/,~,ii!~/~:~ i~I:!

~I:

THE

'

#AY
:JULY 1964

THY WILL BE DONE

T h e Ways of God :
BRUCE

VAWT E R

The Will o f m y Father

ROBERT

MURRAY

Not my Will
WILLIAM

YEOMANS

Our rebellious wills

MURRAY

PLACID

Living by Faith
MICHAEL

KYNE

Have I a vocation ?
MICHEL

VOL.
MONTH
31 F A R M

RONDET

4 No.

PUBLICATIONS

STREET

LONDON

WI

,J

COVER

SYMBOLS

Christ is A l p h a and O m e g a (Apoc 1,8), 'the beginning and the end'. T h e

whole of creation finds in him its coherence, for he is the keystone of the
whole structure (Eph 2,21-22) ; as he is also the holder of 'the K e y of David'
(Apoc 3,7)God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush (Exod 3,2), a foreshadowing of the supreme revelation in Christ the light of the world (Jn 8,12)
and the l a m p of the New Jerusalem (Apoc 21 #3)Christ is the star that rose out of J a c o b (Nunl 24,I7) , 'the root and stock
of David, the bright a n d morning star' (Apoc 22,I6), a symbol expressing
power and command. Christ reigns in virtue of his glorious resurrection in
which we see the cross transfigured. (cf Exultet).
T h e raising of Christ on the cross was prefigured when Moses raised the
brazen serpent in the desert (Num 21,8-9; J n 3,I4).
The brazen serpent saved those who gazed on it. Christ is our salvation, in
his name we are saved (Acts 4,12). Jezus Christ God's Son Saviour, the initial
letters of these words in greek spell out ichthus - fish. The fish became a

s~mbo~ o~ Chr~t~ and the earlychristianssometimes ca~ed thelus~e~ 'the

little fishes of Christ' (Tertullian, de B@tismo, ch I, PL I, 1 I98 A).

T H E WAY
A QUARTERLY

REVIEW

OF CHRISTIAN

SPIRITUALITY

EDITED BY JAMES WALSH~ S.J. and WILLIAM Y E O M A N S ~

EDITORIAL

S.J.

ADVISERS:

DONAL O'SULLIVAN, s.L (Ireland) ; JOHN McKENZIE, Sd. HERBERT MUSURILLO, SJ.
GEORGE GANSS, SJ. (U.S.A.); ELMER O'BRIE,N, Sd. (Canada); PETERLITTLE, S.L (Australia).

CONTENTS

JULY ~964
THY W I L L BE DONE

Page
The Ways of God

BRUCE

The Will of my Father

ROBERT

Not my Will

WILLIAM

Our rebellious wills

pLACID MURRAY

199

Living by Faith

MIGHAEL

KYNE

208

Have I a vocation?

MICHEL

RONDET

215

LECTIO

VAWT

ER

MURRAY
YEOMANS

I6 7
i76
18 7

DIVINA

Holy Scripture: T h e Bible a n d the R o s a r y

225

Texts: Aelred o f R i e v a u l x

23I

Spiritual Vocabulary

236

Recommended Reading

238

Annual Subscription: U.K., 3us.; U.S.A. and Canada, $ 5.00.

No subscriptions from Booksellers or Agencies can be accepted.
All subscriptions must be sent direct to the Manager,
Wm~WAY, 31 Farm Street, London, W x

 JAM~S

WALS~, juLY

1964

THE WAYS OF GOD

By B R U C E

VAWTER

Y thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my

ways, says Yahweh. As high as the heavens are above the
earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my
thoughts above your thoughts'. 1
The Old Testament possesses a rich and varied vocabulary in
w h i c h to express the divine imperative. This is as we would expect
it to be in the record of a salvation history that is likewise a history
of revelation, a revelation which is in turn the self-manifestation of a
God who has shown himself in doing quite as much as in saying, and
who demands, as man's response to this self-manifestation, a constant doing. Faith, as St Paul, speaking fi-om the authentic historical
experience of Israel, continually reminds us, is a labour, a working,
a toiling. A n y t h i n g short of this, as the prophets taught, is the 'mouthhonour' which the Lord despises.
The Israel which does not 'know' God is the Israel in which there
is no fidelity, no covenant faith with God and man, no practice of
the social virtues. Thus it was seen by Hosea. ~ 'Knowledge of God'
and 'law of God' add up, as far as m a n is concerned, to one and
the same thing.8 The g r e a t deeds of Yahweh are not merely to be
contemplated and retold through the generations, they are above
all to be imitated. The ways of God must become the ways of
man, otherwise there is no faith.
'Ways', as a concrete metaphor for man's moral life, is common to
m a n y languages besides biblical hebrew and greek. The 'two ways'
of good and evil turns up as a theme in the literature of ancient
Egypt and Greece, in hellenism and the bible, in the Didache and at
Q m r a n . W h a t is distinctive about the biblical usage is the personal
relation that is set up with the 'ways' of God. This follows, of course,
from the uniquely personal character of the God of revelation as the
bible presents him, as confronting man with a call to action that
must i n some fashion match the divine action.
The gods of the gentiles had no such character, even when the
gentiles had the idea - as, indeed, they sometimes did - that man's

Isai55,8fi

2 Hos4, ifi

~ CfHos4,6.

