself, especially as regards form or color, it contributes very little to the perfection of charity. Nevertheless, it places the re: ligious in a state of separation which is visible to the world and sym-bolizes and favors that interior separation which is the first step of the soul in search of God" (Dora Basset, O.S.B., Religious Sisters. 87). "When the different religious habits were adopted by the founders, they resembled the dress of the poor people of the period. Today a habit is required that helps the body, not one that embarrasses it; it should be practical, simple. A long habit and a simple veil are always graceful and becoming. They offer many practical advantages and are in perfect keeping with modesty and with religious consecration. In order that in our day the religious habit may keep its aesthetic appeal and its character of poverty together with its attractive symbolism of consecration, it would suffice to simplify it. It would thus become more practical, fewer pleats, narrower sleeves, less pretentious coifs and cornettes" (Reverend Victor de la Vierge, O.C.D., ibid., 272-73). "The choice of religious habits for each order was not necessarily motivated by rules of hygiene but frequently by contemporary usage and certain principles of mortification and decency. In recent years a number of religious habits have undergone simplification and a wholesome process of alleviation. Still, it must be recognized that many remain far from healthy either on account of weight (some 375 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religion, s weigh as much as fifteen pounds), or of difficulty of washing, or of headdresses and winged coifs worn tightly around the head and fore-head" (Sister Germaine Marie, Ckastity, 252). "It is simply not permissible that religious should pay more for their clothing than people of the world. There are habits that have become simply impossible with regard to both health and work, and some have become ridiculous and endanger the acceptance of a voca-tion" lMost Reverend A. Ancel, deta et Documenta (~'on.qressus (;en-eralis de Statibus Perfectionis, I, 381). '~In general, the people approve simplicity and practicality. In those consecrated to God, they desire a habit that is serious, but not eccentric, clean but not ostentatious. Therefore they cannot compre-hend today some religious habits, for example, of some sisters. The eccentricity and at times the awkwardness of their headdress is really incomprehensible. One cannot grasp the purpose of those yards of material in folds and pleats, of the starched cloth that makes the imprisoned face look like a mask, of an obstructive and ridiculous headcovering" (Reverend G. Amorth, S.S.P., ibid., I, 308-09). "Dear Father, many, very many of us are one hundred per cent in agreement with you. Please keep pushing, pushing, pushing and talking, talking, talking until results are obtained. It isn't our fault that we must wear the ridiculously conspicuous and unsuitable out-tits we do. We would be eternally grateful to you if you could do anything to hasten our release from these swaddling bands, this en-casement of the face, the starch, ruffles, pleats, quantity of cloth, number of articles of clothing, the many pins which relentlessly stick our fingers and neck, the dangling, rustling rosary which catches into everything, gets caught in train and bus seats, and is forever break-ing into a dozen pieces and constantly in the repair shop. The Blessed Mother did not make herself conspicuous by adopting a singular mode of dress; she conformed to the style of her day. Religious men when working wear suitable clothes, and neither do they have their heads all bundled up. Give me a habit which is extremely simple, suitable in color and for work, and something that can be thrown into a wash-ing machine and washed at least once a week the way common sense and decency demand. Deliver me from this intricate and unwieldy headdress whose weight and pressure cause so many headaches, eye troubles, sinus troubles, and many nervous troubles as well as adverse comments" (,1 communication from a sister on the missions). 376 Nove~nber, 1957 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 35- Will you please give a bibliography on renovation and adaptation? The primary sources are the statements of Pope Pius XII and the Roman congregations. These were given in the REV[E\V FOR RF.LI(;IOUS, 14-1955-3-11; 85-92; 123-38; 15-1956-309-27. The acts and documents of the first general congress on the states of perfection, held in Rome in 1950, are next in importance. They have been published in four volumes by the Edizioni Paoline under the title of Acta et Documenta Congressus Generalis de Statibus Per-fectionis. Many of the articles of these volumes are in Latin, French, Italian, other modern languages, but very few in English. The next place must be given to other Roman meetings, which can be found in the following works: Acta et Documenta Congressus Internationalis Superiorissarum Generalium; Atti e Documenti del Primo Convegno Internazionale delle Religiose Educatrici; Atti e Documenti del Primo Convegno delle Religiose Rieducatrici, all pub-lished by Edizioni Paoline. In the fourth place are the acts and documents of the various na-tional congresses, e. g., that held for the United States at the University of Notre Dame and published by the Paulist Press in separate volumes for the sisters' and men's sections under the title, Religious Community Life in the United States. The English congress has been published by the Salesian Press under the title, Religious Life Today. In the order of practicality, the next place must be given to the Religious Life Series. These are translations from the French published by the Newman Press and Blackfriars. The volumes that have been translated and published are Religious Sisters, Vocation, Poverty, Chas-tity, Obedience, Doctrinal Instruction of Religious Sisters, and The Direction of Nuns. The volume on common life, La Vie Commune, published in French by Les Editions du Cerf, has not as yet been translated. Again in the order of practicality, the next place is given to Eng-lish works and articles, e. g., The Mind of the Church in the Forma-tion of Sisters, published by Fordham University Press; the Sister Formation Bulletin, published at Marycrest College, Davenport, Iowa; and articles in the l~EVl~.W FOR REL[C, mUS, e. g., 8-1949-86-96; 9-1950- 131-39; 10-1951-75-81; 12-1953-252-72;12-1953-285-90; 12-1953-291-304; 13-1954-13-27; 13-1954-87-92; 13-1954-125-37; 13-1954-169-78; 14-1955- 205-15; 14-1955-293-318; 16-1957-3-9. 377 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religious A really great source in quantity and quality of thoughts on reno-vation and adaptation will be found in the French periodical, La Vie Spirituelle and its Supplement, from 1946. Many modern spiritual books, especially in French, are affected by the movement and contribute to it. Our work the essentials, included, why the customary is a prayer. Therefore, why not get along with just Mass and Holy Communion? If meditation must be not make a good fifteen-minute meditation rather than one of a half hour? Work is not infallibly nor by any means always a prayer, and it is rarely a prayer in those who do not give sufficient time to formal prayer. The regime of prayer you favor is that of a devout person of the world, not of a religious who professes to be striving for sanctity. The prayer in the religious life must be of a duration and quality sufficient and capable of inspiring and developing a really saintly life. Some words of Plus XII can also be pondered. "However, We cannot refrain from giving utterance to Our solici-tude and anxiety for those who, because of the special circumstances of the times, have lost themselves so completely in a maze of external activities that they have forgotten the first duty of priests, namely, that of securing their own personal sanctification. We have already publicly proclaimed that those so rash as to hold that salvation can be brougl'~t to men by what has been aptly termed the 'heresy of activity' are to be brought back to the right path. We refer to that kind of activity which is not based on divine grace and does not make constant use of the aids provided by Jesus Christ for the attainment of holiness." "With the growth of devotion to exterior works therefore, let there shine forth a corresponding increase in faith, in the life of prayer, in zealous consecration of self and talents to God, in spotless purity of conscience, in obedience, in patient endurance of hardship, and in active charity tirelessly expended for God and one's neighbor. The Church insistently demands of you that your external wor

Issue 14.1 of the Review for Religious, 1955. ; Review for Religious JANUARY 15, 1955 The Relicjious Life . Pope Plus xII Advice to Superiors . . st. Francis de Sales The Contemplative Life . Mother M. Immaculafa Loncjevlfy of Rellcjious Mother Mary Walsh . A saint's Last Leffer. Sister Josephlna Sister M. Teresffa . John M. Render Book Reviews Ouestions and Answers VOLUME XlV NUMBER 1 RI VII::W FOR RELIGIOUS VOLUME XIV JANUARY, 19 5 5 NUMBER 1 CONTENTS POPE PlUS XII AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE--Joseph F. Gallen, S.d .3. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 1. Repeating Litany in Community Prayers .1.1. 2. Confession to Other than Extraordinary . 12 3. Privilege to Refuse Requested Indult .1.2 4. Ownership of Matured Bond .1.3. 5. Disposition of Patrimony .'. . 14 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 14 OUR ADDRESSES . " . 14 ST. FRANCIS DE SALES' ADVICE TO SUPERIORS-- Edward J. Carney, O.S.F.S .1.5. BACK NUMBERS AVAILABLE .2.2. THOUGHTS ON THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE-- Mother M. Immaculata, P.C .2.3 APOSTOLATE OF THE PRESS .2.8. LONGEVITY OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN--Sister Josephina, C.S.J .2.9. MOTHER MARY WALSH~Sister Mary Teresita, O.P .3.1 A SAINT'S LAST LETTER--John M. Render, C.P .4.3. ON SECULAR INSTITUTES .4.6. BOOK REVIEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS-- Editor: Bernard A. Hausmann, S.J. West Baden College West Baden Springs, Iiadiana .4.7 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, January, 1955. Vol. XIV, No. 1. 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. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter danuary 15, 1942, at the Post Office, Topeka. Kansas, under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Augustine G. Ellard, S.d., Adam C. E.llis, S.~., Gerald Kelly, S.3., Francis N. Kortb, S.3. Literary Editor: Edwin F. Falteisek, S.d. Copyright, 1954, by Adam C. Ellis, S.2. Permission is hereby granted for quota-tions of reasonable length, ~rovided 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 to us, please consult notice on inside back cover. Review J:or Religious Volume XIV January--December, 1955 Published at THE COLLEGE PRESS Topeka, Kansas Edited by THE JESUIT FATHERS ST. MARY'S COLLEGE St. Marys, Kansas REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS iS incJexed in CATHOLIC PERIODICAL INDEX 'Pope Pius XII and t:he Religious Lit:e INTRODUCTION --l--HE present great movement of renovation and adaptation of the | religious life has been fostered in an unusually continuous and prolonged manner by the Holy See. This is evident from the congresses promoted in various countries by the Holy See. The norm that must be used to evaluate all ideas, articles, and lectures on the subject is the teaching of the Roman Pontiff, and for this reason the present effort consists of a selection of the statements of Plus XII on the religious life. The compilation is restricted to the utter-ances of the Pope and thus does not include an~i doctrines of authors or statements of the Sacred Congregations or of their officials. There are included, however, some pronouncements of Pius XII that were not made directly and explicitly to or of religious, since it was judged that from their nature these statements applied to religious at least to an appreciable'degree, sometimes also equally and even more in-tensively. All such paragraphs are preceded by an asterisk. The sources of numbers 10 and 39 are clearly stated. All other para-graphs are taken from the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the first number being the volume, the second the year, and the third the page. --JOSEPH F. GALLEN, S.J. I. ADAPTATION~ ' ¯ *1. "It gives Us, Venerable Brethren, an inward strength, a heav-enly joy, for which We daily render to God Our deep and humble thanks, to see in every region of the Catholic world evident signs of a spirit which boldly faces the gigantic tasks of our age, which with generous decision ik intent on uniting in fruitful harmony the first and essential duty of individual sanctification with .,apostolic activity for the spread of the Kingdom of God." Encgclical Letter, "Summi Ponti[icatus," 3 1 - 19 3 9- 5 5 7. 2. "The new times in which we live certainly demand, also inlspir-itual matters, new undertakings, new works and aids by which we can aptly meet the changed and increasing needs of our age. These, in keeping With the ardor of your zeal, you should not neglect. Labor strenuously to employ more aptly and serviceably every develop-ment of modern times to strengthen the Kingdom of Jesus Christ POPE PIUS XII Review for Reli¢ious at home and to spread it abroad. However, your institute, dear to Us and to you, must ever remain the same, the same in th~ govern-ment by which it is unified, the same in the spirit by which it 'is nourished, the same finally in that burning obedience and devoted reverence by which you are steadfastly and unflinchingly bound to this Apostolic See." Apostolic Letter to the Father General of the Society of desus, 32-1940-295. 3. "But if becauseof special circumstances and its own prudent judgment the Apostolic See should decide to decree anything that may seem new to your institute, you will beyond all doubt accept it with a most obedient mind and realize fully that it will be to your good, not your hakim. Such conduct is urged on you certainly by the obedience due to ecclesiastical authority and also by the eager and ready desire that moves you to accept anything enacted by the same authority, since it would be appropriate to the time and bene-ficial to you." Letter on the Tercentenartl of the Death ofSt. Jane Frances de Chantal, 33-1941-491, 492. *4. "When We examine the beginnings of your society,, this fact stands out and fills Our soul with the greatest joy: there bare never been lacking to the Catholic Church, there are not lacking now, nor will there ever be lacking in the future outstanding and distin-guished men who, realizing and studying the principal needs of their age, eagerly and with their whole soul strive to meet them." Letter to the Society of the Priests of St. Sulpice, 34-1942-94. *5. "The 'Church of today cannot return purely and. simply to the primitive ways of its small initial fold. In its maturity, which is not old age, it keeps its head erect and in its members reveals unchanged the vigor of its youth. It. remains what it has been from its birth, always the same. It does not change in its dogma nor in its eflScacy. It is impregnable, indestructible, invincible. It is immutable, inefface-able by the document of its foundation that is sealed with the blood of the Son of God; yet it advances, it takes on new ways with its growth in years,, it makes progress but without changing its nature, since, in the admirable language of Vincent of Lerin, the religion of the soul must imitate the manner of the body. The body de-velolbs, grows and advances in years yet always remains the same as 4t was . The Church, having already attained its mature mission of universal mother of the faithful, confronted by far greater necessities and duties, would not consent, without being unfaithful to itself, to twist its steps towards the manners of life January, 1955 THE RELIGIOUS LIFE and action of the earliest centuries." Address on the Twenw-Eftb Annioersarg ~ His Epis.copal Consecration, 34-1942-158. 6. "Therefore, since the circumstances existing originally at the time of the foundations ha're changed, there arises the necessity of adapting the constitutions and rules. Even at the time of the pro-mulgation of the new Code of Canon Law, religious orders of great antiquity, to conform their own monastic rules to the laws of the Code and likewise to correspond more to the needs of thi~ age, labored diligently to abrogate many things that were obsolete, to adapt others suitably, and to make useful innovations. They ac-cordingly opened a way to the talents and zeal of their subjects to a new or rather proper plan of action for their labors in the vineyard of the Lord." Apostolic Letter on the Constitutions of the Cistercian Congregation of Casaroari, 35-1943-390, 391. ' *7. "Therefore, We do not hesitate even now, in this second and more formidable conflict, to look on the future with a serene gaze and, We believe, for a greater reason. In fact, the work accomplished in the interval has been deliberately orientated to give the missions the character of native, not foreign, institutions. From this follows the need of native clergy and native sisters and also the principle that the temperament, the traditions and the native customs must remain inviolate in so far as they are in accord with the law of God. The missionary is an apostle of Jesus Christ. He possesses no office of transplanting a specifically European culture to the mission lands. His duty is to render such nations, which sometimes boast a culture of great antiquity, prompt and ready to accept and assimilate the element~ of Christian life and. customs. These easily and naturally blend with any sane culture and give it the full capacity and efficacy to assure and guarantee human dignity and happiness. Catholic natives must be truly members of the family of God and citizens of His Kingdom, without, however, ceasing to remain citizens also of their own earthly fatherland." Address on Missions, 36-1944- 210. 8. "Some conditions must be observed that what We have prom-ised Ourselves may be happily realized and that you yourselves may fulfill Our expectation. Above all else you are to be s~eadfastly faithful to your constitutions and to all the laws of your consti-tutions. If it seems suitable, some things in your order may be changed and accommodated to the new circumstances of.t.he~ age, but anything s.ubstantial is in no way to be touched :and is to stand 5 POPE PlUS XII Re~iew for Religious perpetually, for example, the tertianship, which hasenriched your own interior spiritual lives and has been imitated and adopted by other religious.families." Allocution to the XXIXGeneral Co.ngre- "gatiOn of the Soqiet~/ of Jesus, 38-1946-383. *9. "The sacred liturgy includes divine as well as human elements. The former, instituted by the Divine Redeemer, cannot be changed in any way by men. The human components, however, admit of various modifications as the needs of the age, circumstances and the good of souls may require, and as authorized by the ecclesiastical hierarchy under the guidance of the H01y Spirit." Encyclical Letter, "Mediator Dei," 39-i947-541,542. 10. "This, above all, must be your solemn principle; you are to protect religiously and observe always anything placed by St. A1- pbonsus as fundamental in your ~ocJety. However, .you are to re-flect and study ,attentively whether some changes should be made with regard to the external manner of life and conduct because of the changes of time and place. You will thus avoid any loss o~ damage to the sacred deposit entrusted to you over the long series q.f years?' Letter to Redernptorist Capitulars; Acta et Docurnenta Congressus Generalis de Statibus Perfectionis, I, 23. 11. "The renewal or rather the reawakening of the spirit and life of your institute has led you to the desire of new undertakings in keeping with the changed circumstances and necessities of the time. It should be the heartfelt desire of religioias men to imbue the age in which they live with the soundness of mind of the Gospel and with grace, to win the men of their time to Christ by apt ways and paths. What could be more desirable than such plans, more salu-tary than such works? It is impossible that We should not approve such intentions." Allocution to Fathers of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, 40-1948-551. 12. '.'However, it must be your clear conviction that these greater apostolic works, demanded of you also by modern times, are" not to weaken in any way nor change fundamentally the manner of your religious, life. On the contrary, this is to be imbued and formed W.ith such evangelical spirit that all of you are conspicuous for a prope~ poverty, excel in an attractive simplicity and humility, and.especially that.you persevere in your traditional austere di~ci-pline . You must.also be on fire with the seraphic love of God and of yoh~ neighbor that consumed the patriarch of Assisi through- "6 danuarg, 1955 THE RELIGIOUS LIFE out his life. Only ifl this way and by a spiritual and interior life that daily increases in intensity can your external works be in-spired with the divine strength that overcomes and successfully conquers all earthly difficulties." Letter to the Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, 41-1949-66. "13. "They [newly ordained priests-] are to learn what our times demand, the needs by which they are tortured, the dangers and diffi-culties they present; and hence are to be trained in all the appropriate methods by which they may more readily overcome these dangers and meet these needs in a way that is vigorous and suited to our times." Motu Pr.oprio on the Pontifical Institute of St. Eugene, 41-1949-166. 14. "As you celebrate the first centenary of the death of your de-vout founder, it is altogether becoming that you should renew and intensify the spirit with which he desired the two religious societies of men and women founded by him to be imbued and formed. You are completely aware of what this demands. You are called upon not only to embrace the evangelical life in a generous spirit, not only to strive zealously and energetically for virtue and sanc-tity, but also according to your ability to show yourselves equal to the needs of the times and to undertake courageously all forms of the apostolate introduced by the present age. In this respect William 3oseph Chaminade gave you most outstanding examples for your imitation." Letter to the Superior General of the Society! of Mary on the Centenar~l of the Death of the Founder, 41-1949-591, 592. "15. "Let it never happen, beloved sons, that the new forms and methods of the apostolate which are today so opportune, espe-cially in localities where the clergy is few in number, should either lie fallow or, for not being properly organized, should not respond to the needs of the Christian people." Apostolic Exhortation, "Menti Nostrae," 42-1950-680. "16. "On these points, Venerable Brethren, We most earnestly arouse you to vigilance." We have no doubt whatever that you will act with prudence regarding the exaggeration, which is found in rfiany, of attachment to the past and of hankering after novelty. This prudence must be wise and watchful that truth alone may emerge victorious when there is question of vefituring on new paths of zeal and effort . Far be it from Us to maintain" that apostolic work should not be in harmony with present-day life or that work,~ now being undertaken should not serve the rieeds 7 ~OPE PIUS XII of our times." 695. Re~iew for Religio~, s Apostolic Exhortation, "Menti Nostrae,' 42-1950- 17. "From this common fidelity and constancy the sacred manner of life of nuns acquired a solid consistency wNch always enabled it to resist inn6vations of any kind more vigorously than institutes of any other regulars or religious of either sex. Within certain proper limits this is undeniably to its credit." Apostolic Constitution, "Sponsa Christi,' 43-1951-8. 18. "On the other hand there are some elements in the life of nuns which are neither necessary nor complementary but merely external and historical, since they certainly owe their existence to the cir-cumstances of former times, which are now very much changed. These, if they are found to be no longer of any use or liable to hinder greater good, seem to have no special reason for being p.re-served. Accordingly, without the least prejudice to any of the native and principal elements of the venerable manner of life of nuns, regarding those that are external and accidental, We have decided to make ~ome considered "and prudent adaptations to present times, which may not only do greater honor to the venerable man-ner of life but at the same time increase its effectiveness." Apostolic Constitution, "Sponsa Christi," 43-1951- I O. 19. "We have been informed that in the sessions to be held dur-ing the week subjects will be proposed to the consideration of religious which undoubtedly meet the needs of the religious life at the present moment, particularly concerning the formation of souls consecrated to God and the apostolic works that should be undertaken. Minds and wills, with the aid of God's grace, are to be so reinvigorated and strengthened that, within the limits of their ability, they are to be equipped to meet the new ways of the times and thespiritual destitution of this age. The reinvigorating of one's life in all its aspects is by no means the same thing as the abandonment or thought-less lack of appreciation for everything accomplished by the very laborious efforts of one's predecessors, which all religious should esteem as the glory and ornament of their own institute. It means rather to ward off the uselessness of an indolent life, to express in personal conduct the noble accomplishments of one's predecessors, earnestly to maintain the standard of spirituality, to exert the ut-most effort to prevent the sacred laws of one's institute from appear-ing as a heap of external and useless rules, whose letter, when the spirit is lacking, kills; it is to make them in fact instruments of danuary. 1955 THE RELIGIOUS LIFE heavenly virtue that those subject to them may be able to conceive an ever higher desire for sanctity and, in imitation of the Apostle St. Paul, may spend their strength to purchase the salvation of their neighbor. If those consecrated to God are to be adapted to the ways of modern times, they are in no way to yield to the demands or senseless persuasion and invitations of the world." Letter An-nouncing the General Congress on the States of Perfection, 43-1951- 25. 20. "When young people hear the statements: 'We must keep up to date' and 'Our efforts must be commensurate with the times,' they are fired with an extraordinary ardor of soul, and if they are serving under the standard of religious militia, they keenly desire to direct the efforts of their future religious undertakings according to this principle. To a certain extent that is proper. For it has often happened that the founding fathers of religious institutes con-ceived their foundations in order to meet the challenge which newly emerging needs were urgently presenting to the Church or her works; and in. this way they harmonized their enterprises with their age. Hence if you wish to walk in the footsteps of your predecessors, act as they acted. Examine thoroughly the beliefs, convictions and con-duct of your own contemporaries, and if you discover in them elements that are good and proper, make these worthwhile features your own; otherwise you will never be able to enlighten, assist, sustain and guide the men of your own time." Address to the Gen-eral Con, gress on the States of Perfection, 43-1951-33, 34. 21. "There are, however, circumstances, and not a few, when you can and ought to accommodate yourselves to the temper and needs of men and the age. Indeed to a great extent this has actually been done, and now the task is being completely and perfectly accomp-lished by y~ur combined counsels and plans. As may be seen from the variety of your undertakings both as individuals and as insti-tutes, you have already initiated many adjustments in schools, in the training of youth, in the alleviation of human misery and in the cultivation and promotion of learning. Hence it must be ad-mitted, and Our affirmation admits of no denial, that a vast amount of energy is even now being expended to meet the altered condi-tions of our era with new and effective resources." Address to the General Congress on the States of Perfection, 43-1951-34. 22. "With regard to the religious habit, choose one that expresses your interior lack of affectation, simplicity and religious modesty. POPE PlUS XII ~Review for Religious It will then be edifying to all and also to modern youth." Apostolic Exhortation to the Ibternational Conoention of Teaching Sisters, 43-1951-741. 23. "The constitutions also, taken in both. their letter and spirit, facilitate and procure for the sister everything that she needs and should do in our day- to be a good teacher and educator. That is evident in the purely mechanical aspect. For example, today in sev-eral countries sisters also, in a becoming manner, ride bicycles ~vhen this is demanded by their work. In the beginning this was some-thing completely new, but it was not contrary to the Rule. It is possible that some points of the horarium, some prescriptions that are only mere applications of the Rule, some customs that corres-ponded, perhaps, to circumstances of the past but now only hinder the work of education should be adapted to the new circumstances. Higher superiors and the genera! chapter shall take care to proceed in this matter conscientiously, with clear-sightedness, prudence and courage and, when necessary, they shall not fail to submit the pro- .posed changes to the competent ecclesiastical authority. You wi~h to serve the cause of ,Jesus Christ and His Church according to the needs of the modern world. Therefore, it would not be reasonable to persist in .usages or ways that impede such service or perhaps even make it impossible. Sisters in teaching and education should be so prepared, so equal to the lofty character of their calling, so cogni-zant with everythingthat youth will encounter and with every in-fluence that they will meet that the students will quickly ~xclaim: We can go to the sisters with our problems and difficulties; they understand us and help us." Apostolic Exhortation to the Inter-national Conoention of Teaching Sisters, 43-1951 - 74 i, 742. 24. "For yourselves, here are Our counsels: in this crisis of vocation~ make sure that nothing in your customs, your manner of life or the ascetical practices of your religious families is an obstacle or a cause of loss of vocations. We mean certain usages which, if ever suited to another cultural context, are out of place today, so that even a really good and courageous girl would find them only an ob-stacle to her' vocation. We cited different examples in Our explana- .tion of last year. To return for a word on the question of dress: the religious habit should always express the consecration to Christ; that is expected and desired by all. In other .respects the habit should be appropriate and in keeping with the demands of hygiene. We could not refrain from expressing Our satisfaction at the fact that 10 danuar~j, 1955 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS during the course of the year a few congregations bad already taken some practical steps in this matter. To sum up: in things that are not essential make the adapyations counselled by reason and well-ordered charity." Address to the Congress of Mothers General, 44- 1952-825. 25. "Your predecessors undertook renowned work for the com-mon good of nations; your obligation today is to undertake it again and again, adapted to present needs and with an ever quick-ening zeal. For your Benedictine Institute can exert today also the salutary force that will ~urni~h a suitable remedy for the violent attacks of evil." Allocution to the Congress of Confederated Bene-dictine Congregations, 45-1953-672. Father Gallen's valuable compilation of papal texts will be continued in our =ext number.--Ed. Ques!:ions and Answers I Is it necessary or correct to repeat the Litany of Loreto three times in. one evening at community prayers? We say this litany as a part of our regular night prayers. Then in October we say the lltan9 before ache ros-ary and the prayer to St. Joseph. On Saturday evenings in some of our. convents the litany is sung. In a small house where it is not sung, we say it a third time on Saturdays--all this in one evening. Is it possible to ful-fill all these obligations with one recitation of the litany? Since the recital of the Litany of Loreto at evening community prayers seems to be a custom rather than a prescription of the con-stitutions, its repetition would seem to be a matter for the general chapter to decide. Unless the chapter would decide otherwise, one recitation of the litany seems to satisfy all the prescriptions of the community prayers: (1) It is recited as part of the regular night prayers. (2) During October it is said before the rosary, which indicates the time when it is said. (3) On Saturdays it is sung, which indicates a quality rather than a repetition. In small houses where there are only a few religious, this quality may be omitted. There is no need of repeating the litany merely because it cannot be sung. 11 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Reoiew [or Religlods --2-- If a sister is not ~t home the day the extraordinary confessor comes to the convent for his quarterly visit, must she still cjo to another confessor besides the or.dlnary confessor? Canon 521, § 1, obliges all religious women to present them-selves to the extraordinary confessor, at least tO receive his blessing, although they need not go to confession to him. But when it is physically impossible for a sister to present herself to the extraor-dinary confessor because she is not at home on the day he comes, her obligation ceases for that visit. She need not go to any other con-fessor but may confess to the ordinary confessor, if that be con-venient. In a despairincj mood and in a confused state of mind, a sister asks her mother cjeneral to obtain for her ~ dispensation from her perpetual vows. The d~rk cloud passes; the s~ster feels better in health ~nd regrets her previous action. Several weel~s later she receives a letter from her mother cjener~l informing her thai" the dispensation has been cjranted. Where does the sister stand now? .Is she dismissed from her concjrecj~- fion before God? Must she return to the world ~cjalnst her own will ~nd. desire? Please explain in detail. In a plenary session of the Sacred Congregation of Religious held on June 9, 1922, the following question was proposed for a solution: "Whether a religious who has asked for an indult of secularization or. a dispensation from simple vows can refuse to accept the indult or the dispensation when he receives notice of it from the local superior, even though the superior general has already issued the executorial decree of the rescript in writing in accordance with canon 56 of the Code of Canon Law?" Having previously considered the opinion of consultors, after mature deliberation, the eminent Fathers decided as follows: "In the affirmative, provided superiors have not grave reasons to the contrary, in which case they should refer the matter to the Sacred Congregation." On the following day, in an audience granted to the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation, His Holiness, Pope Pius XI, approved the solution of the eminent Fathers; and the answer was published officially by the Sacred Cong'regation of Religious under date of August 1, 1922 (AAS. XIV [1922], 501). While prescribing the necessity of acceptance of the rescript of dis- 12 danuar~l, 1955 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS pensation from simple vows on the part of the petitioner, the Sacred Congregation had not set any limit as to the time within which it had to be accepted. Hence, it happened in practice that an individual religious would keep a rescript for weeks and even for months, re-serving to himself the moment of acceptance. Since such a mode of action caused various inconveniences, the Sacred Congregation of Re-ligious found it necessary to determine the time within which the rescript must be accepted or rejected. After some experimentation with regard to form, the following text was incorporated into the body of the indult of secularization or dispensation from vows when new copies were printed several years ago and is now in gen-eral use. "This present rescript shall have no value if it has not been accepted by the petitioner within ten days from the communication received of the execution of the decree." (This information is con-tained in an article by A. Guti~rrez, C.M.F., entitled: "'De Accep-tatione Induli Saecularizationis'" which appeared in Comraentarium pro Religiosis, XXXII [1953], 186-197.) From all this we conclude that the sister is still a member of her congregation, because she never accepted the indult'~ of seculari-zation or dispensation 'from her vows. .--4-- If a religious wlth simple vows receives a $750 government bond as a porf~on of his inherlfance and the bond is permitted o mature so that at' the end of ten years the bond is worth $1,000, does the relicjious keep the' simple ownership of $1,000 or of $7S07 The bond was 9iven with the ex-pressed wish of the donor that if be.permiffed to mature. Does this ex-pressed wish make any difference in the case? The free disposal of the use and usufruct (income) of his prop-erty required by canon 569 of all novices before the profession of first simple vows ~3ermits the novice to add the income to the capital, if he wishes to do so. (See Larraona, Commentarium pro Religiosis, I [1920], 338). ~f he does this, then the added income becomes a part of the capital and may not be disposed of during the lifetime of the religious with simple vows, without special permission of the Holy See. This same disposition of th~ use and usufruct may be made by a religious even after first profession for any additional property which comes into his possession under any title whatsoever (canon 569, § 2). In such a case the religious of his own accord may permit the $750 government bond to mature, so that at the end.of ten years .13 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Revieto for Religious it will be worth $1,000, but he may no longer deduct the annual payments from it, since it has all become a part of his patrimony. In the case in which the donor of the $750 government bond made known his wish that the bond be permitted to mature, the re-ligious has no choice in the matter, as canon 1514 stipulates very clearly that the wishes of the faithful regarding donations and in-heritances are to be carried out most diligently. S A sister of our community received a legacy of $2,800 from her grand-father. As her fathe~ is dead and her mother has only a very small in-come, may the sister, with the permission of her superior, give one half, or at least one third, of this money to her mother for her support, or must the permission of the Holy See be obtained fo thus dispose, of a part of the sister's patrimony? Car~on 583 forbids a religious with simple vows in a congrega-tion to giye away her property during her lifetime without permis-sion of the Holy See. In the present case the Holy See would gladly ~grant the necessary pekmission for the sister to come to the financial assistance of her mother. That permission, however, would have to be asked for. OUR CONTRIBUTORS JOSEPH F. GALLEN is professor of canon law at Woodstock College, Wood-stock, Maryland. EDWARD J. CARNEY is dean of the theological students at De Sales" Hall, Hyattsville, Maryland. MOTHER M. IMMACULATA is abbess of the Poor Clare Monastery, Roswell, New Mexico. SISTER JOSEPHINA is on the faculty of the Boston College School of Education, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. SISTER M. TERESITA is at the mother house of the Dominican Sisters of the Sick Poor, New York City. JOHN M. RENDER teaches English at the Passionist Monastery, Des Moines, Iowa. OUR ADDRESSES We have three different addresses. It would help considerably if all who com-municate with us would note them: 1. Business communications, such as subscriptions, renewals, etc., should be sent to: REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 606 Harrison St., Topeka, Kansas. 2. Books for review should be sent to: Book Review Editor, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana. 3. All other editorial communications, such as manuscripts, questions, letters for publication, etc., should be sent to: The Editors, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. 14 St:. Francis de Sales' Advice t:o Superiors Edward J. Carney, O.S.F.S. AMONG the writings of St. Francis de Sales are found letters of direction, both to lay people and to religious. In the latter category are many addressed to superioresses of con-vents, giving counsel for difficulties either personal or administra-tive. This advice does not touch on every problem, but it does in-dicate in a general way the manner of meeting some of the situations arising in the superiorship. For the purpose of presentation, excerpts from these letters have been arranged in the following groupings: I--Fundamental Virtues for ~Superiors; II~Emotional Control; III--The Superior's Manner of Dealing with Subjects; IV--The Superior and the Observance of the Rule; V~The Superior and Reception and Profession of Candidates. I-~Fundamental Virtues for Superiors St. Francis de Sales bases spiritual perfection on the virtues of humility and charity. "Humility and charity are the mainstays; all the other ropes are attached to them.''1 Therefore, in his teach-ing the superior ought to strive to acquire these two virtues. Charity always presupposes the state of grace and brings about union with God and the neighbor. It le~lds to a loving trust in divine provi-dence, to the prayer of petition, and to that manner of acting so beautifully expressed by St. Paul as kind, self-effacing, bearing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. In the ordinary course of events, appointment to the office of superior represents a fulfillment in time of an eternal decree. God not only obliges Himself to give to the one in charge the means of fulfilling the duties of state, but through a faithful instrument He will accomplish His designs. Therefore, every superior should trust in God's loving providence and confidently hope to receive from Him whatever help is necessary. "What a consolation for you that it is God Himself who has made you superioress . . . ! Where-fore, His providence is under obligation to you, on account of its 1The quotations from St. Francis de Sales are taken from the Dora Mackey trans-lations, with minor changes in the mechanics of spelling, punctuation, and capitali-zation. 15 EDWARD d. CARNEY Reoieto for Religious being the disposer of things, to hold you with its hand, that you may do well what it calls you to. Be sure of this, my dear daugh-ter; you must walk with good confidence under the guidance of this good God and not except yourself from that general rule that God who has begun in you a good work will perfect it, according to His wisdom, provided that we are faithful and humble." Neighborly charity is also an important virtue for the superior. It must not, however, lead to a weakening of. authority or to a removal of proper respect. "I do not think there is any practice to which you should pay more attention than to that of most holy charity towards your neighbor, by sweetly bearing with them and lovingly serving them, but in such sort that you take care always to preserve the authority and gravity of a superior, accompanied with holy humility." Commands contrary to the natural inclinations of others are often ifl order. If these are given kindly and graciously, the sub-jects ordinarily will show a better response. "For whereas it is a very hard thing to feel oneself crushed and mortified at every turn, yet the skill of a sweet and charitable mother gets the bitter pills swallowed with the milk of a h61y friendship;" To a superior who had failed somewhat against charity in an effort to establish religious observance, St. Francis de Sales sent this gentle correction: "Your zeal was quite good, .but it had the defect of being a little bitter, a little severe, a little exacting; now we have purified it from this; it will henceforth be sweet, mild, gracious, peaceful, fore-bearing." True charity requires the maintenance of a correct balance be-tween self, God, and the neighbor. This is had through the exer-cise of the virtue of humility, one of the finest qualities to be found in authority. Thus, along with charity St. Francis would have humility as the mark of the superior. "Be~very simple; . . . humble yourself without discouragement; encourage yourself without pre-sumption." The saint at times treats this virtue of humility in the sense of repression of inordinate movements of self. For example, to a superior giving way to impatience amid the trials of dealing with subjects, he wrote: "Gradually tame down the vivacity of your spirit to patience,' sweetness, and affability amid the littleness, childishness, and feminine imperfections of the sisters who are tender with themselves and inclined to be always teasing a mother's ears." Even .personal imperfections in dealing with subjects can be used 16 Januar~t, 1955 FRANCIS DE SALES' ADVICE as a means of acquiring humility. "Our imperfections in treating affairs, whether interior or exterior, are a great subject of humility; and humility produces and nourishes generosity." II-~Emotional Control St. Thomas Aquinas treats the emotions from the standpoint of good or evil. Love, desire, hope, and joy are possible states in one who looks upon circumstances and persons as good. On the other hand, to regard these things as evil gives entrance to hate, aversion, sorrow, fear, and anger. In the exercise of office, a su-perior meets many difficulties, which, though seemihgly evil, can really be considered as good. Fo~ example, an immediate problem in the direction of the community somehow or other represents God's plan, which can have only good as its final end. Furthermore, to dwell on the defect~ of another is to burden oneself with dislike, aversion, anger. To lovenat least supernaturally--is to bring peace and jo.y into one's outlook. The most common emotional problems confronting authority are worry, anger, and discouragement. For their control and also for the cultivation of a spirit of peace and joy, St. Francis de Sales principally recommends, trust in divine providence and love of neighbor. Anxiety and worry may beset the one in charge of the com-munity. This mental state is reducible to the emotion of fear, which arises when. some evil in the environment seems insuperable. By trusting completely in divine providence, the superior will find a remedy; for God always helps, sends His grace, gives aid. "Up to now the anxiety .about direction and the apprehension of your future superiorsbip have agitated you a little and have often made you vary in thoughts; now that you are a mother of so many daughters, you should remain quiet, serene, and always the same, reposing upon divine providence, which would never have placed all these daughters within your arms and in your bosom without having in some measure destined you an assistance, a help, a grace, most sufficient and abundant, for your upholding and support." In general, St. Francis would have the superior careful in the exercise of charge but without anxiety. "Be painstaking, but keep from eager solicitude." He does not, of course, analyze every ty.pe of worry; but be does mention how to avoid it in the making of decisions, and warns lest ufidue concern over personal imperfection and inadequacy interfere with proper direction of subjects. 17 EDWARD J. CARNEY Reoiew t~or Religious The saint points out that in important matters a superior may~ delay giving an answer. "Do not be quick to promise, but ask time to make up your mind in matters of any consequence. This is fitting in order to secure the good success of our affairs and to nourish humility." However, such a manner of acting differs from inde-cision, which comes from a fear of making an error in choice. St. Francis wishes the superior to rely completely on God and, once a decision has been made, to refrain from ceaseless examination on the course chosen. "When you have decided that something ought to be done, walk securely and fear nothing, regarding God as often as you can." "The resolution baying been taken, one should con-tent oneself with this, that on whatever side one turns the affairs of this world, there will always be much to be desired and to be. discussed, so that, after one has formed one's determination, one should not occupy oneself in sighing after the imagination of better things but in properly overcoming present difficulties, which, more-over, we cannot escape without encountering others greater, since every place is full of them." Sometimes a superior is beset by.a feeling of inadequacy. This may arise from many sources; such as, from lack of background or from personal defects in the spiritual life. Besides being a cause of internal worry and discouragement, it may prevent the superior from giving advice or counsel to the subjects. St. Francis de Sales wishes the one in charge of the community to trust in God and not to use personal imperfection as an excuse for omitting instruction to others. "If nobody worked for souls except those who have no difficulty in their exercises and who are perfect, you would have no father in me; we are not to give up consoling others because we are in perplexity ourselves. How many good doctors are there who are far from being in good health, and how many beautiful paintings are made by ugly painters? When, therefore, your daugh-ters come to you, tell them simply and with charity what God may" inspire you with--and do not send them away from you empty." Worry is not always limited to an immediate problem. Often it is anticipatory, even of the very distant future. In most cases, such difficulties never materialize. If they do, they are not as great as expected. Undue care tends to make the imagination overexag-gerate, to face issues not singly, as they generally occur, but in ac-cumulation. Such troubles are harder to bear than those of reality. "And so, my dear daughter, the multitude of difficulties terrified you; and you bad thoughts of giving it all up: meantime, you have 18 January, 1955 FRANCIS DE SALES" ADVICE' found that all is done. It will be the same with all the rest; per-severance will overcome everything." St. Francis de Sales would have the superior ask for grace and help to face each present mo-ment and then leave the future in the hands of God. "The true servant of God is not solicitoUs for the morrow; she executes faith-fully what He wants today, and tombrrow what He wants; and, after tomorrow, what He shall want then." "Our Lord does not will us to ask our annual bread, or monthly, or weekly, but daily. Try to do well today, without thinking of the next day: then on the next day, try to do the same; and do not think of all you will do during the whole time of your office; but go from day to day fulfilling your charge without increasing your solicitude, since your heavenly Father who has care today will have care tomorrow, and, after tomorrow, of your guidance, in proportion as, knowing your infirmity, you hope only in his providence." Yet divine help is not always given immediately or in the way requested. God acts as He sees fit, and the superior must wait His aid with both patience and courage. "But to work well in this business, 'there is needed an un-conquerable courage and the awaiting of the fruit in patience." In many of his directives to superiors, St. Francis de Sales urges sweetness and mildness. This is equivalent to advising con-trol of anger, which arises as a reaction against some hindrance to one's own will. Under its influence one may unduly assert a per-sonal course of action without consideration of the harm done to the feelings of others. For example, improper anger may spring up when a superior sees a subject violating the Rule or guilty of some fault worthy of reproof. St. Francis warns against correc-tion through ill-controlled anger, pointing out that by it the weak may be discouraged and 'that mildness .itself is more efficacious. "But still, as you know, while remonstrating earnestly, you must use love and sweetness; for admonitions have a better effect so; and, otherwise, one might drive away these somewhat feeble hearts." Furthermore, the saint advises the superior to show special atten-tion to those who commit faults and to rely on the help of Christ and of Mary in this task of exercising mildness towards the neigh-bor. "Be .very tender with regard to those who are more imperfect, to help them profit by their imperfection. Bear in ~mind that a very impure soul can attain a perfect purity if well assisted . Note that those who have the greatest number of bad inclinations are those who can reach a greater perfection." "Do not get angry; . . . recognize that our Lord and our Lady, having laid upon you the 19 EDWARDJ. CARNEY Reoiew [or Religious distraction of the house, know well and see that you are disturbed therein; but they do not cease to love you provided that you are humble and trustful." Discouragement, arising when some hoped-for good seems un-attainable, may afflict the one in charge of the community. St. Francis mentions some examples of this trouble. One deals with the impatience of the superior who, wishing the community to ad-vance in the spiritual life too quickly, becomes downcast when im-perfections still remain. Progress, of course, must always be made, but gradually; and minor imperfections do not detract from the essential beauty of a good work. "That there have been-some acts of impatience, immortification, disdain, disobedience, self-love cer-tainly cannot be denied; still, for all that, the substance of the af-fair does not cease to be good and according to God's will. All the defects which occur in a good work do not spoil its essential goodness." Another source of discouragement to superiors is the criticism directed against them. St. Francis de Sales counsels against too great sensitivity, pointing out that the occasions which give rise to com-plaint are often insignificant, advising consultation with one's coun-selors and complete trust in God's providence. "Take good care not to fall into any discouragement when you are murmured at or criticized a little. No, my dear daughter; for I assure you that the business of finding fault is very easy and that of doing better very 'difficult. There needs but very little ability to find fault, and something to talk about, in those who govern or in their govern-ment; ¯ and, when someone reproves us or points out to us the im-perfections in our conduct, we ought to listen quietly to it all: then lay it before God, and take counsel with our assistant sisters; and after that do what is considered best, with a holy confidence that God will bring all to His glory." Insofar as possible the saint would have the superior remove any objective reason for such criti-cism. "The diligence of superiors ought to be great in applying a remedy to the very lightest murmurings of the community. For, as great storms are formed by invisible vapors, so in religion great troubles come from very light causes." There are, of course, many other types of discouragement in a superior's life; and sometimes these contribute towards a desire for removal from office even before expiration of term. To seek such an escape may be equivalent to manifesting insufficient trust in divine providence. No longer relying on God, the superior turns 2O danuar~t, 1955 FRANCIS DE SALES' ADVICE to self and to other human' beings--means always inadequate. A wish for relief from the burdens of the superiorsbip arises. In such a case St. Francis de Sales would recommend humility and confidence, in God's providence. Humility leads one to recognize that through self nothing can be achieved. Trust in divine providence brings the recognition that through God much is possible. To a superior in such a state of mind, St. Francis sent the following words: "Remain at peace then, my dear daughter; be a mother, and a good mother, as long as God shall so ordain." In moments of discouragement the one in authority may wonder to what degree the natural affection of the subjects is possessed. St. Francis would have the superior avoid" such a consideration and simply serve God courageously in all events. "I do not want you to be so tender, but like a strong woman to serve God with a good courage, looking at Him alone; and, therefore, when those thoughts as to whether people like you or not come into your mind, do not even look at them, assuring yourself that they will always like you as much as God wills." " Since human nature is weak and subject to failure, it would be very difficult to achieve a complete control of the emotions. Thus, the superior may be shaken with internal worry, anger, and dis-couragement. However, St. Francis de Sales does advise an external appearance of calm and peace in spite of thes~ inward troubles. "Take great care to maintain your exterior in a holy equableness. And if you have any trouble in your mind, let it not appear outside." The emotional stress present in everyday life may from time to time increase. If it does, a common difficulty is possible. The practical judgment ldecomes faulty, and suspicion enters into the evaluation of persons and situations. Proper relaxation and or-dinary care of health are helpful preventives. Thus, St. Francis counsels a superior "not to be overcharged with excessive care." To another he writes: "Take care of your health that it may serve you to serve God." Ex&ssive austerities may likewise be injurious to health and judg-ment. "To eat little, work hard, have much worry of mind, and refuse sleep to the body is to get much work out of a horse which is in poor condition without feeding him up." Without depreci-ating the vhlue of external mortification--always to be regulated by the Rule~t. Francis was of the belief that the interior repres-sion of the passions and the cultivation of the corresponding vir-tues are of more importance. "Do not burden yourself with too 21 EDWARDJ. CARNEY many vigils and austerities, my dear daughter; for I know well what I am saying in this. But go to the ro~tal port of the religious life by the royal road of the love of God and your neighbor, of humility and gentleness." "For my part, I should greatly approve that you do nothing but simply follow the community in all things, whether in mortifications or in whatever it may be. It seems to me that it ought to be the principal practice of a superior, this going before her daughters in the simplicity of doing neither more nor less than they do. For this causes her to be greatly loved, and marvelously keeps the spirit of her daughters in peace." Another of St. Francis' recommendations to superiors is an at-titude of peace and joy, even in the midst of troubles. Union with God is the source of such optimism. "And in all events it behooves to remain at peace in the will of God, for which ours is made." "Take care to preserve the peace and tranquility of your heart; let the waves growl and roll all around about your back, and fear not; for God is there: and, by consequence, safety." A consideration of heavenly reward also contributes towards this spirit of tranquillity. "My dear daughter, you are a spouse, not as yet of Jesus Christ glorified, but of Jesus Christ crucified; for which cause° the rings, the rich chains, and ornaments which He gives you, and which He wants you to wear, are crosses, nails, and thorns; and the marriage feast is gall, hyssop, and vinegar. In heaven above we shall have the rubies, diamonds, and emeralds, the wine, manna, and honey." . (To be continued.) BACK NUMBERS AVAILABLE Complete sets of back numbers are available for 1948, 1949, 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954. The sets for each of these years sell at $3.00 for the United States and Possessions, and Canada; all other countries, $3.35. Individu'al copies of the following are still available at 50 cents per copy in the United States and Possessions, and Canada; all other countries, 60 cents each. 1943--January. 1944--January, March, May. 1945--November. 1946--'july. 1947--,Jan., May, July, Sept., Nov. 1948--Jan., May, ,July, Sept., Nov. 1949--March, May, July, Sept., Nov. 1950--March, Sept., Nov. 1951--March, May, July, Sept. 1952--March, May, July, Sept., Nov. 1953--Jan., March, May, July, Sept. 1954--A11 numbers. Please order from our business ot~ce in T6peka, and enclose check or postal money order to cover the amount. Postage will be paid by us. Address: Back Numbers Department Review for Religious 606 Harrison Street Topeka, Kansas 22 Though!:s on t:he Cont:empla ive Lit:e Mother M. Immaculata, P.C. IN view of the great mass of literature by both ancient and modern writers on the subject of contemplation, the title might indicate an unnecessary addencluro! Yet, while it is certainly true that the growing interest of our own age in the subject of contemplation has occasioned a new influx of books on the sub-ject, it remains a fact that much of that interest is mere curiosity, the seeking after something occult or thrilling, and that souls who are earnestly seeking something to satisfy the insatiable hunger left in them after earthly pleasures have waned remain in a state of confused uncertainty about the meaning of total renunciation and union with God in solitude. Contemplation has become al-most a byword of our generation. How many really know what it means? Words nowhere display their inadequacy so completely as when one must use them in writing of contemplative union with God. The greatest contemplative will always be the Virgin Mother of God; yet she has left us no words with which to teach us, save only that her soul magnified the Lord and that she rejoiced in Him. Nothing of the darkness, suffering, and desolation which were hers as coredemptrix has come down to us in words, save that cry which was wrung from. her Immaculate Heart on the one occasion on which we know she spoke to her divine son: "Son, why hast Thou done so to us?" Before any words were coined, before the creation of the ma-terial world, the contemplative spirit lived in heaven where the seraphim and cherubim lay in prostrate adoration before the most Holy Trinity in a state of overflowing bliss. These were the first contemplatives, whom we hope one day to join. There were contemplatives in the Old Testament, but 'fear dominated their souls as much as love did. Surely Isaias, behold-ing in spirit the virgin birth of Christ and then that same Redeemer reduced to utter ignominy, was a contemplative. Yet it required the love of our Redeemer Himself to establish .the full contemplative life in His Church, beginning it with the first and greatest con-templative vocation: that given to His own Blessed and Immaculate Mother. Can we imagine a more perfect house of contemplation 23 MOTHER M. IMMACULATA Review for Religious than that of Zachary and Elizabeth, when our Blessed Lady, the very tabernacle of the world's Savior, went about the humble house-hold duties in silent and joyous contemplation of the God within her, who, her duties completed, joined with her aged cousin in prayer and the chanting of the psalms, those mystic songs which even today form the choir prayer of contemplative communities throughout the world? The apostles, whose days were a succession of sufferings, hard-ships, and failures in the building up of the Mystical Body of Christ, were truly contemplative. What better proof of this than St. Paul's words: "'Mibi enim vivere Cbristus est!'" Down. through the centuries, the Church has fully recognized the value of the con-templative life of union with God; in the complex existence of our modern age, she still jealously guards the contemplative spirit which seems--only seems!