XV. Monastic Prayer

Summary. — I. The place that prayer holds in the life of the monk. — II. Qualities that St. Benedict requires of prayer ; necessity of preparation. — III. Character of monastic prayer in the purgative way. — IV. In the illuminative way. — V. How the Opus Dei is the pure source of abundant illumination. — VI. State of prayer in the unitive life. — VII. Means given by St. Benedict for maintaining the life of prayer within us. — VIII. This life constitutes the normal state of a religious in his cloister ; the precious fruits it produces.

The representation of the life of Christ forms the principal basis of the Liturgical Cycle. But Christ is not alone ; we also celebrate those members of His Mystical Body who already make part of His glorious Kingdom, the elect who are the noblest purchase of the Blood of Jesus and the most beautiful fruit of the Church’s union with her Divine Spouse. The Saints form Christ’s cortege throughout the Liturgical Cycle, and when we praise their virtues and chant their merits, we exalt and celebrate the One Who, being their Head, is now likewise their Crown : Ipse est corona Sanctorum omnium l.

There is great variety among these saints ; each according to his or her vocation, and the measure of the giving of of Christ’s grace, secundum mensuram donationis Christi 2, reproduces one of the aspects of the plenitude of the Man- God’s perfections. The same Spirit, says St. Paul, has given to each a special grace which, being engrafted upon nature, makes each one of the elect shine with a particular glory. In some, strength has dominated ; in others, prudence ; again in others, zeal for God’s glory ; in one, faith has especially shone out, in another, purity. But whether they be the Apostles, Martyrs or Pontiffs, whether it concerns Virgins or Confessors, one common character is to be found in them all. This character is stability in seeking after God and in love of Him. And this is a great virtue, for inconstancy is one of the most redoubtable perils that menace mankind. i. Invitatory at Matins for the Feast of All Saints. — 2. Eph. iv, 7- 3-

I Cor. xii, 4.

Christ , the Ideal of the Monk.

The Saints sought God indefatigably. Whatever the circumstances wherein they were placed, the temptations with which they were buffeted, the difficulties they encoun¬ tered, the seductions that surrounded them, the Saints all remained steadfast and faithful. Therefore on the day of their entrance into the Eternal Kingdom, God crowned them with glory and inebriated them with joy : “ Good and faithful servant, because thou hast been faithful over a few things, enter into the joy of thy Lord ” : Euge, serve bone et fidelis, quia super pauca fuisti fidelis... intra in gaudium Domini tui. Because, in seeking after the unique Good, they did not allow themselves to be turned back, the Saints have attained the glorious goal.

And what is the intimate reason of this stability in good ? What is the secret of the Saints ?

This secret is the life of prayer. The soul that leads a life of prayer, remains united to God ; it lays hold upon God, it shares in the Divine immutability and eternity, and therefore it is not moved whatever be the circumstances. A child who in the tempest clings to the rock is stronger than a man abandoned to the caprices of the waves.

The firm adherence of the soul to God is the fruit of prayer. The Saints in Heaven cannot but remain united to God and to His will because they contemplate God and see in Him the fulness of all perfection and the fountainhead of all sovereignity. To live a life of prayer is to abide habitually in contact with God in faith, and, in this union, the soul finds the necessary light and strength to do the Divine good pleasure in all things. And as God is for it the principle of all holiness, the soul that lives bv prayer finds in this habitual union with God Who created prayer the fruitfulness of its supernatural life.

Let us examine the place that prayer holds in our monastic life ; — what characters St. Benedict wishes to give to it ; — what means are put within our hands by the Rule for safeguarding and maintaining the life of prayer within us.

I

Prayer should occupy a very large place in the life of the monk. Those who read the Rule of St. Benedict for the first time are a little astonished to see that he does not assign to his monks any special length of time to consecrate to private prayer. He says simply that the monk should frequently apply himself to prayer : Orationl frequenter incumbere. He says furthermore that a brother who wishes to pray by himself after the recitation of the Divine Office shall have leisure to do so 2. Again he writes a very beautiful though short page upon the qualities which prayer ought to have. Nowhere, however, does he fix for his monks one hour rather than another to give themselves to private prayer. There are people of a certain turn of mind who cannot refrain from evincing their surprise at this : but they are wrong. The existence of the monk, such as St. Benedict has organised it, with its separation from the world, its solitude, the Divine Praises, holy reading, is in view of creating, and at the same time supposes, a life of prayer. The holy Legislator did not therefore feel the necessity of determining one hour or half hour for the exercise of prayer. Monks who five in perfect obedience to the prescriptions enacted by St. Benedict necessarily attain to the life of prayer. In the conception of the holy Patriarch as in that of all monastic tradition, prayer is not simply a transitory isolated action accomplished at such or such an hour and having only a virtual relation with the other actions of the day ; it should be the very breath of the soul without which there is no true inner life. But when a man lives this life of union with God, he quite natu¬ rally consecrates an interval of specified time during the day for communing specially with God, for the soul that loves God wishes to be united with Him in a more exclusive manner at certain moments. This hour of prayer is as it were the intensifying of the life of prayer in which the soul habitually moves.¹

No day should pass without our applying ourselves to this prayer, for our holy Father desires that “ daily in prayer ” cotidie in orationi *, we should confess our sins to God. Even “ frequently ” in the day, the monk should turn to God to commune with Him, Orationi frequenter incumbere. Moreover, according to the Rule, the monk is to consecrate two to four hours a day to “ holy reading This last expression has, with St. Benedict, a very elastic meaning, allowing of the possibility, foreseen for certain souls, of devoting a very long time to prayer.

We know too how the holy Patriarch has himself set us the example. Each day he poured out his soul before God in sublime prayer which was the well-spring of magnificent graces. It was assuredly whilst he was in prayer that God one day showed him the entire universe gathered up as it were in one ray of light 1 ; it was as a sequel to his prayer that he raised to life a monk crushed by the falling of a wall 2, and, at another time, the son of a peasant 3 ; again it was during prayer that he saw the soul of his sister St. Scholastica ascend to Heaven under the form of a dove 4.²

If then we want to be true disciples of the great Patriarch, we must often give ourselves to prayer, in view of that life of prayer which he certainly desires each one of us to lead. Our Blessed Father, in fact, has no other aim than to help us to find God : Si revera Deum quaerit 6. As we said in our first conference where we tried to show the greatness of this aim, we shall only attain it by the entire gift of ourselves. We quoted the words uttered by St. Ca¬ therine of Siena on her death-bed ; we cannot truly possess God, said she, save by giving ourselves to Him by an undivid ed love. But the Saint immediately added that she had also recognised “ that without prayer one cannot arrive at that state where the whole heart is given to God without ever taking anything back 6. ” There is nothing in this that ought to astonish us. Man is naturally weak and unstable, and it is only in habitual contact with God by means of prayer that he practically learns the emptiness of created things in themselves ; and the plenitude of God Who, alone, is worthy of the whole of our love. Therefore our Blessed Father wishes us to give ourselves frequently to prayer in order never to lose sight of the Sovereign Good nor let ourselves be turned away from Him by the ephemeral attraction of the creature.

We have need of prayer to keep ourselves constantly at the height of that seeking after God which constitutes our vocation. When Our Lord called us to the monastic life. He illumined us with the light of His Spirit ; we under¬ stood in this Divine light that He is the Supreme Good and we left all to follow Him. On the day of our profession, we, in the simplicity of our hearts, “ joyfully offered all these things " upon the altar : In simplicitate . cordis mei, laetus obtuli universal . We vowed stability, conversion of our manners and obedience : this act constituted a supreme homage of love and adoration, extremely pleasing to God. If throughout life we could maintain ourselves in the dispo- sitions we had at that moment, we should become real saints. This is absolutely beyond doubt. Now, only an intense life of prayer can keep us unfalteringly in this attitude of unreserved self-donation. Two reasons will con¬ vince us that this assertion is well founded.³

First of all, the life of prayer makes us live constantly in that Divine light whereof a ray enlightened us on the day of our monastic vocation and profession. Shut out from this light, we should come little by little to have no longer any esteem for the thousand details of religious life, which is meaningless if it is not supernatural; and, on the other hand, religious life is too much opposed to fallen nature, for a man to be able to bear it long without Divine help. It is from this light that we draw the strength and joy for the practice of the abnegation of which our life is composed ; that we nourish our hope of one day attaining to God ; that we find the love which makes us love Him here below in faith.

The second reason which flows from the preceding is that the means we have of ever tending to God and remaining united to Him, — the Sacraments, Mass, Divine Office, the life of obedience and labour, — only attain the summum of their efficacy if we lead a life of prayer. All these means are valuable and fruitful only if we do not put any obstacle in the way of their action, but bring to it the interior dispo¬ sitions of faith, confidence, love, compunction, humility, and abandonment to God's will. Now it is above all by the life of prayer, by habitual union with God in prayer, that we gather strength to thrust obstacles aside and keep ourselves in dispositions favourable to grace. A soul that does not live this habitual life of prayer needs a great effort each time it wants to be recollected and to arouse the affec¬ tions upon which, generally speaking, depend the fruitfulness of the supernatural means that we have for sanctifying ourselves. On the other hand, a soul that leads a life of prayer never lets the Divine fire go out but keeps it ever smouldering ; and when the regular hours of prayer or moments of inspiration arrive where this fire is put more directly or more exclusively in contact with grace — as occurs in the Sacraments, the Holy Sacrifice, the Opus Dei, the orders of obedience, the trials sent or permitted by God — these smouldering embers burst into flame and become a glowing furnace wherein the soul sees its love for God and the neighbour increased and transformed, sometimes in a very high degree. Love of God being the only source, and its intensity being the only measure of the fruitfulness of our acts, even of the most ordinary ones, the life of prayer which maintains and increases this love within us, becomes the secret of holiness for us.