I68

THE

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OF GOD

moral conduct was somehow the concern of the deity. Hammurabi's

law-code, as it has been preserved for us on the diorite stele in the
Louvre, is inscribed beneath a representation of Shamash, the sungod, apparently transmitting legislative power to the babylonian
king. But the law-code itself shows how much of an afterthought and
how adventitious this concept was: the laws of H a m m u r a b i are his
and his predecessors', they are in no sense the laws of Shamash. It is
true, of course, that some biblical law is a reflection of Yahweh's will
in an analogous way: much of the casuistic part of the law of Moses
had its origin as legislation in Israelitic lawcourts and is parallel in
form and content with the code of H a m m u r a b i and the laws of Eshnunna and Lipit-Ishtar. But the hard core of the mosaic law is
without any real parallel with these alien legislations, just as ther~i:iS
no real parallel between Israel's prophetic word and the 'revelations' of the gentile gods. Here, in Israel's apodictic law, the God of
Israel speaks out of the I-thou confrontation that is unique to biblical religion.
The 'ways of God' in the Old Testament are, it is true, quite
frequently simply the ways of man which God has commanded.
Thus in Jeremiash: 'Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and
you shall be my people. Walk in all the ways that I command you, so
that you may prosper'. There is a way which man must follow, and
this has been pointed out to him by Yahweh. I Even these 'ways',
however, though God's only by adoption, so to speak, put man in a
personal relation to God, in which the entire believing person is
involved and not merely external obedience. 'One heart and one w a y
I will give them', said Yahweh to Jeremiah, 'that they may fear me
always, to their own good and that of their children after them. I
will make them an eternal covenant, never to cease doing good to
them; into their hearts I will put the fear of me, that they may never
depart from me'. 2
In a far more intimate sense, however, there are ways of God
which, if they are to be the ways of men also, can be such only to the
extent that men follow the lead of God. These are the ways of God's
own doing in which he has revealed himself to his people. Thus in
the ancient Song of Moses: 'Proclaim the greatness of our God: the
Rock - how faultless are his deeds, how right all his ways ! A faithful
God, without deceit, how just a n d upright he is'! s
x J e r 7, 23. C f E x 32, 8; Deut 5, 33, etc.
~ J e r 32, 38-4 o.
3 Deut 32, 3f; see also Ps 25, Io; I45 , I7; T o b 3, 2; Dan 3, 27.

THE

WAYS

OF GOD

I6 9

It is characteristic of the Wisdom writers, the theologians of

ancient Israel in something of a modern sense, that they have translated the ways of God as seen in his dealings with men into the norms
of h u m a n conduct in what amounts to a rational system. The conclusion to the book of I-Iosea 1 exhorts: 'Let him who is wise understand these things; let him who is prudent know them. Straight are
the ways of Yahweh, in them the just walk, but sinners stumble in
them'. The writer bids the reader reflect on the words of the prophet,
how in accord with the realities they have proved to be; and how,
therefore, the only course for the sensible man (who is the 'wise'
man of the Wisdom tradition) is to conform his own conduct to the
ways of God as they have been made known to him.
I n the same line of thought is the theme of hypostatized wisdom
that appears especially in the later Wisdom tradition. 'Yahweh begot
me, the firstborn of his ways', says Wisdom, 'the forerunner of his
prodigies of long ago'. 2 The hypostatizing of wisdom rose from the
same kind of experience that impressed the author of the conclusion
to Hosea. Experience demonstrated to the sensible m a n that to live
according to the revealed will of God was not only a religious duty,
it also worked: pragmatically, good morality is also good common
sense. This recognition led to the identification of h u m a n and divine
wisdom, originally separate concepts: the theme of divine wisdom
as the creative and sustaining power of God is quite ancient ~ and
also appears in the literatures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan.
But just as only in Israel did creation become the initial act of a
Heilsgeschichte, in the same w a y it was o n l y within its historical
perspective that a divine wisdom which had been shown to man in
history could be seen as the first of the Lord's ways in the government of man. As a further development of the same idea, in John's
gospel Jesus can be called 'the way, the truth, and the light'. 4
Jesus is the eternal Wisdom or Word of God made flesh. He is the
divine way just as he is the divine truth and the divine life, personalized and revealed. He and he alone is the way to the Father, because
he alone has the power to take his disciples with him to the Father. 5
There was no opposition between this doctrine of the Wisdom
writers and that of Paul, who saw the 'wisdom of men' as standing
1 Hos 14, Io, a Wisdomending.
2 Prov 8, 22.
3 CfJer IO, I2.
Jn i4, 6.
5 In what precise sensethe primitiveChurch is called 'the way' or 'this way' in Acts
9, 2; 19, 9, 23; 22, 4; 4, 14, 22 and what relation this usage has to the foregoing,is not
clear.

I70

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OF

GOD

in contradiction to the divine wisdom. W h a t was wrong, in Paul's

view, about such a wisdom of men was not that it was a false wisdom,
but that it was substituted for the wisdom of God and preferred to it.
The wisdom of God and of man can coincide only when the latter
has been seen as reflecting the former and as under its firm control.
This, too, the Wisdom writers believed. 'The beginning of wisdom
is the fear of Yahweh, and knowledge of the Holiest is understanding'. 1 'All wisdom comes from the Lord, and with him it remains
forever'. 2
For there are ways of the Lord which the wisdom of man cannot
know, but in which it can only be instructed. The ways of God can
break in upon those unprepared for them even as something shocking, startling, unacceptable. 'You say, The way of Yahweh is not
fair. Hear now, house of Israel: Is it my way that is unfair, or rather,
are not your ways unfair? '8 Centuries later Paul would similarly
speak of the way of the cross, 'a stumbling-block to Jews and folly
to Greeks, yet t o those who have heard h i s call, Jews and Greeks
alike, the power of God and the wisdom of G o d ' ? These ways of God
can be known only by him who has made himself receptive to the
divine revelation: they will be forever unknown to those who trust
in their own wisdom. 'They seek me day after day, and desire to
know my ways, like a nation that has done what is just and not
abandoned the law of their God[ '5 'You will look for me, but you
will not find me. Where I am, you cannot come'. G
The ways of God refer both to what God has done and what, from
the h u m a n point of view, he is about to do: that is, both to his deeds
and his thoughts, his plans. It is in no metaphysical sense that the
bible considers the thoughts of God as already existing realities, only
for the moment hidden from man. To think (hashab) is to devise,
to conceive, to bring something into being in the heart. Jeremiah's
enemies 7 do not say, precisely, 'Come, let us think thoughts against
Jeremiah', though the text could be translated in such a wooden
fashion. 8 They say, rather, 'Let us devise machinations that will
destroy him'. Similarly, in J e r 29, i i the Lord is not guilty of the
banality: 'I know the thoughts which I am thinking about you'.
Rather, 'It is I who know (experientially) the devices I am constructing for you' - which here are devices of peace and not of evil.
Evil men invariably will not know the thoughts of God. Micah

P r o v 9, lO.
Isai58,2.