--to have become rare. When we consider the persecutions which the Bride of Christ is undergoing in our "enlightened" age, I am inclined to make the bold statement that the martyred bishops, priests, religious, and faithful who have bravely confessed Christ by suffering and dying in physical and mental torture under Communistic rule are true con-templatives. As a case in point, we might mention Maryknoll's Bishop Ford, who had a truly contemplative spirit. He is only one of those whose union with, and love for, our Redeemer grew to such proportions, that the tortures and martyrdom he endured must have left only a diaphanous veil between him and the unseen world which is so very real to every contemplative soul. Prayer to a contemplative who has lived the life for forty years is undoubtedly different from the prayer that is essential to any religious or from the prayer of the young and inexperienced nun. There are active religious whose prayer is truly contemplative. Nor is the contemplative vocation given to anyone in its fullness at a given time. Often it seems to be taken for granted that entrance into a contemplative cloistered community "makes" the contemplative. Progression is thought to be a part of the contemplative life; ~ve are born, not made, by grace! Yet, if there is any vocation where a slow and persistent progress is the norm, it most certainly is the vocation of the contemplative. What does the adolescent boy or girl bIessed with a call to the Iife of contemplation know of the life of interior union with God? He or she has God's summons and the virgin soil for His planting; that is all. Gradual growth to maturity, integrity, spiritual strength is as much a part of the 24 ,lanuary, 1955 THOUGHTS ON THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE contemplative life as is the growth of an infant to manhood. Neither is it a painless growth! Death of self by continual self-ab-negation and self-effacement is the only really effective process of spiritual growth. And it is never painless! Passive acceptance of God's active and permissive will demands steadfast adhesion to His love. It is not easy.I have seen a leaflet which explained how easy it is to be a saint. In point of fact, sanctity "comes easy" to no one. We are members of a fallen race. Unless there be a steady spiritual progress, the contemplative can, and most certainly will, settle down into a mediocrity which is likely to become a hopeless stagnation. With no specialized ac-tivity, such as the outward apostolate imposes on souls and which brings a certain responsibility, the contemplative can settle into a groove of mediocrity and remain undisturbed in it, rousing her-self only on occasions which become more far-spaced. She can go on through life failing to accept the graces which could lead her to the most intimate union with God, until she finally must appear before Him quite empty handed, since she performed no outward work of the apostolate and only stood still on the high road into which He had beckoned her. If the greatest contemplative of all times, the spotless taber-nacle of God's humanity, mounted to an ever-higher sanctity all her life by the ladder of suffering and sorrow, can we who have inherited from our fallen first parents a constant down-drag of nature think to acquire a painless sanctity? We know that the sorrows of our Lady marked the highest flights of her peerless holi-ness~ until the day when the longing of her Immaculate Heart for eternal union with her divine son burned out the last throbbings of her heart and broke it with love. Although poles removed from Mary, we still may, and can, reach out for a union with God as uninterrupted as a creature's can be. Amidst the duties, trials, joys, and sufferings of daily life, our union can, and should, grow, wherever the call of God may have summoned us. If this is true of the active apostolate, and who will say it is not, how much more of the contemplative? But only too often we mistake true values in our daily lives. We certainly do not look for the fleeting pleasures of the world. We do. not want them; we would not enjoy them. Yet we. often look for peaceful hours of prayer, serene living with our fellow religious, untroubled lives as essential to our growth in union with God. Actually, ,it' is the sufferings, spi~ritual and physical, the little annoyances, Of 25 MOTHER M. IMMACULATA Review [or Religious community life, self-denial in our daily duties, and especially the little misunderstandings, misinterpretations of our Words and ac-tions, the setting aside by others of what we regard as so important that bring us to spiritual maturity and closest union with our divine Spouse. The things that so persistently tend to efface self and re-quire a self-abnegation which often shrivels our hearts, though those around us know nothing of it, are the things that indeed can, and do, lift us to a union with our Beloved as no peaceful prayer can. Only the passive acceptance of God's will can ever give us deep interior peace; and this kind of peace is an absolute requisite for true holiness. Faith grows deeper, more seemingly tangible, in the soul whose prayer becomes ever more uninterrupted. And .every true contem-plative will strive to live more and more in this atmgsphere of true peace which, whether accompanied by sufferings great or small, is union with God. If our Lady's prayer supported the infant Church, it was because her power consisted as much in her ardent love for, and union with, the divine will as in her prerogative as mother of 3esus. The power of the prayer of any contemplative, whether offered in the cloister of a monastery or in the de~ert of the world, is measured by the degree of loving, uninterrupted union with God in the fulfillment of His divine will, rather than by the number of bouts spent on one's knees and the number of penances performed. I have said that the unseen world of faith is very real to the contemplative. Only hearts tbat can envision more than the ma-terial and accidental above them know the true value of those very things. When the apostles knew our divine Lord only from His external words and actions, even witnessing His miracles, they still .knew Him only slightly. But after they bad passed through the darkness of Calvary, bad experienced the loss of everything, and realized their own littleness and cowardice did they begin to see Him as the true Son of God. To see ourselves as mean and ignoble, to know ourselves quite capable of any sin is the beginning--gnly the beginning!---of bumilil~y. And without humility there is no union with God. "He resistetb the proud." Before the apostles had experienced the depth of their own weakness, they were all ready to boast with Peter: "Not I, Lord! . Never will I betray Thee!" The contemplative who fancies herself above the weaknesses of others, wbo pretends to a refined scandalization at the faults of others, shows bet own immaturity in the contemplative life. The 26 Januar~t, 1955 THOUGHTS ON THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE great contemplative Teresa of Avila has said that true charity is never surprised at the faults of others. When the apostles had tasted the bitterness of their own weakness, they became fit instruments for the grace of God. The contemplative who has acquired enough self~knowledge to elevate herself above no one is ripe fruit for God's plucking. Standing in darkness, we begin to see into the "world intangible" and to understand true values. The occasions for self-abnegation which come to us can be grasped and taken in swiftdecision when we live in the unseen world where we know the Bridegroom of our soul watches. He upholds us, accepts with a loving hand the seem-ing trifles which the soul gives Him. One day she will find them again in that same loving hand and realize how great a value He has set upon her hidden gifts. Only in the unseen world are her actions fully evaluated, unmistakably understood; and her convic-tion increases that only in that darkness does true light come to her since there alone she sees all, not in the external passing of each action, but in the eternal value of it. The invisible grandeurs of the Christ-life in the soul and in the Church are little realized, though the faithful sometimes catch a rumor of them in solemn liturgical functions. But the eternal values of the unseen world are truly ours; ~and, when we live with ever-growing conviction of the glory and strength hidden beneath external actions of each hidden soul, we have come into true riches. We should not forget that the real mystic is one who is so per-fect an instrument in God's hand that in her highest activity she is 'still closely and passively united to Him, humbly allowing Him to do what He wills with her and humbly "following His will inher every action. That is union with God indeed. Holiness which wants to appear, to make an impression, is not holiness at all. Exter-nal signs of sanctity are not themselves holiness. Their interior cause is holiness in truth. We must strive to be so perfect an instrument in God's hand that He can do what He wills with us or do nothing at all with us if He so chooses. Perhaps this latter is the most ex-quisite form of a soul's acceptance of God's will. Is, then, all our union With God to be centered upon suffering and mortification? Assuredly not. The soul that thoroughly grasps the importance of being lovingly passive in God's hand can afford to be active; for her, prayer accompanies and informs all her actions. Her work is prayer, sprin.ging out of the intense prayer of her hours before the Blessed Sacrament, her chanting of the Divine 27-, MOTHER M. IMMACULATA O~ce, etc. Prayer and work and suffering form the great trilogy of .the contemplative's love of God. In the perfection of contempla-tion, they lose.their separate identities. Only the soul of prayer can make work a prolongation of prayer. Only the soul of such uni-versal prayer is equipped to suffer. Francis Thompson's words in "The Hound of Heaven"-- "Must Thy harvest fields be dunged with rotten death?"-~hold a depth of meaning almost unfathomable. How truly the fields of our kouls are fertilized with the death of self in the daily acceptance of all that so often appears trivial and yet is so searing to our souls. It was another poet who spoke those marvelous words of the Church's greatest lover who had learned that "Love must burn e'er it con-sumes." It is the searing of our self-will which is the mortification spiritual writers speak of as the most important requisite for interior prayer. The disciplining of our hearts in their desires and attach-ments is what constitutes this necessary mortification, not the little exterior mortifications we impose upon ourselves and which often wonderfully flatter our pride. To be able to unshackle ourselves from our attachment to ourselves, our ideas, our plans, our petti-ness, which makes us pity ourselves over every little real or imagined neglect or grievance, is to leave ourselves free and in such liberty of spirit that the Holy Spirit may make the tender chords of our souls vibrate with the music of interior and uninterrupted prayer. Thus will our souls bask in the light of truth: the truth about ourselves which is humbling and salutary; the truth about God, our lover and beloved, which exalts us. I can only repeat the words which God has used to bring strength to a teaching sister who so' graciously expressed her gratitude: It is not the things which en-rich us, but the things which efface us, which lead us steadily up-ward to closer union with God, our heart's beloved. APOSTOLATE OF THE PRESS We have received two booklets--A Brief History of the Daughters of St. Paul and God Gave This Modern World a Modern Religious Congregation--which de-scribe the founding and work of the Daughters of St. Paul. The special mission of this institute is the apostolate of "the editions"--that is, of press, screen, radio, etc. The sisters publish books, newspapers, magazines, etc. They themselves do the printing--from typesetting to binding; and they diffuse this material by direct distribution and by founding traveling libraries and bookstores. The institute, founded in Italy in 1915, was first established in the United States in 1932, at Staten Island, New York. Besides this original foundation, the sisters now have convents in Derby, N. Y. ; Boston, Mass. ; San antoni~o, Texas; Youngstown, Ohio; Alexandria, La. 28 Longevity Religious Women Sister Josephina, C.S.3. THE question often arises pertaining to the years of service in a given religious community. A study was made of the longev-ity of a community of men by Schnepp and Kurz.1 The study embraced 2,380 members of the Marianist order from 1819 to 1951. The mean ayeat death for religious men', according to the above study, was 55.7 years with a standard deviation of 22.4 years. The median age was 61.5 years. In order to compare similar data for women religious, necroiogy data were obtained from two religious communities for women, one in the eastern.part of the United States and the other situated in the midwest. The geographical sampling was felt adequate as the midwestern community reached as far north as Minnesota, west to California, and south to Texas. The two communities supplied for the period 1925 to 1950 the number of religious who died during each year, age at entrance, age at death, and type of work done in the community. For convenience the work was placed in two categories: teaching and housekeeping. To safeguard the iden-tity of the communities, they shall be called Group A and Group B. Both communities are the same in essence as having the same foundress. However, each is independent, with its own provincial and council. Group A numbered 1"81 religious who died in the period from ¯ 1925-1950, of whom 132 were teachers and 49 were non-teachers. Group B numbered 197 deceased members of whom 156 were teachers and 41 non-teachers. The actual number of religious of each community is approximately the same. Table i presents data related to the average age at entrance into the community. The range for both groups was from 14 to 50 years with a mean entrance age of 25.32 years. An important consideration is the actual number of years spent in the religious community. This was obtainedby subtracting the entrance age from the age at death for each member in the study. Table 2 presents the summary for this information. The average age at death was the final aspect of the study. Table 3 summgrizes the evidence for the groups. ZGerald J. Schnepp, S.M., and John T. Kurz, S.M.: "Length of Life of Religious Men: Marianists, 1820-1951," REVIEW FORRELIGIOUS, XII (Jan., 1953), 15-20. 29 SISTER JOSEPHINA TABLE I: AVERAGE AGE AT GROUP N A-~Teachers . 132 Non-Teachers . 49 B--Teachers . 156 Non-Teachers . 41 A ~d B--Teachers . 288 A ~ B--Non-Teachers. 90 A £d B--Teachers and Non-Teachers. 378 ENTRANCE MEASURE MEAN S. D 22.18 4.4 25.72 5.0 24.0 5.0 26.5 4.6 23.3 5.4 24.22 4.8 25.32 5.42 TABLE 2 : GROUP MEAN NUMBER OF YEARS IN RELIGION N MEASURE MEAN S. D A--Teachers . 132 44.4 15.95 Non-Teachers . 49 41.9. 15.95 B--Teachers . 156 34.3 17.25 Non-Teachers . 41 39.95 12.00 A 24 B--Teachers . 288 38.45 17.40 A 24 B~Non-Teachers. 90 41.05 14.70 A ~ B--Teachers and Non-Teachers. 378 38.45 16.65 TABLE 3: AVERAGE AGE AT DEATH GROUP N A-~Teachers . 132 Non-Teachers . 49 B--Teachers . 156 Non-Teachers . 41 A 24 B--Teachers . 288 A ~ B-~Non-Teachers. 90 A ~ B---Teachers and Non-Teachers. "378 MEASURE MEAN S. D 65.85 15.50 67.35 14.25 58.35 17.10 66.75 12.50 63.10 16.95 67.65 13.35 62.76 16.45 Comparing the total average age of women religious 62.75 years with the total average age of religious men 55.7, one may as-sume that religious women have a longer life Span than do religious men. However, the span for the study by Schnepp and Kurz em-braced the years 1819-1951 and the present study the years 1925- 1950. Medical science has made significant advances during the past quarter of a century which no doubt account in part for the longer life span of the religious women ificluded in this survey. 30 The story of the foundress of the Dominican Sisters of the Sick Poor. /V ot:her Mary Walsh Sister Mary Teresita, O.P. sISTER MARY sat down at the old pine table that served as her desk to write a letter to a friend. It was late October, 1887. The little group of lay tertiaries of, which she was the head was still very small. Katie .Barrett, her companion of the first strenuous years, the sharer ot~ her brightest hopes and dreams, had just left her after nine years together. Katie was tired out from the exhausting physical labors required of her, and the enthusiasm which had been hers in the beginning had now turned into dissatisfaction and discontent. Many years later Katie Barrett would re-enter Mary Walsh's life, bringing sorrow and an almost unbearable trial. On this day Mary Walsh could only look back. If she could have foreseen the future, she would have rejoiced; for that little group would some day be known as the Dominican Sisters of the Sick Poor and would achieve her cherished hopes and ideals, nursing the sick poor from eleven convents in various cities throughout the country. She thought of her birth in London and her quick exodus from there after the death of her parents from black diphtheria. The memories of her childhood were indeed pleasant as she mentally relived those happy times with her grandmother in County Limerick, Ireland. As a child she was affectionate and intelligent, quick and lively with many charming ways--and others perhaps not quite so charming; for her temper was as quick as her affections and her dislikes as decisive as her busy and curious little mind. When she was eighteen, her grandmother died; and she had to face the problem of making her own living either there or elsewhere. She decided to leave for the United States at the earliest opportunity. She arrived in this country as a ward of her uncle, who took her to live with his family in Philadelphia. Emerging a year later as a young wo-man of poise and grace, of gentle dignity, of chaste and joyous charm, but with limited educational benefits, she decided to try her fortune in New York where so many others of her race had sought a live-lihood. Securing employment as a laundress, she lived alone and friendless in a big and noisy city, endearing herself everywhere with her simplicity and inner peace. 31 SISTER J~IARY TERESITA Review [or Religious She remembered especially an August morning in 1876, not long after her arrival in the metropolis. The morning dawned, bringing with it the threat of showers, as dark, restless clouds scurried across the gray sky. She was hurrying along the streets of New York's lower East Side intent on the day's work. A child's pitiful cry emanating from a nearby tenement arrested her attention. Mary's response to the child's mournful plea of, "My mother's .sick, and I don't know what to do," was to reassure her gently and follow her up the rickety steps to a foul-smelling, unkempt one-room apartment. Filled with mixed emotions of sadness and anger at the sight that greeted her, and despite the disconcerting dryness in her throat, she managed to utter a few comforting words to the young mother who lay in the corner almost unconscious, with a dead infant at her side. Fright was mirrored in the stricken eyes of several other youngsters who stood huddled against a nearby wall. This stranger's unmistakable sincerity and personal interest in their welfare made a deep impression on the Dunne's; and, be-fore many .days had passed, the sick mother's spirits were soon revived. In the meantime, however, Mary found" herself unemployed. Taking care of the Dunne family all day long had necessitated neglect of the laundry work by which she made her living. When con-fronted with an ultimatum by her employer, her conscience and the dictates of charity left her only one choice. She would continue caring for this poor family that was on the brink of disaster both spiritually and materially, and God would take care of her. For choosing thus, she was to exclaim in later years, "I knew that day that hereafter I was to give whatever I had to those poorer than I. I said to myself, That's to be your life, Mary Walsb, to give what you have to the poor." At times the magnitude of the offering and the arduousness of the sacrifices ahead would almost overwhelm her, but she would never waver. Almost in a single focal point her inner desires came to bear with sharp intensity. Briefly and most effectively her new career was launched. This incident was to influence her whole life. Though not conscious of it, at that time she was laying the foundation of her real vocation as a benefactress and friend of Christ's sick poor, no matter what race, creed, or color. It-was amazing with 'what alacrity the local tradesmen were willing and eager to help this young woman in black. Though a stranger to most of them, her genuine honesty and simple eloquence won their support. The candor in her eager 32 Januarg, 1955 MOTHER MARY WALSH ~yes, the enviable integrity which her strong features displayed,, and her cheerful disposition enabled this obscure young laundress to effect an immediate and overwhelming response from everyone to whom she appealed. That was in 1878; and that was when the thought struck her that perhaps there might be other young women who would, if made aware of the appalling misery in their midst, help to alleviate it. It was then that Katie Barrett, with an enthusiasm as eager as her own, joined her; and together they began the work of nursing the sick poor in their neighborhood. She herself recalled this period in later years when talking to the sisters. "We lived on the West Side in two rooms on the top floor for two years. We went there late in 1879. We worked insofar as it was pgssible, i.e., only the first three days of every week, in order to spend the rest of the week among our beloved poor. We did laundry work--washing and ironing--in our own little flat. It was hard to maintain an even division of time, because often we couldn't get the clothes dry or laundry bundles were larger than we expected; and we were urged to accept more washing than we could take care of. That was a temptation of no mean size, for we needed the money desperately. We worked to earn money to pay our rent and food and to buy supplies for the poor and sick, for our begging campaign could not take care of the .many needs. We saw so many people who were in greater need of food than we were that we could enjoy our humble fare much better when we shared it. Many a/time we had only bread and water and enjoyed it. Our plain black dresses and the large wicker basket that we carried soon became symbols of begging in the neighborhood." Now, in 1887, Sister Mary was writing to Father Nevins, the spiritual director of her little group, to tell him that Katie had left them, It was hard for her to understand Katie's attitude because her own love for the sick poor had increased a hundredfold during the years. Father Aloysius Russell Nevins, C.S.P., had assumed the direc-tion of the little group only a few years before, but he knew the few tertiaries quite intimately, and Katie's defection was a sad blow for him also. His invaluable advice and counsels were a great'bul-wark in those early days when so many of the clergy regarded Mary Walsh as an impractical visionary. They would denounce her as trying to effect a century of progress in a decade. Amazing indeed ,were the results she accomplished in spite of these many handicaps 33 SISTER MARY TERESITA Review/:or Religious and setbacks. The years began to pass by more rapidly. Her days were even more crowded with work and responsibilities. Her health was grad-ually weakening, too; but she paid no attention to it, for, as a Ter-tiary of the Dominican Order, her increasing pains and difficult vision could not prevent attendance at her religious exercises and at her work. Meanwhile, the little band had grown quickly and just as quickly had dwindled. The utter poverty, physical hard-ships, and the rigors of religious life without the compensations afforded by a recognized order proved to be too ~nuch for the many, young enthusiasts who tried to live the life. Some twenty years later, in 1900, Si'ster Mary found herself with still only one com-panion, little Sister Teresa as she affectionately called the young sister who was in delicate health. When she was only five years old, Sister Teresa had come to live with Sister Mary. An aged uncle bad become Teresa's guardian at the death of bet parents, and she lived with him over a year when his health began to fail. It was the uncle's urgent request to Sister Mary, who bad been nurs-ing him through his last illness, that she take and care for the little girl. This Sister Mary did; and the playful, joyous, though always delicate youngster grew up sharing the sisters' life of poverty and hardship. Her one ambition was to become one of "Sister Mary's Sisters" when she was of age. This she did and chose the name of Sister Teresa. Though only eighteen at this time, she was a source of joy and consolation to Sister Mary in the dark and somewhat ominous days they 'shared. The turn of the century ushered in renewed hope and increased life through a transfusion of young, fresh blood into the hardened arteries of the struggling group. Upon the death of Father Nevins, ¯ the Reverend Peter J. O'Callaghan, C.S.P., became the spiritual guide of the little band. With flashing blue eyes and a firm, strong mouth which knew no indecision, Father O'Callaghan's very ap-pearance disseminated vigor and enthusiasm. Together they dis-cussed the possibilities and hopes for Sister Mary's work and the eventuality of becoming a recognized branch of the Church's fam-ily. Though Father O'Callaghan was sixteen years her junior, Sister Mary accepted him as her spiritual superior and would always ac-cept his counsels and advice as the word of God in her behalf, though in a short wh.ile that voice would assume a harsh note and force her into disharmony with her beloved community. In 1903, Sister Mary received an application from a young wo- 34 danuar~, 1955 MOTHER MARY WALSH man who she realized was no ordinary aspirant. In explaining the work and ideals of the community to Miss Brown, she stressed their extreme poverty. To the former school teacher she said, "We nurse the sick poor in their own homes. We accept no money for our work, and we make no distinction among our patients. Their color, religion, or lack of it, is no barrier to our services. You must know that we are very poor ourselves and live by the charity of others." The newcomer listened attentively and expressed her willing-ness to share their life. Elation and gratitude filled the heart of Sister Mary, for here was a candidate with the advantages of a good education and many friends in the neighborhood and who could do much to make known the plight of the sick poor. Within two months the infectious personality of Sister Annette, as she was called, bad gained for her the love and esteem of all the sisters, especially Sister Mary and Father O'Callagha9, who were quick to appraise the talents of this newcomer. Her business acumen was remarkable: and it is, therefore, not hard to understand that she was appointed treasurer of the group in such a short time. Realizing l~er capabilities and the respect she had won for herself both in religious and business matters and thinking of the advance-ment of the community, Sister Mary approached Father O'Callaghan and with characteristic humility suggested that Sister Annette be named superior in her stead. At first he was much abashed at such a precedent, but Sister Mary's persuasive humility and depth of sincerity won his approval. Thus in March of 1903, only a few months after her entrance, Sister Annette was appointed superior and Mary Walsh, after twenty-seven years of hard work, humbly and joyfully submitted to this woman of fresh ideas and hearten-ing determination. On that day a new page was written in the his-tory of the Dominican Sisters of the Sick Poor. Prestige and authority show a person's character in its true light. They give rise to the best and the worst in an individual, and at times to a little of both. The fact that Sister Annette was only three months in the community at the time of her appointment gives credence to the forcefulness of her personality. Her auspicious rise in power was recognized by all as something unique. As far as her administrative abilities were concerned, she proved to be all and even more than they had hoped for. It can be said that she accomplished much for the good of the litt!e group and procured many influential friends for it who were to prove lifetime benefactors. However, the qualities which in previous months bad attracted her to the foundre~s, 35 SISTER MARY TERESITA Review for Religious Sister Mary, now only repelled and annoyed her. Sister's unaffected humility she shrugged off as diffidence and timidity, and her ideas and suggestions were relegated to "those belonging to another .era." Subtly, she contrasted the hardships and burdens of Sister Mary's regime with the efficiency of her own. Her host of wealthy friends had been able to help the community a great deal in financial mat-ters. Unfortunately, however, things were not all as they appeared to be on the surface, for Sister Annette had fallen victim to a strange illness. Refusing medicaI attention, she would retire to her room for days at a time; and then as suddenly as it had come on the ill-ness would leave and once again she would be her old self. Sister Mary's keen mind appraised the situation; and, after long and prayerful deliberation, she decided to make known her fears to Father O'Callaghan. She was sure that Sister Annette had fallen prey to an indiscreet use of the narcotics to which she had access. Though at first she used them cautiously, as time progressed and her resistance was weakened, she succumbed to them completely. The mainspring of Sister Mary'scharacter was a dogged, stub-born, self-willed courage. Fired with love for her community, she presented the facts to Father O'Callaghan. Sister Mary knew that it would be di~cult to tell him these things, for the priest had the greatest admiration and respect for Sister Annette, but she never dreamed what the outcome would be. The priest listened quietly, his burning blue eyes showing their disbelief, his stern profile slightly contemptuous and his voice calm but openly rebuffing her. Yet, she found herself speaking with a calmness to match his own, which was astonishing in the face of such a grave situation. He could not believe that Sister M~ry was capable of harboring such uncharitable thoughts, and in no uncertain terms he made his position clear. It was his opinion that Sister Mary was unduly critical and perhaps regretful of her lost authority. It was true that it was at her own suggestion that Sister Annette assumed of-rice, but perhaps now she wanted it back. With eyes lowered and a heavy heart, Sister Mary replied slowly and placidly, "I want the best thing.for the community now as. always. I have .told you the truth with the good of the community and nothing else in mind." Father O'Callaghan, too, wanted the best thing for the com-munity, but it was very hard for him to accept this strange story, and he thought that perhaps it might be Sister Mary, herself, who was sick. Partial blindness had been threatening her for some time 36 #anuarg, 1955 MOTHER MARYWALsH now; and the years of exhausting, body-bending and heart-break-ing work had no doubt exacted their toll. Always quick to ~each a decision, he flatly stated that as her spiritual director, he advised that she leave her community for an. indefinite time. Confirmed in strength that was not and never could be her own, she asked, "Father, where am I to go?" "To St. Michael's Villa in Englewood, N. J. The Sist'ers of St. Joseph of Peace are in charge. I shall arrange that you will have a private room and you will be responsible only to me." "How long will that be?" she inquired. "For a year at least." And continuing, he added, "I impose silence on you in all matters pertaining to the community." The crucible of adversity and sufferings, misunderstanding, and rebuttals was to claim Mary Walsh for its own. No saint ever.went through this life without realizing the inseparable connection be-tween the cross here and the crown hereafter. Few were giyen more opportunities than Sister Mary to m~ake a perfect con, nection. Arriving at the lonely station in Huntsville, Sister Mary looked in vain for someone to direct her to St. Michael's Villa. The station was empty though, and tears o~ loneliness welled up within her. As she began the long walk to the Villa; however, the. fund of divine grace, accumulated through the years, began to shine through. She felt the peace of Christ flood her with strength and acquiescence, with consent and joy. The flow of tears ceased, and she went on from the station more tranquil and freed from the nervousness and strain of this severe trial. A brief excerpt from her little notebook revealLher inner sentiments: "Oct. 6, 1903--Sent out of my home. God forgive my sister. God forgive my sister. I arrived in Huntsville, could get no carriage. Had to walk one and one-half miles through a lonely wood with my little bag and bundle. I felt the weight of them so much, but I thought of our Lord carrying His cross. I felt the bitterness of exile. How good God is to bring me to live with Himself when I am driven out of my own home. It is very lonely but God is here and that is the best of all.'.' Another disappointment soon befell her. Father O'Callaghan, the man who had sent her on her via dolorosa, was taken from her. For years now the sisters had benefited from his wisdom and prudence, so it was with deep regret that they learned of his trans-fer to a large parish in Chicago. Sister Mary was perhaps the most deeply affected by this change; for, though their opinions had di- 37 SISTER MARY TERESITA Review/:or Reliqious verged on many questions throughout the years, their souls were kindred spirits, united in tireless love and service to Christ and the sick poor. In later years it was to be said of him that he knew the mind and heart of the foundress better than anyone else. However, he continued to direct Sister Mary by way of the written word, and within a year he sent for her to join him in Chicago. For the remaining years of her exile, she worked as sac-ristan in his parish, living in silence and acute loneliness. Never once did she refer to her little community, which was now a legal cor-poration in the State of New York. Under Sister Annette's super-vision both the personnel and scope of work had expande'd, and the future was beginning to take on a brighter hue. Once again the faultless intuition of Sister Mary, which was bred of faith and true charity, had proven itself. Sister Annette's condition had become markedIy worse and her unfortunate addic-tion to narcotics was beginning to play havoc with the struggling group. Diocesan authorities intervened, and on November 23, 1906, she was admitted to St. Vincent's Retreat, Harrison, N. Y., for psychiatric care. Discharged seven mdnths later as cured, she led an exemplary and truly Christian life until the time of he~ death some twenty-five years later. Immediately, the sisters petitioned Father O'Callaghan for Sister Mary's return. He sent for her at once and, without any reference to her years of unfair exile, stated that she would once again assume command of the community at the request of the sisters and in com-pliance with his own wishes. This she did joyfully and never once alluded to the past. There was only one cloud to darken Sister Mary's homecoming. It was the absence of little Sister Teresa, who had died during Sister Mary's exile. Though the young sister bad written often, she had never once mentioned the serious condition of her health; and her death came as a severe blow to Sister Mary. The task of straightening out the many loose ends which her predecessor had left was a difficult one: but often, when deluged by the multitudinous problems which almost never abated and from which she never flinched, she would seek and find in daily prayer the support and supernatural strength she needed. Soon her charity became a byword in the neighborhood. She was ever ready at a moment's notice to assuage pain, to give advice, and to enter into every trial of those who sought her aid. A soul so richly endowed with the gifts of nature and of grace, as intelligent as she was holy, as cheerful as she was prayerful, as sensible as she was recollected, 38 d'anuar~j, 1955 MOTHER MARY WALSH free from any of the harshness or oddity which tend to make holy people offensive to others, she had the power of attracting souls. It was the ardent desire of Sister Mary to see her little com-nhunity placed on a more stable basis; for she realized that many of the young applicants, so zealous and enthusiastic and full of good will, needed the protection and he.lp of a recognized community as well as the work so dear to them. Toward this end both she and Father O'Callaghan would work indefatigably. It was natural that they would decide to affiliate with the Dominican Order since all of the sisters were Third Order members. Fortunately, Father O'Cal-laghan was able to influence a young Dominican priest in their cause. Father John T. McNicholas, O.P., later Archbishop of Cin-cinnati and lifelong friend of the community, was sympathetic toward the little group: but he xvishedto proceed cautiously. After his first meeting with the foundress, whom he described as a "light that could not be dimmed," he entered into the project wholeheart-edly. Later on he was to say.of Sister Mary: "Her.willingness to wait and her confidence that God would bless her work impressed me beyond measure. I could never forget her firm resolve that her community should accomplish its aim only under the aegis of Saint Dominic." August 4, lC/! 0, feast of St. Dominic, was indeed a day of glad rejoicing; for the long-sought approval had arrived. The Very Reverend Hyacinth Cormier, O.P., Master General of the Dominican Order, who earlier in the struggle had proved himself a staunch supporter of their work, now officially received them into the order. Henceforth they were to be known as the Dominican Sisters of the Sick Poor and were to enjoy all the graces and privileges of St. Dominic's daughters. After several unsuccessful attempts to secure a novice mistress from one of the many Dominican Sisterhoods, Sister Mary finally achieved success when Mother M. Vincentia, O.P., Mother General of the Dominican Sisters of St. Mary of the Springs, Columbus, Ohio, consented to grant a year's leave of absence to Sister M. Fred-erica for that purpose. Father McNicholas inquired somewhat hesi-tantly whether Sister Mary, as superior, was planning to go through the novitiate training with the other sisters. She told him, "I also must learn about the religious life. I, more than the others, need the benefit of that important training." Writing for religious I find it hardly necessary to emphasize the adjustment'necessary for novitiate training. Imagine with what 39 SISTER MARY TERESITA Review for Religious difficulty a woman of sixty years, worn out with the physical and mental hardships of more than thirty years of labor, possessed of an ardent nature and quick temper, had to fight the tiring battle of self-conquest under a loving but strict disciplinarian. With total forgetfulness of self and her infirmities, Sister Mary sought no dis-pensations from the novitiate rules kept by those forty years her junior. No other sister in the whole group was more conscious of her failures and shortcomings. Sister Frederica was later to say of her, "Sister Mary accepted correction better than any other religious I ever knew. I gave her many penances and humiliations, but never once did she show any signs of disobedience or pride. I wonder now how I could have been so strict with her." At this time Sister Mary was a mature woman in her early sixties, disci-plined by years of suffering and pain and tested in the crucible of unjust criticism; but her shining purity of motive, unremitting labor and d~votion in the cause of fostering her work among the poor, her personal humility and austerity made her an example to all the other novices. At the end of the canonical year, Sister Mary asked Father Mc- Nicholas to use his influence in.retaining Sister Frederica for another year as superior and novice mistress. In a somewhat incredulous tone he asked, "Have you not had enough corrections?" "Oh no, Father!" she quickly answered. "Sister Frederica is a wonderful religious. She has had a hard task training us old women. I would like her to continue to act as our superior for another year, directing the lives and exercises of the sisters, as if we were going through the canonical novitiate again." Kindly disposed toward the little community and recognizing the true worth of Sister Frederica's work among them, Mother Vin-centia agreed to the proposal. Rejoicing at their good fortune, Sister Mary expressed herself to Father McNicholas, "We need further trials. We'must be put to further tests if we are to be good religious. As for myself, I know that only in the fire of humiliation can this stubborn will of mine be bent to the yoke of God's will." Perhaps one of the greatest proofs of Mary Walsh's humility are the words of one who tried and tested its worth, her novice mistress. In a conversation with Sister Hyacinth some years later, Sister Frederica said, "You will find that Sister Mary's humility will keep things in balance under all circumstances. It permits her to recognize her. own nothingness in the face of God's perfection. Many read of such humility, but few are privileged to live with it."' 4O Januar~l, 1955 MOTHER MARY' WALSH During these years when Sister Frederica was in charge of the newly formed community, Katie Barrett once again cast her shadow. It was her desire to join the growing community now that it was officially established in the Church. Sister Mary, a novice at the time, referred her to Sister Frederica, who recognized signs of in-stability and rejected the candidate. Katie was annoyed and in-dignant. She went away with great feelings of resentment against Sister Mary, who actually had nothing to do with the decision of Sister Frederica. The years began to pass quickly now, and the fullness of the religious life would help Mary Walsh to make great progress in oyercoming her passionate nature. She was to be sanctified by an intense amount of work and sacrifice. She would have the merit of a life of prayer but not the enjoyment of it, for she would pray by wishing she had more'time to pray. Crosses belong in everyone's life, but in hers they played a major role. Perhaps the greatest cross she would have to bear came to her one night in August, 1913. The sisters were sharing the ~imple joys of St. Dominic's feast day, waiting for Sister Mary to come in from her little office where she was glancing through the mail. The sight of a familiar handwrit-ing staitled her with surprise, and eagerly she tore open the letter to see What Katie Barrett bad to say. In this fateful letter Sister Mary read the horrifying accusation that she was the mother of the little orphan girl who later had become Sister Teresa and had shared Sister Mary's work among the sick poor until her death. Katie also stated that this information had been sent to the Arch-bishop of New York and the Dominican provincial. Unrestrainedly Sister Mary wept. "It doesn't seem possible that Katie could invent this falsehood about me. My poor little com-munity! My dear sisters! Will they, too, suffer from this slander?" But, just as quickly as the tears came, they disappeared, and, reach-ing a decision, she added, "I'll put this in the hands of God. He will protect our community, if it be for His honor and glory. With all my heart and soul I believe that." Sister Mary called Sister Reginald, her assistant, into the office and revealed to her the contents of the letter. After prayerful con-sideration Sister Mary said, "The sisters must not know. God will take care of us. I am not afraid now; and there is only one thing I wish for Katie; if she ever needs us, I hope we will learn of it in time to take care of bet." Sister Mary would never have that opportunity, but fifteen years 41 SISTER MARY TERESITA later one of her spiritual daughters would be summoned to a dreary flat where an elderly lady, poor, sick and alone, suffering from arthritis, was badly in need of care. The patient's name was IZatie Barrett. At first she was hostile and unresponsive, but little by little the warmth of sister's charity melted the cold reserve, and one day she spoke to Sister Concepta with a tone of deep sincerity. "I hurt Sister Mary when I wrote that lie and I did her a great harm. Many times I have been sorry that I ever left her." Shortly after that Katie Barrett died and the sisters rejoiced that they had been able to carry out their foundress' wishes on her behalf. Mother Mary Walsh, as she had been called since her vows in 1912, achieved the goal of her lifetime when she saw her com-munity and its work approved by the Church. Her work, like that of the mustard seed in the gospel, had a humble beginning and grew without exterior display; but, with the grace of the Holy Ghost, it had begun to bear fruit. Before Mother Mary's death in 1922, the community had already made another foundation in New York and one in Columbus, Ohio. Plans were made for the opening of another convent in Denver, Colorado, but the foundress did not live t6 see this eventuate. Here was a woman humble of heart, shrinking from e.xterior glory, and animated by the keenest sense of responsibility. There is an undeviating consistence in her character; and this character crystallized into something compact, disciplined through the years of unremitting sacrifice to the triumph of a cause to which she had so long ago dedicated herself. God had raised her up to found a new body of religious women. For this task she had prepared her-self by first conquering self and by a steadfast faith that never wavered nor lost sight of its motivating drive. All she had to do was become like plastic, pliable material and cast herself in a state of absolute dependence and humility into the beautiful and cruci-fying mold of suffering. This she did admirably. Seeking to un-derstand the hidden part humility played in her life, we look to no better source of information than her own words, "I would rather be able to take humiliation well than to raise the dead to life. If I could raise the dead to life, I might still lose my own soul; but if I became truly humble in all things I am assured of salvation." A Saint:'s Last: Le!:t:er [EDITORS' N&TE: This is the last letter written by St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful~ Mother, the young Passionist saint who died February 27, 1862, and was canon-ized on May 13, 1920, The letter, written at Isola, December 30, 1861, is ad-dressed to his brother, Michael Possenti, who later became a doctor and who, when over eighty years of age, was present at the canonization. Michael kept this letter with him constantly. It was his joy to tell others: "The last expression of his love for Mary. his last call to true beauty', his last good-by' written on earth was for me." The present translation was made by' Father ,John Mary Render, C.P,, of Des Moines, Iowa. The translation was made from Lettere di San Gabriele dell" Ad-dolorata: Santuario S. Gabriele dell' Addolorata (Teramo), 1943, pp. 140-45.] My dear brother, ~received your letter at Christmas and appreciated it. In it you reminded me again that I have not written for a long time. True, but what is there to write? I have no particular news to give you. We live in a solitary spot. No one tells me any news, and I thank God I have no desire to know what goes on in the world. What can I tell you then? What little news I have is passed on to you by Dad to whom I am careful to write from time to time. If I wrote to you, I could only write about things that you know already. Michael! Remember that you cannot serve two masters. No one can be occupied with the world and God. Remember that they are mistaken who think that by practicing some devotions or doing some good works they can be saved, while remaining attached to creatures, amusements, and a goc~d time. You know that Jesus Christ said the way to heaven is straight. And another, time He said: "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." I hope that you do not attend the theater, parties, balls, and such things. While you do take part in social life, I hope that you are prudent enough to keep far from such dangers as I have men-tioned. Michael, believe your brother who speaks to you with his heart on his lips and who wishes only to see you always truly happy--the desire to go to such places without true necessity is most dangerous. To pretend that God will give you the grace not / , to fall into sin on such occasions is foolish presumption. Michael, do you want to love? Then do so by all means, but do you know whom? Love Mary. Who is more beautiful, more lov~ible, more powerful than she? Do not think that, because you cannot see her with your bodily eyes, loving her and speaking with 43 JOHN M. RENDER Review for Religious her brings weariness an'd is empty of consolation. No, consolations, joys will be all the more pure and all the more capable of filling your heart as the soul is spiritual and superior to the body. And then note well that people here on earth cannot make you happy. They are inconstant and deceitful in their love. And even if you should find someone without such defects, ~the one thought of having to separate from them one day will embitter and torment you/ heart, But this will rmt happen tb one who chooses Mary. She is lovable, faithful, constant. She will never let herself be out-done in Iove but will ever remain supreme. If you are in danger, she will hasten to free you. If you hre troubled~ she will console you. If you are sick, she will bring you relief, If you are in need, she will help you. She does not look to see what kind of person you have been. She simply comes to a heart that wants to love her. She comes quickly and opens her heart of mercy to you, embraces you, defends you, consoles you, and even serves you. She accom-panies you during this short time while you travel to eternity. And then (oh, my brother, this is what is most consoling) in that moment, in that very moment, when all will end in unspeak-able bitterness for those who have loved creatures from which they must separate themselves and pass from life here to the eternal home they have built, in that moment, I say, they will speak of these things with indescribable anguish. As though in despair they will say:--O cruel and bitter death, do you cut me off from what has up to now been the object of my heart! But the true lovers of Mary are consoled and welcome death. They separate themselves in peace from the things of this world and remember they are going to possess in reality the, object of their pure love, and they will be happy forever in her presence. Michael, try this; and, if it doesn't happen to you, then tell me I'm wrong. Make a visit every day, morning and evening if possible, to an image of Mary which you like best. Or better still, visit one in a church which is most neglected; and your visit will please her all the more. Sacrifice some object which is dangerous or vain, some- .thing you may have. Offer it at her feet in one of your visits. For love of her abstain from some amusements, companions, or pastimes; at least, from those that are dangerous and lead to evil. Recite the rosary every day out of love for her. Finally, when you feel in-spired to do anything or make some sacrifice for her, do it at once with a great heart and willing spirit and. be convinced that Mary will not be outdone in generosity. 44 January, 1955 SAINT'S LAST LETTER If you think it proper, show this letter to Tess and Pellegrini.1 Remind them that the scene of the present world is passing swiftly away. Tell them to keep God ever before them; and never do anything which could displease Him, not even for all the money in the world. Better to suffer and be patient for a few years here and then to rejoice for eternity than to live in luxury for a few years here and then to suffer, not ten, nor a hundred, nor a thousand, nor a million years, but for eternity. Remind them that God will ask an account not only for their own souls, but also for those of their family. So they must try to brihg them up in the holy fear of God and not according to the maxims of the world. What will they answer in the ~day of judgment, if . . . ? Perhaps you will smile when you read this letter, but that does not matter. He who has written it merits only derision. But re-member that he,who writes does so with his heart in his pen, with-out any aim in the world but the true and real good which you will have to answer for. My only aim after the glory of God is to be able to see us all united on the t~emendous day of judgment under the mantle of Mary, although~ here we are separated. Good-by, my .brother. Do not disdain me. Do what I have told you. It is a matter of eternal happiness or unhappiness. Every sadrifice is important and small. May Jesus and Mary give you and the whole family a very Happy.New Year. My Father Lector, who is so concerned for me, wishes you the same. Greet Dad and all the family. Recommend me to our Blessed -Mother that I may be saved. I seek nothing else. I am content to live retired in holy religion. I would rather by the divine mercy be the least of our brethren that be a son of the king and an heir of the kingdom. At this moment I might have been ordained a priest. But the ruling on the ordinations has prevented me from ascending beyond minor orders,z God wills it this way; so I will it too. Peace be with you. Your dearestbrother, Conf. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin3 1His sister and brother-in-law. 2He received tonsure and minor orders May 25, 1861; and arrangements had been made for him to receive the subdiaconate the following September, then diaconate and the priesthood at Christmastime. But political disturbances made travel dang-erous, and the ordinations had to be deferred. 3Conf. is the abbreviation for Confrater, a title of passionist clerics not yet priests. 45 On Secular Ins÷ifu÷es For those who are interested in secular institutes a fine treatment of that topic in French has appeared under the title, Les lnstituts S~culiers. Descl~e de Brouwer publishes this 402-page book by Jean Beyer, S.J., professor of moral theology and canon law at the Jesuit Seminary in Louvain. The price is listed as 150 francs. A glance at the Table of Contents shows that the subject matter is divided into four parts. (1) A historical treatment of the origins and development of secular institutes (about 55 pages). (2) Astudy of the theology of secular institutes, including such items as the mat-ter of the vows, states of perfection, perfection and the priesthood, the interior life of secular institutes (about 105 pages). (3) Under the caption of legislation about secular institutes, a commentary on the ten Articles of the Provida Mater Ecclesia and on several other prac-tical points (also about 105 pages). (4) A concluding section which gives the text (in French) of various pertinent documents. The first of these are ten pontifical documents, dating from 1801 up to 1952, and including the Apostolic Constitution Pro~2ida Mater Ecclesia, the Motu proprio Primo Felic~'ter, and the Instruction of the Sacred Congregation of Religious Curn Sanctissirnus. Then follow two short "historical" documents and six "canonical" ones. These latter six documents are examples of decrees establishing a definite pious union and a diocesan secular institute, a decree of praise of a pontifical secular institute, a decree of definitive approba-tion of a pontifical secular institute, a form of "oblation" used by one group at the start.of the "novitiate," and a form of "consecration" used by one pious union for admission of new members. The differ: ent documents fill up about 55 pages. The last 35 pages of the book are devoted to valuable appendixes listing and giving brief descrip-tive notices of pious unions and secular institutes in various stages of approval. Four very short statistical tables summarize the data. The descriptive notices and the tables are concerned with groups nearly all originating in Europe, but of which some have spread to other continents. An extensive bibliography on the subject proper and on related areas, the table of contents, a list of abbreviations, the Preface and Introduction, and interspersing title leaves round out the sum total of pages of this highly competent work. 46 t ook Reviews THI: THEOLOGY OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. By Joseph de Gulbert, S.J. Translafed by Paul Barre÷÷, O.F.M.Cap. Pp. x÷382. Sheed and Ward, NewYork, 1953. $4.50. Father De Guibert was one of the most prominent and influen-tial authorities in ascetical and mystical theology during the first half of this century. He was one of the principal founders and editors of both the Reuue d'Asc~tique et M~stique and the Diction-naire de SpiritualitY. For many years he taught this specialty in the Gregorian University, Rome; and this book is a translation of what he used as a textbook or outline for his course there. Hence it is not primarily a devotional treatise, but a textbook for students of the-ology. After an introductory section on the study of "spiritual the-ology," the nature of Christian perfection is considered. Father De Guibert's favorite way of expressing it is to say that it consists "in the ever-growing dominion of charity." Other points discussed in this connection are the relations between observing the counsels and perfection, perfection and union with God or with Christ, union with the Holy Spirit, Christ as the center of all spiritual perfection, perfection and the imitation of God or of Christ, perfection and bearing the cross, and, lastly, perfection and con. formity of will. The third part is given to "The Inspirations and Gifts of the Holy Ghost and the Discernment of Spirits," and the fourth to "Man's Cooperation with God in the Spiritual Life." Next the important .problems of mental prayer are dealt with. Then follows a treatment of the degrees that are to be found in the development of the super-natural life. The final part handles questions relating to infused contemplation. Certain sections of this work are taken up with matter that has been much involved in controversy in recent years. Such are the chapters on contemplation, acquired or infused, the nature of mysti-cal experience, and especially the necessity of infused contemplation for the pursuit of high sanctity. These may be commended to those who are interested, and most of all to those who are not familiar with the views and arguments proposed by Father De Guibert and still would like to consider both solutions to the problem before ,committing themselves to either one. 47 BOOK REVIEWS Ret~ie~J for Religious Among the chapters in this book that seem particularly orig-inal and interesting, one might call attention to three. (1) How should one strike the proper balance in the spiritual life betwen ac-tivity and passivity, between personal initiative and accepted meth-ods, or between the impulses that appear to be inspired by the good spirit and external norms? (pp. 146-154) (2) What is the right attitude toward spiritual direction? Is a director acting within his power if he determines the vocation of a yourig person who seeks his counsel? (pp. 155-185) (3) How are we to conceive the re-lations between the active and contemplative lives? In what sense is the contemplative life superior to the active or mixed life? (pp. 292-301) Though The Tbeolog~ of the Spiritual Life was written for students preparing for the priesthood, it is a work that any intelli-gent person cultivating the interior life could very profitably use. What one should expect from it is not so much inspiration or moti-vation- it does not strive to bring out the vital implications of the great Christian dogmas--but rather a thorough knowledge and understanding of the theory and practice of the supernatural life. For directors it should be on the "must" list; and, to all who would take a more deeply intelligent approach in their quest of ascetical or mystical perfection, .it is very highly recommended. AUGUSTINE G. ELLARD, S.J. THE SECRET OF THE ROSARY. By St. Louis de Mon~forf. Pp. 188. Mon~for~ Publiea÷ions, Bay Shore, N.Y., 1954. $2.50. When canonized saints write "spiritual reading," they seem to dip their pens not so much into ink as into the heroic charity and extraordinary prudence that help them be the saints they are. Hence their books deserve more than ordinary attention, for they inspire to much better than ordinary goodness. This volume is definitely such a book. St. Louis. Mary (born in the Breton town of Montfort, or-dained in 1700, canonized in 1947) was extraordinary even among saints for three realizations, namely, devotion to Mary increases love for 3esus; the rosary is the devotion which (he tells us) Mary "vastly prefers to all other devotions"; and the rosary "is not just a conglomeration of Our Fathers and Hail Marys, but . . . a divine summary of the mysteries of the life, passion, death, and glory of 3esus and Mary . . . a blessed blending of mental and vocal prayer, bywhich we honor and learn to imitate the virtues of the life, 48 danuary, 1955 BOOK REVIEWS passion, death, and glory of Jesus and Mary." St. Louis Mary was not only singularly devoted to Mary and the rosary, but--and this is the second great merit of his book--- he was singularly capable of teaching how to say the rosary well. The brief considerations on the Our Father are better than any others we have ever seen and, with the considerations on the Hail Mater, can serve magnificently as "points" for many meditations. The method, variable according to each one's devotion, of offering each of the fifteen decades is truly a saint's remedy for distractions. Fortunately, St. Louis Mary remembered to add to his book some wise words about "human faith," "pious faith," and "divine faith." These words can help the historical-minded and may pre-vent them. from refusing to let this book help them because they find unwarranted historical assumptions in it. As the Catholic Encyclopedia noted years ago, it was "undoubtedly" Blessed Alan de la Roche (preaching the rosary lovingly and beneficially in 1470-75) who "first suggested" that it had been revealed by our Lady to St. Dominic Guzman (1170-1221). St. Louis Mary and his contemporaries generally accepted Blessed Alan's belief as an historically-proved fact. But the good lessons which the saint draws from Blessed Alan's preaching make this book's historical error very pardonable indeed and very minor.-~PAUL DENT, 8.J. MARY IN DOCTRINE. By Emil Neubert, S.M., S.T.D. Pp. 257. The Bruce Publishing C~o., Milwaukee~ 1954. $4.25. In Mary in Doctrine, Father Neubert, foremost Mariologist among the Marianists, offers a systematic study of the privileges of Mary. While theologically exact and thorough, the book is written especially for the busy priest or religious unable to devote himself to the arduous study of the more specialized works. The book is developed on the basic formula: to the various privileges of the humanity of Jesus there correspond analogous privileges in Mary, in the manner and in the degree required by the difference between her condition and that of her son. The privi-leges of Mary fall into two groups in the author's division. The first are primarily functions; such as, the divine maternity, the universal mediation, and the universal sovereignty; the second are .the privileges accorded to Mary either in view of, or consequent upon, her functions; such as, her Immaculate Conception,. her vir-ginity, and her fullness of gra~e. ~ Chapter by chapter,' the book is a well-laid-ou.t'study of these BOOK REVIEWS Review for R~ligious functions and privileges. Each study is nicely done with clear ex-planation of. the meaning of the dogma, a rather full treatment of its scriptural and traditional background, and a rounded develop-ment of its wider theological implications. Readers will appreciate the clear explanation of what the Church understands by each privi-lege, the adequate treatment of its historical development, the ex. planation of the positions held by the more important adversaries. Father Neubert has written a very practical introduction ex-plaining the process by which the implicit content of revelation con-cerning Mary has become explicit through the ages and the criteria of infallibility that has guarded this de~relopment. Although--perhaps because--Father Neubert has written with the thoroughness and precision of the professional theologian, the book radiates the warmth peculiar to well-handled theological study. It offers a solid doctrinal foundation for a knowledge of Mary that will lead to a practical devotion to the Mother of God. --WILLIAM J. ENNEN, S.J. BORN CATHOLICS. Assembled by F. J. Sheed. Pp. 279. Sheed and Ward, New York, 1954. $3.S0. Those who think that the discovery of the Faith is a phenome-non peculiar to converts are inviting disillusionment when they pick up this book. Born Catholics is a compilation of nineteen accounts of why they are still Catholics, writ'ten by Cath01ics'who were such from infancy or from an age too young for' them to be called converts. The various' contributors are men, and women of varied age and profession, including a philosophy professor, in a Catholic college, a chemistry professor in a non-Catholic colleges artists, writers, names well known to the Catholic reading world, such as. Erik yon Kuehnelt-Leddihn and Caryll Houselander, and names not so well known. The unifying element, besides the fact that the writers were Catholic from an early age, is that they Were known to the assembler. All the ~iccounts, save the last by Hilaire Belloc, were.written for the book by request. It. seems to this reviewer that a greater variety of viewpoints is expressed in this assembly than is found in convert books; and that this book should refute those who think that only the con-verts show spontaneity and originality, the "cradle-Catholics" merely fdllowing where they are led. Some of the writers had to" find their way back to the Church after a period a~ay; most have met crises along the way; and all.have had to face their Faith with art attitude 5O danuar~t, 1955 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS of intelligent examination sooner or later. Nor do the writers ar-rive at a point where they all settle back comfortably viewing the Church with the same regard, without problems, without criticism, without difficulties. The reader is in for an interesting intellectual experience.--ALBERT J. SMITH, S.J. BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS THE AMERICA PRESS, 70 E. 45th St., New York 17. Mar~t and the Popes. Five Great Marian Letters. Edited by Thomas J. M. Burke, S.J. In this collection Pius IX defines the Immaculate Conception (InelfabiIis Deus), Leo XIII writes on the rosary (ducunda Semper), Pius X speaks of Mary's maternity and mediation (Ad diem Illum Laetissimum), and Pius XII defines Mary's Assumption (Munfffcentissimus Deus), and proclaims the Marian Year (Fulgens Corona). Each letter is followed by study questions. Pp. 107. $1.00. BEAUCHESNE ET SES FILS, Paris, Rue de Rennes, 117. L'Evangile et les Evangiles. Par Joseph Huby, S.J. Nouvelle edition revue et augmentee par Xavier Leon-Dufour, S.J. A classic commentary on the New Testament which is much more than a mere explanation of difficult phrases. It is a book that should be translated into English. Pp. 304. BROTHERS OF THE SACRED HEART, Metuchen, New Jersey. Catechism of the Religious Profession. Many religious must be familiar with the first edition of this excellent book. They will be pleased to learn that in this new edition it has been completely revised. Pp. 158. $2.00. THE BRUCE PUBLISHING CO., 400 N. Broadway, Milwaukee 1, Wis. In the Image of Christ. By John L. Murphy. Books for "spir-itual" reading written specifically for the laity are not too numerous. In this volume Father Murphy applies the doctrine of the mystical body to the practical, every-day realities of life in the world. There are chapters on Marriage in Christ, The Teacher, The Farmer, Christ in Politics, and many others. The book makes good public reading for closed retreats. Pp. 169. $3.00. The Christian Life Calendar. By Reverend Gabriel Ward Haf-ford and Reverend George Kolanda. A truly Christian life is a liturgical life. That is why this calendar gives the layman all the liturgical informatiori he /nay need to live each