You see how right our Blessed Father is in telling us to apply ourselves often to prayer. It is by the faithful and frequent exercise of prayer that we come gradually to lead this life of habitual union with God in view of which St. Be¬ nedict has established everything in his monastery : Dominici schola servith l.

II

I have elsewhere commented at length 2 on the nature of prayer and pointed out the elements that constitute it. Taking it for granted that we have grasped the substance of the teaching on prayer let us content ourselves here with touching upon some points that concern the characteristics of prayer, such as we find them in the letter and spirit of the Rule of the holy Patriarch.

Prayer, as we have said, is the intercourse of the child of God with his Heavenly Father ; thereby we adore Him, praise Him, tell Him our love for Him, learn to know His will, and obtain from Him the necessary help for the perfect accomplishment of this will. Prayer is the normal outcome, under the Holy Spirit’s action, of the affections resulting from our divine adoption.

This definition affords us a glimpse of the primary qualities which prayer ought to have. If prayer be the conversation of the child of God with his Heavenly Father, it will bear the impress both of a high degree of piety and of a deep reverence. Indeed for the child of God, for the brother of Christ Jesus, no tenderness, no intimacy is too great, but on the condition that it be always accompanied and sustained by a sense of unutterable reverence before the immense majesty of the Father : Patrem immensae majestatis 3. This is to adore the Father in spirit and in truth 4.

And it is this double character St. Benedict requires in his Rule. What does he tell us, in fact, in that chapter on the reverence we ought to have at prayer ? He would have us first of all “ offer our supplications to the Lord God of all things with all lowliness and purity of devotion : " that is the note of reverence. We are to draw near to God with that sense of respect before His infinite perfections which is expressed by a humble attitude and the longing to be pure in the presence of holiness itself. St. Benedict knows of and wishes for no better manifestation of this reverence than tears of compunction shed in remembrance of faults whereby, miserable creatures as we are, we have offended a God full of majesty — tears accompanied by entire purity of heart.⁴

He wishes our prayer to be “ pure and short ” " unless " he adds, — and here comes in the note of submission of heart proper to an adopted child of God — " it be perchance prolonged by the inspiration of Divine grace ” : Nisi forte ex affectu inspirationis divinae gratiae protendatur.

Our holy Patriarch requires then that we come before God with respect and humility, as befits creatures, and creatures who have sinned ; but this deep reverence which holds us prostrate before Him in all submission, does not prevent the heart from opening out, under the movement of the Holy Spirit, in confidence, love and tenderness. This confidence is so much the surer in that it rests exclusively on the goodness of our Father in Heaven.

In the Prologue, our Blessed Father recalls these Divine words: “ My eyes will be upon you, and My ears will be open to your prayers, and before you call upon Me, I will say unto you : ‘ Behold, I am here ! ’ What can be sweeter, dearest brethren, ” the great Patriarch immediately adds, “ than this voice of the Lord inviting us and shewing unto us the way of life ? "

Thus appears the double aspect of piety as St. Benedict understands it. These affections are both necessary ; they are inseparable, as our condition of creatures and our cha¬ racter of children of God arc inseparable. If an unrestrained familiarity, forgetful of reverence, is perilous, fear, separated from confidence, is not less so ; each of these two attitudes is a wrong done to God : irreverence, to His infinite sovereignty : servile fear, to His boundless goodness.

This reverence and this confidence are possible and are maintained only if we take care to prepare ourselves for our intercourse with God. Some might say : Since it is the Spirit of Jesus Who prays within us, we can come into God’s presence without preparation. To think in this way, would be to make a great mistake ; we cannot expect the⁵

Holy Spirit’s action to be forthcoming in our souls inde¬ pendently of certain interior conditions. You know the Protestant sect of Quakers. Very respectable people are to be met with among them, but their religion is rather singular. The principal religious act consists for them in assembling in their meeting-houses, large square halls with white-washed walls ; men and women sit upon benches which are the only furniture in the edifice ; silence is established, all await until " the spirit moves. " All at once, sometimes after long waiting, one of those present, a man or woman, boy or girl, cries out : “ The Spirit moves me. ” And immediately she or he rises and begins to say “ what the Spirit breathes. ” Ail listen attentively to the words, which are, most often, only disconnected ramblings. When the speaker has finished, the “ prayer ” is at an end and the assembly disperses. These Quakers expect everything from the Spirit; their whole religion consists in this desire for the moving of the Spirit which makes the soul vibrate and agita¬ tes the body, whence the name of " quakers. ” No interior preparation is required, no exterior action is asked for.

It cannot be the same for us ; our prayer is not the result of nervous troubles or illusion. “ The Spirit Himself asketh for us, ” says St. Paul x, but the same Apostle warns us not to “ grieve 2 ” nor “ extinguish ” the Spirit. Now, how do we extinguish the Spirit ? By mortal sin, wdiich forces Him to separate Himself from the soul. How do we grieve Him ? Certainly not by the frailties we deplore, the faults that take us by surprise, but we grieve Him by our infide¬ lities and our deliberate resistance to divine inspirations. We must, then, if we would make the life of prayer possible and prayer itself fruitful, watch over the purity of our heart. St. Benedict holds much to this quality. It is “ the purity of our devotion " which is to be the condition of our suppli¬ cations : Puritatis devotione supftlicandum est ; “ let us know it is only for our purity of heart and tears of compunction that we shall be heard In puritate cordis et compunctione lacrymarum nos exaudire sciamus 4. The soul that does not strive to purify itself of its faults by compunction, to avoid as far as possible all that could be displeasing to God, cannot attain to a life of union with Him through prayer : it wilfully grieves the Holy Spirit Who must uphold the soul in prayer. It is in this purity that the preparation of the heart consists, a remote preparation, but always necessary.⁶

Another preparation, of a more intellectual character, is likewise demanded. The Holy Spirit guides us according to our nature : intellect and will. Before entering into prayer we ought to possess some knowledge of the things of faith which will serve us as elements for this communing with God. You may say that God sometimes gives a soul the gift of prayer even before it has acquired great knowledge of the mysteries of faith and dogma, or is completely purified. Undoubtedly this is so, but it is not the general way. We here find a certain analogy between the manner in which God governs the natural world, and His mode of action in the order of grace. See how things come to pass in the domain of creation. God could produce effects without the concourse of secondary causes ; He could create bread and wine without man having to sow and reap, plant and gather the grapes. Did He not change the water into wine at Cana ? and multiply the loaves in the desert ? He is the Sovereign Master of all the elements, but His glory requires that the habitual course of things be ruled' by the laws which His eternal wisdom has established. God wills that the vine shall be planted and the leaves bud forth, that the fruit shall ripen and be gathered by man and go through the wine-press, before the wine is poured out into the cup. After the same manner in the supernatural order there are laws fixed by Divine Wisdom and shown by the experience of the Saints. God undoubtedly is not enslaved by His laws. Thus He makes certain souls pass in an instant from the state of sin to a state of perfect love. Magdalen, by the disorders of her life, was at the antithesis of love ; it needs but a word from Our Lord to change her life into one of glowing charity. Again look at Saul ; he is a perse¬ cutor of the Christians, spirans minarum, “ breathing out threatenings and slaughter,” hating the disciples of Jesus and blaspheming Christ: he is overthrown on the road to Da¬ mascus, and our Divine Saviour makes of him, in an instant, “a vessel of election 2, ” an Apostle full of fire who preaches Christ from Whom nothing can henceforth separate him. In the same way, we read in the life of St. Teresa 3 that, in one of her Carmels, a novice received the gift of prayer without anything having prepared her for this grace. But these are exceptional gifts or extraordinary prodigies whereby God manifests His sovereign power and reminds us of the infinite liberty of His Spirit and of His Spirit’s action.⁷

God’s ordinary way in leading souls to Himself is to have respect to the laws of which He is the Author.

But God excludes no one from benefiting from these laws about which we will say a few words. He calls all baptised souls to be intimately united to Him. Are we not, by grace, His children ? the brethren of the Son of His love ? the living temples of His Spirit ? All the mysteries of Jesus, all the marvellous supernatural organism that He has established in His Church, to what do they tend, if not to open to upright, generous and faithful souls the way of love and of most intimate union with Himself ? And if this be true of Christians in general, how much more must it be so for those whom, by a singular predestination, Christ has chosen to consecrate especially to His service ? It is of them above all that He says : “ I have called you friends ” for I have made you enter into the secrets of My love.

III

In speaking of the instruments of good works, we already said a word about the three stages that, in the ordinary way, the soul must pass through before coming to perfect union. It is necessary to return to this subject because the degree of our prayer is practically determined by the degree of our inner life.

As you know, spiritual authors mark out three states of the inner life ; the purgative, the illuminative, and finally the unitive way. Although these three stages are real, they are not in contradistinction to one another ; there exists between them a reciprocal penetration, a certain affinity ; these denominations result only from the predominance of such or such an element, a predominance which cannot go so far as to exclude the other elements. Thus a soul who is in the way of purification likewise accomplishes, and it may be often, acts of the illuminative way and acts of union. In the same manner, a soul that is in the state of union cannot say : “I no longer need the thought of hell and the practice of mortification. ” We cannot then in this matter assign such or such impassable limits, or rather, we cannot geometrically fix souls in one state distinct from another ; these stages are not separated by fixed boundaries passed once and for ever ; they more truly comprehend and sustain and complete one another, but with one predominating element : here purification, there illumination, finally, habitual union. With this reservation, let us say a word on each of these three “ ways. ”⁸

In the purgative way, the soul is chiefly occupied in the work of purification. It has come from the world to which it was more or less given up ; more or less it has offended the Divine Majesty ; it comes for its “ conversion ” says our Blessed Father : Veniens quis ad convcrsionem : “ con¬ version ’’ here being taken in the wide sense of the word, and meaning detachment from every creature in order to seek God unceasingly. The Sacrament of Penance has re¬ mitted the sins of this soul but the scars of sins and evil ten¬ dencies remain ; the attraction towards creatures is not entirely corrected ; the soul is yet full of spiritual imper¬ fections. It is doubtless in a state of grace and seeks God, but has not yet reached that state of purity and stability in good which is to make it worthy of the embrace of the Divine Spouse : the soul is not yet paralum sicut sponsam ornatam viro suo.