~ Sir i , I.
n .In 7, 34.

3 E z e k I8, 25.
7 J e r xS, I8.

4
a

I C o r I, 23f.
C f J e r i i , 19 .

THE WAYS

OF GOD

~71

scoffs at the nations gloating over the downfall of Zion: 'Yet they
know not the thoughts of Yahweh, nor can they discern his plan though he has gathered them like sheaves to the threshing floor! '1
Israel, too, is capable of the same fate because of its sins: 'This
people draws near me with its mouth only, and honours me with its
lips alone, but its heart (i.e. its 'thoughts', w h a t it actually does) is
far from me'. Therefore it will see its 'wisdom' confounded when the
Lord reveals his plan unexpectedly, without warning. 'Therefore I
will again deal with this people in surprising and wondrous fashion.
The wisdom of its wise men shall perish, and the understanding of
its prudent men shall be hid'. 2
It is not only with regard to punishment, however, that the ways
and thoughts of God are hidden from men. Because the thoughts of
God are the works of his power, to that same extent they are beyond
the compass of man. The quotation from the second Isaiah with
which we began appears, it is true, in a context in which Yahweh is
insisting on repentance and in which the 'way' and the 'thoughts'
of the wicked are excoriated. Yet it is not actually to contrast sinners
with the sinless One that it is said, ' M y thoughts are not your
thoughts, nor are your ways my ways'. Rather, this follows simply
from the filct that 'As high as the heavens are above the earth, so
high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your
thoughts'. ' W h a t eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor ever entered
in the heart of man, this God has prepared for those who love him'. 8
The prophet of the exile speaks of a way and a thought of Yahweh
which has not yet come into the experience of his people, but which
surely will. 4 What he is insisting on is the unexpectedness of the
event and the inability of man to attain it by his own devices, since
it hes outside the analogy of his experience. 'Who would believe what
we have heard? To whom has the arm of Yahweh been revealed? '5
The recognition of God's ways, of God's thoughts, is always,
therefore, a grace, an act of the divine power by which man is
accorded something that is not rightly his, to which he could neither
aspire nor of which he could in the first place deprive himself, since
it was never within his grasp. It is only by the gracious action of
God that man can know the ways of God, to walk therein. It is only
by this gracious action that he can be made privy to the thoughts of
1 Mic 4, I2.
2 Isai 29, I3f.
8 I Cot 2, 9; Cf Isai 64, 3 whichPaul is paraphrasing.
Cf Isai 55, II.
5 Isai53, I.

I72

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God. And this occurs when God admits man into his sod, that is to
say, into his 'council', his comradeship. The false prophets, says
Jeremiah, they who lead the people astray speaking their own word
and not the word of the Lord, have not stood in the sod of Yahweh. 1
But on the contrary, Yahweh does nothing without revealing his sod
to his true prophets. ~ Furthermore, this intimacy with Yahweh is
not reserved to those alone who have been touched by the spirit
of prophecy. It is God's gift to all who are faithful to the covenant in
which he has bestowed his grace: 'Good and upright is Yahweh,
therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He guides the humble in
mishpat, and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of Yahweh
are steadfast love and fidelity to those who keep his covenant and his
d e c r e e s . . . When a man fears Yahweh he will instruct him in the
way he should c h o o s e . . . Yahweh's sod is for those who fear him,
and his covenant is to make him known to them'. 3
Among the many terms which the Old Testament uses to designate
the revelation of the divine will, two are important enough to demand
our attention: mishpat and the concept of the divine word.
Mishpat is the noun of action derived from the verb shaphat.
Because the latter has consistently been translated 'to judge', the
former is frequently given the basic translation 'judgment'. And, as
a matter of fact, mishpat does have as one of its meanings the decision
reached in a court of law. However , it would be an error to conclude
that in the many uses it finds in the Old Testament all other senses
are simply extensions of the juridical sense or metaphors related to
it. Mishpat has a much more primary significance than that of
'judgment'.
The verb shaphat implies sovereign rule in a way that includes its
judicial exercise without being exhausted by it. The Old Testament
shophetim, however, whom we call 'judges', were certainly not in
biblical tradition even primarily those who handed down decisions
of law. Something more is involved than merely 'rule' ~ or perhaps it
would be better said that the ancient meaning of 'rule' is involved
rather than the mere 'reign' to which we might be tempted to reduce
the idea. 'Vindicate' might be a better approximation of the
meaning. A ruler was, pre-eminently, the one who vindicated right
and justice, who protected the poor and oppressed, who righted
wrongs and made justice triumph. That is the kingly ideal reflected
in canaanite literature of 15oo B.C. and in the bible. It lies behind
1 J e r 2 3 , I8.

2 Amos 3, 7.

P s 2 5 , 8 - I o , 12, 14 .

THE

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173

GOD

the messianic expectation of the Old Testament.