Issue 4.5 of the Review for Religious, 1945. ; for °' SEPTEMBER 15, 1945 ~Nnct,on, Key ÷o Heaven5 C~arence =Aug_ :Nobls . James:~A;" catholic Action . Francis F÷he Holy Spirit . Leo A. Cyri~ Communications Reviewed " Questions Ans~ De~:isions of the Holy See DLUME IV SEPTEMBER 15, 1945 ¯ CONTENTS :',IEXTREME UNCTION, KEY TO HEAVEN-~Clarence McAuliffe; BOOKS RECEIVED . - SPIRITUAL READINGS FROM THE COUNCIL OF TRENT-- Augustine Klaas. S.J . "AUFER A NOBIS"--James A. Kleist. S.J, CONTRIBUTORS . ¯ . THE CONTRIBUTION OF RELIGIOUS TO CATHOLIC ACTIO Francis B. Donnelly . bECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE . THE INDWELLING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT--Leo A. Coressel, 8.J., WE DIED WITH CHRIST--Cyril ~91"lert, S.J . BOOKLET NOTICES . ". . . BOOK REVIEWS Weapons for Peace; Daily Progress in Religious Virtue: A Retreat Religious: Meditations on Eternity qor R~ligious . COMMUNICATIONS . QOESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 43. Return to Congregation and Disposition of Do~vry after Transfers to Cloistered Community . 44. Payment of Surplus Earnings to Motherhouse . "~. 45. Respective Jurisdiction of Local Superior, Principal, Hospital suP~ erintendent, and so forth . . , . 46. Right to Send Uninspect~d Letters to Local Superior ~. ,. ~'REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, SeptembeL 1945. ~ol. IV, No. 5. ~monthly; January, March, May, July, Septeinbgr. and November at the Colic 606. Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St.,°Mary's College, St. Mary~ ~ith ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter January at'the Post Office, Topeka,, Kansas. under the act of M~rch 3, 1879. Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.J. G. Augustine Ellard, S.J., Gerald'.Kill Editorial Secretary: Alfred F. Schneider. S.J. 1945, by Adam C. Ellis. Permission is hereby' granted f,reasonable Igngth, provided due credit be givett _this a~ ipt~on price: 2 dollars a year. , , i'B~fore wr~incJ to us. please consult notic~ on" Inside r.); I=xtreme Onctionz Key to ~e~ven Clarence McAuliffe, S.~'. THreEli gfiirosut st,i mwee wpre oabssaibstleyd l eaatr tnheed f/uann6 irmali Sorf eas sfievlleo wan-d abiding lesson. Still tinctured as we were with that" worldly spirit which encompasses death with an impene-trable fog of tears and. g!o?m, .we were perhaps mildly. shocked to sense an unusually cheerful atmosphere in the community after the funeral. This set us.thinking and we soon recovered from our shock. We reflected that no other reaction could be expected of religious. If death, as faith' teaches us, is the door to everlasting life, then the demise of a consecrated child of God must be a joyful event despite the natural pangs of separati6n. We. might have wept; we might have experienced a feeling of emptiness; but despite these lawfuland normal symptqms of grief,~ we realized that the occasion called much more for rejoicing. "Blessed are they who die in the Lord." The gaiety .consequent upon the funeral and evidently inspired by it taught us, as no instruction or sermon could, that immortality and heaven are facts, It made us realize more keenly that this life is zfierely a porch, not a home. It injected new blood into our spirit of detachment. But our fellow-reiigious had passed through a supreme ~ri~is before death and our joy hinged upon the conviction that he had met that crisis well. Death for every man is the climhx in a series of crises that make life a battlefield. We mawr. f.ail in other crises and yet succeed in life; but if we fail in the~crisis of death, we become eternal castaways. To CLARENCE MCAULIFFE Reaieua for Religio~zs guarantee our succeds at this crucial moment, our blessed Savio~ instituted the sacrament of extreme .unction.' Sometimes we .might .feel inclined to ask: "Why did the Savior not restore the gift. of immunity from death , which God granted to the entire.human, family. before Adam',s sin?." We might answer partly that He has done almost as much by giving us the sacrament of extreme unc-tion. Cold weather is not particularly burdensome to i~ealthy people" who live in well-heated homes and dress comfortably when they. go out. But it is hard on- the poor because they are bereft of fuel and sufficient Clothing. In the same way, dea'th would be a formidable spectre if we '"were left to our natural resources. But God has removed its s'ting by the spir.itual anodyne of extreme unction. Probably not one Catholic in. ten could explain ful.13T the real reason why Godestablished this .sacred rite. Some would say God wants to help sick people prepare for death. O~hers would say that He wants to comfort them. Others believe that He intends t0improve the health of th~ infirm. Others ~igain, think that He aims at removing temporal pun-ishment from the soul. All these answers contain~ some truth, but none of them gives thewhole truth. Asa matter of fact, God's real purpose is to purge the soul so thoroughly of all traces of sin and its effects that the dying man will by-pass purglitory. If he. prepares sufficiently for extreme unction and cooperates generously with its 'graces, he will never experience the frustrated love and sensible pains of God's temporary pris.on but will be welcomed at once by the smile of Christ into God's mansion, for the just. Astonikhing? Yes, but true iaone the l~ss and a'belief. held by all' theologians without exception. Of course, fo obtain this immediate admittance into heaven, certain con-ditions must be fulfilled. Among these, tw.o are funda-mental. The sick person must ordinarily be in the state of 290 8epteraber, 1945 EXTREME UNCTION grace when.he receives the sacrament, since it is primarily a, sacrament of the living. Sdo~dly, he must receive the sac-rament while he still has the use of his ,faculties. If he delays it until his physical and mental forces are nearly. depleted, he may not be sufficiently disposed to .gain the full effect of the sacrament and he will not-be able to use ade-quately the graces spon, taneously springin~ from it. ~To prepare him for God's, embrace instantaneously ¯ after death, certain results ,must be produced in the soul of the skk person. To. begin with, his sickness itself is the cause of spiritual trouble and may endanger his eternal sal-vation. To meet this danger, the sacrament provides the infirm man with actua! graces that impart courage and buoyancy to him. These actual graces do not all come when the sacrament is received, but from that time until the moment of death they keep. coming whenever they are needed. If the sick person is to recover from his malady. they keep coming until he is out of serious danger. Nor is their coming due to the prayers or .good works of the patient but principally ~o the divine efficacy of the sacra-ment itself. It is part of our faith that extreme unction confers this spiritual strength and co'nfidence to the sick. In fact, it is a qui.,te commonly accepted opinion today that this is the dis-tinctive effect of this sacr~iment. That we need God's spe-cial support when we fall 'seriously ill is beyond question: When the body is weak, lits passions become unruly. Satan is apt to be ~very active as death impends. This does not mean that we believe that most religious will be assailed at this time by temptations of every kind. Many sick r.eligious apparently are bothered very little by assaults against pugity or faith or resignation to God's will. But fear, diffidence, anxiety, ahd~depression are the common lot of those whose ilives are ebbing away. In normal health We 29i CLARENCE MCAULIFFE R'euieu; [or Religious do not realize how. harrowing such temptation.s may become because we do not realize how fond we are of this present world until we are on,the verge of leaving it. may meditate on death again and again;, but our imagina-tions are not keen enough'to stir up ~he strains of f~eling that will strike their discordant notes when we are about to say farewell to this world forever. '~'~I am dangerou.sly ill. The doctor says I shall die or am likely to die." Once we.sp, eak thus with ourselves, a turmoil naturally arises in our souls. Willy-nilly our memories go searching back through our ,entire past begin-ning from the dawn ,of ,reason. Black splashes of' sin mar the beauty of the picture we have painted. These sins, have been forgiven, of course, by the ~acrament of penance. But now is the time when Satan strives to upset our tranquil-lity. "Didn't. you fail to confess such and such a sin. "You weren't sorry when you confessed that sin or you wouldn't have committed it again." "Look at those temp-tations you dallied with." '~Look how remiss you were in your religious life." Such temptations to distrust~for ~they are purely te~nptations--are apt to assail the holiest religious;' and against them the sacrament of extreme unc-tion sends forth its invigorating injections of confidence. courage, and childlike trust in God. But not all disquietude arises from the past. The present, too, has its special diificulties., We may be worried by the distracted condition of ou~ mind. We cannot focus. o, ur attention on God or on anything else. We try to pray ~tnd we cannot. God flits,in and out of our minds. This inattention may easily disturb our tranquillity. In addition~ we are apt to be impatient and irritable. Little things get On otir nerves:, Above all, we are apt to feel, a sense of neglect-7--a piercirig .realization that we are alone. 'For hours at a stretch we have no company.If we should have .292 t September, 1945 " I EXTREME UNCTION visitors, we might not have any chance of recuperating. And yet we feel keenly the .need of human consolat{on, Through all these disturbances of mind and emotion, the sacrament of extreme unction is at work. God, through its efficacy, keeps touching-the.soul, keeps soothing it like a balmy breeze on a sultry night. Inability to pray is tinc-tured with a firm trust in God. Loneliness i~ .mitigated. by the surging realization that God is all and that His society alone is all we need. " ' But we. may also be ialarmed:by thoughts of the future. ' Our glazed eyes stray t6 the window and takein a misty view of the world outside--the sunny .sky or the verdant garden. "I may ne-ver ~ee them again in this world after today. Tomorrow the' rest of the community will rise as usual and I shall not be among them."' It takes dangerous illness tO make us realize how strong is our attachment to ¯ this ephemeral world; and the sense of be.ing torn from it may raisea veritable tumult in our soul. Then there is that crucial moment of death itself, when body and soul will be. severed, and perhaps w~ 'shrink from it and from the p, os-. sible agony which may precede it. S~iritual ,hazaRds, too, may lie ahead. Because of our sickness, we.~seem like rud-derless boats and we w'orry perhaps about our ability to steer God's course safely, t3ut extreme unction will be our substitute rudder. Through its graces we shall have the courage t~) face the pair/of sep~iration. .We shall offer our impending physical sufferingh, in union with the suffering Christ, and a humble confidence in God will buoy us up to grapple successful'y with any~emptation whatever, In addition to strengthening the soul, extreme unction has within itself the power to remove all our past unfor-given venial sins. ~i minority of theologians believe that this effect is procured, only indirectly. They believe, ~ namel);, that the sacrament inspires us with such strong. 293 CLARENCE MCAULIFFE . Reoiew for ,Reli~?ious inclinations to love of God and general, pie.ty that if we utilize these graces, we shall.delete all ourvenial sins. This is not the prefe.rred 6pinion, however:. Most.theologians maintain that this effect ~esults automatically from the sacrament. It depends not on utilizing the graces ¯arising from ,the. sacrament, but on a voluntary act of virtue made at the time we receive it or shortly before. This act of vir-tue is one of imperfect contrition ~ for all our venial sins. Some th,eologians would demand even less than this, but it is quite certain that if we do sincerely make an act of imper-fect contrition for all past unforgiven venial sins-~even though we do not, since We cannot, recall each one 'indi-vidually- they are at once remitted in their entirety. Such an act of sorrow should be easy for any religious. "However, sin is not the only obstacle to immediate access to'heaven. We¯may be weighed down by a great debt of temporal punishment for past forgiven, sins, and it is not quite so easy to rid ourselves of this by reception, of the sacrament. Unquestionably the sacrament can do so, since its very aim is to escortthe soul into heaven at once; and undoubtedly it can-do' so by its own inherent e~cac~!: In other words, the removal of all Our temporal punishment dods not depend on our cooperation or non-cooperation With the graces flowering from the sacrament, but upon our own subjective,, voluntary disposition, at ~the time we receive it. Just as damp wood ¯impedes the burning action of fire, so a lack of the required disposition may prevent extreme unction fro'm blot~inffout every last vestige of our temporal punishment, though it will always remove some of this by the mere. fact that we have received the sacrament worthily. , What then is the necessary dispo, siti0n On our part in order to gain this effect? Quite probably an act.of attri-tion (imperfect contrition),, but one of grea,ter perfection 294 September, 1945 EXTREME UNCTION than that required to delete all our venial sins. But how perfect;does it have to be? We~do not know for sure, but reliable authors say that it must be more fervent than that required by l~aptism in an adult and less fervent than that demanded by confession in .order that these sacraments may remove all temporal punishment. Baptism wip'es away all temporal punishment in the adult who makes.a valid act of attrition, even though it be of the lowest degree. Confession, on the other hand, exacts a more perfect attri-tion, not that sins may be forgiven by it; but that the entire mass of temporal punishment may be carried away. The atti~ition of the average penitent is har~lly sufficient to enable his confession'to annihilate all his temporal punish-ment. In.extreme unction, then, a lesser sorrow would be .necessary to remove all t~mporal punishment than,.is required in the sacrament of penance. Such an act of attri-tion should not be difficult for a sick religious to make. Inn fact, an act of perfect contrition for all sins, or .of perfect love for God, should b~ easy for religious; and it appears beyond dispute that such an act coupled with the sacra-ment would make. the sbul ready for immediate entrance into glory. Any-~ tiny debt of temporal punishment incurred between the reception of the Sacrament and death would' be forgiven either through the prayers and good works of the ailing person, or by Holy Communion, or by indulgences, particularly~by the plenary indulgence attached " to the Apostolic Benediction which is conferred immedi-ately after extreme, unction but which suspends its effect until the very moment of death. ¯ In view of all this, certainly we should not say that very few persons receive the full effect of extreme unction. Since this Sacrament has been instituted b~r Christ to con-duct souls~directly into heaven, it is surely no compliment to the merciful Savior to say that He established the sacra- 295 CLARENCE MCAULIFFE Review for Religious. ment for this purpose but has maple the conditions for reaiizing it so difficult that hardly any one can ever hope to escape purgatory by.receiving it. As Father Kern, S.J., perhaps the foremost authority on extreme unction, puts it: "It would hardly.savor of piety to think that this sacra-ment produces its full effect only in.comparatively isolated instances." Another remarkable, yet secondary and conditioned, effect of extreme unction is that it sometimes restores bodily health to the sick person. This fact is certain and is defined doctrine. The cure itself may be miracul,bus, but this is not ordinarily the case. Hence, if the sick person is to recover from his malady, he should receive the sacrament 15efore his natural physical forces are exhausted. But even though he does receive it in plenty of time, he may not get 'well since this effect always depends on the condition expressed by the Council of Trent, "'ubi satuti anirnae exioedierit.'" This Latin phrase is susceptible of two trans- . lations, either of which is admissible. If we translate it, "if it conduces to the soul's salvation," then we mean that the sick person regains his health only if his salvation hin. ges upon restored health. Thus even the greatest saints who did not attainthis effect from extreme unction would have lost their sot~Is lqad ghey lived longer. Thus, too, people who .ha've recovered from their illness through the sacrameni are predestined and can not lose their souls even though they should live for many years. This opinion may be held safely, but its conclusions are so difficult to admit that the majority of theologians today prefer to translate the Council's phrase:~"if it conduces to the soul's welfare." This means that if restoration 0f, bodily health will aid in bringing about the perfect cleansing of the soul at t.he time of the sacrament's reception, and only then, health will result from the sacrament. In other words, an 296 .~eptemSer, 194 ~ EXTREME UNCTION imp.ro.vement in health may in some cases be a great aid towards fostering courage and confidence and for cooper:. ating with the graces of the sacrament. When this is the case, the sacrament will automatically restore bodily' vigor pax-tially and sometimes even completely. ,Just bow this is accomplished is debatable, but the fact itself is not only part of our faith, but is attested by the experience of priests, doctors, and nurses. " : One other singular aspect.of the sacrament of extreme u.nction should be mentioned. Though asacrament of .the living, it partakes in a special .way of the nature of a sacra. ment of the dead, and under certain conditions it can blot .out even mo/tal sin. Suppo'se that-a Catholic were to com-mit a inorta! sin today, and that tonight,, before retiring, he would make an act of imperfect contrition. During the night he becomes seriously ill and lapses into unconscious-ness before, he thinks, about-making an act of perfect con-trition or has the opportunity- of receiving the sacrament of penance. The morta! s~in ~is still unfo~rgiven; but if he were to be anointed while unconscious, he would regai.n the state ¯ of grace through the efficacy of extreme unction. He would, of course, have.the obligation of confessing tl~e.mortal sin later if he recovered consciousness and confession were pos-sible, just as a man has the obligation of confessing mortal sins dve.n though he has madean, act Qf perfect contrition for them. The fact that extreme unction can remit mortal sins is commofily admitted by theologians today, and it ~is an important truth to keep in mind. It indicates that this sac: rament may be the only certain means of salvation for many unconscious dying persons and"thus shows us th.e ,urgency. of callin'g a pries.t to administer the sacrament. Such are the effects of extreme unction. Its general purpose is to make us ready for' God's handc!asp the 297 CLAI(ENCE MCAULIFFE moment we die. To achieve this, it st~:engthens us against the trials preceding death, it remits all venial sins and all temporal punishment if we do our part. This sacrament ~explain~ the'statement of Oliver Wendell Holmes: "So far as I have observed persons nearing theend of life, the Roman Catholics understand the business of dying better than Pr6testants. I have seen a good many Roman Cath-olics on their dying beds and it has always appeared to me that they accepted the inevitable with a composure which showed that their belief, whether or not the best to live by, yeas a better~one to die by than most of the harder creeds that have' replaced it." Holy Simeon pronounced his Nunc dimittis with the child Jesus in his arms. We pronounce our Nunc dimittis in the arms of Jesus through, the graces coming from extreme unction. Books Received ¯ (From June 20 to August ZO) THE LITURGICAL CONFERENCE, Chicago¯ National Liturgical Week : 1944. ¯ FREDERICK PUSTET CO. New York. The Holg Sacrifice. By Peter Wachter, O.S.B. $2.50. the Holg Ghost. By Rev. L. M. Dooley, S.V.D. (Ed.). BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, Milwaukee. August(ne's Quest of Wisdom." By Vernon J. Bourke, Ph.D. THE NEWMAN BOOKSHOP, Westminster; Maryland. Moral Tbeologg. By Rev. Heribert Jone, O.F.M.Cap., J.C.D. FIELD AFAI~ PRESS, New York. Margt~noll Mission Letters, Vol. I, 1945. 50 cents. THE SODALITY OF ST. PETER CLAVER, St. Louis. The Servant of God Marg Theresa Countess Ledochowsha. $1.5~0. Further Discourses on $2.50. $3.00. $3.00. By Valeria Bielak. 298 ;piritual Readings from the Council of Trent Augustine Klaas, S.J. ~OUR hundred year, ago, towards the obscure little i- to.wn of Trent in. sduthwest Tyrol could be seen con- ~ verging for many ~eeks cardinals; bishops, abbots, priests, 'religious ~of .div~ers orders, legates of Emperor Charles V and of other ~overeigns, soldiers, retaine.rs, and servants. The~ came si~agly or. in picture,sque cavalcades., riding on horse or miile-back, .carried in ornhmented litterS. jolting along in. lumbering wagons, or trudging on foot through the luxuriant v~lley of the Etsch,. Their features, speech, dress, and cust6ms bespoke the universality of Christendom. , On the Third Sundaiy of Advent, December 13, 1545, after marching in procession through the streets singing the Veni Creator, the disti,~guished ecclesiastics convensd in solemn assembly in th~ choir of Trent's Romanesque ca~thedral, dedicated to Saint Vlgdxus, to open with a High Mass, of the Holy Spiritithe nineteenth, ecumencial council of th~ Church. It v~as an'~impressive and ~olorful gathering. Present were the threeI legates of the reigning Pontiff, Paul III, appointed by him to be,also the rotating pres~, dents of .the council" Cardinal Giovanni del Monte, future Pope 3ulius III; Cardinal Marcello Cervini, later pope Mar-cellus II; and the Englishman, Cardinal Reginald Pole. Present also were.Cardi~aal Cristoforo Madruzzo, Bishop of Trent, four archbishops, twenty-one bishops, five gen-erals of religious orderS, nine canon.ists, and for(y-two theologians, besides ,man~y assisting priests and not a few prominent .laymen. Ex~cept for four Spanish diocesan priests, all the theologians were members of religioas orders, 299 AUGUSTINE KLAAS ¯ , Revieto /:or R~li~ibus "six .Dominicans, eighteen Franciscans, five Augustinians~ fi~e Carmelites, and four Servites. The Bishop of Bitonto, Cornelio Mussi, a famous Franciscan orator, preached the sermon in Latin. When Cardinal del Monte, the celebrant of the Mass, had finished the prayers pre.scribed'by the Ceremonial, Tommaso Campeggio, Bishop of Feltre, read in a loud voice from the pulpit the papal Bull Laetare Jerusalem .convoking the council and anol~her .appointing .th~ three legates of the Holy See. Then Cardinal del Monte, with the assent of the bishops, officially proclaimed the c~uncil open and fixed' January 7, 1546 as the date of the second session. The ceremony closed with a Te Deum. Lowly Trent had. been catapulted to fame. As an ecumenical city it now ranked on a par with and even above Nicea, Ephesus, Constantinople, Chalcedon, Lyons, Florence, and all the rest, because the council held within its ~w.alls was undoubtedly the most momentous and successful of the twenty ecumenical cohncils of the Church. The Council of Trent had not been easy to convoke. As earlyas 1518 Martin Luther had hypocritically appealed from Pope Leo X to an ecumenical council hoping in this way to avoid the condemnation of his errors in Rome. Protestants after him had repeatedly demanded a' general council. The succeeding Popes and Emperor Charles V were sincerely for i~, but ecclesiastical .and political obstacles rose up again and again to block the way and so it was put off for .years. Francis I, "most Christian king of the French," bad not always lived up to his ~itle, and Eng-land's Henry the Eighth was a troublemaker~ too. Finally, just when the way was clear and the council ready to be summoned, the Protestants. rejected it and refused to appear at Trent. The Pope reluctantly determined to hold the long overdue council without them. 300 September, 1945. READINGS FROM TRENT The principal objective of the Council of Trent .was twofold: first, the condemnation and rooting out of Prot-estant heresies by clearly defining the Catholic doctrines attacked; and secondly, the carrying through of the 10ng needed reform of the Church's inner life by removing the abuses that bad crept in. It was decided to treat doctrinal and disciplinary matters simultaneously in the council. -Twenty-five ecumenical Sessions were held, the number ¯ of attending Fathers and theologians fluctuating. but gen-erally increasing,as time went on. T~hree main periods may be distinguished. The first, under Pope Paul III, lasted from, 1545 to 1549; during this time ten sessions were. held, the last two at tSologna, whither the council had bemoved because of a threatened plague at Trent. tSack at Trent once more, the. second period opened under Pope Julius III and went from 1551 to 1552, covering, sessions eleven to six- . teei~. After a suspension of ten years, .the council recon-v~ ned under Pius IV and held the remaining nine sessions during 1562 and 1563. Some of the most important doctrinal decrees w~re those ¯ dealing with Holy Scripture, original sin, justification, the sacraments, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the yeneration of the~saints, and indulgences. Reform decrees were passed .concerning episcopal jurisdiction,, the bishop's obligation of residence in his diocese, legal matters and the morals t.be~ clergy, and the seminary training of candidates for Holy Orders. Others pertained to religious, their vows, their novitiate, their obligation of cloister, and so on. Finally, on December 4, 1563, when all business had been duly dispatched, Cardinal Morone, pa.pal legate and " last, president of the council, intoned the Te Dearo, and when it bad been chanted, officially closed the council with the wordst "Most Reverend Fathers, go in peace." All answered with a hearty "Amen." All present then signed "301 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Reuieto /or Religious .the acts of the council: :there were four cardinal-legates, two" cardinals, three patriarchs, twenty-five archbishops. one hundred and sixty-seven bishops, seven generals of reli-gious orders, seven abbots, and nineteen procurators .who signed in the name of the thirty-three absent prelates. The following year, .January 26, 1564, Pope Plus IV issued the bull of confirmation and stipulated that the ,decrees. would be effective as of May 1., 1564. Nineteen years had elapsed since the opening of the first session in the cathedral. of Trent. .Of 'all the ecumenical touncils of the Church, Trent was the longest in time, the richest in doctrinal content, the most efficacious in repelling error and in reforming.th~ moral and disciplinary life of the Church. "With rejuvenated and redintegrated strength Catholicism could now face the Protestant world," wrote the hostile historian Ranke.' Indeed, the Council of Trent was the Church's mighty answer to the Protestant Reformation. It was to be the corner-stone of the counter-reformation. On it the Church still continues to build. In this fourth centenary year .is it not fitting that we reread the decreesof the Council of Trent, at least, the more important ones? During the year priests and, religious can make these decrees the subject of very profitable spiritual reading, because they deal with many revealed truths that are basic in the spiritual life. Sound spirituality must always be deeply, rooted in revealed dogma. As an aid to such spiritual reading I have selected the secl~ions on dus6fication, Penance, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the Eucharist. Since their Scriptural and dogmatic content are extremely meat, y, the reading should be Slow and medi-tative. The second method of prayer of the Spiritual Exercises can'also be fruitfully employed on these inspiring truths. 302 September, 19.45 READINGS FROM T, RENF Except for some omissions of text and references I am in: debted for the following selections to Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, edited by the Rev. H. J. Schroe-der, O.P., Herder, 1'941. dustitication through Christ The holy council declares first, that for a correct and clear under-standing of the doctrine of 'justification, it is necessary that each one recognize and donfess that since all men had lost innocenc~ in the prevarication of Adam (1)~, having become unclean t 2), and. as. the Apostle says, by nature children of wrath (3), as has been set forth in the decree on original sin, they were so far the servants of sin (4) -and under the power of the devil and of death, t'hat not only the~ Gentiles by the force of nature, but not evefi the Jews by the very letter of the law'of Moses, were abl~ to be liberated or to rise there-from, though free will, weakened as it was in its powers and down-ward bent, was by no means'extinguished in them. Whence it came to pass that the heavenly Father, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort'(5), when the blessed fulness of the time was come (6), sent to men Jesus.Christ, His own Son, who had both before the law" and during the time of law been announce.d and promised to many of the holy fathers (7), that be .might redeem the Jews who we.re under the. lau) (8), and that the Gentiles who" followed not after justice (9) might attain to justice, and that all ÷ then might receive the adoption of sons. .Him has God proposed, as a propitiator through faith in his blood (10) for out'sins, and not for 6ur sins only, but also for those of the whole world. ( 1 1') But though He died for all (12), yet all do not receive the bene-, fit of His. death, but those only to whom the merit of His passion is. communicated; because as truly as men would not be born unjust, if they were not born through propagation of the seed of Ad.am, since by that propagation they contract through him, when they are cbn-ceived, injustice as their own, so if they were not born-again in Christ, ~hey would never be justified, since in that new birth there is bestowed upon them, through the merit of His passion, the grace by which ' 1) Romans 5:12; I Corinthians 15:22 2) Isaias 64:6 3) Ephesians 2:3 4) Romans 6:17, 20 5) See II Corinthians 1:3 6) Galatians 4:4 7) Genesis 49:10, 18 8) Galatians 4:5 9) Romans 9:30 10) Romans 3:25 11) See I John 2:2 12) See II Corinthians 5:15 303 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Review [or-Religiou. s they are made just. For this benefit the Apostle exhorts us always to give thanks'to the Father, .who hath made us worthy t9 be par-takers of the lot of the saints in light, and hath delivered us from the power of darkness, "and hath transli~ted us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in wbbm we have redemption and remission of sins.' (13) In which .words is given a brief description o'f the justification of the sinner, as being a translation from that state in which man is born a cl~ild of the first A'dam, to the state of grace and of the adoption of 'the Sons of God through the s.econd Adam, Jesus Christ, our Savior. .This translation however cannot, since the promulgation of the Gos-pel, be effected except through the laver of regeneration or its desire, as it is written: Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter in[o the'kingdom of God. (.14) Preparation for dustilication It is furthermore declared that in adults the. beginning of that justification must proceed from the predisposing grace of God through ¯ Jesus Christ, that' is, from His vocation, .whereby, without any merits on their part, they are called; that they who by sin. had b~en Jut off from God, may be disposed through His quickening and helping grace "to convert themselves ~:o their own justification by freely assenting to and cooperating with that grace; so that, while God touches the heart of man. through the illumination of the Holy Ghost, man himself neithe~ does absolutely nothing while' receiving that inspiration, since he can also reject it, nor yet is he able by his own free will and without the grace of God to move himself to jus-tice in His sight. Hence, when it is said in the sacred writings: Turn ye to me, and I will turn to you (1 5), we are reminded of our lib-erty; and when we reply: Conver.t us, 0 Lord, to thee, and we shall be converted (16), we confess that we need the "grace of God. , Now, they (the adults) are disposed to that justicewhen, aroused and aided by divine grace, receiving faith by hearing (1 7), they are moved freely toward God, believing to be true what has been divinely revealed and promised, especially that the sinner is justified byGod by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ desus (18); and when, understanding themselves to l~e sinners,' they, by turning themselves from the fear of divine justice, by which they. are 13) Colossians 1:12-14 14) John 3:5 15) Zacharias 1:3 16) Lamentations 5:21 17) Romans 10:17 18) Romans 3:24 304 ,~epternber, 194~ READINGS FROM TRENT salutarily aroused, to consider the mercy of God, are raised to hope. trusting that God will be propitious to them for Christ's sake: and they begin to love Him as the fountain of all justice, and on that account are moved against sin by a certain hatred and detestation, that is, by that repentance tha~ must be performed before baptism; 'finally, when they resolve to receive baptism,~to begin a new life and to keep the commandments of God. Of this disposition it is writ-ten : He that cometh to God, must believe that he is, and is a rewarder to them that seek him (19) : and, Be of good faith, son; tby sins are forgiven thee (20) : and, The fear of the Lord driveth out sin (21) : and, Do penance, and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ,. for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the "gift of the Holy Ghost (22); and, Going; therefore, teach ye a!l nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and Of the Ho,ly Ghost, teaching them to observe all things ~vhatso-ever I have commanded you (23) : finally, Prepare you[ hearts unto the Lord. (24) Nature and Causes of Justification This disposition or preparation is followed by justification itself, which is not.only a remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man through the voluntary reception of the grace and gifts whereby an unjust man becomes just and fr.om being , an enemy becomes a friend, that he may be an heir according to hope of life everlasting. (25) The causes of this justifi.cation are: the final ¯ cause is the glory of God and of Christ and life everlasting: the effi-cient cause is the merciful God who washes and sanctifies (26) gratui-tously, signing and anointing, with the holy Spirit "of promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance (27): the meritorious cause is His most beloved only begotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, when we were enemies (28), for the exceeding charity wherewith he loved us (29), merited for us justification by His most holy passion on the wood of the cross and made satisfaction for us to God the Father; the instrumental cause is the sacrament of baptism, which is the sac-rament of faith, without which no man was ever jusl~ified; finally, the single formal cause is the justice of God, not that by which He 19) Hebrews 11:6 20) Matthew ,9:2; Mark 2:5 21) Ecclesiasticus 1:27 22) Acts 2:38 23) Matthew 28 :19 f 24) See I Kings 7:3 25) Titus 3:7 26) See I Corinthians 6:11 27) Ephesians 1:13 f 28) Romans 5:10 29) Ephesians 2:4 305 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Re~,ie~ for Religious Himself is just, but that by which He makes us just, that, namely: with which we being endowed by Him,.are renewed in the spirit o: our mind (30')~, and not only are we reputed but we are truly called and are just, receiving justice within us, each one according to his own measure, Which the Holy Ghost distributes to everyone as He wills (31), and according to each one's disposition and coop.eration. For though no one can be just except he to whom the merits of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated, yet this takes place in that justification of the sinner, when by the merit of the most holy pas-sion; the charity of God is poured forth bg the .Holy Ghost i[o the° hearts (32)' of those who are justified and inheres in them; whence man through Jesus Christ, in whom he is ingrafted, receives in that justification, together with the remissioi~ of sins, all these infused, at. the same time, namely, ,faith, hope and charity. -For .faith, unless hope and cha.rity be adddd to it, neither unites man perfectly with Christ nor makes him a living member of His body. For which tea: son it is most truly said that faith without works is dead (33) and of fro profit, .and in Christ Jesus neither circumcision au'aileth any-thing nor uncircumdsion, but faith that worketh bg charity. (34). This faith, conformably to Apostolic tradition, catechumens ask of the Church before the sacrament of baptism, when they ask for the faith that gives eternal life, which without l~ope and charity faith cannot give. Whence¯also they hear immediately the word of Christ: If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. (35) Where-fore, when receiving true and Christian justice, they are commanded. immediately on being born again, to preserve it pure and spotless, as the first robb' (36) given them through Christ Jesus in place of that which Adam by his disobedience lost for himself and for us, so that they may bear it before the tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ and may have life eternal. Increase of dustification Having, therefore, been thus justified and made the friends and domestics of God (37), advancing from virtue to virtue (38), they are renewed, as the Apostle says, day bg da~t (39), that is, mortifying. 30) E1~hesians 4:23 31) See I Corinthians ¯ 12:11 32) Romans 5:5 306 33) James 2:17, 20 34) Galatians 5:6; 6:15 35) Matthew 19:17 36) Luke 15:22 37) Ephesians 2:19 38) Psalms 83:8 39) See II Corinthians 4:16 September, 1945 READINGS FROM TRENT the members (40) of their flesh, and presenting them as instruments of justice unto sanctification (41), they, through the observance of the commandments of God and of the Church, faith cooperating with good works, increase in that justice received thro.ugh the grace of Christ and are further justified, as it is written: He~ that is justs, let him be justified still (42) ; and, Be not afraid to be justified even to death (43) ; "and again, Do gou see that bg works a man is justified, a~d not bg faith onlg? (44) This increase'of justice holy Church asks for when she prays: "Give unto us,~O Lord, an increase of faith, hope and charity." (45) But no one, however much justified, should consider himself exempt from the observance of the commandments; no one ~hould use that rash statement, once forbidden by the Fathers under anathema,, that the observance of the commandments .'of God is impossible for" one that is justified. For God does .not command impossibilities, but by commanding admonishes thee to do what thou ~anst and to pray for what thou canst not, and aids thee that thou mayest be able~' His commandments are. not heavg (46), and his goke is sweet and burden light. (47.) For they who are the sons of. God love Christ, but they who love Him, keep His commandments, as He Himself testifies (.48): which, indeed, with the divine help they can do. "For though during this mortal life, men, however holy and just, fall at times into at least light and daily sins, which are also called venial, they do not" on that account cease to be just, for that petition of the just, forgive us our trespasses (49), is both humble and true: for which reason the just ought to feel themselves the more obliged to walk in the way of justice, for being now freed from sin, and made servants of God (50), they are able, living soberlg, justlg and godlg (51), to proceed onward through Jesus Christ, by whom" they have access unto this grace_. (52) For God does not forsake those who have been once jt~stified by His grace, unless He be first for-saken by them. Wherefore, no one ought to flatter himself with faith alone, thinking that by fhith alone he is made an heir and wi!l obtain the inheritance, even though he suffer not with Christ, that he mug be also glorified with him. (53) For even Christ Himself, as the 40) Colossians 3:5 41) Romans 6:13, 19 42) Apocalypse 22:11 43) .Ecclesiasticus 18:22 44) James 2:24 45) Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost 46) See I John 5:3 47) Matthew Ii:30 48) John 14:23 49) Matthew 6:12 50) Romans 6:18,,22 51) Titus 2:12 52) Romans 5: I f 53) Romans 8:17 307 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Reoieu~ [or Religious Apostle says, whereas he was the Son of God, he Ibar6ed obedience by .the things which he suffered, and being consummated/he became to all who obey him'the cause of eternal salvation. (54) For which reason the same'Apostle admonishes thbse justified, saying: Know (jou "not that they who run in ~the' race, all run indeed,,but one 'receiveth the prize? So run that go.u" may obtain, l therefore, so run,. not as at an uncertainty; I so fight, not as one beating the air, but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection; lest perhaps when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway. (55) So also the prince of the Apostles, Peter: Lab6r the more, that by good works you may make sure your calling and election. For doinq thesb things, you shall not sin at any time. (56) From which it is clear that they are opposed to the orthodox teaching of religion who maintain that the just man sins, venially at least,~in every good work; or, what is more intolerable, that he'merits eternal punishmen.t: and they also who assert that the just sin iri all works, if, in order.to arouse their sloth and to encourage themselves to run the race, they, in addition to this, that above all God may be glorified, have in View also the eternal reward, since it is written: I have inclined my heart to do thy justifications on account of the reward (57) ; and of Moses the Apo~tl~ says; that he looked unto the reward. (58) . ' Justification "Lost and Restored Those who through sin have forfeited the received gra~e of justi-fication, can again be justified when, moved by God, they exert them-selves to obtain through the sacrament of penance the recovery, by the merits of Christ, of the. grate 1osi. For this manner of justifica-tion is restoration for those fallen, which the holy Fathers have aptly called a second plank after the shipwreck of grace lost. For on behalf of those who fall into sins after baptism, Christ Jesus instituted the sacrament of penance when He said: Receive ye the Holy Ghost, whose sins you.shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sin~ you shall retain, they are retained. (59) Hence, it must be-taught that the repentance of a Christiafi after his fall is very different from that at hisb~ptism, and that it includes not only a determination to avoid sins and a hatred of them, or a contrite and humble heart (60), 54) Hebrews 5:8 f 55) See I Corinthians 9:24, 26 f 508 56) See II'Peter 1:I0 57) Psalms 118:112 58) Hebrews 11:26. ~9) J~hn 20:22 f 60) Psalms 50:19 September, 1945 READINGS FROM TRENT but also the sacramental confession of those sins, at least in desire. to be made in its season, and sacerdotal ab.solution, as well as satisfac-tion by fasts, alms, prayers and other deyout exercises of the spiritual. life, not indeed for the eternal punishment, which is, together with the guilt, remitted either by the sacrament or by the desire of the sac-rament, but for the temporal puishment which, as the sacred writings teach, is not always wholly remitted, as is done in baptism, to~ho'se who, ungrateful to the grace of God which they have received, ha#e grieved the Holy Ghost (61) and have not feared to violate° the ¯ temple of God~ (62) Of which repentance it is written: B~, mindfu~ whence thou art fallen: do penance, and do the frst t~orks (63) : and again, Thesorrow that is according to God .worketh penance, stead-fast unto salvation (64); and again, Do penance, and bring fdrt,b fruits worthy of penance. "(65) Fruits of Justifcation: Merit Therefore, td men justified in this manner, whether they have preserved uninterruptedly the grace )eceived or recovered it when lost, are to be pointed out the words of the Apostle.: Abound in ewry good work, knowing that your labor is not in vain in ttie Lord. (66) For God is not unjust, that he should forget your work, and the love whibh you baue shown in his name (67) : and, Do not lose: your confidence, which ,hath a great reward. (68) Hence, to those who work well unto the end .(69) and trust in God, eternal life-is'to be offered, bdth as a grace mercifully promised, t6" the sons of God through Christ Jesus, and as a reward promised by God Himself, to be faithfully given to their good works and merits. (70) For this is the crown of justice which after his fight and course the Apostle declhred x~as laid up for him, to be rendered to him by the just judge, and not only bimt but also to all that love his coming. (71) For since Christ Jesus Himself, .a~ the head into the members and the vine into the branches (72), continually infuses strength into those justi-fied, which strength always precedes, accompanies and follows their good works, and without which they could not in any manner be 61) Ephesians 4:30 62) See. I .Corinthians 3:17 63) Apocalypse 2:5 64) See II Corinthians 7:10 65) Matthew 3:2: 4:17; Luke '3:8 66) See I Corinthians 15:58 67) Hebrews 6:10 68) Hebrews 10:35 69) Matthew 10:22 70) Romans 6:22 71) See II Timothy 4:8 72) John 15:1 f 309 AUGUSTINE KLAAS pleasing and meritorious before God, we must believe that nothing further is wafiting to those justified, to prev.ent them from being con-'" sidered to have, by those very works which have been done in God, fully satisfied tile divine law according to the state of this life, and to have truly merited eternal life, to be obtained in its (due.) time; pro-vided they depart (this life) in grace (73), since Christ our Savior says: If anyone shall dr~'nk of the water that I will give :him, he shall nc~t thirst forever; but it shall become in him a fountain of water springi'ng.up unto life everlasting. (74) Thus, neither is' our own justice established as our own from ourselves (75), nor is the justice of God' ignored" or repudiated, 'for that justice which is called ours, because we are justified .by its inherence in us, that same is (the jus-tice) of God, because it is infused into us by God through the merit of Christ. Nor must this be omitted, that a!thbugh in the sacred writings so much is attributed to good works, that even he that shall give "a,drink of.cold water to one of his least ones, Christ promises, shall not lose his reward (76) ; and th.e Apostle testifies that, That which is at present momentary and light of our iribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory (77) : nevertheless; far be it that a Christian should either trust or glory in himself and not in the Lord (78), whose bounty.toward all men is so great that He wishes the things that are His gifts to be their merits. And since in many things we all offend (79), each one ought to. have before his eyes not only. the mercy and good.hess but also the severity and judgment (of God) ; neither ought anyone to judge himself, even though he be not conscious to himself ofanything' " (80). ; because the whole life of man is to be ex~imined and judged not by the judgment of man but of God, who will bring tO light the hidden things of darkness, and Will make manifest the counsels of the hearts, and then shall every man have praise from God (81), who, as i~ is written, will rehder to every man accordihg to his works. (82) (To be concluded) 73) Apocalypse 14:13 74) John 4:13 f 75) Romans 10:3; II Corinthians 3:5 76) Matthew 10:42; Mark 9:40 77) See II C6rinthians 4:17 78) See I Corinthians 1:31: II Corinthi- ¯ arts 10:17 79) James 3:2 80) See I Corinthians 4:3 f "81 ) I Corinthians 4 : 5 82) .Matthew 16:27: Romans 2:6: alypse 22:12 310 "Auger a Nobis" . James A. Kleist, S.I. THERE is a we~ilth.of fuel stored up in the wording of the missal, particularly in the Ordinary.of the Mass, which needs only the touch of devotion to set the soul on fire in its effort to foster private.prayer. In a very true sense the missal is the great everyday Catholic prayerbook, and its use outside the Massmay well be recommended. One illustration will be enough to indicate how this wealth may be drawn upon for ~he enrichment of one's spiritual life. As the priest .ascends the altar steps~ after saying the Confiteor with its train of versicles and responses, he recites the Aufer a nobis. He is about "to enter the holy of holies." This expression, borrowed-from ~he Old Test~iment (Num-bers 4:19), was the name for the most sacred part of the Jewish tabernacle, and late~ of the Temple~ in which the ¯ ark of the covenant.was kept, and where no one was per-mitted to enter except the high pr.iest-Tand he only-once a year. In the New Dispensation, every Catholic church is a holy of holies, a place which the Real Presence makes much holier than the Jewish holy of holies could ever be. , Now, in ascending the altar steps, the priest is directed to offer this beautiful prayer: "Take away from us our sins, we beg, O Lord, that by Thy grace~ we may enter the holy. of holies with. minds that hav.e been purified, through Christ our.Lord. Amen." As in almost all the pr0yers of. the Mass, the priest, though thinking of himself in particu-lar, uses the plural number, since he is offering the sacrifice XThe rendering "that l~y Thg grace we may enter" is more expressive-than the cur-rent version, "that we may be made more worthy to enter." The La:in word meceam~r is often used in the Missal to emphasize, not so much bur wortt~iness to do this or that, as the fac~ that we are doing this or that b~/ God's 9race or rhrouoh His mercy. 311 JAMES A. KILEI~T , Rev[etv for Religious. both for us and with us. At this point of the Mass, then, our minds have been purified by the publid act of contrition, the Confiteor, but its echoes havre not yet wholly died away; it is rounded out and finished by the Aufer a nobis and the loll'owing Oramus te, Domine. Is it not remarkable what amount of time; comparatively speaking, the Church assigns to this act of cleansing the heart from even the faintest traces of sin at the beginning of the sacred function, an amount that seems almost out of proportion to the more important parts of the sacrifice--the Offertory, the Conse: cration, and the Communion? .But, instead of questioning the wisdom of the Church, we shall do well to take a hint from the Liturgy for the sanctification of our lives.- The Church's mind is, of course, clear: we cannot reasonably approach God for His favors, as we do at Mass, while unre-pented sin still lingers in ihe sotil. Hence there is the ever-- pressing need of asking that, ir~ His mercy, He may blot out in us what is displeasing to Him. So much for the place and function of the Aufer a nobis within the framework of the Mass. It is important for us to realize, however, that the Church's prayers, although design'ed for some particular liturgical action, may yet be fittingly employed by:us in numerous s~tuations outside the Mass. This being so, it is easy to see how occasions may .arise in daily life when the Aufer a nobis, will come as a wel-come relief to the burdened soul when relief is. sorely needed, or will inspire such reverence as the presence of God should inspire. T,o illustrate. Some day is bound to be.our last day on earth, and we shall find ourselves at the door of eternity. Beyond the threshold, there~is the true holy of holies, the place where God thrones in, all His majesty, the reality rather than its earthly type or shadow. It is ihen that we shall be confronted with the question, whether our minds, 312 September, 1945 "AUFER A NOBIS'.' are sufficierltly purified tO enter. We trust in God's inercy, of course; but. surely, if the Aufer. a nobis, ~vhich is familiar to us from the Mass, has taken a definite hold on us and secured a definite place in our round of favorite aspirations, it will spontaneously rise to our lips :at the moment whe]a the need for it is most urgent, ,The familiar holy of holies of the Aufer a .nobis w, ill then widen, out into the as yet unfamiliar courts of heaven. Surely, we shall feel relieved to find that we have yet time for one last fervent prayer for forgiveness, And will.this prager not be all the more acceptable, all the more hearty,, because it presents itself in ~¢ords which, through frequent repetition while we were still in good health, have become, a~:ready vehicle of its meaning even when the mind is at its weariest in the last illness? ~ ' . To the saints the thought of death was an ever-pre~ent reality. May we not make .it such in our own life, too? There is a very unobtrusive way of doing it--provided we accustom ourselves.to r~cite the Aufer a, nobis, not only during Mass but frequefitly outside the Mass, with a view to preparing for entry into th~at heavenly holy of holies. Of its aptness for voicing our petition for a special grace in .the hour of death, there can be no doubt. This does not mean that it should supplant any other more formal prayers "for a happy death," but iic does mean that a prayer framed by the Church for a specific occasion--as in the case of the Aut:er a nobis at the beginning of the Mass--may, by" rea-son of its catholicity of expression, be utilized on other occasions when the fundamental, idea (here, the entry into the holy of holies) is the same. Thls principle, is of no small advantage in the spiritual life. Indeed, what need i's ther~ for multiplying prayers when there is a prayer in the ¯treasury of, the Church, known to us from other uses, which is ready to' hand and only waits to be used? For unction 313 JAMES A. KLEIST Review [or Religious and terseness of expression, at all events, we should find. it "difficult to match the prayers of the Universal Church. ~ But the availability of the Au[er a nobis as a cry for mercy is not thus exhausted. Let us think~for a moment of the significant a nobis. The Church loves, to use the plural numberin her official language. It is one of. her ways of ,impressing upon us the consoling doctrine of the Mystical- Body of Christ. "One for all and all for one" is a prin: ciple the Church~ never loses sight of in her prayers~ Con-sequently, then, if the AuIer a ,nobis r(minds us through habitual practice of our death, it will'also put us in mind of. the thousands of ~men hnd women who at this very moment are on the point of departing this life. We love our neighbor ~is Ourselves; we are interested in the well-beingof our fellow creatures and cannot help won-dering whether they. are prepared, or unprepared, to face their eternal du~dge. The. question is one of keen anxiety to us, because we see in them potential fellow citizens of the h'eavenly Jerusalem: because their eternal sal.vation, is at stake; because, finally, so far as they are concerned, our Lord's redemptive work is now rendered either wholly nugato,ry or eminently useful. And so, if we live in this supernatural ,atmosphere, we shall be desirous of praying frequently for the dying; and what more natural aspiration could we find for this purpose than our familiar Ai~t:er a nobis? It s~ems so Chkistian to pray for the dying! Many of them have not had our opportunities for keeping the com-mandments; many of them were in their ~arliest years throwni.nto the, whirlpool of life frith its myriad tempta-tions; many of them have, for one reason or another, been strangers to the sacramental facjlitie~ of the Church. And yet, whatever their s/ate of soul may be, here d~ey are, at this. moment, when a final decision must be made! Let us 314 . " September, 1945 ' ;'AUFER A NOBIS" hasten to their assistance by accustoming ourselves tO include them in our Actfer a rlobis. We need not know their names, or who and wherethey happen to be at the moment. Neither niational nor any othe'r accidental boundaries, can separate us from them. Our ability to help them is bounded' only by God'S "goodness, and that. is boundless. Nor .will bur charity be a loss toourselves. A supernatural ac.t, no mattei how good it is in itself, is made still lfietter by an additional touch of charity. As we includ~ the dying in our Actfer a: r~obis, so there are other devou~ souls that will include us in tl'ieirs~ Indeed, even were Fhey to forget to give us the benefit of their intercession~ the Lord will cer-tainly not forget the helping hand We have ~o often reached out to the. dying. It .is quite clear, then, that the Aufer a. rlobis, if once discovered and eagerly mined for its precious ore, holds rich possibilities for the spiritual prospector. Le~ me call atten-tion to one more such.possibility.