God requires of this soul to take the last place at the feast. It must above all exercise itself in the first degrees of humility and in reverence towards God. It is not becom¬ ing, especially when one has greatly offended God, to expect to enter into familiarity with Him at the beginning of the spiritual life. We must remain at the end of the banquet table until our Lord calls us “to go up higher.” What ought to be the prayer of the soul in this state ? Not having any acquired habit of prayer, nor possessing within itself the material elements of intercourse with God, it must perforce borrow them from such or such a work that will provide these elements and of which it will make use until the heart be touched and the will be made subject to God. Otherwise mental prayer may degenerate into a vague barren reverie. If in the course of prayer, God draws the soul to Him, then it can lay aside every book. Our Blessed Father compares prayer to an audience. Now when we beg an audience with a great personage that we may present to him our homage and respect, we are careful to come prepared in order not to be taken unawares ; but if in the course of the interview, this personage takes the direction of the conversation, we make it our duty to follow his lead without thinking any more of ourselves. In the same way we ought, especially at the beginning of the spiritual life, to have recourse to the help of such or such a practice, such or such a method, but without attaching so great importance to it as would leave us no liberty of spirit ; the danger of illusion will moreover be avoided by submission to the direction of the Father Master.⁹

In this we should imitate the discretion of which our holy Patriarch gave proof. He was certainly a true con¬ templative ; he possessed a great gift of prayer and a wide experience of the ways of union with God : none can doubt this on studying his life and Rule. In the latter we might expect to find long pages upon prayer. We find barely two short chapters ; and in neither of them is any special method laid down ; some principles, fundamental and charac¬ teristic, but briefly formulated, are all that he has left to us. Why is this ? It is because our holy Legislator shines in discretion ; he knows that nothing is more narrowing for souls than to regulate their intimate relations with God intoo rigid and imperious a manner. He contents himself with indicating the fundamental attitude of the soul in pre¬ sence of God, the dispositions that are the condition of the fecundity of the divine action in the soul : purity of heart, humility and compunction.

As to the habitual subject of mental prayer in the purgative way, what is it to be ? It ought to be chiefly taken from the Last Ends, Christ’s Passion caused by our sins, the Divine perfections of which the sight fills the soul with fear and reverence. Prayer ought then to resolve itself before all in¬ to acts of compunction and most humble confidence. It is chiefly of a soul in this state that St. Benedict is speaking when he say “ one ought daily in prayer to confess one’s past sins with tears and sighs ” : Mala sua praeteriia cum lacrymis vel gemitu cotidie in oratione Deo confiteri s.

Such is the dominant note, not however the exclusive note, of this stag . The monk who is in this way ought often to cast himself at the feet of God, as did the Prodigal Son, to ask pardon of Him and soften his own heart at the sight of the Divine Majesty he has offended and at the thought of the sufferings of Jesus ; he ought to incline his will in all humble submission before the Divine will and that of his Superiors. The last fruit of this stage is submission, deep and generous because humble and contrite, to God’s i. "Before beginning your prayer, " wrote a holy Benedictine nun, favoured with heavenly gifts, “ try to realise God’s presence in your soul ; then make your proximate preparation ; if in the continuance of your meditation the Lord inspires you with some special affections, follow the light that He gives you, and I pray Him to grant vou the grace to keep the fruit of it for His glory. ” A n Ecstatic of the X P//m> century. The Blessed Bonomo. ~ 2 Rule ch. iv. holy will whatsoever it may be, and whatsoever be the manner in which it is manifested.

The duration of this stage is more or less extended ; it much depends on the manner of life previous to entering the monastery, the strength of bad habits, the degree of generosity that the soul brings to the work of self-purification. It is for a prudent and enlightened director to judge of this. However it is not presumptuous to believe that those who, during the Novitiate, have allowed themselves to be moulded by humility and obedience, who have been generous and full of ardour, who made their monastic profession with great love and great purity of intention, will on that day reach the threshold of the illuminative life. Monastic pro¬ fession is indeed like a second baptism ; to one who has been constantly faithful to grace during the time of probation, God certainly gives a great purity that enables him to advance in spiritual ways.

IV

As the name indicates, the illuminative way is characterised by the spiritual lights that God causes to abound in the soul, thanks to which it is filled, if we may thus speak, with the knowledge of divine things.

God leads beings according to their nature. We are intellect and will ; now we only love the good that we know. If then we wish to cleave fully to God, we must first know Him as perfectly as possible. Therefore, as the soul begins to be purified from all sin, from all negligence, God enlightens it little by little in order to bring it entirely to Himself. God has only to show Himself and the soul is drawn by His infinite wisdom, beauty, goodness and mercy. In return God requires of the soul who seeks Him that it should also give itself, and even for a long time, to the study of divine truths. This extremely important work was already begun in the preceding stage, but it must be intensified as one advances. The soul must go deeply into the truths of faith. Some might say : What is the use of so much searching into the truths of faith ? What is the use of so many theo¬ logical notions ? What advantage do we reap from them ? It would be dangerous to reason after this manner. Listen to these words of our Lord : O Holy Father, eternal life consists in knowing Thee, and in knowing Him Whom Thou hast sent here below, Jesus Christ : Haec est vita aeterna : ut cognoscant te solum Deum verum, et quem misisti Jesum

Christum. Thus it is Christ Jesus, the Infallible Truth, Who makes eternal life consists in the knowledge of His Father and of Himself, certainly not a knowledge purely theoretical but a practical knowledge which surrenders us wholly to the service of God and of His Beloved Son.

For there is knowledge and knowledge. There is a know¬ ledge of Christ which is purely intellectual, limited to the understanding alone ; one might thus know all that is treated of in the Gospel, the history of its composition, of its sources, of its text, all the commentaries that have been made on it ; but this knowledge will remain cold and sterile if love be absent from it.

There is another knowledge of which the motive is neither curiosity of mind nor intellectual pleasure, but love seeking the beloved object with the view of being united to it, love striving to know more in order to love more. This is the knowledge that turns to love, practical knowledge. Study thus comprehended is the expansion of our faith ; it becomes prayer, contemplation. This knowledge is necessary to us ; it is important that it be developed, because it then becomes the principle of an ardent love.

God has not left us the treasures of revealed truth for us to keep them buried in sudario 2, as if they were not worth the trouble of being studied. The deposit of revelation was delivered to us in order that, with humility and with eyes on the Church s teaching, we should exercise our in¬ telligence in fathoming this deposit and in extracting from it all that is precious, glorious to God, and fruitful for our souls. The lives of the Saints show us that God loves this seeking after the truth, the starting point of a more generous charity. When He wishes to lead to a higher degree of union a soul that is, naturally speaking, little instructed, like St. Catherine of Siena, He Himself takes the charge of enlightening it by His Spirit and of giving it in an infused manner the knowledge of the deepest mysteries that it may therein find the secret of a more extensive love. Let us then be persuaded that studying the truths of faith makes the “ talent, ” confided to us, fructify, and we thus labour at our sanctification.

Our faith should seek to be enlightened : Fides quaerens mtellectum, said the great monk, St. Anselm 3. According to our holy Father, the monastery is a school where we learn to serve the Lord : Dominici schola servitii 4 : but our service i. Joan, xvii, 3. — 2. Luc. xix, 20. — 3. 1, 11, ep. xu. — 4. Prologue of the Rule.

S. Anselm. Meditat. xxi, et Epist will be so much the more perfect and pleasing to God in proportion as our knowledge in matters of faith — whence love is derived — is the wider and deeper: processu fidei... curritur via mandatorum Dei. It is therefore not a small thing to apply ourselves to nourish the faith within us 2. The monk who is called by his vocation to a great union with Christ cannot content himself with a faith ignorant of the marvels wrought by God for our sanctification. Let us seek as St. Paul says, “ to comprehend... what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth ” of the Divine mysteries, that we “ may be filled unto all the fulness of God ” : Ut impleamini in omnem plenitudinem Dei. Such is the goal of our efforts in this way of illumination : — to fill our souls with the truths of faith that they may become for us the principle of a closer union with God.

Now how are we to carry into effect this part of the work that God requires of us, whereby we may live in this state of illumination ? The result may be obtained in different ways. There are souls who lay up and appropriate to themselves supernatural knowledge by reflection and medi¬ tation. This is an excellent means for souls who are en¬ gaged the most part of their time in what we agree to call the active life ; for them, this is often the only means of entering deeply into the notions of faith and being per¬ meated with supernatural truths.

Other souls incapable of giving themselves to this discursive labour, set apart a regular time for spiritual reading, either in the Gospels, or a Life of Our Lord, or an ascetic treatise on His mysteries, frequently interspersing this reading with aspirations of the heart towards God, towards Christ. This is for many the only possible manner of getting light on Divine things and of holding intercourse with the Heavenly Father.