Mishpat is accordingly sometimes translated 'justice', that is, the
doing of justice. This will be correct, of course, depending on whose
mishpat is in question and in what connection. The mishpat of the king
of which Samuel speaks 1 is obviously not a regimen of justice, nor is
the mishpat of the prophets of Baal. ~ But the mishpat of Yahweh is
justice, righteousness, for it is the way of God: 'The way of Yahweh,
the mishpat of their God'. ~ The judgment of Yahweh is always
justice, while that of earthly rulers is too often its very opposite. 4
His judgment may be a repudiation of the unworthy. ~ But for those
who are truly his, it is always grace and mercy and all blessings, the
divine action in history revealing himself and his ways. 6
The God who reveals his way and his thoughts by the same token
reveals his mishpat, his judgment, his regimen, the very norm of his
being. It is part of the bridal gift with which he has dowered
Israel in its covenant-marriage. ~ Accordingly, he who would be
faithful to the covenant of his God has no choice but to make it the
norm 'of his own being. Yahweh wants, rather than empty sacrifices,
that 'mishpat m a y surge like waters, and justice like an ever-flowing
wadi [,s The way to God is through covenant fidelity and mishpat;
it is a path that is to be found only in Yahweh. 1 In a fine play on
words Isaiah tells of Yahweh who planted Israel as a vine, looking
for a yield of mishpat only to be rewarded with bloodshed (mispah).n
From this it is easy to see in what sense the commandments of
Yahweh to Israel are known as his mishpatim. Though, as a matter of
fact, many of these laws had been formulated in consuetudinary law
and the judgments of israelite tribunals, they were recognized as
mishpatim of the Yahwistic covenant, because in them Yahweh had
communicated his mishpat; he had thus ruled Israel and he thus
continued to rule Israel.
And, finally, the word. Continuing the poem with which we began, ' M y thoughts are not your t h o u g h t s . . . ' , the second Isaiah
quotes the Lord: 'For just as the rain and snow come down from the
heavens and return not, but water the earth, making it bear and
sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, thus shall my
wo'rd be: It shall go forth from my mouth not to return to me empty,
b u t it shall do what I have willed, it shall succeed in what I have
1

x S a m 8, I I .
P r o v 29, 26.
H o s 2, 2 I f .
~o I s a i 4 o, 14.

2
5
~
11

x Kgi8,28.
E z e k 7, 3, 8, 2 7 etc.
A m o s 5, 24.
I s a i 5, 7.

s J e r 5 , 4 f6 Isai 3 o, I8--2I.
9 H o s I2, 7.

174

THE

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GOD

sent it to do'. 1 The word of God is the divine power itself, the 'actualization' in time of God's thoughts.
The Old Testament has two ways of expressing what has been
indifferently translated 'word' by the Septuagint and subsequent
versions. A distinction between the expressions is not, for that matter, always maintained in the hebrew bible itself, or it might be more
correct to say that the stronger of the expressions has extended its
meaning to the concept as a whole. One of the expressions ('omer,
'imrah) denotes the act of speech, and the word, therefore, as an
utterance. It is the other, &bar, which has some basic significance
of 'backness'; 'innerness', that refers to the word as a reality, a force.
As Fr. J o h n McKenzie has aptly put it, the sense is 'to get behind
and push'. It is this strong meaning of word that has prevailed in the
bible and given it such a fulness of meaning that we sometimes find
puzzling when we compare it with our ways of thought.
For the word of God is creative power: 'By the word of Yahweh
the heavens were made; by the breath of his mouth all their host l' ~
'The word of Yahweh' is pre-eminently the prophetic word, which
we should never imagine to have meant for its contemporaries
thoughts, hopes, or aspirations. When Ahab greeted Elijah as 'You
troubler of Israel '3 it was in tribute to the efficacy of his prophetic
word that had shut up the heavens against Israel's sins : 'As Yahweh
the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither
dew nor rain these years, except by my word l'~ The law of God is his
word: the decalogue is the asereth had-debarira, the 'ten words', the
very covenant with Yahweh himself. 5 The word of Yahweh continues to give life to the world and man which he has created:
' m a n lives by what proceeds from the mouth of Yahweh'. 6
O f all the expressions we could consider, doubtless the 'word' is
the most inclusive and the most filled with meaning. Furthermore, it
is the word which has proved, in the end, to be the most surprising
of all God's ways. 'Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this word
which has come to pass, which the Lord made known to us'. 7 The
prophets - whatever later generations may have thought about
their intimacy with the ways of God - never suffered any illusions
concerning their limited possession of the word of the Lord. They
would have been the first to agree with the author of Hebrews that
God had spoken through them 'in fragmentary and varied fashion', s
Not even those most enlightened in the ways of God were prepared
1
s

I s a i 5 5 , iof.
D e u t 4 , 13 .

~
6

Ps33,6.
D e u t 8, 3.

8
~

I K g i 8 , I7.
L k 2, 15.

4
s

I K g I 7 , I.
H e b I, I.

T H E W A Y S OF G O D

175

for the final form which the word took on in its coming from God
and appearing among men: 'The Word became flesh! '1 'The law
(which was also God's word) was given through Moses; grace and
truth came to be through Jesus Christ', 4 who alone has revealed God
in all fulness.
We do wrong if we succumb to the temptation of western minds
to treat the johannine Logos as a metaphysical expression of the
divine nature of Christ. It does express his divinity; this is obvious.
But it does so as the introduction to a gospel, the good news which
is the culmination and climax of Heilsgeschichte. The deliberate w a y
in which the prologue to John's gospel evokes the creation narrative
of Genesis is no mere literary device. The same creative word which
first appeared in h u m a n history bringing man into being, which gave
him a hope beyond his nature and imposed on him a commensurate
way of life, found its insurpassable expression in the Word made
man, who has reconstituted mankind and revealed to him the divine
glory as the life, the truth, and the way. The Christ-event, -word,
-reality is no mere concept or idea to be grasped by the mind alone;
it is the definitive breaking-in of God into man's affairs, demanding
the commitment of man's mind and will and his whole being.
WheI1 we survey the Old Testament's varied ways of considering
the will of God, we find that they converge in a consistent affirmation which can be viewed from many angles. The divine will is
power, act, doing. It demands on man's part a reciprocal doing
which is not contrary to his nature, but which his nature alone could
never discover for him. It is in this doing alone that he fulfils his nature
and properly evaluates his place in creation. As Walther Eichrodt
has written: 'Here the natural harmony between the outer and the
inner life, between nature and spirit, was broken, and there followed
a general devaluation of the gifts of creation in face of the one
infinitely valuable and irreplaceable good, the community of the
will of G o d . . . M a n sees himself pressed to the limit of his earthly
existence by the divine demand, and directed towards a new order
whose only assurance lies in the promise of God'. The ways of God
take man on an adventure in which God alone is the guide. That he
is known to be a sure guide does not lessen the element of adventure,
for in these ways man walks not by sight but ill faith. He walks into
the unknown, by ways he could never find One thing only he does
know, that it is this adventure that is the meaning of life.
I J n I , 14.