~ In religious communi-. ties the' custom prevails at stated times of visiting¯ the Bles-sed Sacrament in a body, or privately according to one's devotion. In some houses the domestic chapel: is reached only by a. long hall or passage, and the purpose of this ~wise arrangement is to allow the religious sufficient time for col-lecting their thougbts[ Now, a ~hapel in which the Blessed Sacrament is kept is as truly a holy of holies 'as h~aven i~tself, and it is obvious that the recital of the Aufer a t~obis on theway to it is a very appropriate means of insuring .the needed recollection. In fact, it is a fitting prelude to any prayer, 'whether said inchapel or in one's private room. ¯ In prayer we stand befor+ the Divine Majesty; ~and sorrow for sin is an infallible key to entry into that holy of holies; as we are reminded, by another prayer in the Ordinary of the Mass: "In humble frame of mind and with heartfelt 9rief [or sin, we beg, O Lord, to be received b~t Thee: may our 315 JAMES A. KLEIST Revie~ for Reli~liOuz sacr.ifice.be so offered in~ Thy sight this day as to be pleasing t0 ~Fhee, O Lord Goal." Tho~ei:who are acquainted .with the Spirituai Exercises of St. Ignatiuswill.remembe,r how he insist.s that, beforewe begin to. pray, we should pause a while andreflect ~hebe We are gOing.and for what purpose. "Before prayer," says the Scripture, "prepare thy soul." And here, too, as .I said above, it iswell to lay stress on the plural number. At the same time With ourselves there are countless souls all over the world a, bout to betake themselves to prayer. A heart-felt~ Aufera nobis Will bind us into one solid body. of .wor- Shippers who come before God, not relying .so mu~h on our own merits as on the combined cry for mercy that rises from the lips and hearts of all God's children. As members of the'Church we are never alone, never wrapt, up in our own concerris and miseries: we are always acting as a powerful group made confident by the support of theintercession and merits-of the saints both on earth and in heaven. The pray-ers of one benefit all those that are united by bonds stronger than those of flesh and blood or other purely accidental cir, cumstances, ~ But enough. -By singling out the Autier a° nobis I merely intended to show what a rich treasuie the missal holds for all who. wish to profit by. it for their own spiritual advancement. It would be easy to multiply illustrations. ~'Seek, and you shall tinft."' . A certain holy ingenuity will supply anyone with a great number Of brief prayersi0r ejaculations from the missal for almost any circumstance in life. Ejaculatory prayer, by the way, is a veritable neces-sity in our busy life. How else can the fire of the ~morning meditation be Sustained throughout the busy hours of the "day? Besides, one may not always command.a somewhat ex~ended sfretch of time for formal praye~;but no one is too busy at any time to raise his heart to God by a swift arid 316 ,~epternber, 1945 "'AUFER A NOBIS'" heartfelt aspiration. And one of the most .suited to our circumstances is, surely, the Aufera nobis; for, if the Church's practice is a safe and sure norm, it is clear that the removal of sin from the soul is one of the best approaches to the holy of holies, that "throne of grace" (Hebrews 4:16) w, here we may "obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." The reader of this brief exhortation to use the missal as a quarry for private prayer is, of course, aware that, in dealing with the Aufera r~obis, Lhave made free use of what biblical scholar~ call "the accommodated sense." No one acquainted with the missal will find anything ~trange°in this: for, as a matter of fact, the Church herself takes ample liberties with Scripture texts in composing the formularies for the various Masses throughout the year. Words found in the Scripture~ in their literal sense hre freely wrested by her from the original context and applied to the varying needs of the ecclesiastical calendar. The Aut:er a nobis has a definite place and purpose in the Mass; but we are allowed to use the same words in any sense that they may bear in the special circumstances of life in which we may find'ourselves. The missal is the Church's official prayerbook. n.ot every one of us follow the ~xample of the Church and make it his favorite prayerbook forall his private needs? OUR CONTRIBUTORS F.~ANCIS B. I~ONNELLY is. Professor of Canon Law at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception, Huntington, Long Island, New York, and Defender of the gond in.the Tribunal of the Diocese of Brooklyn. JAMES A. KLEIST is Professor of Classical Languages at St. Louis University and Editor of The Classical Bulletin. The remaining'four contributors to this issue are members of the Theological Fac- "ulty at St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas: CLARENCE MCAULIFFE and AUGUSTINE KLAAS are Professors of Sacramental Th, eology; LEO A. CORESSEL and CYRIL VOLLERT, of Dogmatic Theology. 317 The Con!:ribu!:ion ot: Religious t:o Ca!:holic Ad:ion Francis B. Donnelly ALETTER addressed in 1936 by the then Secretary of State, Cardinal Pacelli (now of course our present Holy Father), to the Superior Generals of all reli-gious communities throughout the world has never received in this countr3i the'attention and the ready compliance that it certainly deserved. Its publication in this issue (pp. 326- 328) will ~erve, therefore, to acquaint our American reli-gious with its contents and to inspire them to respond to the appeal it makes to them. For a careful reading of the letter will convince all religious, and especially teaching religious, that the promotion of Catholic Action is their concern and their responsibility, a duty we may presume they would not wish to ignore or to evade. Two earlier articles in the REVIEW [:OR RELIGIOUS treated of certain practical directions for Catholic Action; they told bow an apostolic program might be carried out.1 This article has a more fundamen.tal purpose (only touched upon in the earlier articles) : to convince all religious, par-ticularly those engaged in teaching, that their active col-laboration with CatholicAction is not only desirable, but demanded. This will be established.by analyzing the con-tents of the above letter, bringing out its full. implications. and adding some further details from other official pro-nouncements on the Subject. Why All Religious Should Assist Having placed great confidence in Catholic Action as an 1Cell Technique of Catholic Action by Albert S. Foley. "S.J. (May 15, 1943: pp. 164-175); Leadership in Cathol& Action by Youree Watson, S.J. (S~ptembCr 15, 1943: pp. 312-326). 318 THE CONTRIBUTION OF RELIGIOUS TO CATHOLIC ACTION effective means of restoring all things in Christ, the Pope has had these hopes justified by the reports .of its progress and success. He knows that religious contributed much to. this advance. And .being. desirous"that the movement of Catholic Action ~hould .spread an'd develop everywhere, he now seeks the cooperation, of alt religious throughout the entire world. The papal idea of Catholic Action has proved workable and practical; it has stood the test of experience. Now let it be taken up everywhere--with the valuable help of religious. Responsibility 6~: Superiors Since religious have henceforth a new dut~r to discharge, they must be instructed in its requirements. This calls for special courses of study, at least-to the degree that would prepare religious t6 iinspire and even train the faithful for the apostolate of Catholic Action. Thei~ will be reason and opportunity, we might add, to impart a more intensive knowledge of its principles to young religious at the time they are being trained for their future work. Cardinal Lepicier/as Prefect of the Congregation for' Religious (in a letter of June 27, 1930 regarding the assistance to b~ given Catholic Action by Italian religious), directed that al! teaching religious shoflld be instructed in the nature. statutes, and regulations of Catholic Action, and that in addition a limited number should be given a more specia!- ized training, but entirely in keeping with their calling as educators of Catholic youth. This is a program that all Communities might well follow. Superiors may also cooperate With Catholic Action by aiding it to give the necessary formation to its members. Cardinal Lepicier, in the letter referred to, thanked Italian religious for opening their houses to Catholic Action mem-bers for days of study, for retreats, and for other exercises. 3 19 FRANCIS B. DONNELLY Review for Religious Such evidence of interest and charity is particularly desirable in the pioneer days of a Catholic Action movement, since its organization will at that time lack facilities of its own. Of course, this kindness Will entail certain inconveniences for religious, but it is by such sacrifices that the body of Christ will increase (1 Cot. XII: 17-26). Preachers and Retreat-Masters One specific way in which religious priests may pro.- mote the lay apostolate is through their' preaching-- awakening the faithful to their responsibility for the salva-tion of sbuls and helping them to prepare for the aposto-late. But it will be in their conferences and retreats to the diocesan clergy that religious preachers will be able to do most for the cause of CatholicAction. Having become fully acquainted themselves with its aims and principles, they will be in a position to speak on the subject knowingly and authorit~atively. It will be their duty to set forth clearly the grave obligation incur~bent upon the clergy to foster Catholic Action as one of the their main pastoral duties. Certainly we can expect that, on the occasion of a ,retreat or day of recollection, diocesan priests can be stirred most effectively to a greater willingness to respond to the urgent ~all of the Popes, to clear their minds of prejudice and misunderstanding about the subject, and to use every means possible to seek and to train auxiliary apostles whose burning .desire is to bring Christ into their world. Invaluable Aid o[ Teaching Religious Religious will aid Catholic Action best by educating youth for it and in it. There is no more fertile soil than youth in which to sow the seed of apostolic action. Reli-gious are the educators 6[ Catholic youth, at least as far as formal education is concerned. And Plus XI, repeatedly, insisted that formation in the apostolic spirit (a specific 320 September, 194~ THE CONTRIBUTIOI~ OF RELIGIOUS TO CATHOLIC ACTION objective of Catholic A~tion) is an essential part .of educa-tion in'our day, a complement of formal education. That means it must not be left out of the modern program of Catholic education. Preparation for the Future And why is it so important? First, because itl gives greater assurance that the° students trained for the aposto-late will begin, immediately, to live a truly .Christian life. a life of real devotion. For to try to conquer others for- Christ is the strongest stimulus to conquer oneself. Religion in life becomes a matter of intense conviction. The student makes his daily life an actual test in Christian living, with-out direct dependence upon the authority of the school and its teachers. He learns to stand on his own feet as a ChriS tian and to influence tl~ose around hi~. Are not all the labors and sacrifices of Christian education meant to achieve just that? Besides, this apostolic training is the greatest gift reli-gious can bestow upon their pupils. What can surpass the privilege of becoming intimately associated with the ,priestly ~ipostolate, sharing in the' great good it does for mankind? In the mind of the Holy Father such collabora-tion is a special grace. He has not hesitated even, on another occasion, to dignify the official call to Catholic: Action as a true vocation inspired by a singular divine grace. Is it not a blessir~g for a'religious to be allowed to sow the. se~d of that vocation? The wise educator, whose vision extends beyond syllabus and examinations, will not b~ unmindful of this. He will se~ Catholic Action as a w, ay to develop a Christian conscience in youth, to awaken .a generosity that too often lies dormant. He will envision: the in,caluable aid that the Church will receive in the future, the great increase of laborers in the vineyard. He will know ~321 FRANCIS B. DONNELLY Reoieto [or Religious that the school is fulfilling its mission. In a word, prepara-tion for life as a Christian calls for training in Catholic Action. For to be a Christian now, one must.be an apostle. TheGood or: the School Itself But the educator need not judge the matter merely from the viewpoint of the individual student and his future. Let him see it from the pbint of view of the school, whose interests are his primary concern. Will not every educat6r who is honest with himself admit that his influence .upon students is limited: by his own shbrtcomings; by the frictions of everyday contact; above all, by the barrier that many students, particu!arly 'those whose need is greatest. set up between themselves and even the most understanding of their teachers? .Is not, l~herefore, an added influence necessary inevery school--the influence of students upon one another? Such influence will be exerted, no matter what the teachers say or do. Ought it not be channeled arid made to serve the cause of Christ? .Cardinal Pacelli's letter, therefore, goes on to say that the. apostolic training given to students who are well-disposed will redound to the benefit of the entire student-body. There will be the force of concerted good example. Added to this will be the deliberate, planned effort by the "student apostles to win over (l'azione conquistratrice are the words used in the letter) the lukewarm among their-daily companions. This itself will provide a rich experi-ence in the apostolate, with the r~sult that school life wil! become a real preparation for work in Catholic Action during ?vacations or after graduation. It is training such as this that .will later enable students to withstandthe many formidable evils of modern life, to which all too often graduates of Catholic schools have succumbed, to the great sorrow of their former teacher~. Having been taught to 322 ~epteraber, 1945 THE CONTRIBUTION OF: RELIGIOUS TO CATHOLIC ACTION view life critically, to see. its defects, to rise above the level of accepted standards, students schooled in the apostolate will not later lack the courage to be light to the world and salt to the earth. They are not apt to disgrace the school and its teachers. Practical Measures Th~ above considerations should lead to definite results. The first of these is the establishment of Catholic' Action group.s within the school, "internal associations," as they are called in the letter. A new activity with its own special objective necessitates a distinct organization,, and this,, the letter points out, has alr~'ady been recognized in a number of schools. Pius XI on several occasions urged such a step, not only in universities and public schools, but in every secondary school and house of education (letter to the Hierarchy of Colombia, February 14, 1934) and even in elementary schools and academies:. "train boys and girls for it from earliest youth in their schools and academies" (letter to the. Brazilian Hierarchy, October' 27, 1935). Pius XII takes for granted that Catholic Action units will be formed in educational institutions, though he rightly insists they enter the schooi with due discretion and reserve, seeking only to give greater impetus to the apostolic life of the school (address to Italian Catholic Action-, September 4, 1940). In view of these various pronouncements, there can be little doubt but that the Holy See desires real, active Catholic Action groups in all Catholic schools.2 There is also need of coordinating this new work with the religious activities already being carried on in. the school. Pious societies already established are not.be displaced or de-emphasized, but rather to continue and to grow in °The £rticles already dited providevaluable suggestions for starting this activity. A recent publication will also prove very helpful: Geissler, Traininq of Laq Leaders (The Apostolate Press, South Bend, Ind.). 323 FRANCIS B. DONNELLY Revietv for Religious accord with their specific purpose.However, as otga~niza-tions~ they are not to stand apart from Catholic Action. They~ must openly and generousl~ assist its apostolate: by prayer, by emphasizing its importance, and even. by encour-aging their own' members to become part of it. Alumni groups, particularly, should put' themselves at the° service of Catholic Action and come under its influence. It will do much to keep alive in them the lessons of a Christian education., ,Spiritual Backing .of All Religious Every vital activity within the Mystical Body, eizen that of private prayer, adds strength to the whole Body. For this reason each religious can, promote th~ cause of Catholic Action immeasurably by his own con.stant prayer and by inducing all underhis care or influence ~o pray for its success. By the power of prayer every member of the Church, each in his own place and in conformity with-his vocation, can participate in the great campaign to.restore all things, all of life, in Christ. Even contemplative religious (as Cardinal Lepicier observed in his letter) should offer their prayers and their sacrifices for this all-important work. Fruits of Collaboration bg Religious By aiding Catholic Action, which is so dear to the. heart Of the Pope, religious will once again l~ave proved .their loyalty to Christ's Vicar, answering his urgent call, as they have so often done in the past, promptly and generously. And this time they will respond at an hour that is critical for mankind and.especially for youth. By their collabora-tion they will give evidence of the expanse of their charity for Christ and souls, uniting in complete solidarity with the diocesan clergy to spread the Kingdom of Christ. A whole new field is thereby opened to the zeal and generosity of religious. 324 September, 1945 THE CONTRIBUTION OF RELIGIOUS TO CATHOLIC ACTION But, as is true of~all that is done for God and,His Church, there will be a return,.a recompense. It is good to emphasize this so as to allay any fear that encouraging the young to prepare for an apostolic life in the world might turn some from the priesthood or the religious life. Of course, anyone who really believes that the Pope e~njoys divine guidance in the government of the' Church would hardly concede that a program enjo!ned by him so repeat-edly and so vigorously could have such a deleterious effect. But it is i~evertheless reassuring for all religious to know ¯ that, instead of fearing such a consequence, they .might rather expect an increase in religious vocations. Cardinal Lepicie~r gave assurance of that: "they will obtain new vocations f.or their communities, as we have already had the pleasure of witnessing." In his encyclical on The Catholic "Priesthood, Pius XI himself testified to the benefits that Catholic Action would confer upon the priesthood and the religious life. On ~the one hand, Catholic Action would promote vocations to the priesthood as one of its primary duties. On the other hand, as a reward for these efforts, Gbd Would "prepare and ~all very many from [its] youth groups for both clergies [diocesan and religious]. This is added evidence that Catholic Action can rightly .be com-pared to a fertile soil in which every kind of virtue can be found, or better still to a well-sheltered and cared fornur-sery where even the more fragrant and delicate flowers bloom free from all danger." Suggested Course of Studtl The following.is offered as a plan of study in colleges, normal schools, or summer schools for religious to educate them in the func-tion and program of the lay apostolate: 1. The Need for Catholic Action: to solve the great problem of our day--~secularization; Christ is dethroned in His world; He is, losing it! A review of the evils condemned°by the Popes in their 325 DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE . Re~2iew for Religious ~ncyclicals and other messages, 'v.g., oil Christian Marriage, Christian Education, Reconstructing the Social Order (Quadragesimo Anno)~ Atheistic Communism, Motion Pictures, Present ~7orld Order (Summi Pontificatus), letter to the American Hierabchy (Sertum Laetitiae). Modern youth problems. 2. The Plan of Catholic Action: theory and guiding principle.s. The necessary material may be gathered from: Directibes/:or Catholic Ac-tion (Centra,1 Bureau Press, St. Louis); What Does the Pope Sa~l About Catholic Action (Pellegrini, Sydney, Australia) : Con/:erences on Catholic Action, Introduction to Catholic Action (both N.C. W.C. publications); Civardi, Manual o/: Catholic Action; Lelotte, Fundamental Principles of Catholic Action (Fides, Montreal). 3. Catholic Action Methods: .specialization in approach; successffil techniques; relationship of priests and religi.o.us with Catholic action; inculcation of the apostolic spirit. The following publications will provide information; Geissler, Training of Lay Leaders; Roy, The docist Movement (JOC, Manchester, N. H.) ; The Young Christian Workers (Burns Oates). Further help can be derived from contact-with the YCS at Notre Dame: YCW groups in Chicago, Rochester, San Francisco, New York, Montreal; The Grail (Loveland, Ohio). Decisions o[ I-toly See sent by the Cardinal Secretary of State to the Superiors of all Religious Communities Well known to Your Reverence are tl~e lively hopes which the Holy Father places in Catholic Action as a means to'the Christian restoration of society and the great comfort afforded him. by the news coming, even from missionary lands, as to its continued growth and the inestimable benefits which the Lord produces by means of it~ A cause of special consolation has been the generc;us spirit with which certain Orders and Religious Congregations, both of men and women, have put their members at the'service of Catholic Action, who by writing, speaking, and active assistance have helped its growth and assured its success. The August Pontiff himself has had to 326 September, 1945 DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SIEE express his approval and satisfaction on .many occasions; and, in a letter to the Bishops of Brazil last October, he even voiced the hope that the help given by religious communities "w~uld be greater and more extensive than that 6f any other." . This will certainly be so if, as urged 'in that important document; special courses of study are instituted to prepare religious for thes~ new tasks in order that by .theirt preaching and manifold works of zeal the faithful may be inspired, and trained for the apostolate of Catholic Action. Since bne of the outstanding cofitributions of reli-gious is their preaching to the clergy especially during retreats, it is to be expected that, being thus better prepared, they will be able to inculL care expertly and authoritatively together with" the discharge of other priestly obligations the duty of Catholic Action--a.duty that the Holy Father, as early as his first encyclical, has declared to be "among th~ principal responsibilities of a pastor of souls." But assuredly no less valuable will be the help given by religious (under the the most favorable condition~) in the education of youth, which is for the most part under their direction. The" August Pontiff has insistently declared on various occasions that training in the apostolic spirit (the specific function of Catholic Action) is an essential element of education in these modern times, a strong safeguard of the Christian life; that moreover it is a special grace to be called .to an apostolate so closely associated with that of - the priesthood. A wise educator cannot forget:that; otherwise he would be limiting the horizons of good that should be opening before the generous souls of youth, he would be depriving the Church of precious auxiliaries, and he would scarcely attain all the purposes c~f a truly Christian education. On the other hand, this tr~iining contributes to the improvement of the school itself. No one can deny the incalculable good that will come from the mutual good example of students, from the activity of winning over more careless students, from the effort to transform the every-day life of. the school into a more active preparation for the work that the students will undertake in Catholic Action organiza-tions during vacation or after graduation. Thus they will be found much better equipped to overcome the many grave dangers ~of modern social life, to which, as is well known, youth educated in a Catholic school have often been victims. For these very weighty reasons the Holy Father has in the pas~t recommended the establishment of Internal Associations, such as are 327 DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE ReVieW [or Religious happily flourishing in a ~umber of institutions, and also that the .pious societies already under the care of religious be stimulated "to offer to Catholic Action their, providential, assistance: by prayer, by making known the excellence, the" necessity, the advantages of Cath-olic Action, by exhorting and guiding their own members to it. This is especially desirable for organizations and societies that unite young people for the purpose of preserving the fruits of a Christian educa-tion.'" (Letter of His Eminence, Cardinal Pacelli, Secretary of State to His Holiness, addressed to Commendatore Augusto Ciriaci, Presi-dent of, Italian Catholic Action, March 30th, 1930). If, then, good religious not only will' endeavor to direct their own prayer to this great objective, but strive also to persuade and induce those under their spiritual care to pray for Catholic Action and enroll in it, then indeed their cooperation will be complete, and copious blessings Will redound to Catholic Action and in fact to the whole Church. By conforming to these directions, [eligious will continue their glorious tradition of a generous readiness to respohd t.o the needs of souls and to the wishes of the Vicar of Christ at a time so hazardous for youth, beset as it is by many enemies, ~specially that of Communist propagand'a. It will be an~ act of unexcelled charity to coilaborate in'complete solidarity with the sec6lar clergy }or the spread of the Kingdom of Christ, which is the constant aspiration of the August Pontiff. With the certainty that this rich promise of good will become a cdnsoling reality, ~the Holy Father imparts to all superiors and mem-- bers.of this religious coinmunity the Apostolic Blessing as an expres-sion of his gratitude and as a pledge of heavenly graces. Meanwhile, on my part, I add my best wishes for the happy out-come of this desired collaboration in such a h61y work, taking this ~ccasion to express my sentiments of special regard. March 15th, 1936. Most devotedly in the Lord, E. Card. Pacelli. 328 The Indwelling ot: !:he l-loly Spirit: Leo A. Coressel, S.J. WE RELIGIOUS are hardly as ill-inst~ructed as were certain Ephesians of St. Paul's day. Whenasked by the Apostle if they had received the Holy Spirit, they answered: "We have not so much as beard whether there be a Holy Ghost" (Acts of ~the Apostles 19:2). But it is to be feared that the indwelling of tile Holy Spirit is not realized and appreciated as it ought to be. Thi~ is one of the most inspiring truths of our faith. Yet We lose sight, of it in our busy and active lives. Our awareness of it almost reaches the vanishing point so that in actual practice, if riot in knowledge, we are not too far from the ignorance dis-played by the men of Athens: "But Paul standing'in the midst of the Areopagus, said: Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in/ill things you are too superstitious. For passing by, and seeing your idol~, I found an althr also, on which was written: To the unknown God. What therefore you wor-ship, without knowing it, I preach to you." (Acts of the Apostles 17:22-24.) . Is the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, in %ur very souls, an Unknown God? This article proposes to set down a few fundamental considerations on this sublime truth. It hopes to bring into clearer focus a truth that can be a help to our recollection, an encouragement to our work, a con-solation in time of need. The Holy Spirit does aktually dwell in the souls of those who are in thestate of grace. Of this there can be no doubt. The revealed word of God is I~oo plentiful and too forceful .to call this truth into question. To quote only a 329 LEO A. CORESSEL Review [or Religious few striking passages from Sacred Scripture: "Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God; and you are not your own?" (1 Corinthians 6:19). And.again: "Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16). We have just heard that the Holy Spirit is not merely in us, but that He dwells in us. The reason of this is tha.t dwelling in a place is quite distinct from being there. He who dwells in a house is said to have his treasure there, a fact that is not at all true~ of one whomerely is in a house. The treasu/e of the Holy Spirit is the gifts of grace, which He has lavisl~ed on us in preparing a worthy habitation for Himself. By His gifts of grace, He expelled the darkness of sin and regenerated us unto God so that we share the divine nature, are adopted sons and heirs of eternal life, His friends, an~t bretl~ren of the Incarnate Word. We are also said to be temples of the Holy Spirit. This is so because he in whom the Holy Spirit dwells is holy ~'nd consecrated to. the pra.ise, glory, and service of God in the same manner as a temple is a holy place, consecrated to God and His pbaises. In thi~ connection, .St. Paul says: "Bui you are not in the flesh, but in the spit!t, if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in you" '(Roma.ns 8:9). We must now try to come to some und, erstanding of the indwelling. A beginning can be made by.setting down what it is not. 'The indwelling is not a m~re psychological presence of God induced by a spirit of recollection and prayer. This latter is enjoyed by those who .are conscious that God is present to them in their prayers and w~rks; that He hears them and speaks to them; that He is ur~ited to them;, that they, on their part, act under the influence of H~.s presence. Such a presence of God, though excellent and praiseworthy and generally attained only after long and 330 ~epternber, 1945 THE INDWELLING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT arduous practice, is not ~:he indwelling of which we are speaking. This indwelling is the actual, personal, sub-stantial presence of the Holy Spirit in the soul. Th~ indwelling must also be distinguished.'from Godls natural presence in every creature. That there is such a divine omnipresence is eloquently told us by the Psalmist:' "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thySac~e? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there: if I descend into hell, thou art present.- If I take .wings early in the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: Even there also shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me." (Psalm 138:7-10.) God is everywhere and in, everything. He is present in every creature: in the mountains, in the sea, in land and air: in plants, in animals~ in man, in angels. He is in sinriers, in the murderer,, and in the thief. He is in the pagan. "In Him we live and move and are," as St. Paul told the Athenians (Acts of the Apostles 17:28). This is a natural presence of God which is proper to Him by reason of His attribute of immensity. As distinguished from this natural presence, the in-dwe. lling of the Holy Spirit is a supernatural presence. It is had only in the souls of the just. It is a presence in a new If we now e~plore this "presence in a new way," new vistas of [hought will unfold themselves that will an~ply repay our efforts.' The task is. not too difficult. It can be reduced to a search for an answer to a single question: How, is the new way different from and superior to God's natural presence? In venturing onthis s.tudy, we can take no safer guide than the encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII on the H01y Spirit. From this document much enlightenment and solid doctrine can be drawn. After speaking of God's natural presence in all things, 33l for Rdi~iot~s ¯ the Pope' proceeds to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, We quote the very words of the encyclical letter: "Moreover God by grace resides in the.just soul as in a temple, in a 'most intimate and peculiar manner. From this proceeds that union of affection by which th%soul adh~eres most closely to God, more so than the friend is united to hismost loving and beloved friend, and enjoys God in all fulness and" sweetness." " From these words it is clear that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit means an intimate and special presence. The Holy Spirit and man are united more closely than friend with most cherished friend. Now such a presence is entirely different in manner fr6m the natural presence of God. In this latter presence God and man.are as two strangers.seated side by side in a trolley-bus. Thereis mutu~il presence but nothing more. There is no friendship linking the two together. ° But,you will ask, how can there be friendship between God and man.? Does not true friendship with another imply a certain equality with him? Man is a creature:, God is his. supreme Lord and Master: Man is finite and sinful; God is infinite and all-holy. Certainly there is not the slightest vestige of. equality between God and man~in the order of nature. Hence there is no friendship with God in His natural .presence. But by sanctifying grace man ,is raised to a certain share of divine nature. In this share there are sufficient .grounds for establishing friendship between God and man, It is for this reason that the Holy Spirit and man can be as:. friend with friend. Thus far the encyclical has told us of an indwelling of the H01y Spirit which is very different from God's natural presence. It now introduces us to a consideration that will require our closest attention. It says in part that the won-derfuI union of man with the Holy Spirit differs "only in 332 September, 1945 THE INDWELLING OF THE HOllY SPIRIT degree or state from that with which God beatifies the saints in heaven." To grasp this :sbe.ming!y bold statement, we must understand that the gifts of grace of this llfe are already the beginnings and the first-fruits of the glory to come~ We have this from Sacred Scripture itself. In St. Paul's Epistle~ to the Ephesians, it is stated their the Hol~r Spirit "is the pledge of our inheritance, unto the redemption of acquisition, unto the praise of his glory" (1:1'[). The word "pledge" should not be taken in the sense in which it is used in community orCatholic.drives for mgney. In the latter case it signifies a signed staterfient certifying the promise of financial assistance within a certain length of ¯ time. Nor dOeS the word mean an ordinary I 0 U, which is returned when cash payment is made. Rather it is to be understood as a sum of money which, is a first installment, an earnest of full payment to be made at some future time. Now the Holy Spirit, who is given ,in-this life, is not a pledg~ ~to be exchanged for something else. He is the ear-nest, thefirst installment, already given in anticipation of the final and complete blessedness that has been promised and preioared for us. A ~ognate idea is contained in the Epistle to the Ro-mans: "And not only it [irrational nature], but ourselves also,who have the~ first-fruits of the Spirit, ~ven we our-selves groan within ourselves" (8:23). In his classic work on grace, Fr. Lange.comments on these words of St. Paul as follows: First-fruits in general are the first produce of a field which is offered to God so that the entire crop. may be consecrated to Him. As used by the Apostle of the~Gen-- tiles; first-fruits are to be understood either as ~he first-fruits of the .gifts of the Spirit.given in this life, the remainder of which are to be given in the next, or as the first-fruits whicl~ is the Holy Spirit Himself, who is how given to us as an earnest of the fulness of what is to come. In either case some 333 LEO A. CORESSEL Review for Religiou.~ beginning is signified which already cbntains and represents that which follows. This summary study o~ two scriptural citations should throw into clearer light the words of the encyclical already observed. There, it will be recalled, the Holy Father stated that the vionderful union of man with the Holy Spirit-differs only in degree or state from that with which God beatifies the saints in heaven. That is to say: the same God is possessed" and enjoyed both by the blessed in heaven and by us wayfarers on .earth. But this possession and . enjoyme.nt is bad by each in a different degree. By the bles-sed. in heaven it is had in the beatific vision: by the just on earth, through faith and,the love of friendship. Although this difference separates heaven from ear'h, it willnot seem too great if we bear in mind that the love of friendship by which we are united to God on earth is the very same kind a~ that enjoyed by the blessed°in heaven. Of course, it will :be ~ncreased immeasurably i.n heaven, where the limitations of faith no longer act as a drag on the fervor of love. Yet Withal, the love of vision and of faith are essentially the same. The difference is not one of kind but of intensity. Such in brief are a few fundamental considerations on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.He is not merely present to the jUSt so'u1. He actually dwells therein as in a temple. He and man are not as strangebs, but united by the bondsof friendship. By reason of the indwelling, man already pos-sesses the beginnings of the final, and complete, blessedness that God has prepared for those who remain faithful to Him until the end. These elements of the indwelling are the minimum essentials, as it were, common to all who are .in the state of grace, and without which there is no ,in-dwelling. To what extent additional elements enter into the indwelling, is a matter on which theologians are not in agreement. But there can be no doubt that the union of 334 September, 1945 THE INDWELLING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT the soul with the Holy Spirit is intensified according to the measure of spiritual progress: It remains for us now to indicate the activity of the Hol,y Spirit in our souls, and our own response to it. In doing so we shall make abundant use of the stirring thoughts proposed in'the encyclical letter. The Holy Spirit is supremely active in the s~)ul in which He dwells. This will .not be surprising in view of His personal character,as, Subsistent Love. Now 'love, if it. is true love, is active. It expresses itself in giving. For this reason a great outpouring of divine.gifts is a conse-quence of the indwelling. "Among these gifts are those secret warn.ings and invitations, which from time to time .are excited in our minds and hearts by the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. Without these there is no beginning of a good life, no progress, no arriving at .eternal salvation." These words should be tremendously significant to us. If we wish to make progress in our spiritual lives, if" we wish to attain eternal life itself, we stand in need of the good offices of our ,Divine Guest. N~t only does the Holy Spirit invite and inspire us to good, He also endows us with gifts which are in a special way attributed to Him and are called the oilers of the Holy Spirit. These gifts strengthen the soul so that it is able to obey the divine voice and .impulse more easily and promptly. ,They are so excellent that they can lead men to the highest sanctity. They encourage us to seek after and attain the evangelical Beatitudes. Christ calls those blessed who prac-tise virtue in the more excellent way of the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor.in spirit" for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek . Blessed are they their mourn . " (Matthew 5:3-10.) They who live 'the Beatitudes have attained the heights of spiritual activity, ~vhich not only indicates giant strides toward~ eternal LEO A. CORESSEL beatitude, but which also is, even in this life, a foretaste of the same. Lastly, under the influehce of the gifts, we can attain the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Twelve such are enumerated by St. Paul: "But the fruit of the Spirit is, charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longa: nimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity'" (Galatians 5:22-23). The fruits are those acts of virtue which fill the soul with joy by reason of the relish and per-fection with which they are performed. Truly, the Holy Spirit pours out lavishly of His graces -and giftS. His is a divine activity surpassed only by Him-self as the first Gift to us. In view of all this, our personal respon.se cannot fall short .of very great love of Hi/n, of fervent prayer to and confident invocation of" Him. We should love Him because He is God. We should love Him "because He is the substantial, etern~l, primal Love, and nothing is more lovable than love." This love_will, in turn, incite us to acquire a fuller knowledge of the Holy Spirit.°.For, as St. Thomas says, the lover is not content With a superficia~ knowledge of the beloved, but strives to inquire intimately into all that pertains to the beloved and thus to penetra'ie into the iriterior; as is said of the Holy Spirit,' who is the Love Of God, that He searches even the profound things of God.1 We should pray to andinvoke.the Holy gpirit. We stand in need of light to supply our deficiencies of heavenly wisdom. Our strength too frequently is overcome by weakness.Consolations are needed to buoy us up in time df trouble. We must strive for holiness, yet we are ever prone to sin. In the Holy Spirit we can find an ever-fl.owing f6unt ,oi~ light, strength, consolation, and holiness, for He is the pledge of our inheritance. He is our divine, indwelling Guest. He is God, . 1Surama Tl~eologica 1-II, q. 28, a. 2. 336 We Died wit:h Christ: Cyril Volle.rt, S.J: EVERY Catholic knows that Jesus Christ died on the cross to redeem mankind. ¯ . The fact itself is incontestable: ~he Son 'of God, made man, actually did offer His life for our salvation. By 'His death He freed us from the tyranny of sin, restored us to the state of God's children, and made eternal happiness accessible .to us." But how. are we to account for this fact? A re'al diffi-culty challenges us, For, after all, He who died xvas not the sinner. How could His suffering, even though H~ is the Son of God, be profitable for us? .What is the connection between His death and our d~liverance from sin? No one need be embarrassed if he finds himself unable to supply an altogether.satisfactory answ.er to this ques, tion. "Surely," remarks the Catechism of the Council of Trent, "nothing is so far beyond the reach of human reason as the mystery of the cross." After centuries ot~ speculatioh, theology has not yet succeeded'in formulating an explana-tion of the redemption with such clarity as to be acceptable to all theologians. Many theories have been proposed. But examin~ition and study show that if any of them is pushed too far or is advocated with narr6w partisanship to the exclusion of other points of view, it will eventually lead to untenable positions or at least will neglect some aspect of reve~iled truth. Very ancient is the ransom theory, adcording.to which Christ. has purchased us or bought'us back. Obviously, there isl question here of a metaphor, but a metaphor which is thoroughly scriptural. The Son of man came '.'to give 337 CYRIL VOLLERT Reo[etu for Religious His life a redemption [ransom] for many" (Mt. 20:28). St. Paul repeats several times: ','You are bought with a great price" (I Cor. 6:20). The price in question is the blood of the Savior, as St. Peter states with emphasis: "You were not redeemed with corruptible things, as gold or silver. . but with the precious blood of Christ" (I Pet. 1" 18 f.). Similar texts conveying the notion that the Son of God has acquired or purchased us are not rare. The sacred writers refrain from urging the metaphor t6o far. The figure is useful for expressing the great truth that Christ has redeemed us in the general sense that He has~ wrought our salvation. There is no actual transfer of a price in the literal sense of the word: Price, in thiscontext, can signify only some burdensome task which the Savior has undertaken. The ransom th.eory does not advance us very far in ou'r endeavor to perceive bow the death of Christ has brought about the. remission of our sins and our resto-ration to God's favor. An explanation that has appealed to some Catholic theologians, and is .very popular among Protestant schol-firs, is the theory of penal substitution, according to Which Jesus, the innocent, underwent the punishment decreed :against us, the guilty. " The scriptural foundation for this view seems to be the touching prediction concerning the future Messias: "He was Wounded for our iniquities, He was bruised for our sins; the chastisement of, our peace was upon Him, and by His bruises we are healed" (Isaias 5.3:5). Our Savior, too, said that He had come "to give His life a redemption for many." Ifi this text the Greek preposition translated "for" means "in place .of," or "instead." But elsewhere throughout the Bible whenever the statement occurs that Christ died. t'.or us, t:or all men, ~:or sinners, and the like, the wbrd "for" invariably signifies "ir~ behalf of," or "'for our benefit." 338 Sept'~mber, 1945" WE DIED WITH CHRIST In any. case, the theory of penal Substitution, if unduly exaggerated, can easily lead toerror. One person can pay a debt for another: but an innocent person Cannot be pun-ished for a criminal Only a guilty pers.on can be truly punished. If suffering is knowingly inflicted upon an innocent man for a crime he did not commit, it is not pun-ishment but a gross violation of his rights. At the very least, the notion of substitution is deficient. It does no~ do justice to the teaching of revelation con-, ceming our redemption and require,s correctibn or comple-tion by dther ideas. A doctrine that goes far to supply the needed correction or completion is the theory of vicarious satist:action. Sin, which is a turning away from God and a violation of His honor, necessarily displeases God.° .To rid himself of sin, the sinner must retract his evil deed, and moreover,, if God chooses to insist upon justice, must offer to God a com-pensation which will please God at least as. much as the sin displeased Him. Since the sinf, ul race was unable to render such compensation, God in His love decreed that His own Son should become man and discharge man's obligation for him; and Christ didso willingly Out of obedience to His Father and love for usi The actions by which Christ redeemed us proceeded, indeed, from His human nature, His human' mind and will; .but inasmuch as that~human n'ature was truly His, the acts were performed by a divine Person, and so were infinitely pleaiing to God and abun-dantly compensated for all sin. Inthis case He who offered satisfaction is not the one who committed the sin; hence the satisfaction is vicarious. However, the critics of this doctrine point out that in the l~ist analysis atonement for an offense can be made only by the offender in person, or by someone who is so inti~ ~nately connected with the offender as to form. one moral 339 CYRIL'.VoLLERT Review for Religious persori with him. Some improvement ih the theory of vicarious sa'tisfa.ction is still possible; and many modern theologians believe theyhave found the key to the rigb~ understanding of the redemption in what they call the principle of solidarity. .For a hundred years and more solidarity, as an idea and a word, has done h~avy duty in the fields of economics, sociology, and .moral philosophy. "The notion was not new to theology; but the convenience and increas.ing popu-. larity of theword soon led to a new emphasis in specula-tions on the redemption. It is St. Paul above all who stresses the stroiig solidarity between.Christ and ourselves. He goes so far as to affirm:~ "Him; who knew no sin, He [God] hath made sin ~or us, that w.e might be made the justice of God inHim" (II Cor. 5:21) i Sin, Of course, is not ~ansferred from us to Christ. Our Lord is 'heither sin nor sinner; the very notion is abhor-rent. ~But He b~came a member of our race'and shared in our lot. ' Ou~ sin embraces Him as our head'and the r~p~re- Sentati~ve b~ore God of o'ur human nature. In the same way the justice of God is "not transferred from: Christ t6 us, liierally,'but is extended to us because of our Union with Him. The underly, iffg idea is not the substitution of one,, persoli for another, but Solidarit); between persons and their actions, ° 7Theref~re.the Apostle. could say in ~the same chapter: "If ond,died for all, then alldied."'1 The death of Christ l~ecomes our death. "We are a~sociated with Christ in'His death because we ar~ :one with Him at th~ instant H~ ~lies "for us. Here again the idea is not the substitution of.Christ for us',-but,rather our solidarity with Him. lTl3is is the proper rend.ering of the Greek, not: "then all were dead;" or "all be, came dead men," or "all 'l~ad died," as various English versions put it. Cf. Ferdi-nand Pr~at, S.vL, .The Theolofly oF St. Paul, II, 201-205. The Confraternity Version translates correctly. 340 September, 1945 WE. DIED WITH CHRIST Thus~ in the minds.of not a few modern theologians, the principle of solidarity tones down what. is extreme in other, theories, corrects what is faulty in them, and com-pletes what is deficient in them. It recognizes that each of them has elements of truth, bu't denies that any of them accounts for the whole truth. The ransom theory has points in its favor, for sin does make us debtors before God, and,we men were unable to discharge the debt. However, He who paysthe debt is one of, us, and so the human race meets its obligation through its representative. The theory of penal substitution is not without foundation, for our Savior. has indeed undergone suffering which He did not bring upon Himself. But some-thing more than simple substitution is indicated, for He who expiates our sins .by His death is our head, and hence. we, the" members, expiate in Him and through Him. The theory.of satisfaction is also correct, .but only if the idea of vicarious satisfaction is not insisted upon with narrow exclusiveness; for sin is atoned for only if the sinner has p.a, rt in the atonement. We have all died with Chri~st because He died for us all, Manifestly, we are united with the dying Christ only in the sense that He. died as our representative. But the point is that We were associated with Him at the moment He gave His life for us. The theory of redemption thus outlined is undoubtedly an advance over explana.tions which overlook or slight our solidarity with Christ. But theologians are a hardheaded lot. They are ever in quest of a more penetrating.insight into the data of revelation and are tireless in their efforts to achieve a clear statement of doctrine. Critical intellects are "not content with a mere mention and application of the "principle of solidarity.''2 Some schc~lars are not sure that :tSee especially E. Hocedez, S.3., "Nitre solidarit~ en 3.C. et en Adam," Gregori-anum, XIII (1932), 373-403. What follows in the present article draws heavily on this excellent study, which is an important contribution to the theology of the redemption. ~ 341 CYRIL VOLLERT Revietu [or Religions . solidarity is the right word, or even that solidarity i~ really a principle. At all events, they desire to know what is the ultimate basis of our association with the redeeming death of Christ. A mere natural so!idarity of race with the ¯ God-man is not enough; nor, it seems, can redemption, be explain.~d by appealing to a moral solidarity, understood in the sense of one person freely agreeing to offer compensation for others. Such bonds of union, even if taken togther, hardlylwarrant St. Paul's emphatic assertion: '.'If One died for all, then all died." A number of th~ Fathers ~f the Church concluded from. meditations on such texts tha~ some sort of identit~cation between Christ and us must, be acknowledged. St. Atha-nasius observes that we are saved by Christ because we ar~ bodily one with Him. St. Irenaeus does not hesitate to affirm: "We are reconciled with God in the Second Adam, beca~Js'e in Him we Ourselves are made obedient unto death." The teaching of tradition is well summed up in the terse ' doctrine of St. Thomas: "Head and members constit~ute, as ii Were,' on~ mystic person. And ~:hereforeChrist's sat-isfactionbdongs to all the faithful, inasmuch' as they are Hi~ members." The Angelic Doctor mentions the faithful explicitly; but since Christ has offered atonement for all men without exception, identification with the Savior in, the worl~ of satisfactionmust likewise extend to all. To get some i.dea of the nature of this identification, which'i~ so enormously advantageous for ds, we must go back to the very beginning, to God's eternal plan. and decree, whereby He chose Christ to be the head and repre-sentative of the human family.' "When the fullness of the time was come, God seht His Son. that He might redeem ¯ them whd were under-the law, that we might receive the adopiibn of sons" (Gal. 4:4 f.). By this appointment Christ was given an official position; He is the officially " 342 September, 1945 WE DIED WITH CHRIST designated¯ mediator between God and men; the ambassador. of God to us, and our representative at t~he throne of God. Because of what He is, the God-rhan is the :,Prince of the kings of the earth," th~ "King of kings, and Lord of lords." God has given Him royal power over all men that He may give eternal life to all (John 17:2). A king repre-sents his subjects. He acts in the name of all, and what he does in his official capacity avails for all. The relation between the king and his people does not result from any solidarity between them; rather, solidarity flows from the relation of subordination. More important still, Christ is the Officially consecrated Priest with the commission to represent God among men and to offer the Prayers and homage of mankind to God. "Every high priest taken from among men is ordained .for men in the things that appertain to God, that he may offer up gifts and sacrifices for.sins . Neither d0th any man take the honor to himself, but he tha~ is called by God, as Aaron was. So Christ .also did not glorify Himself, that He might be made a high priest; but He that said to.Him: Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee." (Heb. 5:1-5.) By His position as King and His.consecration as Priest, Christ is juridically identified with the ~human race. There-fore the official actions of Christ, ~he representative of man-kind in His universal kingship and priesthood, are morally the actions of the entire human race. The main factor in this identification is not a" solidarity of r~ice or sympathy, . but God's appointment of Christ. Solidarity is only a preliminary condition. ~ Another point must be noted. Christ's function as representative of the race is not based merely on the juridi-cal fact that God has designated Him as our head. Christ is not just a moral mediator between God and man, but a 343 CYRIL VOLLERT Review /or Religious physical mediator, for He is both God and man. This leads to a further identification between Christ and us. Because Christ has a human nature which is His own as literitlly as.our human nature is ours, He is truly a man, and the most perfect of men. Therefore even as man He is our model, or exemplary cause. Ore: duty is to grow.up to Him, to become perfect men, unto the full measure of the stature of Christ (Eph. 4:13). God wishes us "to be made conformable to the image of His'Son" (Rom. 8:29). Thus Christ contains all humanity .as the pattern contains all the objects that are to be reproduced according to its model. Our Lord is'also the crown of all creation arid the end or final cause of all men. God's purpose is "to re-establish all things in Christ" (Eph. 1 : 10) or, more exactly, to bring, all things to a head in Him, to gather all things together in subordination to Him as head. Therefore Christ is the supreme principle of unity in the world: for the end is the unifying principle of all things that are directed to the end. His right to act for men flows from His position at thesum-mit of the race. Such reflections on the various bonds that join us.to Christ enable us to gain-some insight .into the great and mysterious truth announced by St. Paul: "Christ is all, and in all" (.C01. 3" 11). The reason for this identity is that "'{lOU are all one in Christ Jesus". (Gal. 3:28). , The perfection of Christ's human nature gives rise to. yet another striking consideration. His human soul, even during His morthl life, was blessed with the beatific vision sb that, in seeing God face to face, His mind was filled With perfect and universal knowledge. Everything that ever was, is; or will be, was known to Him. His knowledge was never dormant, but was always active; nor did He have merely an obscure and general idea of the human race as a 344 ,.q~.l~tember, 1945 WE DIED WITH CHRIST whole, but knew intimately and in detail all epochs in the world's, history, and all men, with all their actions, their words, their dispositions, and their very thoughts., We of the twentieth century were, and each one of usas a distinct person, vividly present to His intellect. Our wanderings from God were perceived by Him, and they truly grieved Him; He beheld our good ~acts, and they made Him glad; and everytl'iing we ever did or will do had its effect upon His feelings and will. In a word, all men and every moment of their .lives were joined together in His mind, His love for us corresponded to His knowledge ot~ us. He was fully aware of the love the Father had for us in sending His Son into the world for our salvation, and He ratified this decree by an act of His human will. His love went out to all men; and "He loved them unto the end." This love was not a.vague sentiment of good-will for the human race in general, but was a burning love for each one of us in particular So that each one of us can say with simple truth, as St. Paul said: "He loved me, and delivered Him-self for me." Under the relentless pressure of this bound-less love Christ cast His lot in with us, He made our cause His cause, He identified Himself with us~, and He wil(ed to sha~e with us all that He possessed. These desires were His from the first moment of the Incarnation; and there-fore from the first moment of the Incarnation His Father looked upon Him as inseparable from the human family. For, as St. Thomas remarks, love so joins those who love that they'form, morally, but a single person. A~tonishing, when we reflect upon the matter, is the closeness of our relationship to Christ. He is King and High Priest, officially designated by God to represent us, so that His acts are accounted our acts. As exemplary cause He contains us; as final cause He is the principle of unity w~hich gathers us.up in Subordination tO Him. In His hni- 345 CYRIL VOLLERT Review for Religioas versal knowledge and His ardent love He embraces us all and receives us into His mind .and heart, so that in His intention He identifies Himself with all bf us and in His love He becomes one moral person with all of us. ¯ The word solidarity can'hardly support this tremen-dous weight of meaning. We must have recourse to a stronger term. For want of a better we might, perhaps, use the expression "mystical identity." Have we at length arrived at an adequate account of our redemption by Christ? Not quite; all this is but an ele-ment of the glorious truth. Numerous and intimate as are the ties of our oneness with the God-man, the mystical ideritit~r be(ween us and Him is no more than a condition prerequisite to the act which has achieved our salvation. Sacred ScriptU~e,.as well as the whole of tradition, ascribes our redemption to the passion and the death of Christ, to the sacrifice of the cross. 'On Calvary Christ, the eternal High Priest, represented the whole of mankind. All men were distinctly present to His mind and His heart. With His knowledge and His love He identified Himself with the entire sinful race, but in a special way with penitent,huma.nity, with all those who, down the ages, Would ratify the sacrifice offered for them by their own saintly lives. The sacrificial action of the High Priest was a social action, an action performed in the name Of all. Christ united all in His intention and included-all in the homage He rendered to God. One point remains. It is a point of capital importance and brings us to the apex of our identification with the ~edeeming Christ. In all sacrifices the victim oifered repre-sents the people and symboiizes the gift of their persons to God. The victim in the sacrifice 9f the cross is the ui~spotted, holy humanity of Jesus Christ in close union with the whole human race. "Christ died once for our- 346 September, 1945 WE DIED WITH CHRIST sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might offer us to God" (I Pet. 3:18). In offering His body tobe slain, our High Priest immolated sinful mankind that was identified with Him. The homage of love and adoration and obedience He held out to God in expiation and atonement for the sins of the world was the homage of the whole human family, head and members. This is why St. Paul could say: "If One died for all, then all died." This, finally, gives us some inkling of the mystery and enables us to understand, .with~ our cloudy, human thoughts, how the death of the sinless Christ could redeem us sinners. The loving oblation of the cross pleased God" more than all the sins of all men could displease Him. The divine jus-tice Was placated. God was prepared to readmit man to His friendship and was eager to accept the children of men as His sons when, in the sacrament of regeneration, they would channel off the fruits of the sacrifice to themselves and become, living members of His only Son. As for ourselves, Christ in His piercingly clear and com-prehensive knowledge associated all our good works, our~ expiations, and our Sacrifices" with His own great act of sac-rifice. The vast Church of the faithful was gathered together in His mind from all lands and all centuries down to the end of time and was offered to God in Him, the head of the mystical body. Our own good works and atone-ments cannot, of course, in any way enhance the merito- ¯ rious and satisfactory value of the sacrifice consummated .on Ca.lvary. For our good works are the fruits of that sacri-- rice, and no effect can influence its cause. But the good that we may do durihg our lives acquires a new value from the oblation made by Christ on the cross; for since He offered to God our persons and all our good actions, which in one way or another are the fruits of the graces He merited for CYRIL VOLLERT us, these actions,share in His sacrifice and take on a sacrifi-cial character. If we so will, eyery moment of' our lives, and above all that supreme instant of our lives w.hich we call death, can be made immeasurably precious for eternity by the contact, we maintain with the sacrificial death of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. BOOKLET NOTICES San Francisco Conference and Congress. This printed record of a radio round-table discussion describes the functions of Congress with regard to treaties and inter-national agreements and tells Of the careful work done by our State Department to secure general discussion and approval of the UNRRA and ultimate ratification of its work by the United State Senate. Fathers James L. Burke, S.J.,' James D. Sulli-van, S.J., and Thomas F. Fleming, S.J., took part in the original discussion. Pub-lished by:°Institute'of Social Order, 3742 .West Pine Boulevard, St. Louis 8, Mis-souri. Price: five cents. Words of Eternal Life. Selected and compiled by Rev. A. H. Goldschmidt, P.S.M. Using Christ's words almost ex~clusively, the author sets before us the basic teachings of the Gospel. The booklet has. values for all readers: 'religious could use many of the texts gathered here as subject matter for meditation. Published by: The. Pallottine Fathers, 5424 W. Bluemound Road, Milwaukee 13, Wisconsin. Paul to the Modern. By L. F. Cervantes, S,J. Many writers and public men have come .forth with "solutions" for the world's ills. The author of this booklet, which is a reprint of a chapter from the book That You May Live, discusses and refutes the claims of Morgan, Stalin, Mrs. Sanger, and others and then presents St. Paul with the true solution--the doctrine of. the Mystical Body put into prac-tice; Written in'a vivid, imaginative style, the pamphlet reads easily and holds the attention throughout. Published by: Guild Press, 128 E. 10th Street, St. Paul 1, Minnesota. Price: teia c~nts. ' To Be or Not to Be)a dew, and dews and You. "By Rev. Arthur B." Kly-bet. C.SS.R. In interesting conversational style the author discusses the existence of God, the Resurrection of Christ, and other topics in the first of these pamphlets, and in the second, such questioias as,.Was J~sus a Jew? Why Was Jesus crucified? Did'the Jews crucify Him? Though written primarily for Jews, these paml~hlets; especially the first, should have general interest. They may be obtained from the author at 1118 North Grand Avenue, (Rock Church), St. Louis 6, Missouri.' ¯ Price: ten cents each. The drive for candidates for the religious life is the inspi'ration for The Call of Charity, by the Sisters of Charity of Leavehworth; Xavier, Kansas, and Introducing the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, by The Fathers of" the Blessed Sacrament, 184 East 76th Street, New York 21, New York. Both of these booklets make effective use of photographs to bring home the story of the life and activities of the respective congregations. They should prove valuable in arousing the interest of prospective candidates. 348, ook Reviews WEA'PONS FOR PEACE. By Thomas P. Nbill. Pp. ix -t- 234. The Bruce Publishing Company Milwaukee, 1945. $2.50. Amid all the glib talk and the weighty statements of our days r.egarding the extension of "democracy" and the working out of "democratic" government and institutions in the conquered terri-tories," it is good to be reminded of the serious implications of such moves. True democracy, if it is to deserve the name and fulfill its promise, imposes careful thought and serious duties on evei'y citizen; it therefore calls for training in correct thinking and principles, for consistent and well directed activity. Towards this end the book here under review may be taken as an introduction and text book. The work consists of four unequal parts.i In the first the prob-lem of democracy is sketched, together with its relation to peace, and then the reason indicated for the state of unrest which has distin-guished the last ~enturie's. --The second part, which makes up about a third of the whole, gives a historical survey of the state of western society since the birth of the Renaissance and describes the philosophical, sociological, economic, and religious ideas which led up to our present disturbed condition. Through the Protestant revolt, the growth of the absolute states, the "Age of Revolutions," and the class struggles of the. industrial revolution, we are brought down to the disillusionment and scepticism of our own days. For many readers this part will probably be the most instructive and interesting in the book. --The stage is now set for a study Of various, solutions of the problem of peace, First Marxism and Nazism are evaluated as systems, then the. Christian teaching as ¯ authoritatively set forth in the, variou