For us, monks, this “ illumination ” finds its principal source in the Divine Office ; therefore it is quite natural that after having spoken of the Opus Dei we should pass on to the subject of mental prayer. It is an immense advantage to be able to link our mental prayer to liturgical prayer, but to be enabled duly to appreciate this advantage it is necessary to understand it well. We have often encountered the truth that in the spiritual life all leads up to Christ Jesus. When St. Paul speaks of the understanding of the

1. Prologue of the Rule. — 2. Innocent XI condemned this proposition of Molinos : Theologus minor em disposilionem kabet quam homo rudis ad slalum conlemplativi. Denziger-Banwart. Enchiridion sumbolorum, p. 363. — 3. Eph. in, 18, 19. mysteries of faith that we ought to have, he sums all up in the knowledge of Jesus. He writes to the Ephesians that he does not cease to pray for them “ that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, ” may give them a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in order to know Christ that so the eyes of their hearts may be enlightened, Christ, is the great revelation of God ; He is God interpreted to our souls. Jesus first makes known to us the Divine secrets ; secondly He shows us how a God lives among men to teach them to live perfectly ; He is the purest, the most living manifestation of the Divine perfections. When the Apostle Philip asks Our Lord to show him the Father, what does Christ reply ? “ He that seeth Me seeth the Father, " for he makes only one with His Father : Ego et Pater ununt sumus. He is the image of the invisible God. Therefore to be filled with the knowledge of God 5 we have but to look at the Person of Our Lord, to listen to His words, to contemplate His mysteries.

Now where shall we find the account of what Christ said and did ? In the Gospel. But the Gospel is to be found admirably set forth, enshrined and commented upon in the Liturgy. From Advent to Pentecost, the Church places the entire life of her Divine Spouse under our eyes, not only as it appears in the Gospel, but illustrated, we may say, by the prophecies, the letters of St. Paul and the commen¬ taries of the holy Doctors. The Church makes us contem¬ plate, one by one and link by link, all the mysteries of Jesus ; all that He said, all that He did, all that He fulfilled in His person, all that He willed for us, is there presented by the Church, in its proper place. Nowhere can we better learn the actions of Christ Jesus, the words that fell from His lips, the affections of His Divine Heart ; it is the Gospel lived over again at each of the stages of the terrestrial life of Christ, the Man-God, Saviour of the world, Head of His Mystical Body, and bringing with Him to our souls the virtue and grace of all His mysteries. Nowhere so much as in the Liturgy does there exist a narration as complete and simple, as ordered and profound, of all the wonders that God has wrought for our sanctification and salvation ; it is a revelation of what is at the same time most perfect and most appropriate for our souls ; it is a setting forth that speaks to the eyes of the body and of the imagination, and that touches the attentive soul to its very depths.¹⁰

The Liturgical Cycle is an incomparable source of super¬ natural illumination. But furthermore — and this is a truth of paramount importance for our sanctification — we can therein obtain the special fruit that Our Lord willed to attach to each of His mysteries in living them for us here below, as our Head.

To this source, then, our prayer may go for its elements. The monk ought to follow the Church, the Bride of Christ, in Christ’s footsteps, listen to His words, contemplate His actions in order to imitate His virtues. Never let us weary of returning to these themes in our prayer : each action, each state in Christ’s life is not only a teaching, but in the wide sense of the word, a “ sacrament. ” To approach Christ thus is to walk in a path which is one of the surest and most fruitful.

We may be easily convinced that this path is truly that wherein St. Benedict leads his sons. The holy Legislator in fact speaks of mental prayer immediately after having treated of the Divine Praise 2 ; he links it closely to “ the Work of God 3. " According to his life written by St. Gregory, we see that the monks gave themselves to prayer “ after the office ” : expleta psalmodia 4. Like the Egyptian monks it was after each psalm that they prayed for a few instants in silence, first standing then prostrating themselves on the ground as they poured out before God their souls enlightened and touched by the sacred verses. This custom has dis¬ appeared, but St. Benedict has kept the idea that inspired it ; and we must keep it after him. Our holy Father wishes likewise that the time which according to the regular horarium remains available after Matins should be spent in medi¬ tating on the psalms or lessons: Quod veto restat postvigilias... p saltern vel lectionum... meditationi inserviatur. We know that it was the custom of the monks, anterior to the great Patriarch, to fill the interludes of the Divine Office with meditation on the eternal truths ; St. Benedict gathered up this precious tradition and made it his own.

We should then take from the Divine Office, of which Christ is the centre, the elements of our prayer, whether we have retained some text that struck us during the recitation, in order to meditate upon it, or whether af ter the Office we speak to Our Lord with the help of a Breviary or other book appropriate to the feast or the mystery 7. Our prayer should i See the Note at the end of the Conference. — 2. Rule, ch. xix a xx. — - a. Ch. hi. — 4. Dialog. Lib. n, c. 15. — 5 Cassian, Institut. 11, 7- — 6- Rule, ch. vni. — 7. For example, the Meditations upon the Gospel, or the Elevations

Christ, the Ideal of the Monk. be like the flower of the psalmody. We know how the an¬ cient monks, St. Gregory, St. Bede, St. Anselm, St. Bernard and so many others lived this life of prayer ; we know that it was by drawing at this source that St. Hildegarde, St. Eli¬ sabeth of Schonau, St. Gertrude and St. Mechtilde rose to such heights of contemplation and love. So sure and fruitful is this way which is that of the Church herself.

V

Like those who have gone before us, we too shall find in the Opus Dei a pure and unfailing source of illumination, extremely fruitful for the inner life. When we are faithful in reciting the Divine Office well, the Holy Spirit — Who inspired the Psalms and directs the Church in the organisation of the worship of Jesus — gives us little by little a deep knowledge, full of unction, sapida, of God’s perfections and the mysteries of Christ ; a knowledge more fruitful than any we could gain by study and reasoning ; the Holy Spirit illumines with His Divine light some truth, some word or mystery of Jesus ; He deeply engraves them in the soul.

This knowledge, altogether heavenly, supernatural and sweet, fills the soul with humility and confidence, and thus illumined with divine splendours, it annihilates itself before God and surrenders itself entirely to His holy will. The Holy Spirit, as has been justly said, "suggests the attitude of sincere souls,” the inward attitude which places the soul before God in full truth.

For you will remark that the sacred texts are not taken from man ; they come to us from Heaven ; and as none but the Holy Ghost, Who inspired them, can make us know their depth, so none but He alone, as Christ Himself said, can make us understand the words that fell from the lips of the Incarnate Word, the actions accomplished and the mys¬ teries lived by the Saviour’s Sacred Humanity : Ille vos docebit omnia et suggeret vobis omnia quaecumque dixero vobis 3. The Holy Spirit presents these truths in a divine light to the soul ; they hence become as it were the elements of our own life, without there being need of reasoning. The passing vividness of the first impression fades, it is true ; but the truth has been deeply perceived and remains in the soul like a principle of life : Verba Christi spiritus et vita sunt*. upon the Mysteries, by Bossuet ; Elevations upon the Life ana Doctrine of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by Mgr. Gay, etc. i. Cf. D. Besse, Les Mystiques Bdnttdictins. See also D. FestugiSre, 1. c. p. 86. — 2. D. I. Ryelandt, Briviaire et Meditation, 1912. — 3. Joan, xiv, 26.¹¹

The Divine Office is truly a M granary, ” prom-ptuarium, prepared by God Himself, and those who recite the Office devoutly abound in the lights of the Holy Spirit ; after a few years, prayer becomes an easy habit to them. The novice who for the first time hears this fact affirmed may be, for want of experience, astonished at it. But, if he is fervent, he will learn for himself, and quickly enough, that assiduous and daily acquaintance with the inspired word is a sure and easy way of conversing with God.

“ How can it be that a soul prepared and formed by the Holy Spirit should not know better than any other how to converse with God in the intimacy of her heart returning as she does to her solitude laden like a bee with honey from so many flowers ? How can she be ignorant of the right language in which to address the Divine Majesty, when she enters into the secret chamber of her heart, all replenished with the Divine Word ? What is contemplation in its highest form but the opening out of the beautiful affirmations which the prayer of the Church puts upon our lips ? When a soul borrows her expressions from human language, she will never find any words that more exactly convey the truths which she has contemplated than the forms of liturgical prayer, lending themselves, as they do, with equal ease to the lispings of the soul beginning to seek God and to the enraptured outpourings of the soul that has found Him 1. ”

Do we not grasp how well founded is this doctrine when we examine things with the eyes of faith, and view everything in a supernatural light ? What is the aim of prayer, of all prayer ? To unite ourselves to God in order to do His will. If prayer does not tend to this, it is a mere amusement of the mind, mere child’s play of the soul. Now what is “ the will of God " ? Our sanctification : Haec est voluntas Dei sanctificatio vestra 2. These are St. Paul’s words. But this same Apostle does not cease to repeat to us under a hundred different forms that our sanctification is of the supernatural order, that it is God alone Who has created this order and established the means of realising it in us ; that our sanctification amounts to the entire reproduction in us of the features of Jesus. The Father has no other will for us ; indeed, the very form of our predestination, — and holiness is but the realisation of predestination in its plenitude — is the conforming of ourselves to His beloved¹²

Son : Praedestinavit [nos Deus] conformes fieri imagifiis Fi'Ui sui. All prayer, the whole life of prayer, ought then to tend to form Christ within us more, until we shall be able to say in all truth : “ I live, now not I ; but Christ liveth in me ” : Vivo autem, jam non ego: vivit veto in me Christus.