~ JnI,,8f.

T H E W I L L OF MY F A T H E R
By R O B E R T

MURRAY

H~NEVEI~ we ask ourselves why God became man, we

ask about a purpose, the purpose intended by God the
Father which Christ fulfilled both by coming on earth
and by his whole life and death. The Father's will is the
beginning and end of the incarnation and redemption, as the earliest
christian theological reflection clearly saw. Thus the author of
Hebrews finds in Psalm 4-0 the words to express Jesus' sense of
mission:
When he came into the world, he said:
Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired,
but a body hast thou prepared for m e . . .
Then I said, Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God,
as it is written of me in the roll of the book. 1

For the author of Hebrews, Jesus started from obedience yet also
'learned obedience through what he suffered' ;~ as he is both the
'pioneer and perfecter of our faith', 8 so he advanced from his first
act of obedience to the supreme achievement of it, the cross, 'and
being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all
who obey him'. 4
This is parallel to the movement in Philippians ~where the incarnation is seen as an act of humility and, as in Hebrews, Christ's
work is expressed as a growth in obedience up to the term Set before
him: 'he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even
death on a cross'. 6 The redemption which Christ came to effect was
won for us by his obedience. 'For as by one man's disobedience
m a n y were made sinners, so by one man's obedience m a n y will be
made righteous'. ~
Thus the earliest essays in Christian theology saw both the incarnation and the redemption by the cross in terms of Christ's obedience to the Father's will. S t J 0 h n goes further and portrays Jesus
x H e b Io, 5-7. T h e h e b r e w text of the psalm seems to stress obedience even more,
with ' b u t thou hast given m e an open ear' (lit. has dug ears for me).
H e b s , 8.
a H e b 12, 2.
~ Heb. 5 , 9 .
Phil 2 , 5 - I I .
6 Phil 2, 8.
~ R o m 5 , I9.

THE

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~77

OF MY FATHER

as preoccupied with the Father's will at every moment, so that we

see this utter devotion as Jesus' very food and even as the inner
mainspring of his being.

Jesus knows what is the Father's will.

Jesus comes before us as one who knows where he has come from,
where he is going, what he is doing and why. In John's gospel this is
explicit; Jesus knew 'that he had come from God and was going to
God' ;1 'I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but
the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent
m e . . ?2 But this sense of mission in obedience to the Father is
already implicit even in such simple sayings as: 'Let us go on to the
next towns, that I may preach there also; for that is why I came out'.~
The same knowledge of God's will, and determination to obey it, is
contained in the simple 'must' o f the passion predictions; 'he began
to teach them that the Son of M a n must suffer many t h i n g s . . / 4
The 'must' comes from God's will, as Peter had to be taught with
uncompromising bluntness a moment later: 'Your ideas are not
God's but merely human'. ~ The synoptics record three predictions,
all implicitly witnessing to Christ's acceptance of the Father's will;
and here already, as in the theology of Romans, Philippians and
Hebrews, the focus is on the cross. The same is probably true of
Matthew's account of the baptism, where Jesus overrides John's
sense of indignity at his ranging himself with sinners; 'let it be so
now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness'. 6 The last
word may well mean here, as it so often does in deutero,Isaiah,
God's salvific plan; the baptism is Jesus' first step towards his mediatorial sacrifice, and John's ' L a m b of God' only makes this explicit.
In the passion narratives the 'must' comes again, but now God's will
is enshrined especially in the prophecies: 'But how then should the
scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so? '7 'This scripture must be
fulfilled in me. And he was reckoned with transgressors'; 8 and
again i n the retrospective review on the walk to Emmaus: 'Was it
not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and so enter
into his glory? '9
Jesus knows the Father's will as he knows his own; he can declare
it without any need for the prophetic 'Thus saith the Lord'. 'It is not

Jnl3,3.
M k 8, 3I a n d parallel texts.
v Mt26,54.

* Jn6,38-39.
5 M k 8, 33.
8 Lk22,37.

8 M k I , 38.
~ M t 3, I5.
9 Lk24,26.

I78

THE

WILL

OF MY FATHER

the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones
should perish. '1 'So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of
you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart'. ~ I t was this
directness which amazed people used to the scribes' cautious recitation of tradition. J o h n often enlarges on Jesus' knowledge of the
Father's will. 'This is the will of him who sent m e . . . ' ~ 'I declare to
the world what I have heard from him'. ~ 'I know him and I keep his
word'. 5
This knowledge is not like our experimental knowledge of another's wishes, but is the fruit of intimate and unique communion:
I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
that thou hast hidden these things from
the wise and understanding,
and revealed them to babes:
yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will.
All things have been delivered to me by my Father,
and no one knows the Son except the Father,
and no One knows the Father except the Son
and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 6
The: Father's will, then, immediately present to Jesus' deepest
consciousness and his constant inspiration, is revealed as leading the
Son first to his public ministry and then to the passion. But Jesus
knows the Father's will also as it regards the disciples, Israel and the
world. It is above all a gracious and salvific will, though it also
makes total and even terrible demands on man.
God's 'good pleasure' or 'gracious will' (eudokia) is revealed especially in connection with divine sonship, both natural (Christ's)
and adoptive (ours). In Luke's infancy gospel, the birth of God's Son
is acclaimed by angels promising peace on earth to men who now
enjoy God's eudokia. 7 The divine voice at both the baptism and the
transfiguration uses the related verb 'in whom I am well pleased'
(eudokesa), s while in the exultant prayer of Jesus just quoted 9 it is
related to the revelation of God's mysteries to 'little ones' those, who
accept God's reign and fatherhood as true children. Simon Peter
by his faith shows himself supreme among these; 'flesh and blood has