Issue 3.1 of the Review for Religious, 1944. ; /'lfl~ No L no ecr j .I. " ~Pr~a~e~for Travelers -.Devotion ÷o the Holy Famil ¯ . Encyclical on the Mystical Body. G.~ Augustine Ellard . James A. Klelst , ~ ~UAIl~cjro . ~ ' Fr,~ncls J. McGarr!gle [ , :' Genuine~ Mysticism . Robert e. Communications. Book Reviews Oue~fic~ns Answered Decisions 6f .the H?ly See NUMBER RI::VII W :FOR :RI::LI .G,IOUS , VOLUME IIl JANUARY 15. 1944" NUMBER ! CONTENTS "IT IS NO LONGER I . . . "--G. Augustine Ellard. 8.J . 3 THE CHURCH'S PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS--James A. Kleist. S.J. 9 BOOKL~ET NOTICES~ ~: 17 THE DEVOTION TO THE HOLY FAMiLY--Francis L. Filas, S.J.18 THE FAMILY ROSARY . 24 RELIGIOUS AND THE ENCYCLICAL ON THE MYS;FICAL BODY-- Patrick M. ReRan. S.J . 25 L'ALLEGRO --- Francis 3. McGarrigle. S.J . 35 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . . 47 GENUINE MYSTICISM: WHAT SHOULD WE THINK OF IT?---: Robert B. Eiten. S.J . 48, COMMUNICATIONS (On Vocation) . SAINT TERESA OF AVILA--G. Augustine Ellard, S.2 . BOOK REVIEWS (Edited by Clement DeMuth. S.J.)-- Pius Xll on World Problems: A Book of Unlikely Saints; An American Teresa: The Best Wine; Men of Maryknoll: Maryknoll Mission Letters; Action This Day: Life with the Holy Ghost; Small Talks for Small People; God's Guests of Tomorrow . " BOOKS RECEIVED . 66, DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE OF INTEREST TO RELIGIOUS.,, 67 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- I. English Hymns at Benedic~io'n ¯ ,. " 68 2. Lighted Candles on,Side Altars during Benediction . ~. 68 3. Changing Constitutions of Pontifical Institute ' 68 4. Poverty and Private Stamp Collections . 69 5. A Hymn entitled "~e Matrem" . . 70 "6, Superiors and Confessors . ". " . 70 7. Use of Crucifix for Way of Cross .~. . 70, 8. Sale of Several Pieces of Property . 71 9. Posture of Faithful at Mass . 72 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, danuary, 1944. Vol. IIL No. 1. Published hi,, month'ly : January. March. May, July, September. and November at the Coliege Pre.~i~ 606 Harrison Street. Topeka, Kansas. b~' St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter 2anuary 15, 1942, at the Post Ot~ce, Topeka, Kansas, under the act of March 3. 1879. E ttonal Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.2., G. Augustine E11ard, S.J., Gerald Kelly', 8.2. Copyright. 1944. by Adam C. Ellis. Permission is hereby, granted forquotations of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price: 2 dolla, rs a y.ear. Printed in U, S. A. Before writing to us. p!ease consult ~notlce on Inside back cover. / Review t:or Religious ~ ~olume III January--December, 1944 Published at THE COLLEGE PRESS Topeka, Kansas Edited by THE JESUIT FATHERS SAINT MAR~'S COLLEGE St. Marys, Kansas "1t: Is No Longer I . . " G. Augustine Ellard, S.,J. ONE of the most magnificent and highly inspiring sentences in the writings of.St. Paul is the following" "With Christ I am n~ailed to the cross" it is no'longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me. So far as I live now ¯ in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered, himself for me (Galatians 2:20),I Among the ancient Galatians in Asia Minor to whom these words were first addressed, there must have been some who wondered what in the world St. Paul meant by them. It was evident that he had not been crucified with Jesus and ' the two thieves, and that he was still among the living and very"active in fact, anything but dead. Nor was it clear how it could be Said that Christ was livi.ng in him. There are--perhaps there are many--good Christians today who could repeat this proud boast of St. Paul with respect to themselves if only they understood it. But it seems so far from the truth to them that they feel that, whatever it means, it cannot be more tlsan some farfetched , oriental~igure of speech. Not understanding it, they can-not use it or draw inspiration from it. Perhaps.a brief consideration of the text will contribute to a wider under-standing of it, and open out .some of the immense inspira-tional possibilities that it contains. Baptism involves a certain mystical death, as well as the beginning of a new life. "Know ye not', that as many of us as were baptized unto Christ Jesus, we were baptized unto his death? We were buried therefore with him through this baptism unto death, that as Christ was raised ~New Testament texts in this article are from the Westminster Version. G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD Review' [or Religious from the dead thro.ugh the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life . For this we know, that our old man hath been crucified with him, in order that our sinful body may be brought to naught, and our-selves no longer.be slaves to sin . Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we.shall also live with him. Even thus do ye reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but living to God in Christ Jesus,' (Romans 6:3-11). Suppose that one of those old Galal~ians, after being a sinner "from among the Gentiles;"' was converted midw~ay through life, and that previously his moral character had :been that of a typical.pagan of those times. Then from birth he had been infected with the taint of origina.1 sin, and presumably, as the years progressed~ he added to that many p~rsonal sins of his own. Such was his old life, at. best alienated from God, and merely natural or human; and at the worst, quite sinful and corrupt. When he ~was converted and baptized, that kind of life came to anend. It gave way to a new form of life, that char]acteristic of the regenerated, engrafted, upon the true vine and vivified by it, incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ and vitalized by it, a'nd sharing in that participation of the divinit~y which leadsto life and bliss eternal in heaven, lD~uring his later years our ancient Galatian could say that his old moral and spiritual self had been replaced by a new one, given to him by Christ and regulated by Christ. In this minimum sense every Christian in the state of grace can say that he no longer lives his o~vn life, that is, a merely, natural and sinful one, the only life that is all his own, and that now Christ infuses into him somethi.ng of His supernatural and divine life. At least in the essentials of his moral and spiritual life,-hi~ judgments and attitudes of will agree with those of Christ. Of the circulation, so to speak, of the divine life-giving sap from the vine into 4 ~anuar~, I "'IT IS NoLoNGER I . . ." ¯ the branch, he cannot be conscious; of his deliberate assimi-lation of Christ's ways of thinking and willing he will of course be quite aware. In a much richer and more m~aningful sense the perfect Christian has ceased to live his own°old life, .and lets Christ live in him, determining, like a new vital principle, the .course of his activities. For with him "to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1 : 21 ). In the first place, the perfect Christian lets Christ guide his thoughts and judgments as completely as possible. "As a-man thinks in his heart, so is he." .He makes Christ's out-look upon all things his own. He has "the mind of Christ" (I Corifithians 2: 16). He appropriates the sentiments of Christ Jesus: "Let that mind be in you, ,which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). His ideas and views are. not those of the worldling, nor those of the mediocre Chris-tian who shows more or less of the secular mentality about him. His constantendeavor is that there be total harmony between his mind and that of Christ. His faith he makes as, full and vivid and realistic as possible, sharing thus i~ some sense in the vision, of Christ: "So far as I live now in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). He cultivates the intellectual virtues of Christ. In his wisdom heviews all things, persons, and extents in relation to God, and he tries to see them as God sees them. His prudence enables him promptly, and accurately to discern the divine plan and to decide practically what he should do in accordance with God's Wishes. In a word, he makes his own, as far as pos-sible, the mentality and ideology of Christ. Mindful of that supremely important practical prin-ciple of Christ, "Where thy treasure is, there shall thy heart be also" (Matthew 6:21), the perfect Christian will be careful above all about his value-judgments. He knows it G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD Review [or Religfous is these that the will tends to folloW. He will earnestly strive realistically to appreciate what Christ .values, and to regard all else as worthless or worse. Christ's hierarchy of values will become his. Like St. Paul, he w, ill be able to ¯ say: "But such things as were to my gain, these for Christ I have come to count as loss. Nay, more, I count all things loss by. reason of the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in l'Jim . that so I may know him,. what the power of his resurrection, what fellowship in his sufferings, and become one with him in his death, in the hope that I may attain to the resurrection.from the dead" (Philippians 3:7-11). In accordance with the mind of Christ and in opposition to the thoUght-fashions of the world, he will rate poverty as having a certain higher value .than wealth, humiliations as being better than honors, mor-tification as superior to gratification; and suffering as pref-erable to pleasure. Where Christ.finds truth, goodness, beauty, peace, beatitude, and glory for the infinite goodness of the Blessed Trinity, there also he will find his supreme values and aims. Judging and evaluating things according tothe stand- - ards of Christ will help the pe~fgct Christian to imitate Him also in His emotional or affective life: Feetin~l like Christ is a great and, tosome extent, a necessary, aid toward willing like Christ. He will strive to reproduce in himself as far as he can that happy emotional balance, harmony, and stability which characterized the interior of Christ. "Peace I leave to you, my peace I give to you: not as the worldgiveth, do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be dismayed" (Johni27). His likes and dislikes, his fears and hopes, his joys and sorrows ' Will follow the model set by the Heart of Christ. danuar~t. 1944 "'IT IS NO LONGER I'.'" It is most of all in the attitudes and activities of his ~¢ill that the Christian in whom Christ lives fully will manifest, as fa.r as is humanly possible, assimilation to Christ, union with Him, transformation into Him, and 'mystical identification with Him. Above all, he will let Christ determine his free actions. The norm according to which Christ Himself inflexibly chose or rejected was the will and plan of the Eternal Father: "I am come down from heaven, not tb do mine own will, but the will of him who sent me" (John 6:38) ; "My food is to do the will of him that sent me, and to accomplish his work". (Ibid. 4:34) : "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: yet not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matthew 26:39) : "The things that please him, I do.always" (John 8:29). The same norm will be the rule for one in whom Christ lives and whose moral and spiritual life He moderates. He lets Christ decide what he will decide: Christ's decisions he makes his own. The dominant influence in the will-life of Christ was a supreme and invincible love and charity for the Infinite Goodness. The same affection will completely absorb and control the will of one pe~:fectly identified with Christ. Christ's love extended from God to God's crea-tures, though tl~ey were little worthy of it; so will the love of one united with Christ. Charity to the Father led Christ to the most heroic obedience, "he humbled himself by obedience unto death, yea, hnto death upon .a cross" (philippians. 2:8). Complying with God's wishes, one whose life Christ informs and. guides will endeavor like-wise to show the utmost obedience. With all his interior acts thus dominated by Christ and made to resemble His, it is only natural that the exterior activity and work of the perfect Christian should also be like Christ's. "Ever we bear about in our body the dying of Jesus, so that the life, too, of Jesus may b~ made mani- ~7 G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD fest in our bodies. For we who live are ever belong- deliv-ered up to deatti for Jesus'. sake, so that the life, too,. of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh" ('II Corin-thians 4:10-11). In general, Christ's work was to glorify the Father and to save men by fulfilling the task which was assigned to Him. "I have glorified.thee upon earth, having accomplished the work which' thou hast given me to do" (John 17:4) ; "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (Ibid. 10:10). Christ went about teaching, helping others, and giving the noblest, example; He founded the Church; and finally He redeemed men to their super-natural destiny by.His sacrificial death on the Cross. His good disciple, whether priest or religious or layman, par-takes in that work and extends it. He carries on the teaching office of Christ, at least privately 'and by example. He eagerly seizes opportunties to give aid to hi~ neighbor. He helps with the work of the Church, perhaps nowadays in some form of Catholic action~ Daily, oil possible," he sl'iares in offering again.to God in the Mass the sacrifice by~ which all men were redeemed; through the Mass als~ he contributes toward actually applying to individual souls ¯ the merits of the sacrifice of Calvary. In a word, he co~operates wholeheartedly with Christ in all the grand purposes and achievements of the Incarnation. Thus, the good Christian who dies to sin and lives as a vital branch of the true vine, as a vigorous m~mber of the ~Mystical Body of Christ, and as a participant in the nature of God, and who lets Christ determine all his thoughts, appraisals, affections, volitions, and external activities, will be "another Christ," and will be prepared to share eter-nally with Christ in the beatific intuition and-love of the most blessed Trinity. The Church's Prayer t:or Trave-lers James A. Kleist, S.J. THE Church's prayer, or collection of prayers, for tray- " elers, known as ~he Itinerarium, was originally intended for tbe reverend clergy. This seems evic]~nt from the use of the Versicle Dorainus vobiscum and the Response .Et curn spiritu tuo. The rest, however, is so broad and elastic in its wording that any person may derive i3rofit and consolation from its recital. It may not be. amiss, therefore, if I propose, for the benefit of religious not acquainted with the Latin tongue, to present an.English rendering and follow it up with a few words of comment. " ~Text ot: The ltinerarium Antiphon: Into the way of peace. .~ The Canticle of Zacharg: St. Luke 1 : 68-79. 68 Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, o for He has kindly visited us." His People, and brought about Our redemption: 69 a Tower of Salvation He has raised up for us in the House of His servant David. 70 He bad promised as much through the mouth of His holy Pr.ophets of old, 71 and has sent us a Savior to deliver us from our foes and from the, hands of all that hate us. 72 He has dealt in mercy with our fathers, ¯ " mindful of .His holy covenant 73 and of the oath He had made to our father Abraham; for He bad sworn to enable us 74 --rescued from the clutches of our foes-- to worship ~im without fear, JAMES A. KLEIST /. in holiness and observance of the Law, in His presence, all our days. . 76 And for your part, my little one, you will be hailed "Prophet of'the Most High"; for you are to run before the face of the Lord to 'make ready His roads, 77 to impart to His People knowledge of salvation through forgiveness of their sins: 78 thanks to our God's sweet mercy in which He so graciously visited us, descending from Heaven-- a rising Light 79 to shine upon those settled in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our steps into the path of petice.1 An.tipbon: May the omnipotent and Merciful Lord direct our st~ps into the way of 'peace and prosperity, and maythe Angel Ra-phael be our escort on the way, so that in peace, in safety, and in joy, we may return to our homes. Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, have rrfercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us. Our Father . And lead us not into temptation. ]1 But de-- liver us from evil. Versicles and Responses: Save Thy servants I that trust in Thee, my God. I I Send us help from Thy Sanctuary. O Lord. I and from Sion guardus. I! .Oh, be to us, 0 Lord, a Tower of Strength I impregnable to all our fdes. I1 Let not the enemy gain the best of us, [ nor wicked men succeed in harming us. II Blessed is the Lord from day to day. I May God, our Savior, make our journey prosperous. 11 0 Lord, show us Thy ways: I reveal to us Thy paths. I[ Oh, may our steps be directed I toward the keeping of Thy Commandments. II What is crooked-ihall be straight I and the rough roads ~mooth. I[ On His Angels God has laid a charge in thy regard: I they are to keep thee in all thy ways. }1 0 Lord, do grant my prayer, I and let my cry come up to Thee. The Lord is with thee, I and with thy spirit. 1This is Father Kldst's own translation of the Benedictus.--ED. 10 d'anuary, 1944 PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS Let us prag 0 God, who didst enable the children of Is'rael to pass, dry-shod. through the depths of the .Sea, and by a beckoning Star show the Three Magi the way to Thee: grant us, we beg, a tranquil time an.:l a prosperous.journey. With Thy holy Angel for companion, may we be able 'happily to arrive at our destinatibn, and, in the end, at the Haven of Eternal Salvation. O God, who hast led Thy servant Abraham out of Ur in Chaldea and preserved him unharmed through all his travellings in a foreign land: we beg Thee graciously to preserve us, Thy servants. Be to us, O Lord, a Support ever-ready in need, a Solace by the way, a Shade in heat, a Cover in rain and cold, a Vehicle in weariness, a Shield in adversity, a Staff on slippery ground, a Haven in shipwreck. With Thee for a Guide, may. we successfully arrive at our destination, and; in the end, return safe and sound to our' homes. A ready ear, 0 Lord, lend to our humble iprayers. Direct and speed Thy servants' course that they may reach the blessings Thou hast in'store: so that amid all the vicissitudes of this life's pilgrimage they may ever be protected by Thy help. Grant, we beg, 0 Lord, that the family of Thy Children may walk in the way of Salvation, and, by closely following the exhor-tations of Blessed John, the Precursor, securely come to Him whom he foretold, our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who lives and reigns with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ages and ages to come. Amen. Let us proceed in peace, [ in the name of the Lord. Amen. II Commentary . The Antiphon, as Usual, sounds the key note of all that follows: "into the way of peace." When we go some-where, we are, in the Church's language, in via, "on the way." It matters not whether our "way", takesbut a few hours, or requires whole months to accomplist'i. Nor does it matter by What conveyance we travel, whether by bus or auto or street-caror train or ship orairplane. It may be a short trip for business, an excursion to. some point of 11 JAMES A. KLEIST ~ interest, a journey to a distant place for any purpose what-ever, a voyage across the Atlantic, a cruise in the Mediter-r~ inean, a march along Burma Road, a military expedition to North Africa, a transcontinental flight, a pilgrimage to Lourdes. We are simply "on the way," and our object in reciting the Itinerariam is to obtain the blessing of God so that our "way" may turn out "a way of peace --a phrase, by the way, in which the word pax is as elastic as t~ia. It means, of course, freedom from any kind of disturbance, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. We want to enjoy ~all the happiness (for that is what pax means) which our friends wish us when they bid us "A happy journey!" A happy ~journey is one that is crowned with "success." That is what the Latin word prosperitas means; only, since "suc-cess" is capable Of a certain worldly connotation, I choose to render it "prosperity." The idea is developed both negatively and positively in the Canticle of Zachary;. for instance, we beg for "salvation from oui: enemies"; we want to travel ."without that sense of fear" which kills all joy. Above all, we wish to travel "in holiness and justice (that is, the observance, of the Commandments) oall our days." We can see, then, what wonders the Antiphon and the Canticle are doing for us at the very outset, even before we cross the threshold. As if by magic, we are charmed away into the region of the supernatural. The liturgy would not be true to itself if it did not lift us Off our feet, so to say, above mere worldly considerations, above those thousand and one petty purposes which so engross the minds of worldly people. The liturgy is at its best in.imparting to our humdrum life this supernatural trend. Nothing is so wholesome for us poor mortals as the Sursum corda which - comes to us from the Altar. How life could be beautified if this exhortation were always heeded! As a matter of fact, 12 Ja.rluary, 1944 PRAYEI~ ~:OR TRAVELERS ' all our life is v~orthless unless all life's doings, all-life's "ways," big or little, issue into that great superhighv,;ay that makes oflife a progressive pilgrimage to Heaven, our Holy Land. Only so considered will our "way" b~ a "way of peace and pr6sperity," a "way of salvatlon." " It is clear, then, why th~ Canticle of Zachary Was iiacor-porated in the Itinerarium. Its great centre piece is Zach-ary's words addressed to his little John, who was destined to be "great'" in the eyes of the Lord. He was to be the Precursor of Christ, to direct the steps of his contempo-raries "into the way of peace," to "prepare the way of the Lord." And we know how bluntly he spoke to the 3ews: "You vipers' brood! You need a complete change of heart and mind if you would enter into the Kingdom of God." We, too, shall take his exhortation to heart and hold our-selves convinced that the one absolutely needful prepara-tion for a "way of peace" is the state of grace. With this, we can reckon on God's help.Death and danger, it is true, lurk everywhere; and the enemy of human nature goes about roaring like a lion; but, somehow, he may be more " active When we are away from home. The Canticle is followed by the complete Antiphon, which reminds us, to our comfort, that God is Omnipo-. tent and Merciful. His Omnipotence and Mercy are our safest guides, our best travelling companions. In His Mercy He assigns to us one of the blessed Spirits, the Archangel Raphael, who proved so pleasant and helpful an escort to young Tobias. It is a delightful story, which we migh~ read from time to time in its entirety. It will beget in us-a vivid sense of God's Presence and ever-watchful P/ovi-dence-- a devotion, by the way, which is one of the Sweetest and most heartening to cultivate in this vale of tears. Since the days of Tobias, St. Raphael is the patron saint of travelers. Iia Christian devotion, he _shares this 13 JAMES A. KLEIST Re~ieto~ trot Religious honor, of course, with the holy Guardian Angels. In this. respect, the life of Blessed Peter Faber, 9f the .Society of 3esus, is particularly instructive. He felt Constantly sur-rounded by, and actually lived, in their sweet presence. They were his comfort on his numerous trips through Spain, France, Germany, and Italy. Before he entered a town or district, he would greet, the Guardian An'gels of. that locality, and put into their hands the business he had come to transact. And when the time for leaving came. he would say Good-bye to them in the most affectionate man-ner and thank them for their help. Incidentally, this .same manof God had a quite special devotion to ,John the Bap-tist, as is clear from one of the entries in his Memoriate: "On the day of 3ohn the Baptist I had and felt in my soul .a notable sense of the greatness of Saint ,John, and experi-enced profound grief because of the fact that, in this Ger-many, he was .not made so much of as in other countries." The Vei:sicles a~d Responses which follow are good illustrations of ejaculatory prayer. They are lively cries. for help, intensified by a deep trust in God. The first Collect takes us back to the story of the Chil-dren of Israel whom ~he Lord led, dry-shod, through the Red Sea, and to that of the Three Magi, whose trip across the desert to Bethlehem reads like a romance. These examples from sacred history animate our faith and trust in God. If need be, God will even work miracles to save us. The second Collect shows God's Mercy in leading, Abraham out of his heathen native land. It is rather cir-cumstantial in. its details, contrary to the usual style of the Collects; but it makes us realize that no detail on our trip escapes God's wat~hf.ul eye. The third Collect, the classic Church's Prayer for Travelers, is terse and straightfor-ward in tone. God directs and arranges our course, and is ever at hand to help. The last Collect again confronts us 14 January, 1944 PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS. with the heroic figure of John the Baptist. The Itiner-arium begins and ends with a reference to him.2 The Itinerarium closes, with this pregnant ejaculation: "Let us proceed in peace, in the Name of the Lord." Since this is a prayer, its sense can only be: "Since we are under-taking this journey in the Name of theLord, may We, assisted by the grace of God, firmly and confidently pro- - ceed so as to accomplish our purpose." Both the Latin word procedere and its English equivalent proceed con-note, a certain firmness of step.a This firmness rests upon the grace of God.Wbuld that we could, in performing. any and all our tasks, firmly "proceed in the Name of the Lord." It is obvious, also, that this Versicle and its Response will do very well as a renewal of our "good intention." If we accustom ourselves to its use in everyday life, it will naturally spring to our lips when w'e prepare for our last journey, the journey in, to Eternity: "Let us proceed in peace, in the Name of'the Lord." It is worthv o of note that, as the Itinerarium opens with "into the way of peace," so it closes with "Let us proceed in peace." -Peace, the possession of happiness, is the great goal of life's pilgrimage. To the old Hebrews "peace" meant the ful-ness of the blessings which they expected from the Messias: on the lips of our Lord (as in the words "Peace I leave you") it means the sum total of true happiness both in this life and in bliss everlasting. The opening "into the way of peace" foreshadows the gist .of the Itinerarium; the closing "Let us proceed in peace" sums it all up in retro- ¯ spect. -°I may mentio.n, in.passing, that the Missal has a special Mass for travelers (Pro peregrinantibus" et iter agentibus) and three Collect~ for Those at Sea (Pro naai- 9antibus). ~Note the vigorous sense attaching to the word in the Vulgate rendering of Psalm 44:5, Intende, i~rosloere procede, et regna: "Bend Thy bow, ride on victoriously. and conquer." 15 JAMES A. KLEIST Review for Religious" May I close,these reflections with a suggest.ion? All the prayers in the Itiner~rium are couched in the plural number. This is significant, though not at all surprising to one who knows the liturgy. We are never alone. We maynot have a travelling companion on. any particular trip; still, even. then millions of persons are, like us, "on the way" somewhere in the world. And even when we stay at home, others are journeying along the highways and byways of this" great world. The suggestion I would make, therefore, is that we accustom ourselves to say the Itinerarium as a regular part of our. daily devotions. We are all united by the strong tie of the Mystical Body. The value of such an exercise comes home to one at this time particularly when our men in the service need the special protection of God on tt2eir numerous and dangerous "ways." How .delighted they would be to know that there is some one at home .who remembers them by this special appeal to God's Providence. By a fervent recitation of the Itinerarium we.have an efficacious means of, as it were, making ourselves their travelling companions, of following them whithersoever their military commanders order them to go, of bringing down on them the very bles-sing of God which theymay stand in need of at an.y par~ ticular moment. There is another reason for adopting this salutary prac.- tice of the daily recitation of the Itinerarium. We may not be leaving home; and yet, we are "on the way" all the time. Between our private room ~nd the.chapel and the refectory and the classroom and the attic and the cellar and the gar-den and the rest 0f the premises, we are "on our feet," upstairs, downstairs, all day long, are we not.?- Eveh in the quietest community there are endless goings and comings. We are in constant" need of God's protection. Psalm 120 reads almost likd a commentary on the Itiner- 16 PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS arium: "I lift mine eyes toward the hills. ~ Whence shall help come to me? My help is from the Lord~the Maker of ¯ Heaven and earth. He'tvill not suffer m~ f~t to stumble: thy guardian will not slumber. Behold,':~He:~whb guards Israel slumbers not nor sleeps. The Lord is thy Guardian; the Lord is thy Shelter on thy right hand. The sun-shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall protect thee from all evil. The Lord shall protect thg going and coming henceforth and for ever." The Itinerarium, deeply Understood in its significance for our spiritual life and daily uttered as a hearty cry for help, will save us many an unpleasant experience to Which we might otherwise be exposed, and will enable us tO travel through life's desert "in holiness and justice all our days." BOOKLET NOTICES Almightg Magic, by R. E. Southard, S.J. An account of some of the marvels of nature. Of interest to all; of special utility to writers, teachers, lecturers, -preachers, and retreat masters. 63 pages. 25 cents a copy. Published by: The . " Catechetical Guild, St. Paul, Miinnesota. ~ ' '" Reporter in Heaven, by R. E. Southard, S.J. An imaginary,visit to heaven. ~ ~ 5 cents a copy: Published by: St: Anthony's Guild, Paterson, N.J. "~,.~" ¯ His Favorites, a little book of reflections for the sick, by Rev. Joseph Lii~a's, P.S.M.~To Troubled Hearts, selections from the spiritual letters of Venerable Vincent Pallotti, translated from the Italian by Rev. George Timpe, P.S.M. Both pamphlets may be obtained from: The Pallottine Fathers, 5424 W~ Bluemound ¯ Road, Milwaukee,W~sc~nsin. No price given. Histo?g O~!ihe°Chu?cl~ of Christ, by Rev. Julius Grigassy, D.D., translated by ¯ Rev. Michael B. Rapach. ~ A texf book for Greek Catholic Parochial Schools. 114 pages. May be obtained from: Rev. Julius Grigassy, D.D., Braddock, Penna. No. price given. 17 The Devotion to the. Holy gamily Francis L. Filas, S.J. AMONG the major devotions of the Church one of the most recent is the devotion to the Holy Family. ~er- ¯ haps the most striking feature of its history is the fact that its growth paralleled the growth of the veneration of St. 3oseph. This phenomenon is easily understandable, for ,Jesus, Mary, and ,Joseph could not be honored together until each of them received due honor separately. We can. not here present the detailed reasons why ,Joseph's glorifica-. tion on earth was postponed; suffice it to say that after the Church firmly established in the world's consciousness the basic facts of our Lord's divinity and Our Lady's virginal motherhood, St. Joseph emerged from centuries of obscu-rity to take his place of honor as the recognized vicar of the Eternal Father on earth, the chaste husband of Mary, and the head of the Holy Family. The devotiofi to the Holy Family, as we now know it, explicitly came to the fore in the mid-seventeenth century, but its fundamentals ~had always been implicitly recognized in the Church. From the very beginning the accounts of St. Matthew and St. Luke testified that the divine Redeemer of mankind spent the greater part of His earthly life in the midst of a true family circle. The recurrence of such phrases as "the Child," "Mary His mother," "Joseph her husband," "His parents," and '.'He was subject to them," could leaqe no doubt of that. However, in the interpretation of these Gospel passages ecclesiastical writers chiefly_dwelt on the marvel of Christ's obedience rather than the parental virtues of Mary and Joseph which wel- 18 THE DEVOTION TO THE HOLY FAMILY corned the Child Jesus in the holiest atmosphere this world could provide. Thus, St. Ambrose stated, "Jesus' subjection is a lesson in human virtue, not a diminution of divine power.- Will those Who dezlare that the Son is less than the Father and unequal to Him because He is subject to Him as God, declare also that He is less than His mother because He was subject to His mother? For we read of Joseph and Mary, 'and He was subject to them.' The truth is that such obedience to parents brings no loss to any one of us but rather gain. Through it the Lord Jesus has poured faith and grace ir~to us all, that He may make us also subject to God the Father in the spirit of faith.''1 In demonstrating that the virginal union of Joseph and Mary was a true marriage St. Augustine more cl0selv approached our concept of the Holy Family, but even here .he failed to touch on that oneness of the trinity of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph which we venerate. "Every good of. marriage," he wrote, "was fulfilled in the parents of Christ --offspring, loyalty, and the sacrament. We see the off-spring in our Lord Jesus Christ Himself; the loyalty, in that no adultery occurred; and the sacrament, because no dissolution of the marriage followed.''2 ~ The first writer to join the three, holy names, appears to have been the ninth-century abbot, Walafried Strabo, who commented, "The shepherds found Mary, Joseph and the Child; t/~rougfi tl~ese tfiree the world was healed.''~ IAater, St. Bernard added more to the recognition of the dignity ot~ Mary.and Joseph as the divinely chosen intimates of Jesus on earth. "Who was s.ubject? And to whom? God to man; God, I repeat, to whom the angels are subject, whom 1Ambrose. Enarr. in Ps. 6l; 2Augustine. De Nup. et Concttp., 1, 13--ML 44, 415. 8Walafried Strabo, In Luc. Z, 16--ML 114, 896. 19 FRANCIS L. FILA$ Reoieto /:or-Re!igious principalities and powers 0.~bey, was subject to Mary, and not only to Mary, but t0~ose~h also because of Mary. Marvel, therefore, both at God and man, and choose that which gives greater wonder--whether it be the loving con-descension of the Son dr the exceedingly great dignity of His parents. Both amaze us, both are. marvellous. That God should obey man is lowliness without parallel, but that man should rule over God is elevation beyond com-parison.- 4 The first public commemoration of the Holy Family-- .far too incidental to be called "a devotion"--occurred at Nazareth in the fourth century. Here churches were built on the traditional sites of the house of St. Joseph and the house where the Angel Gabriel appeared to Our Lady. The Hidden Life was indeed honored, but never under that explicit title whereby " just as Abraham saw three persons~ and adored one, so holy mother Church ~ees three persons and honors one fact.''5 " Perhaps more noteworthy because more explicit is the .veneration which sprang up along the route of the flight .into Egypt. At Faramah on the boundary of Egypt facing Palestine a chapel was built (about 800 or earlier) in honor of the Holy Family, who supposedly entered Egypt at the spot. Traditions of a half-dozen other localities claimed that the three pilgrims tarried in each plate. Some of these traditions still live it; Coptic calendars of the eighth and ninth centurie~ which list a feast called "The Flight of the Holy Family" for November 6, and another feast that also commemorates the entire Holy Family on the 24th of the month P~isons (May 31), "The Entrance of 3esus into Egypt.''° 4Bernard, Homilia I in. Missus Est. .SMariani, De Cultu Sancti dosephi Arnplit~cando, 44. 6Nilles, Kalendariura manuale utriusque ecclesiae orientalis et occidentalis, Oeniponte, 1896, II, 693, 702, 719. " 20 ,Ianuar~, 1944 THE DEVOTION TO THE HOLY I::AMILY The great awakening otcurred in Europe .during the twelfth century and thereafter. A wave of special lov.e of 'jesus and Mary swept ovxr the faithful who sought to follow the course of these two lives down-, to the last d~tail, including, of course, their dependence on St. 'joseph. Since the canonical Gospels deliberately screened the period of the Hidden Life, the common folk fell back on the apocryphal legends to fill-the gap. The acceptance of the.se ,spurious (though well-intentioned and charming) legends was most uncritical, but it was done in a spirit of deep piety. Thus, in. the popular rhyming legends, in the por- .traits by the masters, and in the many.widespread Miracle Plays, the Gospel story of ,Jesus, MarY, and Joseph was Set forth with imaginative coloring that made the Holy Fam!ly a vivid reality for the medievals. If is from this period that we must date the tender contemplation of life at Nazareth, as instanced in the writings of St. Bernard, St. Bernardine of. Siena, and the Meditations on the Life of Jesus Christ of Pseud.o-Bonaventure. During the middle of the seventeenth century the devo-tion ~o the Holy Family appeared as we now know it. Through the~efforts of Francis de Montmorency-Laval,. first Bishop of Quebec, it was propagated in Canada after its diffusion throughout Italy, France, and Belgium. At the samb period Mine. de Miramion, a friend of St. Vincent de Paial, established (1661) a religious community, the Daughters of the Holy Family, to do charitable work in France. This was the first of the religious congregations ,to be placed under-the special patronage of the Holy Family. In 1844 a Belgian officer, Henri Belletable, founded the "]krchconfraternity of the Holy Family" in order to organ-ize working-men against socialism. At Lyons .in 1861 Father Phillip Francoz, S.J., established another group .21 FRANCIS L. FILAS Reoieu~ ~or Religious somewhat different in scope from BelletabIe's archconfra-ternity~ This was the "Association of the Holy Family," whose members were families rather than individuals. They were dedicated to the ideals of the Holy. Family. and recited special family prayers in common in their homes. It was in connection with Leo XIII's approval (i892) of this association that the .Pope issued the letters which present the nature and purpose of the devotionto the Holy Family so excellently that excerpts from these documents have been selected, by the Church as Lessons for the Second Nocturn of the pre.sent feast of the Holy Family. In 1893 Leo permitted the feast to be celebrated on the third Sunday after Epiphany and himself composed the hymns for its new office. However, owing to conflicting rubrics the Con-gr. e~ation of Sacred Rites in 1914 changed the date of the feast to January 19. Seven years later, ~Benedict XV extended the feast tothe universal Church, ordering that it be observdd on the Sunday ~ithin the Octave of the Epiphany. 7 In what does the devotion to the Holy Family con-sist? It is more than a mere combination or accumulation of the honors paid separately t6 Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; rather, in the words of Leo XIII, "in the vdneration ofthe Holy Family the faithful rightly understand that they are reverencing the mystery of the hidden life which Christ led, together with His Virgin. Mother and St. Joseph." The purpose of this joint veneration is that Catholics might be drawn "to increase the fervor of their faith, and to imitate the virtues which shone forth in the divine Master, in the Mother of God, and in her most holy spouse.''s There is no doubt, Leo affirmed, that God in His providence estab- 7Pauwels. Periodica de Re Morali et Canonica, 10, 373; decree dated October 26, 1921, AAS, 13, 543. gAuthent. Collect. Decret. S.R.C., n. 3740. 22 Januar~t, 1944 THE DEVOTION TO THE HOLY FAMILY lished the Holy Family in orderthat Christians of all walks o~f life might be' provided with attractive exemplars of absolute perfection. "In 3oseph heads of the household have an outstanding model of fatherly watchfulness and-care. In the holy Virgin Mother of God mothers possess an extraordinary example of love, modesty, submission, and perfect faith. In Jesus, who 'was subject to them.' children have the divine picture of obedience to admire, reverence, and imitate.''~ Benedict XV called attention to the striking unity of the devotion to the Holy Family. when he wrote: "With the increase of devotion to St. Joseph among th~ faithful there will necessarily result an increase in their devotion toward the Holy Family oi~ Nazareth, of which he was the august head, for these devotions spring spontaneously one from .the other. By St. Joseph we are led directly to Mary, and by Mary, to the "fountain of all. holiness, Jesus Christ, who sanctified the domestic virtues by his obedience toward St. Joseph and Ma~y. Religious communities have always been foremost .in imitating the charity, obedience, and spirit of work and of prayer that pervaded the Holy.House of Nazareth. How-ever, in addition to this method of practicing genuine devo-tion to the Holy Family, there is a most urgent need to utilize.the devotion in another respect. .The Holy Family is the exemplar and patron of the family, which is the cor-nerstone Of society, and which is today being attacked by a most destructive campaign. For the go.od of the Church and for the good of our nation, the apostolate to save the family calls for prayer and action. Probably in most cases. thi~ requirements of the state of life of religious prevent aibid., n. 3777. ldBe~ediet XV, Motu Proprio, "St. Joseph and Labor," July 25, 1920, AA$ ~2, 313. 23 FRANCIS L. FILAS direct external labors in this regard; but each and every religious can offer a life of generous prayer and fidelity to rule in order that the intercession of St. 'joseph and Our Lady will," through the merits of ,Jesus of Nazareth, bring down God's special graces to protect our families from the baneful principles of modern paganism. May they be led to imitate lovingly the family life of,Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. THE FAMILY ROSARY Father Patrick Peyton, C.S.C., who has been working zealously ~for two years to reestablish the salutary devotion of" the Family Rosary, some time ago sent usa lengthy report of the success of this work. We are giving here a brief summary of the facts in the report that seem to be especially pertinent to our readers. A nation-wide campaign to restore the Family Rosary was begun in 3anuary, 1942, to provide families with an easy but effective means of coml~atting the evils that beset the American home and. to provide the. young people of those homes with a weapon'of self-defense against the temptations with which they are faced. Ecclesi-astical authorities and lay leaders have joined enthusiastically and effectively in the campaign. Bishops, in particular, have preached on the Family Rosary: have writ-ten pastorals and editorials about it; have suggested radio programs that would make it easy for families to get,down on their knees and unite with the broadcasts: have inaugurated definite campaigns to promote the devotion in their dioceses; and have asked for and promised prayers for the success of the campaign. Two especially efficacious ways of getting the Family Rosary started in a home are: (1) to urge members of the armed forces to write home and ask that the Rosary be said for them; and (2) to get children to make the suggestion to their parents. Chaplains have the most favorable opportu.nity of ut(lizing the first method, though ~.~ey can b~ greatly aided by all who correspond with members of the armed forces: religious, no "doubt, have the best opportunity of in'spiring the children. At the time the report was issued, religious had already begun to join wholeheartedly in the campaign. A. Superior General of a congregation of men had promised to address a circular letter to his congregation on the Family Rosary. The Mother General of a congregation of women had been giving tfilks on the Family Rosary in the schools iri which her Sisters were re.aching. ~he reported that in every classroom she entered she found some children whose families had already been won over to the commbn recitation of the Rosary. The foregoing are but a few of the facts in the report. Perhaps we can publish more later. --Father Peyton's. address is: The Reverend Patrick Peyton, C.S.C., 923 Madison Avenue, Albany, New York. 24 Religious and :he I:::ncyclical on. :he h ysfical Body Patrick M. Regan, S.J. IN RECENT years Catholics have often been accused, and h~ive often accused themselves, of neglecting the papal encyclicals. Frequently. they excused themselv.es on the pretext that "the encyclicals were concerned with world problems or with ecohomic matters and like subjects which held no particular interest for ordinary individuals. Many of the faithful felt these subjects were'far beyond the grasp of their intellects and so held themselves excused. Be that as it may, in recent months a new encyclical has come from our Holy Father on the Mystical Bodyof Christ, which is the personal concern of every single member of the household ~of the faith. No examination of c~nscience can ever return the verdict: this en~ycli~cal is not for me. Its subject matter touches our whole Catholic life in practice from cradle to grave. Moreover the tenor of the papal document and, in fact, explicit statements in every para-graph of certain portions of it, almost command us: take and read, study deeply and assiduously. The Pope seems to have anticipated our usual indifferent attitude toward his pronouncements and to .have "forestalled every lame excuse. Of Such universal concern is the teaching of this encyc-lical that Plus even declares: "Moreover, we trust that the following exposition of the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ-will be acceptable and useful to those als0 who are without the fold of-the Church." He then a~signs as the reasons for this acceptability "not only the fact tha~ 25 PATRICK M. REGAN Review ~or Religious their gobd will toward the Church seems to grow from day - to day, but also that, while before their eyes today nation rises up against nation, .kingdom against kingdom, and discord i~'sown everywhere with the seeds of envy and hatred, if they turn their gaze to the Church,-if they con-template,. her divinely given unity--by which all men of every race are united, to Christ. in the,bond of brotherhood -:-they Will be forced to admire their fellowship in charity, and, with the guidance and assista.nce of divine grace, . will long to share in the '~same union and charity " If the encyclical concerns even tho~e outside the fold, still more .does it concern every member of the .Church1 itself. Since this is so, what shall, we say of the interest of religious in this doctrine? Surely it is not too mu~h to assert that each one should feel .personally obligated to make himself master" of the doctrine according to the tal-ents and pos!tion God has assigned him. The very opening. ~ar~graph 0f the letter seems to insinuate this: "Illus-trating, as it does, the grfind and inestimable privilege of our intimate union with a Head so exalted, this doctrine is certainly calculated by its sublime dignity to draw a.11 sPiritual-minded men to deep and serious study, andto give them, in the truths which it unfolds to the mind, a strong incentive to such Virtuous conduct as is conformable to its lessons." Religious have given up all things to follow chiist. Who, then, should have a deeper interest in what concerns intima.te union with Christ? Who more sincerely appreciates strong incentives to Virtuous conduct? Reli-gious too enjoy many more opportunities than people of the world to be spiritual-minded; in fact they should be that by the very nature of their vocation. They above all. then, should be attracted by the sublime dignity df the doctrine, and s16ould exhaust to the full the special advan-tages they enjoy for serious study of it. 26 danuarg, 1944 ENCYCLICAL ON THE MYSTICAL BODY For tbeSpiritudl-Minded A few paragraphs further on the Pontiff explains the appeal of the doctrine to the spiritual-minded.~ Remarking that in the present world crisis the faithful are of necessity drawn more to spiritual things and are ~hus in a position to draw more profit from the lessons, he voices the hope "that the~e our instructions and exhortations will be the more helpful to t~he faithful . . . For we know that, if all painful calamities of this turbulent period that cruelly tor- .ture almost countless men are accepted as from God's bands with calm and submissive spirit, they naturally lift souls above the passing things of earth to those of heaven that abide .forever and stimulate a certain thirst and keen desire forspiritu, al things." If these remarks aretru~ of the faithful in general, how much more true are they" of religious, who imitate Christ in seeking the kingdom of God~ not only in adversity, but always and everywhere, as their only call in life? Still more pertinent are the following sentencesin ¯ which the Pope notes the conditions specially favorable to the study of the do~trine: ~because of the present-day calamities "men are moved and, one might say, compelled to be more thoughtful in seeking the Kingdom of God. The m6re men are withdrawn from the vanities of this world and from the inordinate love of temporal things, certainly tl~e more likely it is that they will perceive the light of heavenly mysteries." Religious did not have to wait for World War II to see the vanity and emptiness of worldly riches. "When kingdoms and states are crumbling, when huge piles of goods and all'kinds of wealth are sunk in the measureless depths of the sea, and cities, towns, and fertile fields are strewn with massive ruins and defiled with the blood of brothers," then men will see that all is vanity; th~n they will be prepared to study the mysteries that per- 27 PATRICK M. REGAN ~ Review for ~Religious tain to life everlasting. Surely religio, us, whose one prin-ciple of life is that nothing matters but God's service, will find that the study-of God's mysteries fits into their main interest in life. Reasons/:or the Encyclical All the reasons assigned by the Sovereign Pontiff for addressing the world on the subje~t of the Mystical Body affect religious, but some of these reasons are especially perti;aent. For example, it is particularly true of religious "that many today are turning with greater, zest to a study that delights and nourishes .Christian piety. This, it would seem, is chiefly because a revived interest in the sacred .lit-urgy, the more widely spread custom of rece.iving Holy Communion, and the more fervent devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus practiced to.day have brought m.any souls to a deeperconsideration of the unsearchable riches of Christ that are preserved in the Church." ~ With this vision before him of the multitude zealou~ for a study that nc~urishes Christian piety, our.Holy Father himself assumes the task of teaching this difficult, yes, mys, terious doctrine. At the last moment, however, just before he begins his explanation of the doctrine he calls to our attention other weighty reasons. There are many errors prevalent concerning this doctrine, not only outside the Church but among the faithful also. And it might be added that many religious, too, have been affected by these errors. These are the words of the Pope: ".Nevertheless, while we can derive legitimate joy from all this, we must confess that grave errors in regard to this doctrine are being spread among those outside the true Church, and that~ among the faithful, too, inaccurate or thoroughly false ideas are entering that turn minds aside from the straight path of truth." 28 danuarg, 1944 ENCYCLICAL ON THE MYSTICAL B~)DY Setting aside the errors outside the Church as less per-tinent to our present subjecti we cannot fail to recognize in .the fol!owing the description of. some religious: "As a result of these conflicting and mutually antagonistic schools of thought, Some, through empty fear, look upon so pro-found a doctrine as something dangerous and. so they fight shy of it as of the beautiful but forbidden fruit of Para-dise." We must rather flee the danger Of the "false mgsti-cism creeping in; which, in its attempt to eliminate ~the immovable frontier that .separates creatures from their Cre-ator,, garbles the Sacred Scriptures." This false mysticism, together .with the false rationalism and popular naturalism rampant outside the Church, is the really dangerous for-bidden fruit. Pius reassures us with regard to the true d0c- .l~rine: "Mysteries revealed by God cannot be harmful to men ;. nor should they remain as treasures hidden in a field-- useless, They have been given from on high precisely to help the spiritual:progress of those who study them in' the spirit of piety." Deep and Serious Studg The Holy Father not only assigns the reasons for writing on the doctrine of the Mystical Body; he also, a's a-skilled teacher, sounds the keynote for his class. -This is not a "fresh air" course he offers, not a course to be merely audited, not a course that can be mastered with no further effort than paying strict attention in class. From the out-set. we are implicitly warned against thinking that the course might¯ be entitled: "Doctrine ot~ the Mystical Body Made Easy"; for the very second sentence of the Encyc- ¯ lical states that "this doctrine [of our intimate union with the Head] is certainly calculated by its o sublime dignity to draw all spiritual-minded men to deep and serious study. '.' 29 PATRICK M. REGAN Reoietv for Religious That the Holy Father envisions the reception of his teaching in an atmosphere of deep thought is brought out also in the outline of his plan immediately preceding the first or'explanatory part of the Encylical. Speaking of the lessons he will draw from the doctrine, he explains that these lessons "will make a deeper study of the mystery bear yet richer fruits of perfection and holiness." He seems" to ieassure us that, though we may never fully plumb the "depths of the mystery, yet the deeper our understanding, the richer will be the fruits of holiness. Surely, that is a ~trong incentive forthe religious to study the mystery. . Since deep study involves.reflectio, h, it is quite to expected that the explanation of the doctrine should begin with the words: "When one reflects on this doctrine . " Thus the Pontiff continues his lecture, punctuating it throughout with, similar observations. For example, he concludes the section on Christ, the Founder of the Body, With! ."One who reverently considers this venerable teaching will easily discover the reasons on which it is based." Perhaps the religious will take the cue and repair to the chapel to make some. reverent considerations of the Encyclical there in the presence of the Founder of the Body. Meditation Yes, the doctrine is an appropriate subject of medita-tion. Of this we are assured in the Encyclical: "Deep mys-" tery this, subject o'f inexhaustible meditation: That the salvation of many depends on the piayers and voluntary penanc.es which the members of the Mystical Body of Jesus ~Christ offer for this intention and on the assistance of pas-. tors of souls and of the faithful, especially of fathers and ¯ mothers of families, which they must offer to our Divine Savior as if they were His associates." Plus returns to this idea later when treating the topic, ' 30 January, 1944 "ENCYCLICAL ON THE MYSTICAL BODY "Christ, the Savior of the Body." Adverting to the fact that "we have already treated this subject clearly enough, when treating of the Church's birth on the cross, of Christ as the source of light and principle .of sanctity, and of Christ as support of His Mystical Body," he goes on to sfiyl "there is no reason why we should explain it further.'