Now what better way could be found of forming Jesus in us 3 than to contemplate His mysteries, and thereby obtain the strength to imitate them ? The soul, faithful in following Christ step by step as the Church presents Him, infallibly arrives at reproducing within itself the character (in the deep meaning of the word) of Christ Jesus. The Church, in her Liturgy, is guided by the Holy Spirit, and it is this Spirit Who not only enlightens us as to Christ’s mysteries, but forms in us — for He is the digitus Dei 2 — the features of Christ. St. Paul tells us that without the Holy Spirit we cannot even pronounce the name of Jesus 5 ; with much greater reason, we are incapable, without the help of this Divine Artist, of reproducing in our souls the features of the heavenly Model, the form of our predestination and the Ideal of our perfection. Undoubtedly, we see souls succeed, by force of will and effort, in forming within themselves the human character, the natural virtues ; but in order to form within us the Divine character, to engrave within us super¬ natural traits, the only ones that make us pleasing to God, it needs the action of the Holy Spirit, and this action is unceasing in the Liturgy.

Ihus a life of prayer which is like the continual echo of the liturgical life that each year makes us walk closer, by faith, reverence and love, in the steps of Christ Jesus, from His Birth to His Ascension, besides having a very sure and supernatural foundation, possesses incomparable efficacy and fruitfulness.

From the fact that our prayer as monks takes its elements from the Liturgy, it becomes, I do not say exclusively but mostly, affective. Our soul expresses desires rather than forms reasonings. We no longer need to reason in order to be convinced of the Divine truths : we find them ready set before us by the Church in their fulness and splendour ; we have only to open our eyes, to put out our hand, to dispose our heart in order to appropriate these truths ; the attentive' and faithful soul that lives in solitude is spared the labour of discursive reasoning. What is necessary is to be well prepared, as we have said, to accomplish " the work of God ” ; when the soul is recollected, the Holy Spirit enlightens it little by little and fills it with those Verba Verbi which become well-springs of life and principles of action. It is a law of experience that one who recites the Divine Office in the necessary dispositions goes out from the choir replenished with truths, and is thereby placed in an altogether favourable atmosphere for prayer and the inner life.¹³

The soul is inclined above all to express its desires. It is in holy desires which come from the heart and not in the multitude and arrangment of words that prayer lies. When we have this inward thirst of conversing with Our Lord, when we feel the need of speaking with Him, we do not make phrases ; we tell Him how much we love Him, how much we desire to love Him ; we listen to Him ; we stay looking at Him, praising Him, adoring Him, were it only by a humble attitude, full of reverence and confidence. Commenting on these words of Job : “ Who would grant... that the Almighty may hear my desire, ” St. Gregory the Great tells us : “ Remark these words : my desire. True prayer is not in the sound of the voice, but in the desires of the heart ; not our words but our desires give power to our cries in God's most secret hearing. If we ask for eternal life with our lips without desiring it from the bottom of our heart, our cry is a silence ; if, without speaking, we desire it from the bottom of our heart, our silence cries out 1. ”

The words of this great monk, who was at the same time a great Pope and a great contemplative, are but an echo of those of our holy Father. “ Let us remember, " says St. Benedict — who himself echoes Our Lord’s own words 2 — “ that it is not for our much speaking, but for the purity of heart, and tears of compunction that we shall deserve to be heard...3" A monk may remain in the oratory after the Divine Office and there pray “ not in a loud voice for fear of disturbing his brethren praying beside him, but with te^.rs and fervour of heart ” : Intret et oret, non in clamosa voce, sed in lacrymis et intentione cordis 4. The monk pours out to Him the desires with which the liturgy has inflamed his soul, desires which are all summed up in that prayer taught to us by Jesus Christ, our Master, and that occurs i. Moral, in Job. I. xxir, ch. 17, n. 43. p. L. t. 76, col. 238. St Augustine says the same : Ipsum desiderium tuum oratio tua est, et si continuum desiderium continua oratio... continuum desiderium tuum continua vox tua est... Flagrantia caritatis clamor cordis est. Enarr. in Ps. xxxvn, n. 14. P. L. 37. col. 404. —

2. Matth. vi. 7. — 3. Rule, ch. xx. — 4. Ibid. ch. ui. — 5- Matth. vi, 9. sq ; Luc. xi, 2-4. so frequently in the Divine Office: “Father... hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as in Heaven... "

To speak thus to the Father is to adore Him “ in spirit and in truth, ” in spiritu et in veritate, it is a prayer that rises up to Him like fragrant incense ; when we recite the Office with piety and devotion, this prayer becomes very easy. As soon as the soul comes in contact with a Divine truth or one of Christ’s mysteries, it overflows in pure but fervent desire, and “ sees ” in the truth of God what God asks of it. The soul has reached the fountainhead of a life of intense union.

VI

When a soul is thus faithful in following Christ Jesus step by step, in allowing itself to be replenished by the Holy Spirit with truths from on high and in conforming its life to them, God leads it little by little to the state of prayer. This is the third stage : that of the unitive life, where the soul clings solely to God, to Christ. It can make the words of the Apostle its own : “ Who shall separate (me) from the love of Christ ? ” Quis me separabit a caritate Christi? There are many degrees in this state, but it is certain that the day will come when God will raise us to that degree which He wills for each one of us, if we continue to be generously faithful in seeking Him alone : Ego merces tua magna nimis.

Indeed in the measure wherein a soul is stripped of self, God acts more and more within it ; He draws to Himself all the faculties of the soul that He may simplify their exer¬ cise. Prayer becomes more simple, the soul no longer feels the need of reflecting much, of thinking much, of speaking much ; the direct action of God is made deeper ; the soul is motionless before God, as it were, knowing that He is there ; it is intimately united to Him by an act of loving adherence, while yet this act is enveloped with the shadows of faith. This union can be compared to that of two souls who each know what the other is thinking, even without speaking, and are in complete union of sentiment, without needing to express themselves. Such is contemplation : the soul looks at God, loves Him and is silent. And God looks at the soul and fills it to overflowing. This is what persons do who are knit together by a deep love : when they have said all they have to say, they are content to be silent ; a simple glance tells all their love and tenderness. The soul remains in this prayer of faith, united to God, to Christ Jesus, without any intermediary. The soul puts aside all that the senses, the natural intelligence, even revealed truths, say of God : it rests in pure faith.¹⁴

It can say to God : “ Since I am unable to see Thee such as Thou art, I want no types or images ; I prefer to identify my intelligence with that of Christ and to contemplate Thee through His eyes, for He seeth Thee, O my God, as Thou art. ” In this tryst of the soul with its God, in this immediate contact with the Beloved, the soul gives itself and finds all good, for God also communicates Himself in revealing Himself. This contact of faith and “love is sometimes very short, lasting only a few instants, but it is sufficient to fill the soul with light ; the life of God becomes its own, the Divine activity transforms its own.

This union with God in faith is very simple but very fruitful. For the soul who lives in it, these words of the Lord in the Scriptures are fulfilled : “ I will espouse thee to Me in faith : and thou shalt know that I am the Lord ” : Sponsabo tc mihi in fide: et scies quia ego Dominus 1. What ought the soul to do ? To give itself up, to let itself be taken ; God touches the soul, He seizes its every fibre to make them all converge to Himself as to their centre ; it is a Divine embrance, in which the soul, despite aridity, or darkness, or its own powerlessness, has nothing to do but yield itself up into the Divine Artist’s transforming hand.

The fruitfulness of this prayer merits for it the name of transforming. It is said that in Heaven we shall be like to God, “ because we shall see Him as He is ” : Similes ei erimus, quoniam videbimus eum sicuti est 2. Immediately the blessed soul sees God, it is identified with Him in the intellect by truth, and in the will by love. In the measure possible, the soul is, — not equal evidently, — but like to God : the Beatific Vision works this transformation, rendering the soul like to God, to such a degree that it is united to Him in unity. Now, during this life, what is the prelude to the vision that the elect enjoy ? Prayer through faith. The soul by contemplating God, through faith, in prayer, sees His perfections in all" truth, it surrenders itself to this truth ; and thus beholding in God the Sovereign and Unique Good, its will is united to this Divine will, fount of all beatitude for the soul ; and the more powerful this adherence is, the more the soul is united to God. dliis is why prayer in faith is so precious for the soul. We ought to wish to reach a high degree in this prayer, that is to say to attain to this union full of love and simplicity, which results in an outpouring of the most pure Divine light.¹⁵

The value of this union is very great, for it sometimes transforms a soul in a very short time. Plunge an iron bar into the fire ; without delay, the iron shares in all the qualities of the fire. God is a furnace ; the soul that plunges in God through prayer is wholly filled with light and heat, its love increases in immense proportions, and this is a great grace. God then acts in the soul much more than the sold itself acts. He works in it, the Holy Spirit takes it in hand. We then accomplish with great ease and much better what was hitherto done very imperfectly. God Himself brings forth the virtues which before we had toiled painfully to acquire. This state is therefore exceedingly to be desired ; the Fathers of the Church have always regarded it as perfection, the normal crowning point of the whole spiritual life. Far from producing pride, it gives birth in the soul to the deepest sense of its nothingness, for it is impossible for the creature to comprehend God’s greatness without realising at the same time its own littleness.

However it would be an error to think that we can attain to a high degree of this prayer without having laboured much and suffered much for God and His glory. Under the ordinary conditions of His Providence, God does not give Himself to the soul with this plenitude until the evening of life, when the soul has proved, by a constant fidelity to the inspirations of grace, that it belongs wholly to God and in all things truly seeks but Him alone : Si r ever a Deum quaerit x.