M t I 8 ~ I 4.
2 Mti8,35.
Jn8,55.
6 M t i i , 25-27.
9 M t I I , 25-27; Lk Io, 21-22

8 J n 6 , 3 9 - 4 o.
~ L k 2 , i4"

4 Jn8,26.
8 Mk~,II.

THE

WILL

OF

MY FATHER

I79

not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven'. 1 The same
correlation between God's 'good pleasure' and 'little ones' comes
again in St Paul 2 who clearly relates it to Christ's sonship and our
adoption as sons of God. 8
The Father's good pleasure is shown in a special way to the disciples. 'Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to
give you the kingdom'. * What the Father wills for Jesus, he shares
with them: 'as m y Father has appointed a kingdom for me, so do I
appoint for you', 5 but also, using the symbolic figure for suffering
willed by God which dominates the agony story: 'the cup that I
drink you will drink'. 6 Once again it is J o h n who expresses this sharing most fully: 'all that I have heard from my Father I have made
known to you'. 7 'All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that
he (the Holy Spirit) will take what is mine and declare it to you'. 8
'The Father himself loves you, because you have loved m e and have
believed that I came from the Father'Y Jesus' self-consecration,
though it is 'for the life of the world', is in a special sense for the
disciples, not only for their redemption but also in order that in
their degree they may share in his mission: 'and for their sake I
consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth', l
According to Matthew, Jesus saw himself as 'sent' especially 'to
the lost sheep ofthe house of Israel'. While there are important hints
of God's universal salvific will in the synoptics, it is J o h n who shows
it in Jesus' own consciousness, once again by that pregnant 'must' :
'I have other sheep also, that are not of this fold; I must bring them
also, and they will heed my voice'. 11
So far, then, we have reviewed the gospel records as they reflect
the disciples' impressions of One who spoke of the heavenly Father
as never before, revealing implicitly or explicitly an intimate knowledge of the Father's will for himself, for the disciples and for the
world. We have dwelt on Christ's knowledge though it is not distinct from his obedient~will; now let us pass to consider this and his
teaching of obedience.

Jesus reveals perfect obedience to the Father's will.

The religion of Jesus, like that of the great prophets before him,
delivers revelation to man, and yet is not a matter of salvation by
gnosis, by knowledge of mysteries. Just as he stressed doing rather
x
5

M t I6, 17 .
Lk22,29.
J n I6, 27.

~ I Cor 1,2iff.
6 M k Io, 39.
lo J n I7, 19.

8 Eph 1,5-Io.
~ J n I5, 15.
11 J n io, I6.

4 Lk I2, 32s J n I6, 15.

I80

THE WILL OF MY FATHER

than hearing, so the vocation of the apostles is 'to bring about obedience to the faith' ;~ the encounter with Christ may blind a man and
reduce his knowledge to darkness till through obedience he has new
eyes opened for him. 'What I am doing you do not know now, but
afterwards you will understand'. ~ ' I f any man's will is to do his (the
Father's) will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God'. 3
Jesus reveals the Father's will, but not merely as something that can
be stated. He reveals it above all by doing it and teaching men what
they must do in order to meet its demands; it is by doing the
Father's will that they will come to understand it.
As Hebrews takes a motto for the incarnation from the psalms, so
Luke symbolizes the direction of Jesus' will, already on the threshold
of manhood, b y the story of his remaining in the Temple. 'Did you
not know that I must be in my Father's house?' (or'about my Father's
business') .4 The symbolic gesture once made, however, Jesus returns
to many more years of hidden, unsensational obedience, which
perhaps only a meditative faith will quite rightly observe to be also
offered to the Father, as author Of the commandments.
The baptism accounts, as we have seen, reveal Jesus ' self-consecration as mediator between God and sinful men, taking his place
among the penitents of Israel and attested by the divine voice as
accepted and beloved. Matthew's account in particular stresses
Jesus' submission to God's 'righteousness' or salvific~ plan. But the
fullest demonstration of Jesus' total devotion to the Father's will is
the story of the temptations; this, prefixed to the public life, balances the account of the agony in the garden at its end, as is positively
hinted at by Luke's saying that the devil left him 'till an opportune
time'. 5 The author of Hebrews seems to have both scenes in mind
where he speaks of Christ as 'tempted a s we are, yet without sinning '6
and as crying to God 'who was able to save him from death'. ~ In
the temptation narrative of Matthew and Luke, Jesus never lets
the devil find a crack in his defences, so fast does he cleave to God's
will; not now by revealing his divine sonship, which for the devil is
only a hypothesis ('if thou art the Son of God'), but by holding fast
to God's written word and refusing to enter into discussion.
We have already considered many sayings in the synoptic gospels
which implicitly embody Jesus' total devotion to the Father's will.
In the accounts of the public life, however, the synoptics have no
1

RomI, 5;16,~6.

5 Lk4, I3.

~ Jni3,7.

8 J n 7 , I7.

6 Heb4, I5.

~ Heb5,7.

Lk2,49.