.' However he adds as a sort of afterthought: "but rather let us all, giving perpetual thanks to God, meditate on it with a h"umble and. attentive mind." No matter how clearly the subject has been treated, and despite the fact that there is no reason for further explanation, much still remains to be learned concerning this doctrine. But for this further mas; tery, Pius "turns us over to Christ, the Great .Teacher,. exhorting us at the sa~me time to listen to Him with humil,. ity and attention. Study o[ Mysteries Naturally many religious will be taken aback at the thought of studying quite formally a deep mystery of our faith. That is the work of skilled theologians, we reason: while our part isto share in the fruits of their labors by reading their books, or listening to their sermons or lec-tures. But no, the Holy Father would have us take up the direct study of the mystery of the Mystical Body fgr our-selves. In fact, over and over he insists on this idea of study. On the other hand he anticipates our reluctance to undertake Such a task; or, it may be, even our consterna-tion at thevery thought of facing a mystery in the hope of penetrating it. Hence he cites a declaration of the Vatican Council, which will not only allay all fears but even indi-cate a method of studying the present Mystery: "Reason illumined by faith, if it seeks earnestly, piously, and wisely, does attain, under God, to a certain knowledge and a most helpful knowledge of mysteries by considering their anal- 31 PATRICK M. REGAN Review [or Religious ogy with what it knows naturally and their mutual rela-tions and their common relation with man's last end." What an insPiring thought it is, that the very least among us may go directly to tl~e official enunciation of this doetrineby the Supreme Pontiff himself. What an encour-aging thought that we can be certain, on no less an authority than the Vatican Council itself, of attaining with God'sgrace ~o a sure and helpful knowledge,of the mys-terious doctrine of the Mystical Body. Many of us per-haps must accuse oursel~ces of being content to know only the a-b-c's of our holy Faith. One would almost suspect that.Plus had such in mind as he seems to strive to arouse us from our lethargy and get .us to study the Church, the hope of salvation. What an intellectual.and.spiritual°ban, quet a~aits the religious who approaches the study of this doctrine with eager and humble spirit! We leave the reader tO ~enjoy that banquet for him-self. Meanwhile we would exhort him to keep in mihd, as he studies, thaf foryears he himself has bedn a living mem-ber of this mystery, the Church; that all i~s mysteries, its doctrines, sacraments, hnd graces have touched his. life at every point along the way. In other words he has lived this life of mystery for many a year: surely it is high time to meditate it long and well. Exhortations Although we leave most of the work of teaching to the Encyclic.al itself, still we feel obliged to call attention to certain exhortations particularly appropriate to. religious. Outstanding among these, one that the very name ."Mysti-cal .Body" will bring to mind is this: "When, therefore, we call the body of Jesus Christ 'mystical,' we hear a solemn warning in .the very significance of the word. It is a warning. that echoes these words of St. Leo: 'Recognize, O Christian, 32 danuarv, 1944 ENCYCLICAL ON THE MYSTICAL BODY your dignity, and, being made a sharer of the divine nature, go not back to your former worthlessness along the way of unse.emly conduct. Keep. in mind of what head and of .what body you are a member.' " Again there is the paragraph exalting charity for our imitation: "Charity, then, more than any other virtue, binds us closely to Christ. On fire with this flame from .heaven, how many children of the Church have rejoiced to s~ffer insults foi Him and to face and overcome the hardest trials, though it cost their lives and the shedding of their blood. For this reason our Divine Savior earnestly exhorts us in these words: 'Remain in my love.' And as .charity, if it find no outward expression and effectiveness in ,good work, is something jejune and altogether empty, He added at once: 'If you keep .my commandments, you will remain in my love; as I also have kept my Father's com-mandments and remain in His love.' " The exhortation that follows on love of neighbor may be summed up in the. pointed question of the Holy Father: "How can we claim to love the Divine Redeemer if we hate those whom He has redeemed with His precious blood so ¯ that He might make them members of His Mystical Body?" Rejecting the "opinions of those.who assert that little importance should be given, to the frequent con~ession of venial sins," the Pope implies a special exhortaion to reli-gious in these words: "to. hasten daily progress along the path of virtue, we wish the pious practice of frequent Con- , fession to be earnestly advocated. By i.t, genuine self-knowledge is increased; Christian humility grows; bad habits are corrected; spiritual neglect and tepidity are con-quered; the conscience is purified; the will strengthened; a salutary self-control is attained; and grace is increased in virtue of the sacrament itself." Again, the following words, nothing more than a mere PATRICK M. REGAN statement of fact, are nonetheless a powerful exhortation for any religious: "Moreover, the common practice of the saints as well as ecclesiastical documents demonstrate hov~ highly everyone should esteem mental prayer." Puzzled perhaps by the teaching¯ of those who "would spread abroad the idea that prayers offered to God in private should not be considered worth very much," the religious might have wavered in his loyalty to his mental prayer: .What more encouraging ¯than to hear the foregoing words from the Holy Father himself on this subject, so dear to the heart of everyone dedicated to God. in the service of ~e.ligion! ,Fin'all,y, this whole doctrine of the Mystical Body teaches one lesson above all--love, of the Church. Nat-urally then we expect, to hear: "The vastness of Christ's love for the Church is equalled by its constant activity. With the same charity let us show our devoted active love .for Christ's Mystical Body.;' May we as'r~ligious measure ,up to the high standard of dedication attributed to us in .th~se words: "And so we desire that all who claim, the Church as their mother should seriously consider that not ¯ only the sacred' ministers and those who have consecrated themselves to God in religious life, but .the other members as well of the Mystical Body of ~lesus Christ have the obli-gation of working hard and constantly for .the upbuilding ~and increase of this Body." May our deep study and fer-vent meditation of the Encyclical help us to a deeper real-ization of our obligations as religious to the Mystical Body of, ~lesus Christ) 1For the study of the encyclical, we recommend the edition published by the Ameri-ca Press, which contains an Introductory Analysis, Study Outline. Review Questions. and a Selected Bibliography prepared by Father ylo, seph Bluett, 34 L'Allegro Francis 3. McGarrigle, S.3. AMAN'S duty of joy and cheerfulness is the state of mind, emotion, and will, that should result from his awareness of the great purpose and worth of his. existence. Man can and should be constantly cheerful only if he is convinced that "life. is worth living. '° His cheerful-ness must be essentially the "joy of living." 'joy .grows and flourishes only in the cheerful garden of belief in God's infinitely wise and good purpose for man. Consequently, sadness has its habitat in the dark and dank swamp of atheism andvice. It is ~/mephitic weed that will effectually choke out all fragrant plants of happiness and virtue, if it is allowed to grow in the soul. The best way to extirpate it is to get at its roots. ,Joy and suffering are not by any means incompatible. The one who loves is joyful to suffer f6r the beloved. The laborer who suffers in his labor has joy in the thought of a high wage. A~ surely as man has instincts that are opposite to one another, so surely his life must contain suffering: some form of frustration. For the satisfaction of any one of man's tendencies usually involves the frustration of another .tendency; and thus pleasure always casts the shadow of suffering. For instance, the fatiaer of a family may satisfy his parental instin& by bard labor in caring for his family: butby that very fact he frustrates his tendency to ease and amusement. The soul would have no rainbow Had the eyes no tears. --3. V. Cheney, "Tears." 35 FRANCIS J. MCGARRIGLE Reoie~o [or Religious Nor is cheerfulness the aloof, self-centered, touch-me-not withdrawal from sorrow-laden surroundings and' per-sons, in order to indulge in a sort of Nirvana of emotiom ¯ with studied indifference to the woesof others. Cheerful-ness is bes( fostered in sympathy and interest in others' mis.- fortunes. "Blessed are the comforters; for they shall be comforted"; and the comforters' blessedness or joy is not merely eschatological; it is this-worldly joy as well as other-worldly joy. The cheerfulness of the poor who are not envious of their more fortunate neighbor, while., sympa-thetic with their less fortunate one, isa matter of inspiring experience. Frequently both the smile and the sympathy lessen on the face of man and woman as the money increases in their swel.ling purse. ¯ The reality of life is shocking and crudeonly for those who do not know the wondrous meaning of life. The pes- .simists of humanity are not the oneswho have most to suf-fer; they are often persons in relative ease, but mentally :children who do not see the worth of the schooling of life; Especially literary and socialite professionalsufferers believe that self-knowledge and worldly wisdom consist in abnormal talent for discovering reasons for boredom, unhappiness, and criticism. -Tolstoi, a disillusioned man, quarrels bitterly with the whole scheme of the universe, and finds nothing of joy in life.but to dig the ground for" the sake of digging the ground. The reason is that he does no.t know what life is about. Two other Slavs, Poushkin and Lermontoff, sadly~labored over the reason for human, existence and in their poems and other writings found only" pessimistic replies. Poushkin, father of Russian lyric poetry, addresses life thus dolefully: Useless gift, gift of chance. What unfriendly power Has drawn me from the darkness? . . . There is no goal for me . . . ~6 Saturnine Byron, in "Euthanasia," sums hp.in two lines his lugubrious views of tlde worth Of living: 'And know! whatever thou hast been; 'Tis something better not to be. Pessimism, chronic discontent and sadness, is essentially the convicti6n that life is not worth living. Many amongst the best known German philosophers are pessimists fol-lowing the conviction of Sophocles, the Greek tragedian: "Not.to have been is past all prizing best'" (OedilOUS" Co-lonnus) . Schopenhauer calls life a sh~m, an annoying and point-less interruption of the steady calm of eternal nothingness: "The knowledge that it. is better not to be, is not only the most important of truths£ but also the oldest of wisdom,.'.~o. (Werke, ed. Deussen, III, .693). For Schilling, life is a farce, an absurd romance; for Feuerbach it is a madhouse and a jail. Eduard von Hart-rn'ann tells us that the genius sees through the" illusion of life. and finds it unendtirable, Whilst the.generality of mankind labor on in wretched contentment, slaves of the error, and delusion that they can be happy. After perceiving the ill,u.- ¯ sions of life, man sees the conclusion to be drawn: Nirvana, painless nothingness (Ausgetoal~tte Werhe, dd. Copeland, !II, 76). Most European pessimism likewise borrows its Views from the Buddhism of India, and like it, more or less logically and veiledly draws the conclusion of the blessed-ness of self-annihilation,, suicide. There have been weird societies for the promotion of suicide, on,e in Paris at the beginning of the nineteenth cen-tury. The members placed their names in an urn; and as their nameswere periodically drawn, they killed them-selves in the presence of the other members as the tetric expression of the worthlessness of living. In Italy, with other so-called thinkers, Leopardi. FRANCIS "J. McGARRIGLE laments that¯ no one can be intelligently happy. Life according tothis moping poet, by its very nature is infe-llcita, unhappiness: "I cannot imagine a use for life; nor any fruit of it" (Canto Nottttrno). In his self-pity he speaks to his heart: Be quiet forever; you ha.ve beaten enough; the earth is not ¯ worthy of your sighs. Life is nothing ~but bitterness and :. ycearzness; there is nothing else in it. The world is nothing ¯ but mire. Be quiet;.be in despair forever. Destiny holds ngthing to us but death. Despise henceforth yourself and nature, and the shan~eful hidden power which decrees the ruin of all and the infinite variety of all. (Poesies et oeuvres morales. French Transl. 1880, p. 49.) D'Alembert, amongst French pessimists, aligns himself With such "strong" men as Leopardi thinks himself to be: "Be great," he says, "and you will be unhappy." ' Disbelief" in the immortality, of man can see only dis-heartening frustration and deadening sorrow as funda-menial and final, involved in the very nature of man and his environment. Life for such disbelievers is inherently and utterly "a business that does not pay expenses," a thing far better if it were not. When the godless or materialis,tic philosopher does pro-pose optimism as a principle of life, hi does so on patently insufficient reason, in mere bravado, whistling in the dark. 'Some others are cynical, such as Oscar Wilde ("The Pic, ~ture.of Dorian Gray") saying that the basis of optimism is Sheet terror in facing life. Wrong in their valuation of living, materialists are n~c.e~sarily wrong as to the basis of optimism and joy, as is Herbert Spencer (The Data oF Etbics III) : There is on~ postulate on which pessimists and optimists agree. Both their arguments ~issume it to be self-evident '~ . that ,life is good or bad, according as it does or does not !. brinl~ a surplus of agreeable feeling. : 38 danuarg, 1944 L'ALLEGRO Optimism that ,is sound and ~pessimism that can give some. account of its source, are founded, not on feeling, but on the primary conviction that life. is, Or is not, worth living that the purpose of life is, or is not, worth the suf-fering it entails. -~. -- Quite a number df self-estemed intelligentsia: and worldly-wise hold that there is so little joy possible .in life that we must prove our right to it at all. "What fright have we to,napplness. , .(Ibsen, Ghosts I.) 3oy, they ~thinki is only for simpletons; Great and experienced minds~ among, whom they class themselves, must appear, bored, cynical, and disgruntled with life and with. everything in it. Sophocles~ however,~ says .of them in his Ant(qone: "The man for whom the joy of lif~ is gone, lives no~more~; he should be counted among the dead.~' ._" Many modern novelists, and~ssayists hav~ frankly abandone~ the possibility of happiness as a goa:l. The be~t they can offer as an ambition is. the empty shadow of piness without its soul-filling substance, the panting.quest for happiness without the possibility oL its acquisition, t.he ¢arrot dangled before the eyes of the silly donkey whom.s.ly -nature thus dupes into dragging with much labor the back~ breaking load of living. _ The deluded donkey, they tell :us, will never reach the luscious-looking carrot; and t,~here .is no welcoming manger awaiting.him at his weary journey's end. At last he will buckle under, ~ollapse and fall, the carrot still unattained. Anyway; they add.as a footnote, the carrot, agreeable as it looks; would prove disagreeable: if reached at last. Together with this defeatist attitude toward lif.e, strangely enough, there is~joined a. feverish longing forjo'~ and an amazingly mad chase after it; and all the while the~e same disillusionists assume a contemptuous superciliousne~} towards cheerfulness. They think itbefitting their elevated ':FRANCIS J. MCGARRIGLE :mentality to pQrtray on their grim countenances the cosmic boredom of living. .~ ~ It can be, too, that there are some lopsidedly pious Souls who.scent an insidious enemy of piety in every ~joy. Gaiety is to them always something .ribald. As Macaulay writes in his History of England (vol. III, c. II): "The ¯ Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but.because it gave pleasu[e tO the spectators." On . the other hand, there are still simpler sduls to whom all religion and piety are repulsive because they scent in it the sworn enemy of every joy. However, one would gather from the writings of G. K. Chesterton that it was largely his sense of humor anal joy that established his belief in God and in the Church. The truth is that joy is an essential nutrition of human life, a greater necessi~ty than bread, a power of life, and an immense worth of life. The troUble with the pessimikts, philosophical or social, is that they are the simpletons, who look for hap-~ piness and joy outside their own minds, in riches, pleasure-hunting, social or political notoriety--all and any of which, by themselves, wipe off the human faceits smile of joy. Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; Bliss is the same in.subject or in king. --Pope, Essay on Man. They have not realized that to increase one's toys is not to increase one's joys. They seek joy from all sources but the true one: and finally, with Francis Thompson (in The Hound o[ Heaven), they say by the constant tedium of -their faces and the constant bitterness of their tongues: And now m'y heart is as a broken font, Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever From the dank thoughts that shiver Upon the sightful branches of my mind. ¯40 danuar~l, 1944 L'ALLEGRO All the bright~ lights of care-society, all the tom-tomming of jazz, all the social fir.ew0rks, all the scurrying of business, all the flitting from one place to another, .are mainly din and distraction for the stunning of joyless minds. So-called-modern art and so-called modern music-are the most joyless ever. excogitated,, because they 'iecede farthest from thought of God and His providence .for mani. More atheist than the Roman and Greek paganism, they see man and his life only with the unsmiling eyes of the animal and interpret him only in the fate and destiny of an animal. Modern art and music, are the saddest ot~ all art and music ,because they are the "most inhuman of all. They cannot smile; and the definition of man-is anirna( risible: '."the' animal that smiles." To study an exp0si; tion of modern art or tO listen tO moderri mi~sic is to dreriCh one's spirit with cold watermmuch ot~ it- dirty. ' -The joy of the theist is the only possible joy, for he alone knows wl-iere human lithe is going and has the assur~ ance that, it~ he So will it, nothing can hinder him.fr0ni reachinghis exCeedingly desirable destination. A ChriS-tian optimist sees an opportunity in every calmity; a pagan pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity:. Successl is getting what you.want; happiness is wanting wl'iat you get. The reason is that happinessdepends on one's own outlook and dispositions. No one can make us happy or' unhappy;we do it ourselves, and we alone can do As Publius Syrus tells us in his Sententiae, "No man is happy Unless he believes he is." Enviroriment gives us the opportunity for happiness or unhappiness; but our own attitude of mind to our environ; merit constitutes our happiness or unhappiness. Humor and cheerfulness anddeep joy are by no means correlatives of comfort, riches, ease, learning or notoriety. FRANCIS J. MCGARRIGLE " Review for Religious ¯ Because nobility is not idependent on exterior things, bkcause it is an attitude of mind and will, nobility nor-mally has joy and cheerfulness as its distinguishing trait. Small souls are sad souls;.great souls are glad souls. There is no question but that one must be noble in character to be cheerful constantly; for only "out of the strong shall come the sweet." Nobility causes cheerfulness; but there is also the mutual causality of constant cheerfulness in generating and increasing real nobility, with its necessary discipline of mind. Great minds alone have lea~rned, great heart.s alone have lived, the truth that duty is the only joy and joy is a fundamental duty. Joy and cheerfulness promote social intercourse and lubricate all contacts of" family, business, and general society. Alone one can sorrow; but none can be joyful alone. The cheerful man is sought as the best promoter, seller, and leader of men. All naturally admire the man who does not show the weakness and self-centeredness of sadness. In fact, no one is interested in sad accounts of our misfortunes, but all are attracted by our joy of living, as insects are attracted by light. Hence the jingle runs: Be always as merry as ever you can, For no one delights in a sorrowful man. The cheerful gospel of joy is brought to us by Christ, .who presents Himself as the Divine Model of correct human pS~rchology. To perfect human nature He teaches that man, His brother and sister, children of God the Father, should be joyous in living. "These things I have spoken tO you that my joy may be in ~ou, and that your joy may be fu.lfilled" (John 15:11 ) "and your joy no one shall take from you" (John 16:22).1 Christianity is essentially the religion of cheerfulness. 1The New Testament texts used in this article are taken from the Westminster Version.--ED. danuar~lo 1944 L'ALLEGRO Christ's messianic coming is foretold, as the coming of joy to the human race. "Many shall rejoice in his coming" (Luke 1 : 14). He is announced on the winter hills of Beth-lehem as the arrival of joy: "Behold, I bring you glad tidings of a great joy that shall l~e to all the people" (Luke 2: 10). In His divine masterpiece of psychology, the Ser~ mon on the Mount, He explains the reasons for the peace~ ful joy of living: "Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in .the heavens" (Matthew 5" 12). Naturally Paul of Tarsus .emphasizes 'this dominant note of joy sounded by His.Master, "joy of faith" (Philippians 1:15). Hi~ greeting and wish for his Christian flock is "pdace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Romans 14:17); may "the God of h.ope fill you with all joy" (Roman.s 15: 13) ; even though they have much to suffer: "rejoicing in hope, bearing tribu.- lation in patience." His ~o-apostle and Primate, St. Peter, teaches the same: "Inasmuch .as ye hax~e fellowships ih the sufferings of Christ, rejoice" (I Peter 4: 13). "~ The Church of Christ inculcates through its liturgy th~ joy of living. Its "Alleluia," the exclamation of joy, rings throughout its worship of the Mass and Office. Even in the season of sorrow, the exhortation .to r~joice, "Lae-tare!," begins the Massof the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Its official prayers are those of cheerfulness: the BenediCtus) Magniiicat, and Te Deum; and prayers of rejoic!ng are heard even in its funerals. The Church celebrates the death of her most notable children as their joyful birthday. "Merry Christmas" is essentially a Christian greeting; and Christmas, or any other day, can be merry, only when it is what it says "Christ's Mass," rejoicing over the life of Christ begun in Bethlehem, continued in the Bethfehem of every heart, and to be consummated in Christ's eternal happiness. The "Prince of Peace" means the "Prince of cheerfulness." 43 FRANCIS J. MCGARKIGLE The conflict of selfishness is practically all that is wrong with the world and human life, whether socially, politi-cally, commercially, nationally, or religiously; and selfish-ness is manifested invariably by lack of joy and cheerful-ness. . . Characteristic, tber, efore,.of.those who are most Chris-tian, the saints, is constant cheerfulness; so much s-o that xhe French express it thus: "Un saint triste est .un triste . saint" (a sad saint is a sad [specimen of] saint.) The real ",Christian lives up fully t_o the tranquilizing "principle: '~God is, and all is well" .(Whittier, "My Birthday"). Father Faber observes that "Perhaps nature does not contribute a gr.eatei, help to grace than. gaiety~' In this he but paraphrases the early Christian document, "Pastor,", written before the death of St. John the Apostle, namely, thai sadness leads to sin and joy to good. The most joyful of persons are, on an average, the me.mbers of religious orders; and they have the youngest of hearts, ahhougb they have renounced .the pursuit of revel, wilfulness, honor, and possessions, in which the imbecile world thinks to find joy.~ They honor God, theoGod of their hearts, in a very special way by the alacrity and cheer- .fulness of their service. Hence, too, their magnetic power , in drawing others to the service of God, whose burden of ~"~"~"l[fe they prove by their cheerfulness to be' sweet and light. Their joy is one explanation of their perseverance; for What we do with joy, we do to the end. ¯ Wise St. Teresa of Avila instructs her Sisters: Try, my Sisters, to be affable wherever you can with-out giving displeasure to God. Behave so that all with whom you converse will be pleased with your manner and company, and may never be rendered afraidof virtue. The more holy a r~ligious is, the more simple and gracious she should be in conversation. Never must you separate.your-self from your Sisters, however much difficulty you may L'ALLEGRO~ feel with them, and however little their ¢on~rersat~o~_ may please you. We must make every, effort to be affable and ¯ to please those with whom we deal, and especially our Sisters. : The joyous mood of St. Francis of Assisi, so popularL with Catholic and non-Catholic alike., arose from his intense spirituality; and this reassuring ~haract~ri.stic" undoubtedly was most potent in the engaging attraction., which he exercised over others in leading them to enthusi~. astic Christian life. Thomas of Celano tells us of St, Fran~: cis: "The saint Constantly, endeavored to persevere; in gladness of heart . With utmost, solicitude he avoided, the great evil of ill-humor." . . Ready and steady the Christian gazes into. the hollo~. eyes of Death. Despite his instinctive revulsion fiom thi~: death of the body, the Christian's joy is strengthend by: th_.e. thought of death, not the end for him, but the beginning of life; and with thisknowledge, his joy arises from,the correct evaluation of the things of time. He does not. live. in tile uneasy dismay of. wa!kirig over life's treacherous glacier, in the dark, without a guide, at the risk of being. engulfed at every sFep. He does not undergo the bitter dis~. appointment of placi.ng all his expectan.cy of happiness-in,. creature goods, which.were not made. to last or to sail.sly; for that which makes these spectral goods is, as in the case of bubbles, that which explodes them. The Christian has shorn grisled death of its fearful,¯ hess; and eq.ually sufferjng's barb has been cleansed of its venomous poison of hopelessness, the sensethat suffering.i.s of no avail, dead loss, The Christian grasps the nettle of suffering and ddath with firm hope and its sting is gone, Chamisso writes of a peasant woman, singing:at the door of her whitewashed cottage, while .with her own hands she stitched her shroud, so that when she should die, it would be ready: 45 I~RANCIS J. MCGARRIGLE " I wouldI were as wise as she Life's cup to. empty never sighing " .And still with joy like hers to see The shroud made ready for my dying. :. ~,Joy is.indispensable to physical as well as to spiritual i~fticiency. Sadness deadens; joy quickens. "Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a Steady and. perpetual serenity" (Addison, The Spectator, May 17, 1712). What sunlight is tO the metabolism, of ~the. plants, joy is tO spiritual metabolism . and general health. It has a most profound effect on the ease of recov- :ery from illness and.even on the amount of inconvenience and suffering felt in sickness. Physicians know this fact weii: and an important factor of the "bedside manner" is _ the development.of a cheerful outlook in the patient. Nerve spedalis.ts make gr~at account of it in their treatments. Ancient Ecclesiasticus also knew it several millenia ago: "The joyfulness of the heart is the life of man., and the joy of a man is length of life" (30:23). It is a commonplace amongst doctors that the joyful patient, other things being equal, is the one who has the most favorable prognosis, especially in somediseases, such as tuberculosis. An English physician in his book on "The Prolongation of Life," observes that joy and hope, ¯ "-by quickening respiration, increase the flow of blood to the .brain and the supply of nourishment to the nerve cells. Psychic depression retards respiration and heart action, he says, and lessens the blood-flow to the brain, causing first ¯ .functional and then organic derangement. 3by is a sort of gymnastics of the soul whose health is always shared with the body. "The fear of the Lord shall delight the heart and shall give joy and gladness and length of days" !(Ecclesiasticus 1 : 12). The great philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas, tells us January, 1944 L'ALLEGRO in this regard: Sadness does more harm to the bddy than the other passions ~ of the soul, because it interferes with'the.vital action of the heart. Sadness at times causes even the loss of reason, as may he seen in cases where it-has led-tO deep . o melancbqly and madness. (Summa Theolo~ica, 2a, 2ae, 28, '.'On.Joy.") And inspired writers express the same concretely and pungently: . ~ Sorrowful heart drieth up the" bones" (Proverbs 17, 21). "For sadness hath killed many and there.is no profit in it . Of sadness cometh death; and it overwhelmeth" " the strength; and sadness' of the'heart boweth do~rn the neck" (Ecclesiasticus 30; 25; 38; 19). The observance of the laws of Christianity is i.n gen~ eral the m~st conducive factor to healthy living. Especially is it t1~e best preventive and curative treatment for mental health. Chief amongst the laws of Christ in this, and'in every regard, are acquiescence to God's Will and interest in the happiness and welfare of others. An old English proverb runs: "A man Of gladness cometh not tomadness,'.' OUR. CONTRIBUTORS G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD is a member of our editorial board and Professor of Ascetical and Mystical Theology at St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. ,IAMEg A. KLEIST is the editor of The Classical Btdletin and Professor of Classical Lan, guages at St. Louis University. FRANCIS L. FILAS is a student of Theology ~t West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana, and. has written a book on tile history of the-devotion to SL ,Joseph. PATRICK M. REGAN is Professor of Apolo2 getics at St. Mary's College; St. Marys, Kansas. FRANCIS 2. MCGARRIGLE i's Graduate Dean at Seattle College, Seattle, Washington. R.OBERT B. EITEN. le.ctu~e.s in,Mathematics at the University of Detroit, and has given much special study to questions of Ascetical and Mystical Theology. 47 Genuine h yst:icism What Should We Think Robert B. Eiten, S.J. SO MUCH is written, t.oday on mysticism that it is scarcely possible for anyone interested in the spiritual life to avoid taking a stand on the subject. The stand whicb"all should begin.with ought tO be based on the common teaching df mystical theologians. Of ~ourse in mystical theology as in nearly all other sciences, we may reasonably expect to find some problems which have .not been settled to the satisfaction of all authorities. There are differences of opinion on some questions. Nevertheless there is agreement on nearly, all fundamental questions, at least in so far as they would concern either our spiritual life or spiritual direction. Let us now consider what the proper attitude, of a reli- ¯ -gious.should be toward mysticism. This proper and safe attitude, as .we said before, can be derived from mystical theologians in those points where there is agreement among them. What, then; is the common teaching of mystical " theologians in g~neral? First of all, we surely would like to know the connec= tion between mystical graces and high sanctity.' Although mystical theologians admit that mystical graces are a great aid to sanctity, still they hold that these graces do not con-stitute sanctity, be it heroic or ordinary. Sanctity is meas- 'ured by the amount of sanctifyinggrace onehas. Its further 9rowtl~ too is determined by.the perfection of the life that one leads. Ultimately,then~ mystical graces help our sanc-tity in so far as they help these bther elements. For a high degree of sanctity and perfection, mysticM 48 GI~NUINE MYSTICISM theologians agree that special graces are not only helpful but necessary. These graces must be more abundant and more stimulating than those which are required to lead an ordinary life of sanctity. Likewise they would require a greater cooperation and docility on the part of the soul receiving them. These graces thus can dominate completely the actions of the soul. This constant fidelity to grace or this proficient life of grace, mystical theologians would admit, will bring an ever greater union of mind and Will with God. Finally, over, a period of time such constant fidelity to grace will bring about a habitual union with God. ~rith a habitual union "present, supernatural truths and, in general, the mysteries-of faith, are clearly perce.ived. .- But what is this habitual union with God if not an intense prayer-life or life of r~collection? Thus all'along r~orr~ally there has been.progress ir~ prayer. Most likely in the beginning the soul passed from meditation [o affective prayer where affections are usually many and varied, and reflections few and short. After using this latter type of prayer for a while the soul gradually passed into simpff[ied affectit2e prayer or the prayerof simplicity. In this prayer the soul immediately and, as it were, intuitively grasping a supernatural truth or mystery, experienced a repose and relish in resting therein without much change or variety of. affections over some considerable period of time. Within," thislatter degree of prayer there was much opportunity for -the soul to make progress up to the very borderline of infus-ed contemplation. And if some mystical theologians place the prayer of simplicity beyond ordinary prayer and within the realm of infused prayer, at least they will agree that there has l~een a progressive prayer-life in such a soul. Mysti~a~i'' theologians do not conceive of the passing from acquired prayer into infused or mystical prayer as a necessarily sud-. 49 ROBERT B. EITEN Reoiew ~,or Religious den and great hiatus.or jump; .rather they admit some con- . tinuity between these states of prayer. " The importance, then, of a progressive prayer-life-- a life of intimacy with God--should be at once rather evi-dent. Any carelessness here normally precludes one frorn the hope of enjoying mystical graces. We said before that special graces are needed to reach high sanctity. We have also pointed out the importance .of ¯ a recollected life. Now, infused contemplation happens to fi~ in very well in this list of special graces. It is one of the most select graces. And it is certainly a big factor in leading a deeply recollected life. It is not st,range, therefore, that mys-tical theologians would further admit that mystical grace~ or infused contemplation are in themselves most desirable be, cause they can be a great .factor in tea, ching high sanctity. True, there may be-some difference of opinion among mys-tical theologians on the opportuneness of exciting such a desire in allsouls on account of certain disadvantages it ~ay ¯ bring about in some souls or in unusual circumstances. The desire can be abused. But, just as with any other means of sanctification, mystical graces can be desired and prayed for under certain conditions.1 How strange and unfortunate. then, it is to find that there are still those who on princ.iple not only fear mystical prayer, but discourage it! Perhaps . they do not realize that they are trying tO make void a great grace and an important factor in the matter of spiritual progress. Perhaps they act this way because they think of mystical contemplation only in terms of visions, revela-tions, internal locutions, ecstasies, levitations, stigmatiza, tion, and so forth. But no mystical-theologian holds lThe eminent and prudent author, Tanquerey, has the following excellent remarks on the desire for mystical prayer: "It is permissible to desire infused contemplation. since it is an excellent means of perfection, but it must be done httmblyoand condi-tionally with a hol~ abandonment to the will of .God." (The Spiritual Life. p. 665.) 50 ~lanuary, 1944 GENUINE MYSTICISM "today that these pertain to the essence of mystical,praye~. They .are merely the accidental phenomena sometimes con-nected with mystical prayeL Mystical prayer can. exist apart from them. Even those who truly desire the grace of infused prayer should not ask for, but should ratherlshuni these extraordinary external experiences. All or nearly all authorities admit that God grants the gift of infused prayer when and in the way He pleases, and even to beginners, though this latter is rare. Usually. infhsed contemplative prayer is granted primarily for. one's increase in personal holiness, after years.of earnest .striving for sanctity,-and secondarily that others may be prevailed upon to lov~ God more intensely. Authorities further agree that temperament, proper direction, envirqn-ment, vocation, and so forth, are noteworthy factors in disposing oneself to receive this gift. Although infused contemplation¯ is a precious gift,yet one w.hb desires it for its.sweets is apt to be disappointed; for usually there is much suffering connected with .it and the suffering may even outweigh the sweets. It is generally admitted that there is no high sanctity withouk a rigorou~s purification of the soul. In this regard God ordinarily intervenes personally by means of interior and exterior trials, since personal efforts, even the most generous, are hardly enough. These divine purifications are similar to the nights described by St. John of the Cross. Mystical writers also agree 6n the great means.leading to the gift of mystical graces. They are usually classed as follows: (1) an intense prayer-life, or recollection; (2) uncompromising self-abnegation, or self-renuncia-tion; (3) continual mortification of self, or the apostolate of the cr6ss.2 Other means, such as the practice of charity, '2These means seem rather obvious. Contemplation is one of the higher types of psychological union with God. But all progressive union with God consists in ROBERT B. EITEN deta~hment, and so forth, are sometimes listed, but these can readily be reduced oto-the former.° Since, then,there is in general .an agreement among mystical theologians on wl~atare the best means to be used to dispose ourselves for infused contemplation, there oug.bt not be on our part too much - concern whether there is a general or only a restricted call tb infused contemplation-- a matter on which mysticaltheologians do not. agree. Let . :us-live our lives in accordance with. these means and leave it to God to grant us this gift if He so chooses. Mystical prayer, indeed, is. a great gift, a great means of ¯ sanctification, and one worth asking for and working for by our lives of personal holiness. It is a gift that makes us in some way consdous of the divine and brings us into contact with the divine. It is in some way; at least in its ¯ higher stages, a prelude to heaven. It is, therefore, most desirable in itself, and we act wisely in dlsposing oursel.ves .and others for it by ,lives of recollection, self-effacement, and suffering. Today, the feast of the great mystic doctor, St. John of the, Cross, as I write ihese lines, I am reminded, of an inci-dent in the life of this great saint. Once when asked by Christ what reward he would seek for his many labors, St. John replied: "Lord, to suffer and be despised for you." ~"~This is. the disposition to be cultivated by those desiri'ng infused contemplation. Above all else it should be our aim to live holy, Self-effaciiag lives, realizing that if we do this ¯ God. will. take care Sf all the rest with His sweet Providence --and this includes the bestowal or refusal of infused con-templation. (1) becoming detached from all,creatures, and (2) becoming as attached as pos-sible to God. Self-abnegation and continual mortification accomplish the first ele: merit, detachment from creatures; while a life of fervent recollection takes care of the'. second element, attachment to God. 52 ommunica ions Reverend Fathers:. I am followin~ the vocation discussion with interest. Here is a suggestion based on experience. Do religious who are unfaithful in seemingly small points of rule realize how often they are to blame for the failure of girls to follow a .vocation? This is particularly true in boarding schools aad acade-~ mies. Postulants disclose how they were shocked when, as students, they were asked to mail letters, etc., for religious who.wished to avoi'd censorship by the superiol. Others tell how the worldliness of some religious, their want of reserve, and the ease with which they excuse themselves from assisting at Mass on week days during summer vaca-tion have done much to shatter their ideals and made them Wonder if ~ ¯ they should rehily embrace the religious'life. The lack of vocations . c~iTf~ten' b~ ~raced to religious themselves. Mistress of Postulants Reverend Fathers: My interest in the matter of vocations lies in the problem of per-sever~ ince rather than in the initial fostering of vbcatlons; and my suggestions are, I suppose, more applicable to religlous.men than to. religious women. I would ~uggest a better psychological handling .of young reli-gious iri regard to these two problems: restlessness and chastity/ Restlessness, ~lways largeamong the problems of active young ¯ . Americans, is a double-barrelled source of trouble during the time of war. The young religious see their brothers and sisters winning medals, piloting bombers, visiting distant places, while ~hey are told to thank God that they can continue their training-in quiet. It's not that easy. I would suggest: (a) a sane article on this matter, explaining in what this restlessness is common to all young people and .not someth_ing peculiar to the religious state; and (b) some practical work, requiring physical energy if possible, to aid in the war effort-- for example, volunteer farm labor. Secondly, there is the matter of chastity. Here, as in the foster- 53 COMMLrNICATION~ ing of vocations, the true dignity of the ~arried state should be incul-cated. Some novitiate superiors create the impression that the religious.life is the only life for a true friend of Christ; with the result that the reaction is sometimes overwhelming in young religious when, later on, they acquire a more balanced Unpsychological passages on this matter should be omitted from old-time spiritual writers in required reading for religious. Prac-~ tical spiritual reading on the subject, attuned to the findings of mod-ern .psychology should be made available for religious of various ages. A Priest Reverend Fathers: Perhaps you and the readers of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS recall the controversy that waged some time ago in the "Communications" of America, concerning the influence of the Sisters' habit on vocations. One letter asserted rather strongly that the habit is a deterrent to many American girls who might otherwise embrace the religious life. The reply was equally emphatic that if girls would be deterred by such a trifle, then it was good riddance to them. I suppose most people took this controversy as a good joke; but I was seriously interested in it, and I know a number of other priest's who were also-interested~ True, we did not favor discussing the sub-ject in a magazine for. the general public, but we did wish to know the honest opinions of Sisters and of modern girls. There may be no truth in the assertion that likely candidates are deterred by the bulki-ness of the habit. ¯ If it is not true, then it is well for us to know that. But if it should, prove to be true then we are confronted with a fur-ther problem. Can we solve the problem by simply shrugging our shoulders and saying: ."Good riddance to such candidates"; or should we conclude that there may be need today of some modifications in traditional habits or of new institutes with more simplified habits. Is it not true that many of the traditional habits are merely modifica-tions of a style of dress worn by women at the time of the found-resses? Certainly they differ radically from the clothing worn by the modern American girl. A P~iest 54 Teresa Avila' G. Augustine Ellard, S.J~ ~N ALL the long and varied history of the Church there do~s not seem to be a feminine leader who can ' outshine Teresa of Avila. Nor in the whole galaxy of Catholic saints does there appear to be one, whether man or woman, in whom the divine and human were united in a more lovely and attractive fashion. Some of those saints had a more eventful external life, and perhaps some of them had a nobler interior life and were holier inGod's sight, but there are few among them whose life, taken in both its interior and.exterior phases, was, as far as we know, conspicupusly, and demonstrably, so rich and intense. As a little child Teresa ran away from home inorder to become a martyr among the Moors. A second time she ran away from home to enter the convent. Soon her health was wrecked and she had to leave for.a time, during which she converted an unworthy priest. She became worse, seemed for a while to have died, survived a funeral service, and narrowly escaped being buried alive:, as if that was not enough, while she-was waiting to be buried, a candle set her bed afire. It pertains to her active life that during the first twenty years or so in the convent she excelled rather at entertaining in the parlor .than at conversing ~rith Almighty God. During her later years she Was busy in the extreme and was constantly battling wi~h difficulties and obstacles of every sort. She led in the reform of her order--a task far more arduous than that of founding a new order. In fifteen yea/s she established seventeen convents and several monasteries. A foun-dation usually cost her so much trouble, opposition from various sources, high and low, and 'bitter suffering, that once when she was asked how one could become a saint, she replied, "We are about to make another foundation: just watch and see!" Shd stiffered from the terrible Spanish Inquisition, and was persecuted by a visitor of her own order. She was revered as a saint, but also referred to by a Car-melite provincial as "an excommunicated apostate." She was quite. expert in dealing with men of every rank, f/om the aristocratic zSaint Teresa of Avila, a Biography. By William Thomas Walsh. Pp. xiv q- 592. Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee. $5.00. -5-5 G. AUGUSTINE EI~LARD .Philip II down to foul-mouthed muleteers. She could accor~modate herself in the palaces of princesses and duchesses, and also in cheap inns with coarse men.whom she called "infernal people." It is not surprizing thatl she knew well how to manage women. Physical vio-. lence was almost needed to install her as prioress at the Incarnation in, Avila--city .officers were .present, fearing a riot but before long .she. bad that. house of 130 nuns reformed, liking the reform, and .loving .the reformer. Teresa was also an authoress, and.one of remarkable m~rit: her .works in the critical Spanish edition fill nine large volumes; and two of her mystical treatises stand foremost among the. greatest mystical classics., . In general, few women of any walk in life have left a better record for efficiency. The interior life of St. Teresa was still more intense and exciting. She knew the misery of having fallen from a higher to a lowei con-dition of soul, In a celebrated vision she descended to the depths of hell, and during the last ten years of her life she lived amidst the sub-limities and grandeurs of the highest pinnacles of mysticism. She felt the indescribable joys and pains of a heart literally laid open' by a ~raph's dart. She was familiar with ecstasies in which "one learned mysteries." In one momentary flash she understood, as she said, "more truths about the highest things of God than jf great theo-~ ;lc~gian.s had taught her for. a thousrind years." It was no strange experience for her to enjoy a certain vision of the Blessed T~inity. HerIove of th~ Cross was so great that she could take the attitude, "the more we suffer, the bett~r it will be." For many years she Observed the seraphic vow, that is,-always to do the more perfect ~"thin~. Her love and longing for the Divine Spouse was so great tlsat it broke out into expression in a famous poem "I die because I do not die." Her prayer-life too was fertile and efficient: "this is the end of prayer: to give birth to works, always works!" A major problem of the twentieth-century religious is how to effect the right combination between the contemplative and the active elements in his life. Walsh's new and outstanding biography of the great "'Doctora'" of Avila is recommended as an aid toward solving it. 56 eviews PlUS XII ON WORLD PROBLEMS. By James W. Naughton, S.J. Pp. xxlv -I- 199. The America Press, New York, 1943~ ~ $2.00. World problems today intimately touch the life of every.indi: vidual. Hence the eager welcome to a volume that gives us the. jhdg-ment of our Holy Father on these problems, along with hi~ solu-tions. Encyclicals, radio broadcasts, addresses, Christma~ and Easter messages, sermons, peace plans, .letters to public men, totaling twenty-six in all, carried the words of Pius to the world. For most of.us this formidable array of documents is an insuperable obstacle to acquiring .knowledge of the papal teachings. .However, Father Naugh~on has made them conveniently available to all within the narrow ~ompass of this one volume. Through exhaustive study and.careful selection. he has given a compilation that contains all the .pronouncements substantially. The resul~ is a reference book that is.a real treasq~e. A glance at the table of contents .at the beginfiing .shows 'the. wide variety of.general topics treated. Another glance at the seventeen pages of index at the end makes one realize that here is a ready refer-ence to every subject treated in papal pronouncements, no matter how cursorily. ¯ ': Religious in particular, as leaders of thought, will find the book most useful. With its help they will be enabled to direct others in the modern.crucial probl~ems, whether in sermon or lecture, whether in class or study club, whether in informal talk or in. private conversa-tion. They will also be equipped to maintain their position as Cath-olics who are better informed on the struggle of Christ's Kingdom in the world today. But this is not only a reference.book. Indeed if one expects a dry-as-dust collection of ponderous papal pronouncements .0n.:ipter-national problems the ordinary mind cannot grasp, he is'doomed to a pleasant disappointment. It is not merely a compilation,.it is a work of planned order, that rivals many.in its absorbing interest. The passages directly quoted from the Holy Father 'are joined by para-phrases of his words in these same or related contexts. These para-phrases not only make for Unity and readability, but also throw ifu.r-ther light on the Pope's mind. Best of all they save tiresome repe- 57 BOOK REVIEWS .Review for Religious tition of the same idea which has been expressed several times in vari-ous utterances. The author exercised especially good taste in furnishing us many gems of thought in the exact words of the Pontiff. In these, religious will find an abundance of inspiring matter for meditation. Thus the section, "Trust in G6d" (p. 26 ft.), offers material for sublime mental prayer that may well occupy the soul for weeks, even months. From this moving passage on Trust, we select just one sentence as a sample: "However cruel may seem the hand of.the Divine Surgeon when He cuts with the lancet, into the live flesh, it is always active 'love that guides and drives it in, and only the good of men and Peoples makes Him interfere to cause such sorrow." The following section, "Meaning of Suffering," will also spontaneously lift heart and n~ind to God, saving us the customary agony of trying to stir our own train of thought in the early morning. The solemn conse-cration of the whole world to Mary Immaculate (p. 33) is another example, to which may be added: "A Prayer for Consolation" (p. 35), "Readiness for Suffering" (p. 140), "Eucharistic Union with Christ" (p. 141). These are but a few choice selections taken at random; there are many others .throughout the book, which the reader will appreciate the more for having discovered them for him-self. Finally; the religious who uses this book for meditation or 'mas-ters it for ready reference will realize in his life the following from the "encyclical Supreme Pontificate: "The Christian, if he does honor to the name he bears, is always an. apostle; it is not. permitted, to the soldier of Christ that he quit the battlefield, because only death puts an ,end to his military service."--P. REGAIq, S.J. A BOOK OF UNLIKELY SAINTS. By Margaret T. Monro. Pp. 220. Longmans, Green and Company, New York, 1943. $2.50. "No saints are really likely. But some are unlikelier than others." With these words, Margaret Monro shows us her vivid sketches of five saints. These Unlikely Saints are pictured in their relation to their fellow men. It is the author's idea that "a great public wrong lies in the background of several Unlikely Saints; their function is to restore the lost moral equilibrium for the sake of the whole commun-ity. When sin has abounded, it is only fitting that grace should more abound." St. Aloysias becomes "Machiavelli's Prince gone good." St. Rose 58. ~anuary, 1944 BOOK REVIEWS of Lima, "granddaughter of Conquistadores," washes away in her penance the cruel stains of injustice committed against (he native Indians. St. Benedict Joseph Labre, "the great unwashed," revolts "against the cult of Hygeia--'.'not, of course, that there is anything holy about the louse. But there can be something very unholy about men's attitude to the lou~y." St: Gemma Galgani, "a sign' to be spoken agaifist," is pictured as a victim offered in reparation for the comfortable mediocrity of her surroundings. It is difficult to hang the portrait of St. Th~r~se of Lisieux in the artist's G~llery of Unlikely Saints. Even .the author felt that Thir~se is there "really as a sort of appendix, not as part of the book." There is danger, in writing this sort of "life," of over-painting the background and distracting the reader's eye from the central figure of the Saint. That is es.pecially true where one is not dealing with full-length biography: The-second sketch, for instance, leaves one with the rather unsatisfactory, notion of having read a treatise on expiation illustrated by incidents taken from the life of St. Rose of Lima. The Note on Sources, in which the author ventures ~nto the field of hagiology, will seem unnecessary to the plain reader, and to the critical one unsatisfactory to a degree. The book will have a special appeal for religious women. Already ¯ in the p.reface the author copes with the problem of frustration-- a.social ill intensified by the unnatural conditions of war. Itis this feminine interest, too, th;~t makes her discover the "minx-like" quality of St. Rose of Lima's sanctity: that makes her speak under-standingly of Donna Marta, St. Aloysius' mother. Nor will the feminine interest annoy the male reader. Hewill perhaps see, in Margaret Monro's choice of two Unlike!y men Saints to three Unlikely women Saints, a sort of hint at the proportiohate unlikelihood of sanctity among men as compared with that .among women[--C. T. HUNTER, S.J. AN AMERICAN TERESA. By Margaret M. Conklln. Pp. ix + /;7. The Eastern Observer, MunhaJl, Pennsylvania, 1942. $.25 (paper). Her name, her hidden life of love and zeal, her early death are among the many similarities to the Little Flower that have caused Teresa Demjanovich (1901-1927) to be called "An American Teresa." Baptized and confirmed in the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Rite, 59 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious .-she rdceived from her parents an excellent religious education. At school in Bayonne, N. 3., she wrote prize winning .poems and essays. She was remarkable for.her attend~nce~at Mass; her exact obedience and hidden s~crifices. Teresa matriculated at the College of St. Elizabeth. Although she mixed in the full student life, her deepening spirituality cofild not escape notice. It was during her sophomore year, as we read, that she was fhvored with a vision of our Blessed Mother. Soon after graduating with highest honors, Teresa joined the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth, at Convent Station, N.J. Her favorite brother was already a priest. From the very start of her novitiate she was noted for fidelity to [u!e and. charity to others. But before the full two years were com-pleted, her pure soul Went home to Christ. Because of her spiritual acumen and literary ability the spir-itual, director had commanded the young novice to write a series of conferences, which he then gave week by week to the community. Published post~umuously under the title Greater Perfection, this work was selected by the Catholic.Press Association as the best.spir-itt~ al book of the year 1928. Widely acclaimed from the start, the book has since been translated into Dutch,. French, German, and. 'Arabic. Through Greater Perfection Sister Miriam Teresa's prayer is :being fulfilled: "Oh, if I could only shake some life into souls! "If I could be heard all o,ber the earth . my whole soul would spend i~self in giving testimony to ~he Word that dwells within it." Written by an intimate friend and college classmate, An Arneri- .~can Teresa will serve to make more widely known an inspiring model for religious and laity. One would wish to find in it more quotations from Teresa herself, more about her transfer to the Roman Rite, more of the "secrets" revealed in personal letters. --J, V. SOMhERS, S.J. THE BEST WINE. By the Reverend Paul'Bussard. Pp. 64. Catechetical Guild, St. Paul, 1943. $.50; six copies, $2.40. In the words of Father Bussard, "The reason why a thing is done is as complicated as an ~atom and as far reaching as a family tree." This holds for every human choice; but to the highest degree is it true of choosing a religious vocation. Hence, this personal, inspirational, 60 Januarg, 1944 ' BOOK REVIEWS aid poetic presentaton of the motives involved in religious vocation is a very valuable aid in.drawing more laborers into the vineyard of Christ. , In faet,'the little "book's actual appeal and effectiveness in inspiring vocations to the various sisterhoods has been proved since its first publicaton in 1936 under the title, The Living Source. Thdse who knew it under that title and appreciated it will be glad to.find it still ready for the lips that thirst for The Best Wine. Others will surely find it suited to their taste.--R. E. SOUTHARD, S.J. ' MEN OF MARYKNOLL. By the Reverend ~James Keller and Meyer Berger. Pp. 191. Charles Scrlbner's Sons, New York, 194:~. $2.00. MARYKNOLL MISSION LETTERS: Volume I, 1943. Pp. viii -1- 55. Field Afar Press, New York, 1943. $.50. ~ A Ma~yknoll priest and and a feature ~vriter of the Neto.'York Times have collaborated in writing a most engaging narrative of the experiences of Maryl(noll missionaries in th~ Orient and in. South America. The small volume contains more of interest than many books three times its size. Herein are recounted the heroic deeds of young American priests who left home arid country to bring, the goo, d news of Jesus Christ. to unmindful millions. Young men from Manhattan, young men from the farms of the Midwest, . young men from our country's western shores, all fired with a common zeal, tramp across the Chinese terrain carrying the life-giving Body of Christ to starving .souls. Men oF Mar~jknotlshould hold high interest for those who peruse today's war accounts. These soldiers of 'Christ felt the tight-ening bonds of Japanese captivity. Father J6e Sweeney, a Connecti-- cut Yankee, ran a Japanese blockade to get provi.sions to his lepers. Father William Cummings, after valiant service on Bataan, is now a prisoner of the Japanese. There need be no hesitation in placing. these Men of Maryknoll alongside the military men of note when "citations for heroism are pre~ented. The new volume of Mission Letters covers, in time, slightly more than the first half of 1943. The period was one of transition; many of the letters picture, the missions in the Orient struggling for survival in the midst of war; others raise the curtain on Maryknoll activity in South America. Friends of the mission will appreciate these.!etters, and will welcome further news of never-ending spir-itual drama.---3. B. GUERIN, S.J. 61 BOOK REVIEWS ACTION THIS DAY. By Archbishop Francis J. Spellman. Pp. 255. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 194:L $2.75. During the d.ays wl~en Rommel was being cornered in Tunisia, Archbishop Spellman, Military Vicar of the U. S. armed forces. traveled 46,000 air miles through countries of Europe,. Asia, Africa, and South America to visit his chaplains on the fighting fronts. The many interesting experiences of the journey are told in this book of letters written by His Excellency to his father from various ports of call. The author tells bf the many hours he spent with Pope Plus XII, of the gracious welcome given him by Winston Churchill, of his visits with Generals Eisenhower and Clarl~, King Farouk of Egypt,. President Inonu of Turkey, General Smuts of South Africa, antl scores of others. In the course of his.trip he could say: "Wherever I roam, I see America and Americans, striving, struggling, suffering and dying, d, estroying lives to save lives, all wth the intent ahd hope of serving our country and saving our civilization." The Archbishop lived for weeks with our chaplains and soldiers at the front, going from bed to bed in military hospitals to talk with the wounded, kneeling in prayer at the graves of our valiant dead, visiting American missionaries who were blazing the trails of peace long before the advent of our armed forces. And he was convinced that "our soldiers are doing more for us than defending our land, offr lives, and our ideals. They are, inspiring us to a renewal of faith in our country." They inspired him to write an American creed that expresses the very soul of America. ¯ This important book sboulld be read by every American because iUis a specialist's diagnosis of our war-stricken world. The Arch-bishop found himself journeying through a civilization starving because it has lost its Christian heritage of faith in God. The crisis of our "one world" is summed up in these words: "Either God will be in the victory and in the minds of the peacemakers, or the peace will be a mockery; the home a shell; and all human beings, material-istic automatons, pawns and targets.'.' Yet optimism prevails in the Archbishop's Catholic patriotism and devotion to victory: "In this America, I believe; for this America, I live; for this America, I and millions of others stand ready to die:" ---G. VAN ACKEREN, S.,J. danuar~, 1944 BOOK REVIEWS LIFE WITH THE HOLY GHOST. By the Reverend Hugh Francis Blunt, LL.D. Pp. xiil -I- 130. The Bruce Publishing Company,~Mil-waukee, 1943. $1.75. This book, in general a very excellent work, treats of the Gifts 0f the Holy Ghost and the part they should have in the sanctification of every Christian. The non-technical, vocabulary, conversational style, and wealth of homely, concrete examples and comparis6ns should make it acceptable to many who would shrink from a more scholarly work, especially to teachers in search of new ways of pre-senting old truths. The very quality which is this book's greatest asset is also its greatest weakness. Departures from the technical language of the-ology and attempts to clothe dogma in the language of every-day life always involve the risk of loose and inaccurate expression and lop-sided presentation. The author does not entirely escape these pit-falls. At times, too, his efforts to be informal lead to awkward sen-tences and obscurity of thought. An example of confused thought and inexact expression is the following: "Thus the Sacred Humanity of Jesus ~ . . was filled with the Divine Life which subsists in God, that Life communicated from all eternity to the Son by the Father, and in time communicated by the Son to the humanity which He united to Himself" (pp. 14-t5). Accepted at their face value, these words seem to ignore the impas-sable gulf between creature and Creator and to attribute the uncre-ated perfection of God to the created humanity of Christ. Equally confused is the following: "And since His humanity is the humanity of God's own Son, God gives it what it has a right to, being God, every possible Divine Perfection .' . . " (p. 15). Jesus Christ, the God-Man, i~ correctly said to have all the divine perfections in as much as He is the Incarnate Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and therefore God. But not everything which may be predi-cated of the Incarnate Word may likewise be predicated of Christ's human nature. His humanity is not God bu~ a creature and, in itself, has the essential limitations of creaturehood. A creature .of abso-lutely infinite perfection is a contradiction. A theologian might objdct to calling Adam a "son of God by nature" (p. 8), a term generally restricted to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. One wonders what the author means by calling the Holy Ghost the "ultimate Cause" of things (p. 16), or, again, 63 BOOK REVIEWS Review [or Religious by speaking of the "legal way" in which we are made the sons of God (pp. 17, 37). The reviewer finds himself in the embarrassing necessity o,f having to point out incidental defects of a book that is otherwise most excel-lent, of. calling attention to shortcomings which the superficial reader might skim over without advertence and which, often enough, have little to do with the general trend of the thought. Yet it is just such blemishes which keep this book from being an entirely satisfactory cgntribution to the popular literature on the Holy Ghost and force one to withhold one's unqualified recommendation. --A. H. BACHHUBER, S.J. SMALL TALKS FOR SMALL PEOPLE. By the Reverend Thomas J. Hosfy, M~A., S.T.B. Pp. 136. The Bruce Publishing Company, Mil-waukee, 1943. $1.7S. This book has already been reviewed by children of twelve nationalities, who live in the stockyard district of Chicago. The forty "small-but-not-little" sermons in this book are made up of material that. Father Hosty found "will work" with his best "pub-lic"~--" small people." " "The story behind this book," writes Father H'osty in his Fore-v~ ord, dates back to a "pet peeve" he had as a youngster at hearing "adult sermons at the children's Mass." He offers this book not-as "the last word in preaching to children," but as a stimulus to fellow priests to write "asermon book for children." The author is a member'of the Chicago Archdiocesan mission band and has had eight years exp.er!ence in giving retreats, days of .~rfic~llection, novenas, and sermons. During this time, not the least among his accomplishments has been to learn the language of chil-dren- while shooting marbles or playing second base. This is the language of Small Talks for Small .People. There is no attempt at literary style. "The language," admits the author, "is a far cry from the style of Lacordaire or Fulton Sheen, and at times verges on downright slang." But it is the lively, catchy, humoroias. familiar, concrete language of children, replete with their ideas and their connotations. Questions to be actually answeredmare introduced as a new. feature in preaching tO children, owing to the author's "conviction that there is no better way of getting and keeping the children's 64 danuary: 1944 BOOK REVIEWS attention during a sermon.;' This is sound child psychology and a real merit of the book. Much of Father Hosty's cbarm'is probably lost because of the inadequacy of the written word to convey the spontaneity of the spoken. " Perhaps the "moral" of the stories or illustrations is not.~always pointed enough. Priests will find these 5-m~nute ~mall Talks very handy, and an incentive as well as a challenge to expand this neglected field . --A. LEVET, S.~I. GOD'S GUESTS OF TOMORROW. 8y