We ought to tend to this blessed state, to which many religious souls are certainly called ; it is to this life of union that the monk’s whole existence should tend; otherwise it is useless. This is truly what our Holy Father proposes to us : to be so far stripped of self, and cleansed from all sin that God may fully act in us as Master through the action of His Spirit : Quae Dominus jam in operariutn suum mundum a vitiis et peccatis Spiritu Sancto dignabitut demonstrate 2. It is this state of perfect charity that is reach¬ ed by the generous and constant ascension of the degrees of humility which resume in themselves the whole work of purification His omnibus humilitatis gradibus ascensis, monachus mox ad caritatem Dei perveniet illam quae perfecta foris mittit timorem 3. Happy state wherein the soul that

1. Rule ch. lviii. — 2. Ibid. ch. vn. — 3. Ibid. ch. vii.

MONASTIC PRAYER 36x is all for God finds the prelude to that eternal union of endless beatitude 1 1

VII

The best means of stimulating within ourselves the holy ambition of a like state is to maintain with vigilance our life of prayer. Our holy Lawgiver organised his monastery so that this life might become easy for us : separation from the world, solitude, silence and recollection, holy reading, the Divine Office are so many elements that are of a nature to create and favour the life of prayer.

We must first of all seek solitude and silence. We see our Blessed Father in his youth leave the world : recessit. What is his aim ? “To please God alone ” : Soli Deo placer e desiderans 2 ; but there is no true solitude that is not bathed in an atmosphere of silence. Noise, in fact, disturbs the soul’s inward recollection ; to walk noisily, to shut the doors in the same way, to hold loud conversations, can hinder our brethren from giving themselves up to prayer ; upon this point, each one should have it at heart to respect the inner life of his brethren, to facilitate it by carefully avoiding all that could be an obstacle to it. Little things, yes, but pleas¬ ing to God, for they favour His intimate work in souls.

More than outward noise, indulgence in useless conversa¬ tions divert the attention of the soul and destroy recollection. Whenever, apart from the time given to recreation, we speak without authorisation, unless urged to do so by the motive of the love of God or of our neighbour, we commit an infidelity, we put an obstacle in the way of our intimate union with God ; with culpable levity, we allow the perfume of the Divine visit received in that morning's Communion to evaporate. As St. Benedict says, we do harm to ourselves and are a distraction to others : Non solum sibi inutilis est, sed etiam alios distollit. Where silence is not observed, it can be i. This is how a nun of a wonderful mystical life, the Blessed J. Bonomo, characterised the three stages : " The purgative way leads to the feet of Christ (this signifies humility feeling its misery and imploring grace and pardon) ; the illuminative way leads to the side of Christ, wherein are contained the divine secrets which the beloved disciple learnt at the Last Supper as he leaned upon his Master’s breast ; the unitive way leads to the kiss : supreme testimony of that union which begins upon earth to be consummated in Heaven. ” Life of D. du Bourg, pp. 38-40. This comparison is already to be found in the writings of S* Catherine of Siena. Dialogue, ch. x. S‘ Bernard speaks of the kiss of the Feet, of the Hand and of the Mouth of the Lord which signify the three stages of the soul’s progress. (In cantic. Sermones hi, iv, P. L. 183, col. 794, sq.). — 2. S. Greg. Dialog, lib. II. c. 1. — 3. Rule, ch. xlviii. affirmed that the inner life is lacking in intensity. Therefore our Blessed Father rarely concedes to his disciples the faculty of speaking together L Is it not remarkable that after having pointed out a great number of “ instruments of good works ” he reserves three of which to treat more specially, thus signalising that these are, in his eyes, particularly precious, namely; obedience, silence, humility ? He warns us to keep what he calls by a word of deep meaning : “ the gravity of silence, ” taciturnitatis gravitas 2. He knows and repeats that a multitude of words is often the source of sin. Silence is, for him, the atmosphere of prayer ; when he invites us to give ourselves frequently to prayer, it is only after, having laid down the preliminary conditions : “ To keep our mouth from all evil words. Not to love much speaking. Not to speak vain words apt only to provoke laughter. Not to love excessive laughter. " Does then our great Patriarch condemn joy ? Quite the contrary ! He extols that “ dila¬ tation of heart ” the fruit of a joy of which the sweetness is unspeakable 5 ; but he condemns, with a severity which is only too well justified, all that dissipates the soul and the interior life, particularly words out of season, buffooneries, mere jesting, the habitual tendency to levity of spirit : things which he wishes to see for ever banished from his monasteries : Aeterna clausura in omnibils locis damnamus 6. So sure is he that a soul which pours itself out in a torrent of words cannot hear within itself the Divine voice 6f the interior Master.

Silence of the lips would be of small use unless silence of the heart were joined to it : “ To what serves material solitude, ” says St. Gregory, “ if the solitude of the soul be lacking ? ” Quid prodest solitudo corporis si solitudo de¬ merit cordis 1 ? We might live in a Carthusian monastery and not be recollected, if we allowed our imagination to wander over an immense field of memories and insignificant things, if we dreamt of these futilities and opened our mind to vain thoughts. It is distressing to see how lightly we often squander our thoughts. In God’s sight, a thought is worth more than all the material universe ; heaven may be gained, it may be lost by a thought... Let us then watch over ourselves ; let us guard our imagination and our mind, which we have consecrated to God, from all tendency to run after deceptive mirages and unwholesome or useless thoughts : as soon as they appear let us dash them, as St. Benedict wishes, against the rock which is Christ : Cogitationes malas cordi suo advenientes mox ad Christum allidere L It is by this vigilance, says our Blessed Father again, that we shall remain exempt at every hour from sins of thought 2 and safeguard within ourselves the precious good of interior recollection. A frivolous, superficial soul, wilfully and habi¬ tually distracted by the disordered agitation of sterile thought cannot hear God’s voice. But happy that soul that lives in inward silence, the fruit of a calm imagination, of the rejection of vain solicitude and heedless haste, of the quelling of the passions, of progress in solid virtue, of the concentration of the faculties upon the constant seeking after the Only Good ! Happy this soul ! God will speak to it frequently ; the Holy Spirit will make it hear those words of life which do not strike the bodily ears, but which the attentive soul gathers up with joy within itself as the nourishment of its life.¹⁶

Was it not in interior recollection that the Blessed Virgin lived ? The Gospel writes of her that she kept the words of her Divine Son in her heart, so that she might meditate upon them : Maria conservabat omnia verba haec conferens in corde suo 3. The Blessed Virgin did not speak many words: filled with grace and light from on high, inundated with the gifts of the Spirit, she remained, silent, in the adoration of her Son ; she lived on the contemplation of the ineffable mystery wrought in her and through her ; and from the sanctuary of her immaculate heart a hymn of praise and thanksgiving rose up unceasingly to God. Our monasteries are like other Nazareths where, in virginal souls, divine mysteries should likewise be wrought. Let us then live in recollection and try to remain closely united to our Lord.

It is not enough to keep outward silence, to put away vain and profitless thoughts from mind and heart ; this inward solitude must be filled with reflections that help the soul to rise towards God. Our Patriarch provides for this by “ holy reading ; ” he wishes the monk to listen to it willingly: Lectiones sanctas libenter audire 4. Numerous hours are set apart by him for what he calls the lectio divina* ; he wishes this holy reading to be taken especially from Holy Scripture, the works of the Fathers, and the conferences of the monks of ancient times 6.

Our Blessed Father knew by experience that no source of contemplation is purer and more fruitful than the Holy¹⁷

Scriptures. Indeed what is contemplation but the move¬ ment of the soul that, touched and illumined by light from above, enters into the mystery of God ? It is true that no one has ever seen God 1, for He “ inhabiteth light inac¬ cessible 2, ” says St. Paul. How then are we to know Him ? By His words. “ Would you enter into the very heart of God ? ” says St. Gregory. “ Listen to His words ” : Disce cor Dei in verbis Dei*. With a being as essentially true as God, His words manifest His nature. Have we not here the very mystery of the Eternal Essence ? God expresses Himself in His Word, in an infinite manner, so perfect and so adequate that this Word is Unique.

And see how this Word, Who is Light, veiling His native splendour under the infirmity borrowed from our flesh, reveals Himself to us in the Incarnation : Illuxit cordibus nostris ad illuminationem scientiae claritatis Dei in facie Christi Jesui This Word makes us hear the words from on high, which He alone knows because He alone ever dwells in the Father’s Bosom: Qui est in sinu Patris ipse enarravit 5 ; being “ One with the Father, ” He gives us the words which the Father has given to Him 6, so that the words of Jesus, sent by the Father, are the words of God Himself : Quern enim misit Deus, verba Dei loquitur 7. Manifold words of the One Word, as the human words that translate them are manifold and likewise the generations that are to hear them in order to live by them.

These words of God are words of Eternal Life: Verba vitae aeternae habes 8. Our Lord tells us : “ This is eternal life [O Father] : That They may know thee, the only true God, and [Him] Whom Thou hast sent 9. ” The words of Jesus, the Incarnate Word, reveal God to us, His Nature, His Being, His Perfections, His Love, His Rights, His Will. Being the utterances of the Word, the utterances of Wisdom, they make the soul penetrate into the light from above ; they transport us into these holy splendours where God dwells. The soul, therefore, that, full of faith, hearkens assiduously to these words is wonderfully enlightened upon the plenitude of the Divine mystery, and is able, with perfect safety, to remain in contemplation of this mystery.

Where shall we find Jesus’ words, these words that should

Sr f°ViS " fountains of water springing up into everlasting life . In the Gospel, first of all. There we listen to

P V IV 1 JOaniTr’ I2- “ £2- 1 XirT VI- l6‘ — 3. Lib. IV. Epist. 31.

4. n Cor. IV, 6. — 5. Joan, i, 18. — 6. Cf. Ibid, xvh 8.

7- Ibid, hi, 34. — 8. Ibid, vi, 69. — 9. Joan, xvii, 3. — 10. Cf. Ibid, iv

4 ’

Jesus Himself, the Word Incarnate ; we see Him revealing in human words that which is ineffable, translating the invisible into deeds comprehensible to our feeble minds ; we have but to open our eyes, to prepare our heart, in order to know and rejoice in this light of glory : “ The glory which Thou hast given me, ” says the Saviour in speaking of the Apostles to His Father, “ I have given to them. ” To the Gospels are to be added the letters of the Apostles especially those of St. John and of St. Paul : both repeat to us the divine words into the meaning of which they had penetrated, the one while resting his head upon the Master’s Heart, the other in those visions where Christ Himself gave him to hear the arcana verba 2, “ secret words ” containing His mystery.