THE

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OF

MY FATHER

I8I

explicit expressions such as abound in St J o h n ; it is only in his

teaching that Jesus shows the supreme and exclusive claim which
the Father's will must have on us as it has on himself. St John, on
the other hand, cannot emphasize enough that Jesus is always doing
the Father's will throughout his life: ' M y food is to do the will of
him who sent me, and to accomplish his work'. 1 ' M y judgment is
just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent
me'. 2 'I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the
will of him who sent me'. 3 'I do nothing on my own authority, but
speak thus as the Father taught m e . . . for I always do what is
pleasing to h i m ' ? 'I know him and I keep his word'. 5 From chapter
IO, these sayings point increasingly towards the passion. 'For this
reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may
take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own
accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it "
again; this charge I have received from m y Father'.6 Clearest of all,
in the discourse before the passion J o h n shows Jesus going to his
death as a sacrifice of love, freely undertaken and offered. 'I do as the
Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love
the Father. Rise, let us go henceV
After this majestic characterization of Jesus' devotion, J o h n does
w i t h o u t a n account of the agony; his equivalent, which looks as if it
is connected with the synoptic source, comes in the discourse to the
greeks before the passion: 'Now is my soul troubled. And what shall
I s a y . . . Father, save me from this hour? No, for this purpose have
I come to this hour. Father, glorify thy n a m e ' ? The synoptists, in
contrast with John, concentrate their picture of Jesus' sacrificial
self-consecration to the Father's will into the one scene of the agony,
making Jesus' act of acceptance the pivot of the whole story of our
i~edemption. Free to escape , free to raise a fanatical insurrection, free
to stun the opposition with miracles, Jesus gathers up all his freedom
to offer it into the Father's hands. He shows what it costs by revealing
his longing that it might be otherwise , calling on the Father with
such piercing insistence that the very tone of his 'Abba!' continued
to re-echo even among greek-speaking christians; but as in the former temptations, s o now in the supreme trial he is immovably
attached to the Father's will: 'Not as I will but as thou w i l t . . , thy
will be done'3 This moment is the supreme crisis; none of the pasx jn4,34"
J n Io, I7-I8.

~ Jn5,3o"
~ J n I4, 31.

8 jn6,38"
s Jn I2.27-28.

4 jn8,28_29"
5 jn8,55"
" M t 26, 39, 43.

182

THE

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MY FATHER

sion narratives suggest that the conflict in Jesus' soul continued, but
rather that this supremely free choice of the Father's will thereafter
sustained him in serenity to the end.
Jesus' teaching of obedience to the Father's will is above all by his
example, which is centred on his acceptance of the cross, the means
of our redemption. But obedience to God's will is also the principal
subject of his teaching - as is clear when we realize that this theme
is present not only when Jesus speaks of doing God's will, but also
whenever he preaches the kingdom of God; this preaching means
primarily not the inauguration of an institution but an appeal to
man to acknowledge and accept the reign or rule of God. We do not
know whether the Lord's Prayer, as Jesus first taught it, contained the
petition 'thy will be done', which is absent from Luke's version; but
in any case, the essence of the petition is present in the undisputed
'thy kingdom come': that is, 'realize thy reign'.
The theme of obedience to God's will and reign in Jesus' preaching is too vast even to permit of a summary in this article, which is
concerned rather with Jesus' personal attitude. Here let us consider
only a few sayings on the subject which especially reveal that attitude. For Jesus, obedience to ~he Father is all that matters, more
than either outward attachment to h i m s e l f - 'Not everyone who
says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he
who does the will of my Father who is in heaven u - or even bloodrelationship : 'Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister
and mother' .2 This relationship to Jesus, constituted by setting one's
duty as a child of God above all else, must take the place of natural
ties of blood, 8 and it means sharing Jesus' cross, as he shows in the
same context. The call to take up the cross and follow Jesus is not
explicitly related to God's will, but it is implicitly, since God's will
for Jesus meant above all the cross. The johannine equivalent of the
saying about self-denial and the cross promises the Father's approval
to all who 'hate their own life' and follow Jesus: ' I f any one serves
me, he must follow m e . . . if any one serves me, the Father will honour him'. 4
Thus for us as for Jesus, the will of God must transcend every other
call, and for us as for Jesus it means the cross. The imitation of Christ
is not concerned with this or that detail of his life or behaviour; it is
concerned with serf-consecration to the Father's will and accepting
the cross.
1

Mt7,2I.

~ Mk3,35.

M t 1% 3 7 ; L k i 4 , 2 6 .

~ JnI2,26.

THE

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OF MY FATHER

I8 3

I n considering Jesus' knowledge a n d a c c e p t a n c e of the Father's

will, we have also seen w h a t it enjoined in p a r t i c u l a r : the incarnation, the salvation of the world t h r o u g h the freely-accepted sacrifice
o f the cross, a n d men's acceptance o f salvation a n d therefore o f its
means, the cross, t h r o u g h faith in Christ. N o w let us consider f u r t h e r
not only the objects b u t also the characteristics o f God's will as
revealed i n Jesus. W e shall see that they are equally characteristics
of Jesus himself. W h a t he tells us a b o u t the Father's will is at the
same time the most intimate revelation of his own person as Son a n d
W o r d of God. ' H e who has seen me has seen the F a t h e r ' . 1

The Father's will is loving.

' G o d so loved the world t h a t he gave his only Son, that w h o e v e r
believes in h i m should not perish b u t have everlasting life'. 2 God's
loving will controls all the world; ' n o t one sparrow falls to the
g r o u n d without y o u r Father's will'. 3 I f he cares for the birds a n d
flowers, m u c h more does he for m e n ; 4 if imperfect h u m a n fathers
show love to their children, m u c h m o r e 'will y o u r F a t h e r w h o is in
h e a v e n give good things to those who ask him'. 5 O n l y love which
transcends h u m a n dislikes and enmities can be w o r t h y o f sons o f
such a F a t h e r : 'I say to you, love y o u r enemies a n d p r a y for those
who persecute you, so t h a t y o u m a y be sons of y o u r F a t h e r who is in
h e a v e n ; for he makes his sun rise o n the evil a n d on the good, a n d
sends rain on the just a n d on the unjust'. 6
This loving will is totally satisfied in Jesus, ' m y beloved Son in
w h o m I a m well pleased'. ' F o r this reason the F a t h e r loves me, because I lay d o w n m y life'. ~ ' G r e a t e r love has no m a n t h a n this, t h a t
a m a n lay d o w n his life for his friends'.8 I n the u p p e r r o o m w h e r e
Jesus instituted the new c o v e n a n t in his blood, t h a t new c o v e n a n t
which according to J e r e m i a h was to be written in men's hearts, 9 he
r e n e w e d the c o m m a n d m e n t s o f G o d a n d s u m m e d t h e m u p in one
new c o m m a n d m e n t , ' t h a t you love one another, even as I have
loved you'.lJesus has power to sum u p the expressions o f God'swill,
and he can point to his own love to show w h a t his s u m m i n g - u p
means. T h e quality of that love o f his is shown in his free a c c e p t a n c e
o f the cross.