Issue 54.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1995. ; Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Mis'souri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ° 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ P.O. Box 29260 ° Washington, DC 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ° Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1995Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library, clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for com~nercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read Joann Wolski Conn PhD Iris Ann Ledden SSND Joel Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JULY-AUGUST 1995 ¯ VOLUME54 ¯ NVUMBER4 contents 486 499 5O8 mission Twenty Inner-City Years Joanna Bramble, CSJ explores feelings, questions, and insights from her effort to revitalize an inner-city neighborhood and empower its people. Corporate Sponsorship: The 1990s and the Fruits of Our Labor Margaret MaW Knittel RSM raises some questions which suggest a fluidity of vision and a loosening of ties in regard to corporate sponsorship and the fruits of our labor. Retirement's Wisdom Years Catherine M. Harmer MMS proposes that retirement for religious may be a time of deepening wisdom and individuation and a time for a greater spirituality to emerge. 519 531 guidance The Enneagram Tad Dunne examines understandings of the enneagram and suggests ways of moving to a larger world of meaning and values. Imaging Spiritual Direction Mary Vginifred CHS discusses guidelines for spiritual direction and presents three images illustrative of the relationship between director and directee. 535 56O heritage The Brazier That Is My God: Teresa on True Prayer's Dispositions, Gifts, and Signs Mary C. Sullivan RSM highlights the prayer of personal conversion wi{h its many gifts as captured by Teresa of Avila in her rich metaphor of "dwelling places." Playing with Edged Tools Donald Macdonald SMNI allows the thought of John Henry Newman to enter us into a richer appreciation of vowed public profession as a part of radical gospel living. 482 Review for Religious spirituality 566 How Am I Doing? Signs of a Healthy Spirituality Melannie Svoboda SND suggests some indicators for checking on how healthy our spirituality is. 573 Appreciating God through Creation Roderick Payne OFM illuminates the heritage of St. Francis to draw attention to some aspects of prayer through creation. 585 589 594 6OO religious life Individualism and Rel!gious Life John Gallagher CSB reflects on three options dealing with the compatibility of contemporary individualism in relation to religious life. Psychological Screening for Religious Life Kevin E. McKenna reviews the help given by the Code of Canon Law for religious congregations attempting to form a consistent policy regarding psychological reports at the time of admission and the maintenance of personnel records. Reformulating the Religious Vows William Reiser SJ reviews the meaning of vows in religious life and suggests that an option for the poor might be a promise for our times. Let's Talk Again about Poverty Richard J. DeMaria CFC probes the meaning of poverty for religious-life practice today. ¯departments 484 Prisms 615 Canonical Counsel: Cloister for Nuns: From the Early Centuries to the 1917 Code 622 Book Reviews ~tuly-August 1995 483 prisms Pope John Paul's two recent docu-ments offer vision and direction: the apostolic letter Orientale lumen (The Light of the East) and the encyclical Ut unum sint (On Commitment to Ecumenism). More than helps to enter into the third millennium, they issue a call to conversion. In Orientale lumen the pope emphasizes that our Eastern Catholic and our Orthodox brothers and sisters are earnest bearers of a venerable and ancient tradition integral to the church's heritage. He calls for all members of the church's Latin tradition to become fully acquainted with this treasure. He desires us all to be fired by a pas-sionate longing that the church's catholicity become man-ifest to church members themselves and to the world, a catholicity comprising the several traditions together rather than in opposition to one another. John Paul uses monasticism as a special vantage point from which we can identify values important today for expressing the contribution of the Christian East to the journey of Christ's church towards the kingdom. In the East, monasticism, which did not experience the differ-ent kinds of apostolic life as in the West, is seen not merely as a separate category of Christians, but rather as a refer-ence point for all the baptized, according to the gifts offered to each by the Lord. John Paul singles out the common traits uniting the monastic experience of the East and the West and forming a bridge of fellowship, "where unity as it is lived shines even more brightly than may appear in the dialogue between the churches." lie empha-sizes the splendid witness of nuns in the Christian East: "This witness has offered an example of giving full value in the church to what is specifically feminine, even break- 484 Review for Religious ing through the mentality of the time. During recent persecu-tions, especially in Eastern European countries, when many male monasteries were forcibly closed, female monasticism kept the torch of the monastic life burning. The nun's charism, with its own specific characteristics, is a visible sign of that motherhood of God to which Sacred Scripture often refers" (9). Among the values reflected in monasticism for the life of the church, the pope highlights 1) a balance in Christian life lived as a personal response to an individual call and as an ecclesial and community event; 2) a liturgy revealing the proper harmony of the baptized-in-Christ and the eucharistic meaning of all creation; 3) a maturing journey in terms of knowing self and being free and able to love as Jesus loves; 4) a tradition of spiritual guidance from brothers and sisters to whom the Spirit has granted this gift; 5) a community showing us a life of communion and service beginning in the family and extending to the wider community; 6) a unity of theology and spirituality deriving from the triune God--the principle and foundation of the Christian understand-ing that the human person is meant for and made for relation-ship; and 7) an all-pervading mystery, enveloped in awe, with which the face of our God presents us. In still wider ways the encyclical Ut unum sint continues the call to deepen the unity we seek with one another and with God. Insisting that the unity of all Christians is God's will and is at the heart of the mission Christ entrusted to his followers, John Paul begs forgiveness for times when Catholics and the papacy itself have contributed to the divisions among Christians and calls for discussion about ways in which the pope can exercise power and authority in a reunited church. He notes that a heritage of saints belonging to all communities provides hope for the dialogue of conversion. "When we speak of a common heritage, we must acknowledge as part of it not only the institutions, rites, means of salvation and the traditions which all the communities have pre-served and by which they have been shaped, but first and foremost this reality of holiness" (84). The urgency of building for the future out of the strengths of Christian heritages marks both of these papal writings. We, like the pope, need to set our sights on this unifying and evangelizing mission of all Christians, thereby living up to religious life's own spiritual heritages. David L. Fleming sJ a~uly-August 1995 485 rnissJon JOANNA BRAMBLE Twenty Inner-City Years After almost twenty years of working towards the revital-ization of West Oakland, a depressed inner-city neigh-borhood, I took a year's sabbatical of travel and spiritual enrichment. In the middle of that year, I decided not to return as director of Jubilee West, the Community Development Corporation I had helped to create. I real-ized that I had unresolved feelings about my years in West Oakland, feelings and questions that I needed to work through before I could move on to the next steps in my work for justice. The reflections below document my liv-ing with those questions. What are my usual feelings about Jubilee West? I feel proud of what it has accomplished, but often I feel deep sadness for the people whose lives have changed very lit-tle, especially the ones I knew well and tried the hardest to help. I feel deep sadness at the unemployment, the drugs, the depressed people, and the piles of garbage that are evident with only a brief drive through the neighbor-hood. I often have an overwhelming sense of failure and powerlessness: so much of my life, love, work, anxiety, joy, hope . . . and so many people still with such con-stricted lives! I feel sadness and grief that the neighbor-hood where I worked for so long was worse after twenty Joanna Bramble CSJ is a consultant to nonprofit organizations in management and program analysis and a member of the provincial council of the Los Angeles province of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. Her address is 529 Jean Street; Oakland, California 94610. 486 Review for Religious years than it was before. It is not that our work did not change anything or made it worse; it just could never do enough. But the main cause of continuing disintegration in that neigh-borhood is not my and others' lack of effort or creative ideas. It is high unemployment and the increasing sale and use of drugs, along with other systemic oppression. How do I keep aware of the interrelatedness of many situations and people and things and somehow see my place as both important and unimportant? What was the situation I came to in 1973? And what did I want to achieve? The 1970 census and the Oakland 701 Study gave the following statistics about the West of Cypress area: ¯ 80 percent black and 18 percent Mexican American ¯ median family income: $3,941 ¯ unemployment rate 26.3 percent for men, 35.7 percent for women ¯ 50 percent of families on welfare; mean welfare income $2,110 ¯ 90 percent of the houses had been expected to be unusable by 1969 (most of these houses are still standing in 1995) ¯ median number of school years completed: 8.4 ¯ 24 percent of people over twenty-five years of age were high school graduates Residents listed their major problems as limited incomes and a high rate of unemployment, extremely poor housing, and poor-quality education. All of these problems still exist and are complex and interrelated. I chose to come to this depressed environment from eleven years of teaching English in white, suburban Catholic high schools. I had interest, concern, compassion, energy, enthusiasm, high hopes . . . and two months of training in community orga-nizing. I remember walking through the neighborhood and mentally singing the words to "Anatevka" from Fiddler on the Roof, newly popular then. The song speaks of the nothingness of the town: "people who pass through Anatevka do not even know they have been here., someone should have set a match to this place years ago." That is what West Oakland looked like to me. But the song goes on to describe Anatevka as home: "where else could Sabbath be so sweet., where I know everyone I meet." That too was West Oakland. It did not take me long to get to know friendly people, many of whom had lived there for years. I walked the streets and .~ly-August 199~ 487 Bramble ¯ Twenty Inner-City Years sat in people's kitchens to discuss neighborhood problems. Soon some longtime residents and I started the West Oakland Improvement Association. What did I want to achieve? Mainly, I did not want a repeat of Anatevka; I did not want people displaced to make room for gentrification or other forms of development. In 1974 I wrote that my major goal was to help increase the peo-ple's awareness of their power to direct their own lives. Over the next twenty years, I became more deeply aware of the immense problems in people's lives and in the physical neigh-borhood. What I wanted to do both stayed the same and evolved, as did the strategies we used. Always there was the goal of empow-erment. As a community organizer I wanted us to win on issues that people had chosen as urgent concerns. More importantly, I wanted to build an organization that could continue to empower people and revitalize the neighborhood. We won on many issues. Our victories brought pride and increased self-confidence to a number of neighborhood people. But building an organization never really happened. People seemed too concerned with per-sonal survival to stay involved very long. It became more and more difficult to talk with people about community problems when they were concerned with getting enough food for their kids, paying the rent, and dealing with drug problems. These survival issues prompted me and my good friend Sister Pat Sears to start St. Patrick's Center at the Campbell Village Housing Project, where we saw to basic necessities, providing food, clothes, counseling, and a youth program. But decent afford-able housing remained the most urgent problem. Concern about people who were being displaced or were living in substandard housing, inspiration from Jubilee Housing in Washington, D.C., lots of participation from neighborhood people and suburban friends, and awillingness to step into the unknown with faith and hope led me and Pat to start Jubilee West as a nonprofit Community Development Corporation in 1980. We immediately began to buy and fix houses for poverty-level people even though we knew nothing about real estate or construction and had almost no money. Jubilee West also continued and expanded the com-munity services and youth programs begun at St. Patrick's Center. What successes can Jubilee West celebrate over the last fifteen years? Eighty units of scattered-site housing, most of it perma-nently affordable to poverty-level families: five million dollars in property assets removed from speculation and able to be con- 488 Review for Religious trolled by the community far into the future; hundreds of children helped with tutoring and enrichment; many others helped with mentoring and private scholarships to attend college; hundreds of adults placed in jobs, coming to literacy and ESL classes, or receiv- .ing emergency food, clothing, and needed counseling; and an his-toric building rehabilitated to accommodate various community events and to house the offices for other services. When I left, Jubilee West had a committed board of directors, a staff of varying degrees of competence, and a good funding base, although financial crises were and continue to be frequent. So why do I frequently feel like a failure? Mainly because I very much wanted to do something "for the people in the houses" more than just fixing houses and lowering rents and because I feel that most people's lives are not changed very much from what they were before. As I grew to know West Oakland people, I came to be most concerned about what I experienced as the "typical" resident. She is a woman about thirty years old, never mar-ried, with three or four children from different fathers. She has about a tenth-grade education, has never held a paying job, has very poor nutrition, and probably has an alcohol or drug problem. If she is not in JW housing or other subsidized housing, she may pay as much as 60 or 70 percent of her AFDC income in rent, leaving her less than $200 per month for all other expenses. She has no car, and so her experiences and those of her children are mostly limited to the West Oakland neighborhood. She appears depressed and apathetic or else quite hostile. So what did I wantJW to do for this woman? I wanted us to empower her to enrich her own life. What did I mean by this? How would I hope to be able to describe her after a .few years? I have thought a lot about my hopes for her, and I recently became aware that they are similar to my unrealistic goals for myself: As I grew to know West Oakland people, I came to be most concerned about what I experienced as the "typical" resident. She is a woman about thirty years old, never married, with three or four children from different fathers. .~uly-/lugust 199~ 489 Bramble ¯ Twenty Inner-City Years I want her to have succeeded in or be in the process of get-ting off drugs, getting more education, finding a job and then a better job, stabilizing her family, getting enough income to move out of subsidized housing, deepening her spiritual values, becoming more psychologically whole, building community with her neighbors, keeping her house clean, taking care of her kids, and working for change in the neighborhood through participating in JW and other organizations. I want her to stay in the neighborhood or come back after she succeeds in order to help the commu-nity work for justice. As I write this, it seems so unrealistic that I want to add face-tiously that she should also be thin and beautiful, but not care too much about her looks. Obviously, one reason I feel like a fail-ure is that I had very unrealizable expectations. Only a few peo-ple could achieve the hbove, and only with superhuman effort or lots of good luck. I wanted my "typical" person to be aware of her power to change and control her own life. That sounds like a good goal. But perhaps my biggest mistake was that I did not give enough conscious acknowledgment to the reality of systemic oppression. When she tries to change in other than very small ways, she runs up against huge obstacles that make it exceedingly difficult if not impossible for her to "control her own life." Only a few really "win" in her situation; but, because those few do win, she feels that she too should be able to win. She blames herself and society also blames her, telling her in many ways that it is her fault. In some ways I contribute to this when I talk about "self-help" without at the same time talking about systemic oppres-sion. Her self-blame does not give her more energy to "fight the system" and to make small and then larger changes in her life; instead it leads to depression, apathy, or hostility. Similarly my self-blame, my feeling myself a failure for not being able to empower her, does not give me more energy to fight the system; in me also it leads to depression, apathy, and sometimes hostility. Issues of injustice in economics, politics, and education are profoundly interrelated. A minimum wage that inserts working people into the poverty level without enough money to pay the rent, a business economy dependent on a certain percent of unem-ployment, thousands of job layoffs so that even many people with good educations are unlikely to keep their jobs that pay a living wage, unjust distribution of wealth including "hidden" subsidies 490 Review for Religious for the rich (whereby more money is "spent" on tax write-offs for interest on home-ownership loans than on all the housing programs for the poor), drug traffic that brings huge profits to a few wealthy people, a welfare system that discourages work, the worst schools usually in the poorest areas, housing thought of as an investment for profit rather than a home to live in, pervasive discrimination against minorities, especially African-American males--these are only a few examples of the interconnected sys-tems that cause my "typical" person's situation. I have known all this for a long time. Did I fail to keep it in my awareness because I felt I could do little about it and I like solvable problems? In any case, I concentrated on self-help pro-grams-- how soon I found that often they do not succeed either! Each person in any self-help program must "choose life" for her-self, of course, and begin to act on her own behalf while at the same time society, "the system," must stop oppressing her. Both are interrelated. But as I reflected on my Jubilee West experience, I still heard the same familiar inner voices of my own self-blame. If only I had been smarter, worked harder, tried something more creative, then I could have made a bigger dent in solving these problems. At this point I was fortunate to come across the book Surplus Powerlessness by Michael Lerner. Lerner first talks about real pow-erlessness, the reality of an unequal distribution of power in this society: If a small number of us try to change things, we will run up against a brick wall. In fact, even if millions of people were to engage in activity to change things, in the short run we would find our society very difficult to change. The brick wall is not just a subjective illusion. The basic fact is this: American society is a class-dom-inated society. A small number of people have vast eco-nomic power while the overwhelming.majority has almost no power in the economic realm. Economic power gives that small group a huge amount of political power. While the rest of us have some political power, it takes vast expen-ditures of energy and time to win small victories. But to say that the elites of wealth and power have over-whelming power is not to say that they have absolute power. Things could be quite different if many people were to engage in the struggle for change. It would be a real strug-gle- and there would be many difficult defeats.~ After talking about realpowerlessness, Lerner describes surplus ~uly-Augus~ 199Y 4.91 Bramble ¯ Twenty Inner-City Years powerlessness as "the set of feelings and beliefs that make people think of themselves as even more powerless than the actual power sit-uation requires, and then leads them to act in ways that actually con-firm them in their powerlessness." He is describing me when he shows how many activists continually manage to redefine the con-ditions of success in such a way that they always feel "one down" for not having accomplished enough; they redefine their victo-ries as failures and do not credit their own real accomplishments. I certainly do that often. Lerner reminds us that when society claims it is set up in a fundamentally fair way, in which people can make it if they really try, powerlessness is seen as a product of the individual's personal failures. Thus self-blame becomes the central element in surplus powerlessness. It grows stronger every time we blame ourselves for having failed in some important way and have no compassion for ourselves in view of all the ways that reality pushes us to be less than we want to be. Taking responsibility for one's own life works only for the part of the population and for the societal issues where objective conditions allow for real change. People need help to distinguish between factors out of their control about which they could be legitimately angry and factors that would change if they changed how they thought about themselves and how they lived their own lives. Surplus powerlessness, self-blame, deflects attention from the real problems and hence from any real solutions. The anger that might be reasonably directed against a social order which gener-ates personal unhappiness is instead directed inwards and becomes depression or a dangerous buildup of repressed violence. But Lerner's next point is also part of my" experience. Once people are no longer disempowered by self-blaming, they are in a better position to change their environment. Surplus power-lessness can be lessened by supportive group interaction and by developing compassion, showing people that the problems they face do not come from personal inadequacies, but are faced by others as well, and that people need one another's help in facing these problems. My reflection on Lerner's concept of surplus powerlessness shows me that I have been blaming the victims, both my typical West Oakland person and myself. I have definitely internalized the American way that tells me that, if I have a problem, I should take care of it, work to change it, and not blame someone else. 492 Review for Religious But, to avoid the extreme of blaming others for my problems, I frequently go to the extreme of not giving much acknowledg-ment to the real powerlessness in my life, to the real systems that are oppressing me as well as my typical West Oakland person. At this point in my reflection, I read Joanna Macy's books Despair and Personal Power and World as Lover, World as Self about the need to feel pain, experience it, work through it: my pain and the pain of others. I see that as a big clue for me. I went back to my sabbatical journal written in Washington, D.C., in 1992. One of the questions in Mary Cosby's class on "call" was "What is your deepest pain?" I wrote, "I'm not aware of very much personal pain. Actually my greatest pain seems to be feel-ing the pain of others: so many homeless people on the street, so many hurting children, so much violence in the world., and feel-ing powerless to do very much about any of this." A few days later at a creative-movement session I felt overcome by sorrow and tears. I kept feeling, saying, crying to myself: "I didn't know how to make it better for people. I am so sad about that ¯ ¯ . sad because people were not helped, not so much that I couldn't help but that they weren't helped., thinking of Sylvia, Spring, Connie, Deedee, Charetta, Pat, A1, Brenda . . . tears because I couldn't do it, but more because life did not change for them . " I remember feeling that I must be avoiding some deeper personal pain if the major pain I was aware of was pain for the world, for other people. Now I see that a major need for me is to feel my pain, which greatly includes pain for the world. Joanna Macy says in Despair and Personal Power: "We have trouble cred-iting the notion that concerns for the general welfare might be acute enough to cause distress., but pain for our world touches each of us, and this pain is rooted in caring., our apparent pub-lic apathy is but a fear of experiencing and expressing this pain, and once it is acknowledged and shared it opens the way to our power." 2 I have definitely internalized the American way that tells me that, if I have a problem, I should take care of it, work to change it, and not blame someone else. July-August 199Y 493 Bramble ¯ Twenty Inner-City Years During that semester in 1992, I picked up an old journal from 1988, specifically looking for how I dealt at that time with my pain over the distressing situations I experienced daily at Jubilee West. A pattern seemed to be: I would run into a small or large problem that was usually a symptom of a larger systemic problem; feel frustrated and ptwerless; think I should be able to solve it; blame myself because I could not; go to bed depressed, wake up with somehow more energy ready to try again, to think up some new way to address the problem . . . but rarely allow myself to really feel my own pain and sadness. Although many people were involved in Jubilee West, I always felt myself ultimately respon-sible. I also frequently neglected my deep need to gift myself with beauty and nourishment for my soul. I have always felt a great desire for silence, solitude, beauty, prayer--for finding ways to experience the sacred in all of life. But I often let compulsive efforts to solve problems rob me of the centeredness necessary for living and acting from a contemplative way of being. As a step in the process of"living the questions" and of writ-ing this article, I walked around the West Oakland neighborhood visiting some of my longtime friends. I had not been able to do this since leaving Jubilee West three years ago; when we moved away last fall, I just disappeared without telling many people that I was going. So this walk was a pilgrimage for remembering and finding cause to grieve and cause to rejoice. What do I learn for myself from all of this reading and reflec-tion and from my recent pilgrimage of walking in West Oakland? What does my inner wisdom tell me? What follows are some exploratory answers as I live the questions: 1. Feel your pain, take time for it. your personal pain and that of the West Oakland people that you care about, and the world that 'faces the possibility of total destruction. Allowing myself to feel pain is hard to do; I am more used to giving thirty seconds to pain and then moving on to possible solu-tions. But, on my walk through West Oakland, I was more able to be with the pain of what I experienced: my own fear when I went into Campbell Village by myself because of what I know of the violence, drugs, and crime that are always there; the usual mounds of garbage everywhere, especially in front of my friend Sally's apartment; Sally's son in jail for using and selling drugs--I remem-ber him as a cute, loving eight-year-old; the fifteen or twenty men on the corner of 14th and Peralta as they always are--drink- 494 Review for Reh~ious ing and buying drugs; Trisha's house boarded up because she was evicted for drug activity, when she had been one of Jubilee West's most promising tenants. 2. Feelyourjoy also and others' joy as well: celebrate small suc-cesses, continue the lifelong task of dealing with your inner judge that says, "but it isn't enough." My walk through West Oakland gave me many opportunities for experiencing joy. It felt good to remember all the times I have been in people's houses having coffee and conversation. My friend Joanne greeted me with a big hug, and we laughed over old times together. Two of her children are doing very well, she is enjoying her job taking care of hand-icapped people, she still feels empow-ered by the victories we achieved together many years ago, and her sense of humor is still spectacular. Annie also greeted me with open arms; she is an elderly woman who owns her own home and several oth-ers in the neighborhood, though all of them are in various stages of disrepair. As I sat in her tiny kitchen, she asked me who she could get to help her change her will, and I remembered how hard it was, many years ago, to convince her to make a will at all. My last stop was Charles Garcia, who because of our orga-nizing efforts scraped up $1,700 twenty years ago to buy the falling-apart house he was living in--a small amount, even in 1974, but monumental to him. Although he was not home, his pride of ownership was evident everywhere: lots of beautiful roses in the front yard, a stained-glass window over the door; his daugh-ter spoke of wanting to. move her own growing family back to that neighborhood. I was pleased to see that there was only one burned-out house on Chester Street, when there had been many a few years ago, and I felt pride as always at Jubilee West's twenty-two new-con-struction apartments on Goss Street, definitely the ~best-looking housing anywhere in the neighborhood. My experience of joy on my walk through the West of Cypress neighborhood brought home to me the truth of Joanna Macy's Celebrate small successes, continue the life-long task of dealing with your inner judge that says, "but it isn't enough." jUuly-August 199Y 495 Bramble ¯ Twenty Inner-City Years words: "When we open our awareness to the web of life, we con-nect not only with the sufferings of others, but to the same mea-sure, with their gifts and powers . . . if we can grieve with the griefs of others, so, by the same token, by the same openness, can we find strength in their strengths, bolstering our own individual supplies of courage, commitment, and endurance."3 3. Acknowledge real powerlessness and systemic oppression. Deepen awareness of this as a reality check, as the main reason for not continuing self-blame, as a step to determining at which point to try to intervene. Catch yourself when you are blaming the vic-tim, whether that victim is yourself or someone else. 4. Acknowledge surplus powerlessness in yourself and in others, and try to find ways to deal with it, mainly by group sharing and by compassion for yourself and others. 5. Give up the myth that there is one key to changing the world. I have had the fantasy hope that there is one key to changing oppres-sive systems and that, if I could just find it, I would know what to do. Now I am more aware that transformation is happening on many levels at once and that it is not necessarily more important to work on one rather than another; I have lots of options for where I can best use my gifts to work for change. 6. Give up the myth that I am totally responsible (even when and if it is my job to be in charge), that I necessarily have the power to create the changes I want. Sometimes I have that power, often I do not. Any transformation will take many people working in many ways. A friend told me recently that she has become passionately committed to nudging the world toward justice and ecological san-ity. The idea of nudging shows a good grasp of reality and the pos-sible, and many people are doing this all over the world. 7. Give as much time as possible to the beauty, silence, and soli-tude that I so long for and know is essential to the life of my soul. My greatest desire is to act from a deeply contemplative stance. I do not always live that way, but I become more and more con-vinced that it is the only way to be who I am, to be at peace with myself and the world. Many questions remain as I come to the end of these reflec-tions, but hopefully every deepened insight leads to new possi-bilities and changes in my way of being, feeling, and acting. My questions will take more than my lifetime to answer. I am reminded of a vivid memory from a few years ago. I was in the midst of a crisis at Jubilee West, and I went to walk around the 496 Review for Religious lake to try to think of what to do. As I walked, I would come up with an idea about a next step, bu~ a voice in me kept asking, "What if you can't solve the problem?" I would be with that ques-tion for a few minutes and then start again to plan strategies. But the voice was persistent: "What if you can't solve the problem?" I have been brought up to believe that, ifI have a problem or see a problem, I should try to solve it. In fact, I very frequently have been able to find solutions to problems, to achieve what-ever I put my mind to achieve. Similarly, in World as Love~; World as Self, Joanna Macy quotes Lyndon B. Johnson as saying during the Vietnam War: "Don't come to me with a problem unless you have a solution." She tells of some colleagues in France who, ridi-culing our American culture for demanding instant solutions to problems, said we should "let the difficulties reveal themselves first before rushing for a ready-made solution, or else you will not understand them.''4 And so, as I walked around the lake struggling with the com-plexities of my crisis, the persistent voice asking "What if you can't solve the problem?" was actually a blessing. It pushed me to experience that often I cannot solve the problem. What is needed then is not more strategies, but waiting in openness: openness to the unfathomable presence, power, energy, connectedness in the universe, in me, in other people, and in all situations--which I call God. What is needed is sitting with open hands and open heart in deep silence and solitude, or dancing with abandonment to powerful music, or walking on the beach feeling the immensity of the ocean, or remembering my redwood tree. What is needed is anything that brings home to me the sacredness of all beings. I am remembering also the poem by Wendell Berry that I first saw on the kitchen wall at Genesis Farm, the environmental study center where I spent six weeks in the spring of 1992. It moved me deeply then and still does, giving me a powerful image of commitment to the possible in the darkest of times: "In the dark of the moon, / In flying snow,/. / The world in danger. / I walk the rocky hillsides / Sowing clover." I wonder what forms my clover will take? In looking through my 1991-92 .journal, I rediscovered another powerful image, a dream I had on 1 February 1992 and had forgotten. The image of wholeness in my dream links with Joanna Macy's wisdom about the interconnected whole in Despair and Personal Power: "What is it that allows us to feel pain for our Bramble ¯ Twenty Inner-City Years world? And what do we discover as we move through it? What awaits us there on the other side of despair? To all these ques-tions there is one answer. It is interconnectedness with life and all other beings. It is the living web out of which our individual, sep-arate existences have risen, and in which we are interwoven."s Deep implications of this dream are gradually surfacing as I continue to reflect on it more than three years later: I am in a house with many people., much chaos., there is a cupboard with a lot of jigsaw puzzles., suddenly they all fall out and come crashing down . . . so there are hun-dreds of puzzle pieces all over the floor., all from differ-ent puzzles . . . instead of feeling hopeless, like I would never be able to sort out the pieces and put each puzzle together again . . . in the dream I feel hopeful . . . like what was individual puzzles is now one big whole . . . and the challenge is to make a new picture in a new way. Soon after I wrote the pages above, my friend Sister Pat, cofounder of Jubilee West, died unexpectedly while we were vaca-tioning in Vermont. We had worked, argued, dreamed, planned, and enjoyed life together in West Oakland for nineteen years of a longer close friendship. Pat was "home" to me; now I feel like a homeless person. In my grief I have felt that God is burning himself into my soul, in intense pain and intense beauty. Was it in another lifetime that I wrote, "I'm not aware of very much per-sonal pain"? I am amazed that "Feel your pain" was one of my "exploratory answers." It has helped me take time for the sadness of my loss. I am hopeful that my pain will give me strength and wisdom to respond to the world's pain in new ways. My under-standing of my own "answers" is deeper than when I wrote them. Hopefully, I am more ready to keep working to create a new pic-ture, a new wholeness. Notes ~ Michael Lerner, Surplus Powerlessness (Oakland: Institute for Labor and Mental Health, 1986). These and other quotations from Lerner are a combination of a variety of pages in this book. 2 Joanna Macy, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (Baltimore: New Society Publishers, 1983). These quotations are a com-bination of a variety of pages in chapters 1 and 2. 3 Macy, Despair, p. 32. 4 Joanna Macy, World as Love~; World as Self(Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1991), p. 18. s Macy, Despair, p. 24. 498 Review for Religious MARGARET MARY KNITTEL Corporate Sponsorship: The 1990s and the Fruits of Our Labor I alternate between thinking of the planet as home--dear and familiar stone hearth and garden--and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners. --Annie Dillard, "Sojourner" Mey mother had lived in this home, built by her father, ver since she was eighteen, and now sixty years later she was selling the stained-glass windows, the hardwood floors, everything. All went well but for that last moment holding all the pain. We walked away bearing the image of strangers in that beloved doorway, frame of four generations. Doorways of insti-tutions, too, owned and operated by generations of women reli-gious, hold countless emotionally freighted moments, and near the close of the 20th century the terms "corporate sponsorship" and "fruits of our labor" have become and remain inextricably bound. In one ethical frame come three questions that are relevant to these two realities, corporate sponsorship and fruits of our labor. The three questions suggest a fluidity of vision, a loo'sening of ties. The questions are: Who are we? Who are we becoming? Who are we called to be? Who Are We? Over successive generations the corporately sponsored institutional ministry increasingly became for Catholic women religious in the United States their "hearth and garden," Margaret Mary Knittel RSM served as director of personnel services at Saint Xavier University in Chicago from 1981 to 1987. Presently, as a consultant for nonprofit organizations, she writes to us from I 1 Simpson, H; Geneva, Illinois 60134. ~uly-Aug~st 1995 499 Knittel ¯ Corporate Sponsorship the consummate fruits of their labor, our labor. Hospitals, nurs-ing homes, orphanages, .high schools, and colleges together form a litany of dedicated achievement, of the brick-by-brick accom-plishments of many dedicated women. Annie Dillard's feelings about this planet as hearth and garden and land of exile help identify three groups or generations of women religious who for a hundred years have owned and operated those institutions.1 These generations we shall call the exiles, the arrived, and the The first generation, the exiles, traveled from countries like Ireland, Germany, and Italy to North American mission lands. The second generation, the arrived (or arriv&s), lived in an at-homeness within their institutions in the burgeoning years. Now, in these closing years of the 20th century, we have a third gen-eration, the sojourners, seeking a new way to live their profes-sional commitments and their personal lives as vowed women religious upon finding themselves living in smaller and smaller groupings on a planet presenting challenges and opportunities their pioneering sisters in exile--their grandsisters--would not recognize. For the exiles--pioneers, all of them--the missions of the late 19th and early 20th century meant lives of physical sacrifice and economic deprivation well beyond the virtue or vow of poverty. Those women pieced together budgets, scraping their ingenuity for survival. Having come intent upon working hard, they strove to build hearths and gardens and kept striving and struggling, remaining and reminding themselves to be exiles at heart, women in a foreign land. Echoing the economy at large, the institutional ministries they had founded and maintained boomed after the lean years of the Great Depression. The second generation, the arrived, brought forward personal and corporate energies to build up edu-cational, social-service, and healthcare institutions surpassing the dreams of the earlier immigrant generation, the exiles. With increased settling in, this hearth of the religious women's profes-sional lives, this sponsored work, began for some to take on near-salvific powers. This hospital, this academy, began to hold terrestrial hopes and dreams, promised a salvation, and hinted of a this-side immortality. Plaudits, awards, and status were afforded to this generation of women who had arrived, who in some cases had left a humble family circle for what was increasingly becom- 500 Review for Religious ing an educated, secure middle-class community. They, we, by one definition indeed had arrived. For the arrived, their hospital or academy chapel began to localize the garden of the spirit. Here each morning and evening, all, regardless of professional status, gathered together at prayer. Here the contemplative "side" sought nourishment as the apostolic "side" waited just outside the chapel door. Hearth of work and garden of spirit, these became fix-tures within the corporate institu-tions cared for by the members of this second generation. Who Are We Becoming? In the movie "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" the central figure, an exceedingly obese mother of four, says to her teenage son in a moment of reconciliation, "I never wanted to be like this." She had eaten her way to virtual immobility after her husband walked away from her and their children. Do we women religious, as this 20th cen-tury of ours draws to a close, gaze at our corporate body and say to ot~rselves, "We never wanted to be like this"? The founders of mis-sions here in the United States began on an inspiration to do good The second generation, the arrived, brought forward personal and corporate energies to build up educational, social-service, and healthcare institutions surpassing the dreams of the earlier immigrant generation, the exiles. in the sight of the God, and now, one or two hundred years later, their legatee corporate body has perhaps come to he something overly substantial: substantial hearth and garden, substantial fruits of our labor. These places, these institutions, became the symbolic body of our corporate identity within the church and the symbolic immortality within our destinies. Boards, philanthropic individ-uals, committees, friendships have been cultivated in the name of a hospital, an orphanage, or a school, and individual women's identities have been formed by and dedicated to bricks and steam pipes and windows. And then, as a distant window opened in the early 1960s and Vatican Council II convened, the corporate body ~ly-August 1995 501 Knittel * Corporate Sponsorship began to be looked at and came into question: "Is this who we are becoming?" For some women and men, in and out of religious life, the signs of the times appealed to in the council documents began to replace the signs of success. The prophet Jeremiah's call to voca- Women religious know that an additional thirty years, like those since the council, will not be afforded them. A sizable amount of post-Vatican time has quickly become history, and religious can recite lists of classrooms already vacated, hospital beds unused, and doors closed. tion describes a people God observes burning incense to strange gods and "adoring their own hand-iwork" (Jr 1:16). The prophetic began to ease itself forward. The work of our hands, the fruits of our labor, came into question. Now, in these late days of the 20th century, the hearth lies gray with embers and the garden shows signs of late-summer exhaustion. Women religious know that an additional thirty years, like those since the council, will not be afforded them. A sizable amount of post-Vatican time has quickly become history, and religious can recite lists of classrooms already vacated, hospital beds unused, and doors closed. Worse, we know in our aging the lists of needs more acute, more violent, than our grandsisters might have dared imagine. With abuses crowding our culture into corners that seem to offer no choice, we acknowl-edge there has to be more to this journey. Who Are We Called to Be? Our third generation, the would-be sojourners, wonder at this late-20th-century hour: "Is this our time of exile? Shall we be graced to select to become sojourners. Selecting to be sojourners, to move from being securely settled to securely unsettled, recalls the, sweep of the Hebrew Scriptures showing us a people finding centers other than God. The king-dom, the temple, the land--here was the answer. No, not here, there. No, not there, here. Efforts to restore the earthly kingdom kept centering on realities other than God. But Yahweh contin-ued to insist. 502 Review for Religious Selecting to be sojourners calls us to know how to go into exile, how to travel. Traveling, what shall we pack? Timing, how to schedule transportation, stopovers? And we cannot forget those allowances of minutes and hours, those sponges of time, to absorb this unfamiliar territory, this plan, these new connections. We will not know the language, but will need to interact and relate with others in order to continue on the journey and will have to search our imaginations for ways to communicate constructively. Life will move more slowly even as we continually need to cope with myriad details. Knowing exile, we will know ourselves anew. A clock continues to tick, and while many individual women religious hear it, the instinct to muffle its sound remains. "Enough!" we hear. Our alternative thoughts drift to sojourning, but graying embers say "Enough." We lived through the changes of the 1960s and '70s immediately after the council. No more traveling, turning, leaving, remembering, forgetting, previsioning, refashioning, or paradigm shifting for us! Just leave me alone. Enough. Give me the basics for survival and let me live out my life, here. Give me my job, my position, my power. Give me space. But a clock continues to tick. Learning to Mourn Henri Nouwen has said, "Yes, we must mourn our losses. We cannot talk or act them away, but we can shed tears over them and allow ourselves to grieve deeply. To grieve is to allow our losses to tear apart feelings of security and safety and lead us to the painful truth of our brokenness. Our grief makes us experience the abyss of our own life in which nothing is settled, clear, or obvious, but everything constantly shifting and changing.''2 At issue here is whether or not women religious have the energy to mourn. There have been deaths--countless funerals, remembered rejec-tions, and downright hostilities and hatreds. Yes, death seems to have been an integral part of this life once so much idealized--the youth and the joy! But, through all of these deaths, have we short-circuited a certain human pathos, admixing theologies and spiri-tualities, being at times more stoic than Christian? Several weeks after the death of my mother, an acquaintance asked, "How are you doing?" An incident, fresh that day, helped me to describe a way of being that I would later learn is common to us and may be where the corporate person of religious life .~ly-Auguyt 1995 503 Knittel * Corporate Sponsorship finds itself today. I told him of my standing in the middle of a room that morning, about to clean, but not knowing what to do next. My emotional energy was somehow separated from me as a person. As women religious, do we stand in the middle of a room and not know how to clean it, with our individual and corpgrate emo-tional energy elsewhere? Solneone has said, "Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.''3 Is there a sense that somehow our corporate energy has separated itself from the corporate body so that with our corpo-rate leadership we continue doing things right rather than doing the right thing? Walter Brueggemann has observed that "reli-gious practitioners are often easy and unwitting conspirators with such denial. We become the good-humor men and women, for who among us does not want to rush in and smooth things out, to reassure, to cover grief?.''4 Rush in, smooth out, reassure--sounds familiar. What and where are the deep-down places in which we will individually and corporately rejoin our emotional energies, find ourselves? While sometimes we feel sublimely practiced in the various forms of grief, having experienced death in many forms, have we mourned? Have we cared enough about ourselves individually and corporately to let in the slow, mysterious loneliness, the ever changing healing of life after a death, a shocking, numbing death, has occurred? This work of mourning looks not only to the past but also to the future, fully realizing that new steps must be taken. The ability to bear wholesome and healing grief is every bit as much a fruit of our labor as the most imposing achievement of our corporate endeavors. Who are we called to be in this late 20th century, and is God directly and immediately in charge? Given our status and our connections, have we--women religious who have arrived--cor-porately capitulated to others' being in charge, someone else's agenda. "The task of the prophetic imagination is to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord.''s We come through the numbing to learn from a God in charge that the fruit of our labor may be "only" to know Jesus the Christ once again as way, as truth, as life. In this late 20th century, the fruits of our having arrived carry the exotically sweet flavor of success taken for granted and of 504 Review for Religious controlling power. In some instances we think it necessary to cling to these fruits with an even tighter grip. What sadder use of our time than participating in meetings with unseen forces with a view to reconstituting yesteryear rather than working with hope for tomorrow! Is there true conversation within our communi-ties, or merely some talk while waiting for followers to follow? Whether we would speak with Brueggemann's "prophetic imagination" or Philip Keane's "moral imagination," can we imag-ine imagining? Keane has said, "Communities as well as persons need t6 develop moral character and exercise moral imagination as they seek to address the great issues of our times.''6 When a loved one dies, a significant part of our grieving may involve imagining the future without them. We have known and loved them, but deep down we grieve for ourselves in an unknown future--a birthday or a Christmas--without their presence. We deeply miss this lost past. The exile has begun, with or without us. We need to acknowl-edge it, learning more and imagining more about what it means to mourn. We will be sojourners, like our grandsisters before us, leaving the comforts of home, however we currently define and hold on to them. "A number of factors can hinder persons from being genuinely reflective and playful in their moral thinking," says Keane; "power or force is one such factor.''7 Shall we become more reflective, more playful, and imagine leaving our present "homes" of wrongfully constructed political power, of oppressive behaviors? What prevents us from asking: Who are we? Who are we becoming? and Who are we called to be? The answer from some, if not all, may lie in these processes of the prophetic, these questions. Land of Exile: Corporate Sojournership "Fairly often," says Keane, "I run into persons whose image of God is that God is out to get us. Such persons want to be told what to do, and they are afraid of using their moral imaginations. Their religious or prayer lives will often be quite limited because their fear keeps them from really being open to the power of the Gospel stories.''8 As women religious we seek the courage to imag-ine and do corporately what many individual women and men have already wrestled with in their lives. We need, corporately, to turn in the keys, have a good cry, and move on. 3~uly-Al¢g'ust 199Y 505 Knittel * Corporate Sponsorship Turning in the keys does not necessarily mean a wholesale closing of eacli and every institution. Some would like that, but it could indeed prove shortsighted and definitely unimaginative, even though some say the community's need for money is a good reason for selling this hospital or that academy and others say, "If we sell, we would be doing something holy." Abandoning an inner-city hospital without recourse to imaginative possibilities of how this long-cared-for space--the land's square feet and the buildings' cubic feet--could now serve the poor better might well become a new urban tragedy. We will need to go after anew, with all the civic clout that our years of being respectable arrivges can muster, the neighborhood's endemic and systemic problems. The friends of our institutions of the past may not choose to be the companions of our sojourning in the years ahead. But, together with those who would stay with us, we n~ed to find out who we are called to be. In any new land such as the future, there will be questions, then some answers, and then new questions. Our bequest, the fruits of our labor--whether embodied in our present corporate buildings and our present apostolic endeavors or not--must always be directed towards common goods that our corporate resources and corporate energies can hope to accomplish. People reflecting on the conversion to which all of us are called expect that the hearth and garden that halve come down to tis from a former time, these substantial signs of our having arrived, will increasingly suggest to us new common and corpo-rate lives of sojourning exile. These and similar questions will keep occurring to us: How will we use the power and influence we have? What could the prayer of our community be like? How will we imagine and live appropriate ways of coming together and being together--or of being together and going out together? What can we do most effectively for the coming of the kingdom? Shall we be women of vision, corporately attending to the good? Shall we corporately prepare in earnest to live in exile, to be sojourners, persons consciously and deliberately ready for the journey that begins and ends in God? Notes l Annie Dillard, "Sojourner," in Teaching a Stone to Talk (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1988), p. 150. 506 Review for Religious 2 Henri J.M. Nouwen, With Hearts Burning (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1994), p. 27. 3 Warren Bennis, Why Leaders Can't Lead (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1989), p. 18. 4 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic hnagination (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), p. 49. s Brueggemann, p. 49. 6 Philip S. Keane, Christian Ethics and Imagination (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), p. 104. 7 Keane, p. 107. 8 Keane, p. 107. Tourist Your T-shirt's stamped in letters large across your chest: KATMANDU. Your bike is labeled with a hundred road resorts. Your car is dotted round with all your touring triumphs . So, why not take another route today? A low-cost tour to that other inner world inside. Stay quiet by that vast unbounded inner ocean in your mind. Dive, swim and surf. Fly free. Ride high the inner waves of thought and feeling endlessly exhilarated, or delve into the dark and secret untrod cavern of your soul. Discover now the mystery of creation; confront the abyss unending of your own nothing-self becoming. And meet in that remote mysterious empty temple, far inside, your God. Cothrai Gogan CSSP .y~uly-August 199Y 507 CATHERINE M. HARMER Retirement's Wisdom Years One of the recurring discussions at assemblies and chap-ters of religious revolves around the rising median age, the need to care for our elderly, and more subtly the growing costs of such caring. The issue is an important one in that most United States congregations have median ages over sixty. An examination of congregational budgets shows that increasingly large amounts of money are dedicated to the care of the elderly. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops has been sponsor-ing a special collection for aging religious that people contribute to with great generosity, but it covers only a small part of the actual costs. A visit to the motherhouse of almost any group of sisters will show that a large part of what was housing for novices in the past is now dedicated to the aging members. Some motherhouses have very fine infirmaries for the sick elderly. There is no question that religious leaders are making great efforts to provide the best they can for their members through all stages of life. I would like, however, to examine two aspects of that effort. The first has to do with the nursing-home care that many of the sick elderly need. The second has to do with the concept of retirement for religious and the way it has been handled over the last twenty years or so. The Sick Elderly The first topic is the simpler one and will get less treatment in this article. In the care of our sick elderly, the emphasis has Catherine M. Harmer MMS wrote "Election: A Call to Service" for our September-October 1994 issue. Her address is Medical Mission Sisters; 300 W. Wellens Street; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19120. 508 Review for Religious been changed from the simple caring for them "at home" that was possible when the median age was much lower and the num-ber of elderly religious was either smaller or relatively smaller. When that was the case, at the motherhouse a small staff assisted by novices and postulants could care for them in much the same way that a family could take care of any sick or elderly member of it. Gradually, as the numbers increased and the sick elderly lived longer, a more professional model, that of the nursing home, became more common. As this was happen-ing, the percentage of vigorously active members was decreasing. At present, in most of the retirement facilities I have visited over the years, the staff is largely lay with very few religious among them. In some very large congrega-tions, with several hundred sick elderly members, the facilities com-pare well with any licensed nursing home, often providing much better care and definitely offering more loving care than in the average nurs-ing home for the laity. In smaller congregations the attempt to pro-vide quality nursing care results in Some small congregations in a given area are studying the feasibility of establishing an intercon gregational nursing home. A few religious leaders are looking at ways to provide for their members in general nursing homes in their area. small facilities that are as expensive to maintain as considerably larger ones would be. In some cases a nursing staff (composed mainly of nurse aides) that could care for thirty patients is taking care of ten or fifteen, sometimes fewer. As congregations face the heavy financial drain, there is a movement toward collaboration among the congregations in a geographic area. This is a positive development that could lead to good care for the religious and lower financial costs. Some groups that have larger facilities are opening them to other congrega-tions. Some small congregations in a given area are studying the feasibility of establishing an intercongregational nursing home. A few religious leaders are looking at ways to provide for their mem-bers in general nursing homes in their area. All of these steps are difficult. Often the members of a con-gregation are very unwilling to have their elderly cared for away .