And as Jesus Christ was “ yesterday ” as He is “ to-day ” and will be to-morrow, even the Old Testament itself reveals Him to us. Did He not say that it was of His Person that Moses spoke ? Did He not frequently bring to mind the prophecies concerning Him ? And as for the Psalms, are they not overflowing with Him, to the point of being, according to Bossuet’s beautiful expression, " a Gospel of Jesus Christ turned into canticles, affections, acts of thanks¬ giving, and holy desires 4 ? ”

The whole treasury of the Scriptures, then, reveals Christ to us ; on each page we read His name. These pages are full of Him, of His Person, His perfections, His deeds ; each repeats to us His incomparable love, His boundless goodness. His untiring pity. His ineffable wisdom ; they unveil the unfathomable riches of the mystery of His life and sufferings, they recount to us the supreme triumphs of His glory.

We understand what St. Jerome wrote : “ To be ignorant of the Scriptures, is to be ignorant of Christ : I gnoratio Scripturarum, i gnoratio Christi est. The first Christians did not incur the reproach of ignorance ; not only did they lavish upon the book of Scriptures a special veneration, which has passed into the Liturgy, but they read Holy Writ assi¬ duously ; they put into practice the Apostle’s exhortation : “ Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly ” : Verbum Christi habitet in vobis abundanter 6. It is said of St. Cecilia that she always carried the Holy Gospel in her heart. She therefore remained united to God by an unceasing colloquy, by an uninterrupted prayer 1 Et non diebus neque nocttbus a colloquiis divinis et oratione cessabat.¹⁸

But that this word may be " living and effectual 1 ” in us, that it may really touch the soul, and truly become the fount of contemplation and principle of life, we must receive it with faith and humility and a sincere desire of knowing Christ and uniting ourselves to Him in order to walk in His footprints. The deep and intimate knowledge, the supernatural and fruitful perception of the meaning of Holy Writ is a gift of the Spirit, a gift so precious that our Lord Himself, Eternal Wisdom, communicated it to His disciples in one of His last apparitions : Tunc aperuit Mis sensum ut intelligerent Scripturas 2. To souls that have obtained this gift by great humility and earnest prayers 3, the Scriptures disclose abysses unsuspected by other souls. These souls rejoice in the possession of these divine testimonies as those who have “ found great spoil " : Laetabor ego super eloquia tua sicut qui invenit spolia multa 4. They truly discover therein “ the hidden manna, " manna absconditum 5, which has a thousand different tastes, contains all sort of delights and becomes their daily food, full of savour.

What is the innermost reason of this fruitfulness of God’s Word ? It is that Christ is ever living ; He is ever the God Who saves and quickens. What was said of Him during His earthly life ? “ Virtue went out from Him, and healed all ” who came near to Him : Virtus de illo exibat et sanabat omnes 7. All proportion guarded, that which is true of the Person of Jesus is true also of His word ; and what was true yesterday is still true in our days. Christ lives in the soul of the just ; under the infallible direction of this inner Master, the soul, humbly seated like Magdalen at His feet to hear His words, penetrates into the Divine Light ; Christ gives it His Spirit, the first Author of Holy Writ, that it may there search into the very depths of the Infinite : Omnia scrutatur etiam profunda Dei; it contemplates God’s marvels in respect to men ; it measures, by faith, the divine propor¬ tions of the mystery of Jesus, and this wonderful spectacle, whereof the splendours enlighten and illuminate it, touches, draws, enraptures, uplifts, transports and transforms the soul. It experiences in its turn what the disciples of Emmaus felt when Christ Jesus Himself vouchsafed to interpret to them the sacred Books : " Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in the way, and opened to us the Scrip- i. Hebr. iv, 12. 2. Luc. xxiv, 45. — 3. Tenemus libros et legimus, sed sptntualem sensum non attmgimus, et ideo opus est lacrymis et orationibus mdesmentibus postulate, utDominus aperiat oculos nostros. Origin In Genes c. 21, homil. 7. — 4- Ps. cxvih, 162. — 5. Apoc. n, 17. — 6. Sap. xvi. 20! — 7. Luc. vi, 19. — 8. I Cor. 11, 10. r ' tures ” : Nonne cor nostrum ardens erat in nobis — dum loqueretur in via et apenret nobis Scripturas 1 ?

What is there astonishing, then, in the lact that the soul, charmed and won by this living word “ which penetrates even to the marrow, ” makes the prayer oi these disciples its own : Mane nobiscum 2, “ Stay with us ! ” O Thou, the incomparable Master, indefectible Light, infallible Truth, the only true Life of our souls ! Forestalling these holy desires, “ the Holy Spirit Himself asketh for us with un¬ speakable groanings, ” which constitute true prayer, these vehement desires to possess God, to live no longer save for the Father's glory and for that of His Son Jesus. Love, become great and burning by contact with God, takes possession of all the powers of the soul, renders it strong and generous to do perfectly all the Father's Will, to give itself up fully to the Divine good pleasure.

What better or more fruitful prayer than this ? What contemplation can be comparable to it ?

Hence we understand why our Blessed Father, heir to the thought of St. Paul and the first Christians, wishes the monk to consecrate so many hours to the lectio divina, that is to say to the reading of the Holy Scriptures and the works of the Fathers which are their echo and commentary. We understand how it is that a monk, attentive to gather up daily in the liturgy this substantial nourishment of the Scriptures given to him with perfect fitness by the Church, Christ's Bride, could not be better prepared to converse intimately with the Divine Master.

Oh ! if we knew the gift of God 4 ! If we knew all the value of our share of the inheritance ! Funes ceciderunt mihi in praeclaris, etenim hereditas mea praeclara est mihi 6 /

VIII

In truth, the monk whose soul, pure and faithful, is atten¬ tive to keep the silence of the lips and heart, who listens devoutly to holy reading day by day, is excellently prepared to live in God’s presence. We are not yet in Heaven, where by the Beatific Vision we shall be forever in the Eternal Presence ; let us, at least, often place ourselves under the gaze of God : “ In Him we live, and move, and are.” Let us render His Presence actual by the free movement of a recollected soul ; this Divine Presence will thus become the atmosphere in which we move. Like St. Benedict of whom it is said : “ He dwelt alone with himself under the eyes of the Sovereign Beholder, ” Solus in superni Spectatoris oculis habitavit secum, we shall abide continually in presence of the thrice-holy God, not by means of ceaselessly renewed prayers, or violent efforts of mind or imagination, but by a deep and peaceful sense of faith which everywhere keeps us before God. We shall put in practice the precept of our Blessed Father : “ To hold for certain that God sees us everywhere ” : In omni loco Deutn se respicere pro certo scire; we shall seek the gaze and smile of our Father in Heaven ; we shall often repeat to Him : O Father, cast a ray of light upon Thy servant, become Thy child : Faciem tuam illumina super servum tuum 3 /¹⁹

When we are faithful thus to keep habitually the sense of God's Presence, the ardour of love is constant ; all our activity, even the most ordinary, is not only kept pure from all stain, as our Lawgiver wishes, Actus vitae suae omni hora custodire 4, but, moreover, raised to a supernatural level. Our whole life is irradiated with heavenly light, “ com¬ ing down from the Father of lights " descendens a Patre luminum, and this is the secret of strength and joy.

This habit of the presence of God disposes the soul for the divine visits. It may happen, and to certain souls it happens frequently, that they find a real difficulty in making their prayer at the hour assigned ; weariness, sleepiness, a state of ill health, distractions, hinder, in appearance, all efforts to attain prayer : this is spiritual dryness. Let the soul, however, remain faithful and do what it can to stay near the Lord, even if it is without sensible fervour : Ut jumentum f actus sum apud te, et ego semper tecum. God will draw near to it at another moment. It can be said of these visits of the Lord what the Scripture declares of His coming at the close of our earthly life '. “ You know not at what hour your Lord will come " : Nescitis qua hora Dominus, vester venturus sit. If everywhere, in the cell, in the cloister, in the garden, in the refectory, we live recollected in the Divine Presence, Our Lord will come ,the Trinity will come, Et ad eum veniemus 8, with hands full of light and glory which will possess us to our very depths and have sometimes a considerable repercussion upon our inner life. There is then produced, as it were, an indelible imprint of God i. S. Greg. Dialog., lib. II, c. 3. — 2. — 4. Rule, ch. iv. — 5. Jac. 1, 17. — 6. • — 8. Joan, xiv, 23.

Rule, ch. iv. — 3. Ps. cxvm, 155. Ps. lxxii, 23. — 7. Matth. xxiv, 42. monastic prayer upon the soul ; a divine touch which becomes the starting point of a new orientation of our soul towards God, and strengthens, in a more radical and absolute manner, our seeking after God. By our recollection, let us then be “ like to men who wait for their Lord, ” Similes hominibus exspectantibus Dominum suum ; the Lord finding us ready will make us enter with Him, cum eo 2, into the festal hall...

Thus, little by little, the soul mounts towards God and prayer becomes its very breath ; habitual union, full of love, is established, a very simple but steadfast contact with the Lord : God becomes the life of the soul. If the monk keeps silence, it is to converse inwardly with God ; if he speaks, it is in God, of God, for His glory. Such was the practice of a holy monk, Hugh, Abbot of Cluny : Silens quidem, semper cum Domino; loquens autem, semper in Domino vel de Domino loquebatur 3.

The monk who lives this life does not waste his time thinking of himself, of what others are doing, of the wrongs that may have been done to him, or that he imagines have been done to him ; he does not turn over in his mind all these littlenesses, all these trifles, but he seeks only God ; whenever he can do so, at every free moment left to him by work, the functions of his charge, the ministry of souls, his heart turns towards God to cleave to Him, to express to Him his desires, brief but ardent : that is the tendency of his soul. The soul withdraws into its own depths there to find God, the adorable Trinity, Christ Jesus Who dwells in us by faith. Christ unites us to Himself ; we live with Him in sinu Patris 4; and there we are united to the Divine Persons ; our life becomes a communing with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ; and in this union we find the well-spring of joy. We meet sometimes with sorely tried souls who yet by a life of prayer make within themselves a sanctuary where the peace of Christ reigns. It is enough to ask them : “ Would you not like to have some diversion in your life ? t.o hear them at once reply : “ Oh, no, I wish to dwell alone with God. ” Happy state of a soul living the life of prayer ! It everywhere finds God, — and God suffices for it, because it is filled with God, the Infinite Good.

But the soul feels the need of consecrating one hour exclusively to communing with God, that, this may be, as it were, the intensification of the soul’s habitual life. This hour

1. Luc. XIX, 26. — 2. Matth. xxv, 10. — 3. Vita Hugonis, c. 1, P. L. 159, loc. 863. — 4. Joan. 1, 18.

*4

Christ, the Ideal of the Monk. is at once a manifestation of and a means of attaining the life of prayer. It is impossible for a soul to have arrived at a state where prayer is its life without giving itself in an exclusive manner, at certain hours of the day, to the formal exercise oi prayer but this exercise is only the natural expansion of its state: this is why our holy Lawgiver, who has regulated everything to establish and maintain this life of prayer in his monasteries, has not thought it necessary to fix determined times of prayer for his sons. He wants the monk to seek God ; and if this desire of seeking Him be true and sincere, the monk will try to find these hours where he may be alone with Him Who is the One and Sovereign Good of his life.

Thus animated, monastic life necessarily becomes an ascending pathway towards God. The virtues are nourished by the frequent contact of the soul with the fount of all perfection: I bunt de virtute in virtutem. Prayer brings down the dew that fructifies the earth of the soul. Without prayer, the soul is dry “ as earth without water”: Anima mea sicut terra sine aquat ibi 2; the divine seed of grace, sent to us through the Sacraments, the Mass, the Divine Office, the exercise of obedience, may fall abundantly, but it may fall upon ground hard as a rock, and touch only the surface without penetrating the depths ; it then " withers away ” : Semen cecidit supra petram et aruit. To fructify our soul, prayer must descend upon it “ as a shower upon the herb, and as drops upon the grass ” : Quasi stillae super gramina 4, it must soak through and soften the soil of the heart, and* make it ready to profit as much as possible from the manifold means of sanctification to be met with in our life ; prayer is the secret of great supernatural fruitfulness and the very condition of the soul’s progress.

Do not let us say that these are mystical heights to which a few privileged souls alone can attain ; no, it is the normal state of a religious in his monastery, of a nun in her cloister ; it is the necessary expansion of our grace of adoption, of our monastic vocation. This life of prayer is our most ex¬ cellent inheritance ; optima pars. We can and ought to give ourselves, and to give God to souls ; but this ministry should be the natural radiation of our innermost life in God. Let nothing turn us away from it : Non auferatur ab ea 5, but rather let us strive to become souls of prayer. Our condition as monks is a magnificent one for attain- i. Ps. lxxxiii, 8. 2. Ibid, cxlii, 6. — 3. Cf. Luc. vm, 4. — 4. Deut. xxxii, 2. — 5. Luc. x, 42. ing this lofty end. We live in solitude, far from the vain noise of the world ; we sit down daily, and are served by the Church herself, at the splendid table of the liturgy where we find in abundance that bread of God’s Word which is the soul’s best food. Everything in the monastery, even the stones, the archways, the architecture bears us towards God. The Lord thus draws us to Him, for it was not for nothing that He brought us into monastic solitude ; He wished that we should be able to listen more easily to Him. God is doubtless everywhere, even in the tumult of great cities, but His voice is only to be heard in silence. He Himself has told us so : “I will lead her [the soul] into the wilderness : and I will speak to her heart " : Ducam earn in solitudinem et loquar ad cor ejus x. Religious vocation is the expression of a singular love of God and of Christ Jesus towards each one of our souls : God wills to be for us the Only Good and our sole reward ; He contains all good, all joy, all beatitude, but let us be persuaded that we shall only find Him fully by a life of prayer.

Happy the humble and obedient monk who seeks but to listen to God in the sanctuary of his soul, with deep reve¬ rence and unutterable tenderness. God will often speak to him, even when least expected ; He will fill him with lights to rejoice his soul, even in the midst of his tribulations and trials. “ For Thy word, O my God, is sweeter to the soul than is the most delicious honey to the mouth 2 ; ” it contains all light and all strength ; it gives the secret of patience, and is the source of all joy.²⁰

We have said elsewhere ( Christ , the Life of the Soul, conference on Prayer) how the contemplation of the Sacred Humanity of Jesus is the source of prayer even for the most perfect. We there gave a very explicit text of S‘ Teresa. Let us add thereto the following passage. Having, in The In¬ terior Castle, taught that it must be truly admitted that the soul raised to perfect contemplation cannot meditate in discoursing inwardly, the Saint how¬ ever adds : " Souls... would be wrong in saying that they cannot dwell on these mysteries (of the Life and Passion of Jesus Christ) nor frequently think about them, especially when these events are being celebrated by the Catholic Church. Nor is it possible for the soul which has received so much from God to forget these precious proofs of His love, which are living spark to inflame the heart with greater love for our Lord... Such a soul comprehends these mysteries... in a more perfect way than do other people. " The Interior Castle, 6th Mansion, ch. vii. Translated by the Benedictines of Stanbrook.

Footnotes

1. 1. Matth. xxv, 23.
   ↩
2. 1. Rule, ch. IV. — 2. Ibid. ch. ui. — 3. Ibid. ch. xx. — 4. Ibid. ch. iv. — 5. Ibid. ch. xlviii.
   ↩

3. }■ s- Greg. Di ?. lib. II, c. 35. — 2. Ibid. c. 11. — 3. Ibid. e. 33. — 4. Ibid. c. 34. — 5. Rule, ch. lviii. — 6. Life by Bl. Ravmund of Capua. — J. I Par. xxix, 17. ↩

4. 1. Prologue of the Rule. — 2. Christ, the Lite of the Soul, 2nd Part ch. x, Prayer. — 3. Hymn. Te Deum. — 4.; Cf. loan. iv. 23. ’’
   ↩
5. 1. Rule, ch. xx. — 2. Cf. Ps. xxxm, 16 ; Isa. lxv, 24 ; lviii, 9.
   ↩
6. 1. Rom. VIII, 26. — 2. Eph. IV, 30. — 3. L Thes. v, 19. — 4. Rule, ch. xx.
   ↩
7. 1. Act. ix, i. — 2. Ibid, 15. — 3. History of S1 Teresa, according to the Boliandists.
   ↩
8. 1. Cf. Joan, xv, 15.
   ↩
9. 1. Rule, cb. lviii. 2. Apoc. xxi, 2. — 3. Luc. xiv, 10. — 4. Rule ch. xx.
   ↩
10. 1. Eph. i, 16-18. — 2. Joan, xiv, 9. — 3. Ibid, x, 30. — 4. Col. i, 15. — 5. Cf. Eph. in, 19.
    ↩
11. 4. Cf. Ibid, vi, 64.
    ↩
12. 1. Spiritual Life and Prayer according to Holy Scripture and Monastic Tradition by Madame Cecile J. Bruyere, Abbess of Solesmes. Ch. x, translated by the Benedictines of Stanbrook. This work is excellent in every point ; unfortunately it is too little known. — a. I Thess. iv, 3.
    ↩
13. 1. Rom. vm, 29. — 2. Gal. n, 20. — 3. Cf. Ibid, iv, 19. — 4. Cf. Hymn Vem Creator. — 5-1 Cor. xn, 3. — 6. VVe do not say: sentimental. The remainder of the text sufficiently explains our thought.
    ↩
14. 1. Rom. viii, 35. — z. Gen. xv, j.
    ↩
15. 1. Ose. ii, 20. — 2. I Joan, m, a.
    ↩
16. 1. Rule, ch. vi. — 2. Ibid. ch. vi. — 3. Ibid, ch.iv. — 4. Ibid. — 5. Pro¬ logue of the Rule. — 6. Rule, ch. vi. — 7. Moral, in Job, lib. xxx, c. 16. P. L. 7 b , col. 553.
    ↩
17. 1. Rule, ch. IV. — 2. Ibid. ch. vii. — 3- Luc. 11, 19. — 4. Rule, cb. iv. — y Ibid. ch. xlviii. — 6. Ibid. ch. ix a lxxiii.
    ↩
18. 1. Cf. Ibid, xvii, 22. — 2. II Cor. xn, 4. — 3- Hebr. xm, 8. — 4. Elevations upon the Mysteries io“> Week, 3Id Elev. — 5- Isaiam Prologus, P. L. 24, Coi 28. — 6. Col. hi, 16. — 7. Antiphon of the office of S‘ Cecilia.
    ↩
19. 1. Luc. xxiv, 32. — 2. Ibid. 29. — 3. Rom. vm, 26. — 4. Joan, iv, 10. — 5. Ps. xv, 6. — 6. Act. xvu, 28.
    ↩
20. 1. Ose. 11, 14. — 2. Cf. Ps. cxviii, 103.
    ↩