~dy-August 199Y 509 Harmer ¯ Retirement's Wisdom Years from their own motherhouse. At times the elderly themselves feel that they are being mistreated by being separated from their tra-ditional homes. Only a few consider it a good thing to be in a nursing home of mixed patients, men and women, religious and lay, in spite of the pastoral potential of such a model. The efforts of leaders and the combined efforts of congrega-tions to deal with both the physical realities and the psychologi-cal and religious values are important ones. Key for the leaders will be understanding, patience, and collaborative stances. For the members, those who are elderly and those who are not, it is important to develop an acceptance of the reality they face and a willingness to keep their last days congruent with what has gone before. I suggest that this requires ongoing education for every-one and a spirituality that looks at one's last days as continuous with the dedication of earlier days. Religious Retirement In our efforts to prepare one another for "retirement," we may have bought into a model that was emerging after World War II and continues to develop in terms of what aging and retir-ing are all about. This brings me to the second topic, the one which will constitute the major portion of this article. It is all the more important because it bears upon the first as well. It has to do with how we are viewing retirement. I believe that we have accepted a way of looking at retirement which is increasingly being challenged in the population at large and that we need to study it in the light of what our entire religious life is about. Several aspects of this model of retirement raise new questions. The current model in the United States assumes that people will retire at sixty-five if not earlier. When Social Security became a reality in the 1930s, life expectancy was lower, many people did hard physical labor and had relatively poor nutritional histories, and their hope was simply that at retirement they could stop working without worry about becoming dependent on their chil-dren or "ending up in the poorhouse." Today life expectancy is much higher, and the reality is that many people stay active, healthy, and alert for twenty years and longer after they retire. A second aspect, then, is that retirement is a time of not work-ing and, instead, spending one's time and energy at play of one sort or another. (Married women often have less of the play since 510 Review for Religious they are still expected to do the work of keeping up the home.) A problem here is that many retired people soon become bored with the play aspect. Some move toward part-time jobs or vol-unteer work, while others become captives of the television or the endless bingo games of our less creative senior centers. A third aspect of the current model that deserves examina-tion is the tendency to move away from the place where most of life was spent. This sometimes has to do with seeking a warmer climate or more economical housing. The result is that, as peo-ple age, they are out of regular con-tact with their family and must develop new friends. Even the elderly who manage well on their own in their original home are often under pressure from relatives and friends to find a smaller place-- which often takes them away from the community in which they have close ties and away from some sig-nificant activities that they could otherwise keep up. People are living longer while remaining physically and mentally vigorous, and yet the model of retirement continues to treat them as if they cannot do anything but play. What is being lost is the opportunity for them to contribute to family, to friends, to com-munity, in a different way than during their working years, but a way that is significant and needed. What is being lost to society at large is the accumulated wisdom of the elderly, a loss our soci-ety cannot afford. It would be a shame for religious congregations to follow the national model for retirement too closely. While few if any con-gregations have fixed ages of retirement from major involvement in ministries, there has been a subtle movement over the last few decades to start "thinking about retirement" while the religious are in their fifties. Without necessarily meaning to do so, this has too frequently led to a mentality that places retiring somewhere in the sixties, even if there is no real reason to do so. I have vis-ited motherhouses where some of the sisters appear to have retired Although the idea that play is the major activity of the retired has not taken hold so completely in religious congregations, what has developed is a sense that this is my time to do with as I wish. J-uly-dugust 199Y 511 Harmer ¯ Retirement's Wisdom Years far too soon and are desperate for some way to be involved in ministry. Mthough the idea that play is the major activity of the retired has not taken hold so completely in religious congregations, what has developed is a sense that this is my time to do with as I wish. Especially in motherhouses, which tend to be out in the country or relatively isolated, this leads to a combination of small tasks around the motherhouse, activities that mimic the senior citizens' centers, and some increased emphasis on the spiritual life without much attention to how that might be different at this stage of life. Often when I talk with the retired themselves I find a deep longing for two things: to find some meaningful part-time min-istry and to explore what spiritual life means at this latter stage of life. When retirement takes place at a motherhouse, you find the same isolation from community that the lay elderly experience who move to Florida. While most religious have lived and worked in a number of places, there was always the parish, the school or hospital, sometimes the neighborhood, as a framework for involve-ment and support. This is now gone, and the beautiful grounds of the motherhouse, the special facilities, and sometimes the large numbers (for those, notably, who were used to smaller groups) are no substitute for what has been lost. Religious do not, on the whole, do a lot of complaining, but the sense of loss is often heard in the undertones of a conversation. We hear ". everything is so nice here., everyone is so kind . . . but."--and the long-ing is very real. I am increasingly convinced that elderly religious should, whenever possible, have the same choices as the younger members. This stage of life is important, and it needs to be rec-ognized as such. In the remainder of this article, I want to address two impor-tant things about aging and retirement for religious: (1) the sec-ond half of life as a time of deepening wisdom and individuation, a time for a greater spirituality to emerge, and (2) the role of elderly religious in continuing the mission of Jesus. For many ideas here, it will be evident that I am indebted to Carl Jung, but also to a fascinating book by Jane R. Pr~tat on the croning years (1994). As I read her book, I found myself dwelling on several ideas: that our society wastes the wisdom of the elderly at a time when we need it most; that aging is not just something that hap-pens, but a part of the whole picture of life; and that much of 512 Review for Religious what is wrong in contemporary ways of looking at and dealing with aging in general are found also in regard to aging among religious, especially in how we treat the reality we call "retire-ment." The Second Half of Life Some years ago a large number of articles, workshops, and counseling programs focused on a particular transition seen as noteworthy, the "mid-life crisis." This concept seems, from a Jungian point of view, relevant to the developmental model's tran-sition from the first to the second half of life. This division into two halves does not have a chronological point, just ~s mid-life cannot be tied to a specific number of years of life. The first half of life is devoted to infancy, childhood, and young adulthood inso-far as these parts of life have to do with coming to know the world around ourselves, coming to an understanding of who we are as separate from our parents, learning, developing a working career, and moving to success within that career. At the midpoint, we might wake up in the morning and ask: Is this all there is to life? How we answer that question may indicate if the second half of life is about to begin. If the answer is "Yes, this is it!" we could spend the rest of our life simply as a continuation of the first half until death. If the answer is "No, there is something more!" we could enter into the second half of life. In the second half of life, the tasks shift to integration of the parts that have been separated during the first half, the move-ment toward individuation, coming to know ourselves in a dif-ferent way, and the decision to move toward wisdom. The "wise old man" and "wise old woman" archetypes begin to emerge dur-ing the early part of this second half of life. I believe that many people make the shift to the second half of life without ever hear-ing about Jung or his developmental theories. They recognize that something is changing in themselves, and they move with those changes. Some of the "play" elements of retirement--the programs for senior citizens that involve bingo, excursions, and hobbies--could be considered a return to an early part of the first half of lifel Now that we have done our work, earned our pension, we can again become the children whose task is play. For people with a limited field of interests, this may mean watching television for ffuly-August 1995 513 Harmer ¯ Retirement's Wisdom Years As we age; there is often a longing for a deeper understanding, a greater closeness to God. It is a normal part of the second half of life. long hours of the day and night. This is to remain in the first half of life, possibly until death, without ever taking the step into the second half. For other people, the leisure activities are part of their under-standing of where they are in terms of age, but other aspects also begin to emerge. Spending time with their children and grand-children can be a way of being the elder who is communicating the lore and the wisdom of life. This is a second-half activity and one much needed in today's culture, in which single-parent families and families with both parents working are becoming the norm. Contact with the older generation, with grandparents, . uncles, and aunts, which for long years was the norm, now is the excep-tion in many families. Wisdom also has to do with com-ing to a deeper knowledge of God, a greater and deeper integration of the spiritual life. For many people, life has been so busy, so full of duties, that the spiritual life was relegated to a set of rituals honored on a daily, weekly, or yearly basis. As we age, there is often a longing for a deeper understanding, a greater closeness to God. It is a normal part of the second half of life. In some cases it is connected with daily Mass for people who during their working years were quite con-tent with the Sunday Mass; it may mean a return to some of the religious practices of childhood; sometimes it is :a search for deeper intimacy with God. This longing belongs to the wisdom quest of this second stage. Religious, hopefully, have not stinted on their attention to the spiritual and to God's presence all through the active first half of their life. Yet the sense that the latter half of life has some-thing special to offer is found among them as well. One cannot deny, though, that some religious at this stage seem to put i:he haain emphasis on play. Their way of playing may be different, but it is still play and may involve television, novel reading, trips to the casino with the senior citizens' group, and considerable family visiting. 514 Review for Religious As a country we have to explore how to make the wisdom of the elders available to our children and to our busy adults. In the extended family of the past, this happened very simply. At one time in my childhood, I went every Friday after school to my grandparents' home so that on Saturday morning I could help .my grandmother with some of the cleaning she found difficult to do. What I remember most is conversations after supper on Friday with my grandfather, who told me the stories of his youth when he was an organizer of the unions in the steel mills of Pittsburgh. I also remember listening to music on the radio, and all three of us reading our separate books or magazines. Elderly religious off in motherhouses and retirement centers lose their easy contact with yoilnger religious, lose casual opportunities to share their wisdom with them, just as grandparents nowadays are often in other states where spending time with their grandchildren is no longer 'possible. In some motherhouses there are now prayer centers and renewal centers that give workshops and courses for sisters and lay people who are interested. At one point I had a constant flow of their catalogues coming across my desk. Fine as many of these centers are, I rarely saw anything that addressed the need for exploring the spirituality of the latter half of life, of the retirement years. Yet in those same houses I often met older sisters who longed for scripture study, for prayer assistance, for some way of understanding and developing the spirit life for this special part of their earthly sojourn. Some Strategies for the Second Half of Life It seems to me, then, that there are two things leadership would do well to do~ (1)to make it possible for elderly religious (granted their varying degrees of diminished energy) to continue to be involved in meaningful ministries that connect with the congregation's charism and mission and (2) to make conscious efforts to help the elderly religious move through the integrative work of the second half of their life in a way that is just as appro-priate as the novitiate training was for the first half. ., I live in a parish at present where more than half of the sis-ters in the local convent are well into the second half of their life and thus are no longer able to be involved full-time in the min-istries of their congregation. The congregation is a teaching one, jg~uly-August 1995 515 Harmer ¯ Retirement's Wisdom Years staffing many parish and,diocesan schools. A few of the sisters teach in the parish school, others commute to diocesan high schools, and the older sisters are engaged in time,limited but very vital ministries, These include teaching and tutoring in the adult literacy center, tutoring children from the grade school, and vis-iting elderly shut-ins 'in the neighborhood. None of these are full-time involvements. In some cases the sisters go to the school, in others the students come to them in the convent. Whenever I meet with these women, I am struck by the joy and peace that are obvious in them. Not everyone can be placed in a parish convent. Some of our elderly need to be in places like motherhouses where their greater physical needs can be provided for. It is sometimes possible to bring ministries to these motherhouses and at the same time pro-vide a wonderful service to others. I have been to motherhouses where there was day care for children in some parts of the build-ing and day care for ~he elderly in other parts. Two wonderful things happened there daily. The children and the elderly spent some time together every day, and both benefited by the experi-ence. The staff of both facilities had "assistants" from among the retired sisters who, like the women in my parish, could not work full-time, but could be counted on for blocks of time on .a regu-lar basis to help with both groups of day-care clients. o To keep our religious involved as long as possible has another imp.ortant benefit. Most o£ the research on the aging process shows that, if people stay physically and mentally active, they stay healthy longer and age more slowly. We have wonderful examples of very elderly people maintaining their mental and physical capacities long past the expected time and making contributions to art, 'literature,. and the commonweal. Even more important, this is a time when .religious can begin to share the wisdom that has come to them with age, experience, and deep reflection on the meaning of life. This is a wisdom that is very much needed in our culture, a wisdom that too often the children and young peo-ple do.not find around them. Religious can become, in~ a very real way, the grandparent figures ifi their parishes, neighborhoods, and institutions. This is the wisdom of experience joined with reflec-tion upon that experience. 0 The second thing needing attention from leadership is the effort to help religious .use their latter years creatively in order to move toward the union with God that has been such a part of our 516 Review for Religious thinking throughout life. Many of the forms of prayer and spiri-tuality that are helpful to members of active religious congrega-tions during their early and middle years are apostolically oriented. Appropriately, the religious appreciate seeing a close connection between their ministry and their spirituality. The inner life and the outer life are integrated, ideally, in a rich and vibrant way. Changes take place as religious move through the early years of the second half of life. Spending less time and energy in direct apostolic efforts, they have more time for more leisurely ways of praying. They are ready for the next stage of devel-opment of their inner life. Their focus at this stage is somewhat different from that of their early and middle years. It has within it many of the same elements, but also some new ones. In this stage the elderly may desire to recall or renew some of the things they learned in earlier years, but did not have time to savor and assim-ilate. Frequently they speak of their desire for scripture classes, for prayer workshops. These can be useful, but they need to be focused clearly and carefully on the latter years. Now the emphasis is not on quantities of information, but rather on depth, on quiet composure and integration within each individual's inner reality. The wisdom years are the time when the. "wise old woman" and "wise old man" archetypes come to the fore. While the wis-dom can be for oneself, it is even more for others. At this stage there is not likely to be any necessity to go out and preach or teach, but there should be a simple and peaceful realization that the wisdom being garnered is also for others. This is why it is important during these years: for religious to have two areas of concern: one for the continuing development of the wisdom that has been growing in them over the years, and the other for shar-ing that wisdom, very simply and directly, with others. As religious move along through this final stage of life, it is essential that they have the assistance they need to foster the growth of their inner life, to be more open to wisdom, and that they have opportunity to share it with others. Thus, the ending of Most of the research on the aging process shows that, if people stay physically and mentally active, they stay healthy longer and age more slowly. ~uly-August 199Y 517 Harmer ¯ Retirement's Wisdom Years life can be as full and as rich spiritually as any of the earlier stages, and it can be lived out in a truly mission-centered way. This will enrich the lives of the elderly religious themselves, but also of those who are yearning for that wisdom and do not yet know where to find it. It will bring a fullness to the lives of the "retired" and of those around them. It will be a far happier period than one given to play, television, and various excursions. Religious have frequently been the pacesetters in ministry. Perhaps it is time for the "retired" religious to begin to model to other retirees a richer, fuller, and more outwardly directed wisdom retirement. References Johnston, Charles M. Necessary Wisdom: Meeting the Challenge of a New Cultural Maturity. Seattle: ICD Press, 1991. Pr~tat, Jane R. Coming to Age: The Croning Years and Late-Life Transformations. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1994. Exposition Bless you, caress you~ enfold and possess you. Blessed by you, caressed by you, enfolded within you. Possessed. Chris Mannion FMS 518 Review for Religious TAD DUNNE The Enneagram Since the. early 1970s, religious educators, spiritual men-tors, retreat directors, and, most recently, management trainers have been talking about the "enneagram." 1 The theory proposes that each person is hooked by one of nine psychological compulsions--similar to the seven "capital" sins in classical Christian literature? Dozens of authors. and lecturers nowadays are teaching the theory to help people discover which of the nine compulsions is theirs and bow to accomplish their psychological liberation from it. The nine types are often referred to in caricatures: the Perfectionist, the Helper, ~he Status Seeker, the Sensitive Artist, the Observer, the Accuser, the Planner, the Bully, and the Slug.3 To edch of these descriptions, enneagram teachers attach longer descriptions of phobias, ambitions, expectations, learning style, sexual dynamics, management style, virtues, prides, blind spots, fixations, senses of time, and so on. The r~lations among the com-pulsions are represented by a circle whose circumference is numbered, at nine equidistant points. Within the circle is a triangle drawn from points three to six to nine. Also within the circle is a folded hexagon drawn through the Tad Dunne is an adjunct professor of medical ethics at Marygrove College, Detroit, and a management consultant for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan. He has published Spiritual Mentoring (HarperSanFrancisco) and Lonergan and Spirituality (Loyola University Press). He may be addressed at 2923 Woodslee; Royal Oak, Michigan 48073. guidance July-August 199Y 519 Dunne ¯ The Enneagram cycle 1-4-2-8-5-7-1. This strange figure has become the logo of the enneagram system. Enneagram and Myers-Briggs People often compare the enneagram to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which classifies sixteen personality types accord-ing to one's preference for ways of noticing experience and mak-ing decisions. The chief difference between them is that the Myers-Briggs instrument indicates personal preferences, all of which are psychologically normal, while the enneagram indicates pathologies. That is, in the Myers-Briggs'all the types are healthy, while in the enneagram all the types are sick. So the Myers-Briggs is useful for accommodating one's own thinking style with col-laborators'; it helps groups identify the preferences for ways of learning and evaluating that exist,among their members and to deploy their relative .strengths accordingly. The enneagram, in contrast, is useful for identifying neuroses, mostly in oneself. The Myers-Briggs indicator, rooted in Jungian psychology, carries a positive attitude toward human consciousness, whereas the ennea-gram, rooted partly in Freudian psychology, takes a more suspi-cious stand. Few psyqhologists, however, rely on either tool for diagnostic purposes, because of an absence of empirical studies that correlate with validated' tests. Among other helping professionals, the Myers-Briggs indi-cator enjoys a wider and less controversial reputation than the enneagram. The sixteen preferences are easily understood; one can readily find Jung's comments on people's preferences between extraversion and introversion, between sensate observation and intuition, and between thinking and feeling.4 The enneagram, in contrast, has sources shrouded in arcane knowledge from a cor-ner of the Sufi tradition unknown to most Sufis and from George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a self-styled visionary from Russia with dubi-ous credentials. The many enneagram books and tapes that have been published in the last decade tend to describe each of the nine compialsions in dogmatic terms--a style of presentation that allures some but alienates others,s 520 Some Positive Aspects of the Enneagram One of the most disturbing claims made by enneagram devo- Review for Religious tees is that these nine types cover the total human range of com-pulsions. Not ten, not eight.6 There are subsets among the nine, but these supposedly cover all possibilities. Devotees base this claim on an unfamiliar model of personality and on the ennea-gram logo, whose origins are untraceable.7 But what is really dis-turbing is that, despite the dogmatic claims of the theory and an absence of experiment-based research, it is difficult to find any-one who fails to fit one of the types. Enneagram fans in the help-ing professions, after years of working with the tool, feel that these nine are just about right. And individuals claim that the enneagram has helped them to reach a deeper understanding of their personal compulsions than any other self-help system has, In other words, this weird, unempirical, upsetting, gnostic, and mys-tifying map of the psyche seems to work. In 1990 Claudio Naranjo MD published Ennea-Type Structures: Self-Analysis for the Seeker. Enneagram students were eager to read what he had to say, since he led the development o_f the the-ory among English-speaking publics. His book, the smallest I know of on the subject, builds the theory on much more solid ground. That book is now out of print, but has been incorpo-rated in Naranjo's new and expanded volume, Character and Neurosis, published in 1994. Naranjo lends legitimacy to the theory in several ways. Unlike most other enneag.ram authors, who tend to pile adjective upon adjective and style upon style to cover the many variations possi-ble within each compulsion, Naranjo,keeps the set of descriptors limited. He wants these descriptors to function the way they func-tion in clinical manuals such as the DSM tli, namely, as a list of discreet phenomena sufficient to distinguish one type from another? By describing diseases with as little overlap as possible, he enables therapists to spot the core problem more quickly and waste less time on manifestations of the problem shared with other compulsions. Naranjo also takes pains to make a distinction between pas-sions (anger, envy, gluttony, and so forth) and the cognitive errors that underlie each passion. These errors amount to uncrit-ical assumptions about what life is like--the kind of oversimpli-fied worldview (and subsequent inappropriate adaptive routines) that Ellis deals with in his rational-emotive therapy.9 By pin-pointing cognitive errors, Naranjo believes, a person can iden-tify and dissolve his or her pet myths in order to rob the j~uly-August 199~ 521 Dunne * The Enneagram corresponding passion of its rationale and thereby weaken its grip on the psyche. Another contribution Naranjo makes to the theory is that he consistently explains the psychological dynamics at work in each compulsion, rather than just stating them. By appealing to his readers' understanding rather than their memory, he invites them to consult the workings of their own psyches to verify the pres-ence of certain subconscious routines. This is no small achievement. The mind is easily content with a notional familiarity with terms. Only under the whip of intel-lectual desire will we push forward to uncover for ourselves some of our psychic gremlins that have never seen the light of con-sciousness. Likewise the heart is easily comforted with comfort-able feelings; it takes an inner discipline, responsible to no one but oneself, to face up to the discomforts of acting responsibly. In my limited experience of teaching the theory, I found that many students find it too difficult to allow the teaching to break through their automatic defenses and deal with their hidden fears and cravings. The enneagram doctrine just feeds a ravenous compul-sion. So the Status Seeker uses the enneagram to advance her own reputation. The Observer uses it to gather yet further infor-mation before he ventiares out into the world. And so on. Enneagram work is particularly difficult for teachers. They are tempted to devour the lore with teaching in mind, not learn-ing. The work, however, is for people on a personal mission-- those who possess enough self-knowledge to know they are learners in the school of self-knowledge. Much of Naranjo's prose envisions a therapeutic setting in which a seeker looks to a men-tor for guidance. The aim of the therapy is not to settle what our basic compulsion is, as if from that point on we know what box we are in. The therapeutic outcome is not to identify a conceptual scheme that sometimes describes our behavior. The desired out-come is to understand specific experiences of being not our best selves, using conceptual schemes as initial indicators of what may be causing the trouble. This is why it is important to hold the enneagram types at arm's length. Although some people seem to fit a single type per-fectly, others seem to fit several types. Are these latter persons-- whose self-deceit eludes everyone's analysis--all the while being victims of only a single compulsion? Or have they really developed several distinct alternatives to authentic living? Practically speak- 522 Review for Religious ing, it makes no difference so long as users rely on the ennea-gram as nothing more than clusters of fixations and behaviors that logically hang together. Their conceptual consistency is merely a model to help people raise relevant questions about the inner events that possess a slippery logic of their own. Besides his economy of description and his reliance on per-sonal understanding, a further significant contribution Naranjo makes to the theory lies in how he has analyzed the connection between psychological difficulties and exis-tential decisions about being human. Going beyond Oscar Ichazo, from whom he first learned the theory, as well as beyond the people who had already published his enneagram material, Naranjo bases each psychological dynamic in a fundamental spiritual crisis he calls "ontic obscuration," which is a kind of a deafness to our inner drives to be authentic persons. He proposes that, just as certain cognitive errors under' lie each passion, so certain existential fail-ures underlie each cognitive error. This is significant because it puts the focus directly on the inner work of being fully human. Other authors settle for cate-gorizing people by behavior patterns or look to childhood trau-mas to explain present weirdness--the kinds of analyses commonly found in popular psychology. Indeed, popular psychology usually lacks the words and ideas with which to reflect on that innermost work of authenticity. But, by paying direct attention to "ontic obscuration," individuals can discover that a major driver behind their compulsive responses lies in how seriously they take those quiet impulses to be fully human or else how consistently they have avoided the inner work involved in staying human. This "ontic obscuration" underlies each compulsion in its own manner. The Slug stands at the center, having thoroughly obscured inner voices about how to be one's truest self. The Bully and the Perfectionist hear the voices dimly, but respond through a focus on externals, especially through various forms of anger they feel because things are not what they should be. The Helper, the Status Seeker, and the Sensitive Artist hear the voices, but they divert their desire to become fully human persons into Enneagram work is particularly difficult for teachers. They are tempted to devour the lore with teaching in mind, not learning. ~uly-Augtwt 199Y 523 Dunne ¯ The Enneag'ram becoming just persons whose image carries clout in the lives of o.thers. The Planner, the Accuser, and the Observer also hear the voiceS, but they divert a fear of not becoming fully human into strategies designed to protect the little bits of personhood they believe they possess.l° ¯ Naranjo refers to this approach as his "Nasruddin" theory. The story goes that this mullah was crawling around in an alley near a marketplace, searching for the key to his house. A friend joined in the search and, after finding nothing, asked the mul-lah, "Are you sure you lost the key around here?" The mullah responded, "No, I lost it at home." The friend naturally asked, "Then why are you looking for the key here?" The mullah replied, "The light is much better here." 1, The point is that we often look for the key to our house out under the sun, where everything seems clear. But the key is in the house, an~l the house is dark. The Existential Questign: How Should I Be? For all the benefits ofNaranjo's "ontic obscuration," he does not explain in precise terms what being human involves; he set-tles for a description of some effects of"obscuration." For exam-ple, "loss of a sense of I-am-ness" and "something missing inside.''12 At times he presumes that deep down people really know the experience of "ontic obscuration." At other times he claims that the obscuration itself prevents people from realizing that any kind of obscuration has occurred. So, while it is appro-priate for him to recommend that the seeker find a mentor to help recognize a compulsion, the theory would benefit also from a positive understanding of just what it is that "ontic obscura-tion" obscures. To uncover this prize, we need to reflect on how being human happens to be obscured ifi the first place. Most psychologists agree that the intellect of children develops not only in the amount of information they learn but, more significantly, in whether or not they learn certain higher-level intellectual skills for understanding their experiences. So Naranjo's "ontic obscura-tion'? indicates, not a breakdown in mental development, but rather an unfinished development. It is not a matter of having obscured what once was clear; it is a matter of having been born blind and gradually learning how to see. 524 Review for Religious The developmental problem is how to move from a world of images, behaviors, symbols, and external sensations to the larger world of meaning and values. As children we were able to pose questions about being human only by using images. Should I be pushy? Compliant? Generous? Teacherly? Observant? Like a lion? A turtle? A bird? A monkey? Early successful functioning of one of these styles sets up a habit and provides evidence that the world around us must be of such and such a nature--the one that matches our chosen strategy. To the Bully, then, the world is dog-eat- dog; to the Accuser, the world is ridden with crooks. We build up a behavioral style and support it with a cognitive belief in a par-ticular strategy like one of those described in .the enneagram: being correct, being related, being impressive, being the victim, being retentive, being wary, being pleasing, being pugnacious, or being deaf. We become capable of noticing our compulsions as such only later, when we learn that proper use of our minds and hearts is more important than proper behavior and that intelligent analy-sis and reasonable judgment put us in touch with the real world far better than myths and symbols can. Only p~ople who have learned to think about inner acts of meaning can make a statement such as "There I go again" as they catch on to unreal thinking and feeling. ~ .~ This learning represents a major jump in thinking skills. A person discovers that the world is not just "already out there.''Is The real world is also the invisible world made up of the acts of meaning that occur in people's minds and hearts: the agreements, the plans, the guiding ideas, the reigning values, the loyalties, the spites, the memories, the laws, and the internalized language of the place. Former precepts such as Be corre'ct~ Be connected, Be suc-cessful, and Be the martyr were established in the mind of a~child who had no alternative but to think with pictures and symbols. Bht, in the world of meaning and values, learning how to be human ought to transcend these image-based precepts and adopt precepts based on the functions of the mind and heart. Bernard Lonergan, the late Canadian philosopher whose Insight and Method in Theology have influenced many practitioners in the human and natural sciences, has identified five such func-tion- based precepts. They are: Be attentive, Be intelligent, Be reasonable, Be responsible, Be in love.'4 These voices are in all of us. They are active long before we notice them as distinct July-August 199Y 525 Dunne ¯ The Enneagram impuls.es. Although they still escape the notice of many psychol-ogists as being the most fundamental impulses that make us fully human, they are the living source of our ability to notice, under-stand, realize, take responsibility, and love, For Lonergan, these five precepts support a highly-structured method for the human sciences. But, for people seeking to under-stand their inner compulsions, they can also provide a normal way of referring to the task of being fully human. They can rep-resent the very operations that "ontic obscuration" obscures. These are the events that promise to bring a person to what Naranjo, in a more descriptive and less precise mode, calls "the integrated wholeness of one's experience"; "true aliveness, a sense of existing, a plenitude"; "finding value in the present and the actual.''ts These function-based ~precepts not only transcend image-based precepts; they also enable people to transcend who they are and to rise toward being who they are to be. Lonergan refers to these precepts as "the transcendental precepts." A Therapy of Love The question of how we should be does not end there. While people might rely on a diagnostic tool such as the enneagram to recognize self-defeating thoughts before they become actions, they also need a therapy to help recognize self-transcending thoughts and feelings. This means learning firsthand the differ-ence between the transcendental precepts and their opposites: between being attentive and being oblivious, being intelligent and being stupid, being reasonable and being silly, being respon-sible and being irresponsible, and being loving and being hateful. While anyone can recognize abstractly the contrast between these words, the right-hand members of the pairs conspire quite suc-cessfully to obscure their own functioning right behind our eyes. Fortunately, this conspiracy can be caught in the act. By know-ingly paying attention to the transcendental precepts, we can be more attentive to inner experience. We can be more intelligent about how certain cognitive errors and existential decisions sup-port our compulsions. We can be more reasonable as we admit the truth of how thoroughly our fixation may have dominated our psyches. We can be more responsible in accepting guilt that belongs to us, in shunning guilt that is unreasonable, and in sup-pressing what compulsions we can as they arise. Most wisely, we 526 Review for Religious can let our love for others take the lead more often, including and especially our love for God. When a person falls in love, he or she suddenly sees the exter-nal world as more beautiful, more full of potential, more worthy of respect and care. What has occurred, though, is not a change in the external world one views; it is a self-transcending change in the viewer. Being in love heals much of ~' what was crippled in the other four levels of the person's self-transcendence. That is, being in love gives courage to respon-sibility, realism to reason, insight to intel-ligence, and acumen to attention. The person has risen above the imprisoned self and realized something of the profound marvels of life, nature, and the friendly character of the universe. Love's healing power is evident in the love between friends, within a family, and among fellow citizens and members of a group. It is also evident in the love of God. People who have undergone a religious conversion, whether in a sudden inner revolution or a gradual takeover, experience three new powers. The~y see goodness where the unconverted see only evil. They feel a power to reach out to others at a higher risk to themselves than self-protecting reason would allow. And, after the worst setbacks, they find themselves soon on their feet, mys-teriously alive and submissive to the impulse to love again26 More can be said about the healing effects of religious love, but this milch illustrates how an analysis of our self-transcending acts clar-ifibs'what "being human" means and reveals the available powers that "o'ntic obscuration" obscures. Further analysis along these lines would complement any instance of healing with a thera-peutic theory consistent with religious love. Notice especially how the addition of this account of self-transcendence avoids the typi~cal trap of self-help psychologies. It makes clear that people do not help themselves all by them-selves. When i't is the self that needs help, "self-help" is a con-tradiction in terms. Genuine help must be imported. We rely on each other and we rely on God. In order to let go of our worries that our failures will be someh6w held against us, we rely on the fact that we are loved. Being in love gives courage to responsibility, realism to reason, insight to intelligence, and acumen to attention. Ju~-August199y 527 Dunne ¯ The Enneagram The work of making all this real for oneself is long and hard. It might go something like this: Suppose I typically play the Sensitive Artist, envious of the personas of others and absorbing my injuries in quiet melancholy. I should first keep a diary to log the times I notice my compulsion at work, in order to grow in the habit of noticing, t~nderstanding~ and gradually realizing how precisely my frustrated desire to be a notable person works. (Naranjo suggests that this work on autobiography may take three or four months.) ~7 At the same time, as I grow in self-realization, I should grow in self-responsibility. When I hear the inner voice saying "Be sensitive, be like so-and-so," I should say "Shut up!" and then bend an ear to the quieter voices of authenticity whis-pering, "Just be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and in love. Being that is a quite good enough way to be your best." Then, alongside the inner work of self-reflection, I should let myself connect with others. Although Naranjo believes that his book can help a person avoid high-minded and patronizing therapists, I find it hard to imagine people really benefiting from it unless they talk about this inner work with others. Being con-nected to others means obeying the transcendental precept to Be in love. That means letting my love for others be the light that revdals what is truly worth doing, rather than mere consistency or some private ethical principle. Because genuine love heals irre-sponsibility, silliness, stupidity, and inattention, the test of genuine love will be just that: Does it make me more responsible, more ready to face truth, more functionally intelligent, more on the lookout for what really counts? If it does not, it is not love. The inner work also means letting myself be loved. For most of us, with our distorted self-images, this means facing the fact that despite our faults, despite the injuries we have caused others, the person who claims to love us is telling the truth. It means dropping the flimsy defense that "you don't really know me" and admitting that the point is not whether we are fully known, but whether we are appreciated and valued for ourselves. It means realizing that we will never be perfect, that we do not need to expend that much energy defending ourselves, that we do not even need to "fix" ourselves through diligent self-therapy. Unless we rely on God and other people for forgiveness, tolerance, and patience, no pathology or self-help therapy will work. This is only an example of finding our way home. Different people will find different paths. But at least knowing what being 528 Review.for Religious human is about shows us what our home looks like. Gradually-- never fully being, but always becoming, human--we will have returned. We can come in and go out as we please. We will have found our home's key: the house is no longer dark. Notes ~ Enneagram, coined from Greek, means "ninefold marking." 2 Capital means that the sins are principal or "head" (capita) sins from which people's other sins flow. Althofigh the enneagram seems to have arisen independently of the Christian tradition, seven of its compulsions match the seven capital sins. The remaining two are bogus morality (Accuser) and bogus success (Status Seeker). 3 No two authors agree on these generic names, but there is general agreement about the descriptions of each type~ Devotees often refer just to the number, as in "She's a raving Two!" (a Helper). 4 See C.G. Jung, Paychological Types (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1926), chap. 10. Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine C. Briggs, developed the fourth pair of preferences, judging and perceiv-ing, based on further observations made byJung. Note that they realize that its usefulness applies mainly to the young. See Isabel Briggs Myers, Introduction to Type (Gainesville, Florida: Center for Publications' of Psychological Types, 1962), p. 8. s The works on which I have based my remarks are: Maria Beesing et al., The Enneagram: A Journey of Self Discovery (Denville: Dimension Books, 1984); Kathleen Hurley and Theodore Dobson, What's My Type? Use the Enneagram and My Best Self (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991 and 1993); Claudio Naranjo, Ennea-Type Structures: Self-Analysis for the Seeker and Character and Neurosis: An Integrative View (Nevada City: Gateways, 1990 and 1994); Helen Pahner, The Enneagram (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988); Don Richard Riso, Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). I have also relied on various notes taken by students participating in workshops given by Naranjo and others who derive the substance of their doctrine from him. 6 An exception'is Hurley and Dobson, My Best Self, identifying two distinct compulsions in both the Status Seeker and the Accuser, making a total of eleven compulsions. In .any case, there are no enneagram the-orists I know of who have dealt with the fundamental problem of how to set a limit to types. If there is such a limit, then the types will have to be defined by a set of psychological conditions that are limited and verifiable. For example, Karen Horney's division of three reactions to conflict (against people, toward people, away from people) might be matched against three I-world comparisons (bigger than, equal to, smaller than) to generate exactly nine types. Or against the trio Denial, Overconfidence, Underconfidence. The trio Ignorance, Craving, and Fear seems to under-lie Naranjo's thinking. There are many possibilities. This kind of work will 3~ly-August 1995 529 Dunne ¯ The Enneagram be necessary if the professional psychological community is ever to give credence to the theory and, more to the point, if the theory is ever to be shown to explain the actual range of human compulsions. 7 Gurdjieff, the teacher of this model of personality, claims to have discovered the enneagram in the Sufi tradition, but there is little evi-dence in Sufism of any of the heavy interpretative overlay that it now carries. Gurdjieff's confidence in the diagram seems based on numerol-ogy rather than experiment, and he expected that the diagram could rep-resent any human or natural process. 8 Diagnostic and Stat#tical Manual of Mental Disorders III (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1987). 0 9 See Albert Ellis, Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1963), chap. 3, "Irrational Ideas Which Cause and Sustain Emotional Disturbances," pp, 60-88. l0 The reader should note inconsistencies in the enneagram designs. In Naranjo's Character and Neurosis, pp. 199 and 245, and throughout his Ennea-Type Structures, the triangle arrows run clockwise. Everywhere else in Character and Neurosis, they run counterclockwise. tt Naranjo, Ennea-Type Structures, pp. xix-xx, and Character and Neurosis, p 36. Hereafter page references will be to Ennea-Type Structures, with corresponding references to Character and Neurosis in italics. ~2 See pp. 30/61 and 63/219. He also describes ontic obscuration as: "obscuration . . . of the natural, original, and truest support for one's sense of personal value" (45/196); "the universal pain of fallen con-sciousness, beyond type-bound characteristics" (45/196); "lack of ground-ingin being" (107/197); and "loss of wholeness and sense of being" (138/150). o 13 Walter Burghardt SJ notes that John Courtney Murray relies on this distinction to clarify how weak the old Catholic reliance on dogma-tism really was. See "The Richness of a Resource," in A Spirituality for Contemporary Life, ed. David L. Fleming SJ (St. Louis: Review for Religious, 1991). Murray may well have relied on Lonergan's Insight (New York: Philosophical Library, 1958) for this notion (for which, see real in its index). 14 See Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 53, 55, and passim. I have developed these notions more at length in Lonergan and Spirituality (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985) and Spiritual Mentoring (HarperSanFrancisco, 199 I). Is Naranjo, pp. 47/197, 92/94, and 125/173. 16 These powers are traditionally called faith, charity, and hope. I have avoided the traditional terms in an effort to avoid conceptualism and to make clear how religious love heals the injured psyche. 17 Naranjo, p. 158/275. 530 Review for Religious MARY WINIFRED Imaging Spiritual Direction Ipn spite of a plethora of spiritual direction programs pur-orting to train those who would be spirithal directors, it remains a fact that gifts of direction are just that--gifts, not learned skills. Spiritual direction involves listening and hearing, discernment, clarity of vision, and assistance in the development of a relationship between an 'individual and God. While learned skills may assist a spiritual director, it is only deep sensitivity devel-oped through years of personal prayer that enables true spiritual direction. It is often easier to say what spiritual direction is not, than to describe what it is. For example, spiritual direction is not psychotherapy; it is not life skills taught by a social worker; it is not catechistic training for specific church membership. " In a pamphlet entitled Spiritual Direction, Henri Nouwen says: "It is of great value to submit our prayer life from time to time to the supervision of a spiritual guide. A spiritual director in this strict sense is not a counselor, a therapist, or an analyst, but a mature fellow Christian to whom we choose to be accountable for our spiritual life and from whom we can expect prayerful guid-ance in our constant struggle to discern God's active presence in our lives, A spiritual director can be called 'soul friend' (Kenneth I2eech) or a" 'spiritual friend' (Tilden Edwards). It is important that he or she practice the disciplines of the Church and the Book and thus become familiar with.the space in which we try to listen to God's voice. The way we relate to our spiritual director depends very much on our needs, our personalities, and external circum-stances. Some people may want to see their spiritual director Mary Winifred CtlS is the Sister-in-Charge of St. Cuthbert's Retreat House; Federal Hill Road; Brewster, New York 10509. ¯ July-August 199Y S31 Winifred ¯ Imaging Spiritual Direction biweekly or monthly, others will find it sufficient to be in touch only when the occasion asks for it. Some people may feel the need for a more extensive sharing with their spiritual director, while others will find seeing him or her once in a while for a few short moments to be sufficient. It is essential that one Christian helps another Christian to enter without fear into the presence of God and there to discern God's call" (8-9). Because the singular aim of spiritual direction is to assist in growth toward God, there are no set guidelines, no conventional measuring sticks, no right or wrong answers, and no concretely attainable goals. While training in prayer and meditation may certainly make one a more articulate spiritual director, neverthe-less spiritual direction remains a vocation unfettered by rules and regulations, by industry standards, or by a financial fee scale. Most spiritual directees practice St. Paul's suggestion in the Letter to the Galatians, "Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher" (6:6), by making some gift to their directors: homemade bread, flowers from the garden, a book or tape, or some other item; money does not usually enter into a spiritual direction agreement, nor should it. Unlike therapy or counseling, which are professional relationships between a ther-apist or counselor and a client, spiritual direction is a relation-ship of charity and generosity between fellow Christians. Spiritual gifts cannot be purchased; they are not for sale. Three images of the spiritual life may help to indicate ways in which the presence of a director (or mentor or soul friend) may effectively aid us in our growth Godwards. The first image, offered by Thomas H. Green, is :that of a marketplace. The marketplace--or, as Green also labels it, the ldtchen!--is the part of our lives that encompasses a multitude of small, necessary, sometimes tedious tasks which can seem to draw us away from the richness and quiet of our interior lives. "Frequently," Green says, "the demands and frustrations of the apostolate, or of raising a family and earning a living, seem to be merely obstacles to a genuine and deep prayer life. But if I am right in explaining the way the Lord works through these exter-nal activities and events, then we should see them quite differ-ently. Far from being obstacles to our interior growth, they become for us the very sandpaper of our sanctification, at least as important to our growth as what happens in the solitude of for-mal prayer" (121). 532 Review for Religious These are not particularly comfortable thoughts, especially for those of~us who would like to discover a large block of unin-terrupted quiet. Often it is only with the help of a wise spiritual director that we can begin to uncover and acknowledge the wealth of spiritual graces hidden in our routine daily tasks and to see opportunities in what have earlier appeared to be only obstacles. Another, who listens with detached concern, will not only listen to the occasional frustration, tiredness, or boredom in our every-day tasks, but will also hear the voice of God calling to us from what may, on the surface, seem to be 'merely dull routine. As surely as God works in this world, God is also available to us in our work, however .tedious and distracting our marketplace--or kitchen--may feel at times. Another ancient and popular image for the spiritual life is that of a journey or pilgrimage. John Gorsuch describes such a spiri-tual journey as a moving out from a place of assumed comfort, beckoned on by God into the unknown. The image of a journey is particularly apt if considered in its various stages: there is a beginning, with its preparations and planning; the travel itself; and the goal of the journey. In the early stages of beginning a journey, there may be excitement and feverish planning--a guide is helpful here in focusing our attention and helping us to leave behind our unnecessary baggage. I once watched my sister prepar-ing for a backpacking trip: with the advice of an experienced back-packer friend, she was encouraged to take only the essential objects, leaving her backpack light enough to carry and yet stocked with exactly what she would need. But traveling, no matter how well it is planned and prepared, is nevertheless an adventure into the unknown. Often we must stop to ask for directions or other help. In traveling this may be as simple as "Yes, you're on the right road" or "Two more blocks Because the singular aim of spiritual direction is to assist in growth toward God, there are no set guidelines, no conventional measuring sticks, no right or wrong answers, and no concretely attainable goals. July-August 199Y 533 Winifred ¯ Imaging Spiritual Direction and then turn left"; on a spiritual journey, as simple as "Keep lis-tening in your prayer" or "Look in the mirror every morning: you will see a person God loves profoundly." If we are fortunate enough to have a good and reliable guide or director, we are soon back on track. At times, too, the journey's route may seem long and wearisome--turning aside or even giving up altogether may look like the most positive option. Then a wise mentor's word of encouragement may challenge and enliven us to continue with new energy and zeal. And then there is the goal to our journey. Sometimes we are so caught up in the travel itself that we lose sight of the goal. A friend and I once planned to spend a restful week together; iron-ically, we also planned too many sight-seeing activities, with the result that the true goals of the week--to ,rest and enjoy each other's company--were lost. So, on a spiritual journey, it is easy to be distracted by circumstances and surroundings from our true goal of knowing God. We need a wise and discerning director to help us in maintaining a clarity of vision about our goal. A third image is that of epiphany. Adrian van Kaam, from whom I have borrowed this image, describes an epiphany as the "shining forth of eternity in daily people, in often unnoticed events and things" (8). It is an epiphany that comes through in the openness and vulnerability of spiritual direction. Van Kaam goes on to say: "The risen Lord is our life now. Our life must become a hymn of praise to Jesus rising in us . Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is at hand in each of us. It is already here and now, for we are called to share his resurrection in humanity and history" (65). And surely this is the heart of spiritual direction, that one Christian shares freely with another a word of help, a message of encouragement, a glimpse of eternity. Bibliography Gorsuch, John R An Invitation to the Spiritual Journey. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1990. Green, Thomas H. Darkness in the Marketplace. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1981. Nouwen, Henri. Spiritual Direction. Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications, 1981. Van Kaam, Adrian. The Music of Eternity. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1990, 534 Review for Religious MARY C. SULLIVAN The Brazier That Is My God: Teresa on True Prayer's Dispositions, Gifts, and Signs It is 2 June 1577. Teresa of Avila is, in effect, under house arrest in the convent of the Discalced Carmelites in Toledo, Spain--a community she founded in 1569.1 She has been on the road for almost ten years, establishing reformed monasteries of Carmelite women and even of Carmelite men committed to the poverty, silence, soli-tude, penance, prayer, and detachment she believes are envisioned in the primitive Rule. But now for the last year she has been ordered to remain in one of her convents (she chooses Toledo) because of political tensions between the Calced and Discalced Carmelites. She is regarded by the Calced as a ringleader who must be kept out of cir-culation. To add to her isolation, on 18 June 1577 the papal nuncio Nicol~is Ormaneto, who has been friendly to the reform, will die, and his successor, Felipe Sega, will come to Spain in August already prejudiced against Teresa and her work. He will later call her "a. restless gadabout woman, disobedient and stubborn, who under the cloak of devotion invented wicked opinions, going about breaking enclosure, contrary to the decree of the Council of Trent and the orders of her superiors, teaching as if she were a doctor, in contempt of the teaching of St. Paul, who com-manded women not to teach."2 Mary C. Sullivan RSM works in the College of Liberal Arts of Rochester Institute of Technology. She may be addressed at Sisters of Mercy; 18 Upton Park; Rochester, New York 14607. heritage j~uly-August 1995 535 Sullivan ¯ The Brazier That Is My God Prologue But now, in early June 1577, during her enforced reclusion, Teresa is in Toledo, writing a book on prayer at the request of her confessor, Jer6nimo Gracifin, a Discalced priest. By the end of July, after one month of work on Las Moradas (The Interior Castle, or The Dwelling Places3), she will be recalled to Avila, where against her own desire she has again been elected prioress of Incarnation, the Carmelite convent she entered as a young woman and from which in 1562 she will found San Jos4, the first convent of the Reform, across town in Avila. But the Carmelite authorities do not want Teresa to be the prioress of Incarnation. They will call for a second vote, and when fifty-four sisters at Incarnation persist in electing Teresa, these sisters will be ex-communicated and denied the sacraments. On 3 December of this same year, John of the Cross, the confessor and spiritual director at Incarnation, will be abducted from Avila at night by Calced friars and taken to the windowless closet cell in the Toledo monastery of the Calced Carmelites where he will remain impris-oned for six months. Simultaneous with all this, the modern form of the Spanish Inquisition is in full swing in Seville, having been operating as a powerful ecclesiastical tribunal for almost a hundred years. The manuscript of Teresa's Life has been in the Inquisition's possession for two years, after being denounced to it by the dis-appointed and vindictive Princess of Eboli.4 In the midst of all this difficulty, most of which deeply dis-tressed her, in the six-month period from 2 June to 29 November 1577 (which will actually amount to only two months of writing time), Teresa will start and complete her masterwork, The Dwelling Places, the treatise on prayer and virtue which more than any other of her writings led Pope Paul VI in 1970 to declare her a doctor of the universal church. Not once in this volume does Teresa refer explicitly to the external affairs which weigh so heavily on her mind and heart, though her letters of this period amply demon-strate her concern, and dismay. Rather, in this magnificent book about a human person's gradually increasing communion with the God dwelling within her, Teresa speaks about the prayer of per-sonal conversion, the prayer of reordering and reordered charity within the human heart. And so The Dwelling Places is a book which may contribute immeasurably to the present-day conversion of the church, of religious life, and of the hearts of individual Christian women and men. 536 Review for Reli