1 Jni4,9.

* J n 3 , i6.

4 Mt6,26-3o.
7 JnIo, i 7.

n Mr7, ii.
8 Jni5, i3.

e Mt5,44-45.
9 Jer 31, 31-34.

M t l o , 29.
lo J n I3, 34.

I84

THE

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OF

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FATHER

The Father's will is salvific.

This has already been sufficiently illustrated as regards the divine
plan for the salvation of the world, to be worked out by the cross. So
far, the cross alone has been emphasized, not the resurrection; but
this is the completion of God's salvific plan. The Father, 'who was
able to save him from death', ~ willed that Jesus should freely drink
the cup of suffering to the last drop, but only in order to raise him
from the dead. The resurrection is the Father's work, as the early
speeches in Acts repeatedly emphasize. By the Father's will and by
obedience to it, Christ could now communicate his life to those who
would join him in that obedience: 'being made perfect he became
the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him'.8 It is the Father's
will that all who are joined to Christ by faith should share in his
resurrection: 'This is the will o f my Father, that every one who sees
the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise
him up at the last d a y ' ? Again we see the Son's will revealed with
the Father's: 'I came that they may have life and have it abundantly'. 4 His sacrifice to the Father is his flesh 'for the life of the world' ;5
the same will is shown in the synoptic saying 'The Son of M a n came
not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for
many', n Here there is an echo of Isaiah, 7 just as in St Paul's 'by one
man's obedience m a n y will be made righteous' ;8 it is through the
saving and justifying power of Jesus' obedience that we 'have access
in one Spirit to the Father'. 9

The Father's will is transcendent and often terrible.

'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands & t h e living God'. 1 M a n
plans without reference to God's will and is brought back to reality
with a brutal shock: 'Fool' [ This night your soul is required ofyou'.ll
Even Peter in his loyal affection must be brusquely set right and
given a lesson in the transcendence of God's values? ~ How terrible
the Father's will, that same loving, salvific will, can be is revealed
above all in Jesus' agony as he faces the cup which the Father inexorably holds out to him. 'He who did not spare his own Son, but
gave him up for us all', cries St Paul, 'will he not also give us all
things with him? '~ Yes, and not less than he gave to his own Son;
'my cup indeed you shall drink'? 4
1 H e b 5 , 7.
6 M k l o , 45.
11 L k I2, 20.

~ Heb5,9.
~ I s a i 5 3 , 12.
x~ M t 16, 23.

3 Jn6,4 .
s R o m 5 , 19.
as R o m 8, 32.

~ J n IO, IO.
~ E p h 2 , I8.
xa M t 20, 23-

5 Jn6,51 .
10 H e b i o , 31 .

THE

WILL

O F M Y FAT, H E R

i8 5

As Jesus knew, understood and freely accepted the Father's will

in all its unimaginable transcendence, so he shared it. His own sayings
reveal God's sternness no less than his love. 'Then will I declare to
them: I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers'? 'It would
have been better for that m a n if he had not been born'. ~ J o h n
represents Jesus as challenging his opponents with bad faith and with
resisting the evidence they were capable of recognizing. He confronts them in his own divine transcendence: 'you are from below,
I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world', 8 and
convicts them of having no true love and knowledge of the God they
claim to worship; rather, they are acting like children of the devil. 4
In these terrible words we hear the voice of no merely h u m a n petulance but of absolute T r u t h when confronted with bad will. The
will revealed in Jesus is no less loving and salvific, but the aspect of
it which h u m a n sinfulness now encounters is a terrible one.

Christ's relationship to the Father's will is the key to his Person.

Here we come to the heart of the mystery of Jesus' devotion to the
Father's will. We have seen that he knew it, revealed it, did it and
taught us to do it; but all this is not to be understood merely in the
way that one man knows another's intentions, fulfils them and explains them to others. Nor is any ordinary h u m a n obedience to God
simply like Christ's. I f in obedience to God I resist a temptation to
sin and teach others to do likewise, I have done my duty as a creature of God, but neither my understanding nor my willing nor m y
teaching has been on the same level as Christ's. He has a h u m a n
understanding and a h u m a n will, proper to his h u m a n nature, body
and soul, but he is not a h u m a n person; that is, in Christ the selfpossessing and subsistent centre and source of responsible h u m a n
acts is not established as an entity distinguishable from his eternal
divine Person. The Person of Christ is divine only; his acts through
his h u m a n nature were truly h u m a n (or more correctly, divinehuman) but their source is entirely divine.
The Person of Christ is never more clearly revealed in St J o h n
than with reference to the Father's will. 5 'The Son can do nothing
of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise'. 6 'The living Father sent
x M t 7, 23.
~ M t 26, 24s J n 8, 23.
4 J n 8, 39 ft.
5 A careful reading of J n 5-8, io, i 3 - i 7 is necessary for a proper appreciation of this.
6 j n 5 , 19"

i86

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FATHER

me, and I live because of the Father'. 1 ' M y food is to do the will of
him who sent me'. ~ ' I f you knew me, you would know my Father
also'. 3 'He who has seen me has seen the F a t h e r . . . Do you not
believe that I am in the Father and the Father in m e ? ' #
Theology teaches us that the divine Persons do not first subsist
independently and then in relation to one another. It is by relationship alone that they are distinct; the first Person in that he begets
tile Son and breathes forth the Holy Spirit, the second Person in that
he is begotten by the Father and sends the Holy Spirit from the
Father, the third Person in that he proceeds from the Father through
the Son, as from one principle. The whole being of the second Person is to be ad Pattern, sonship personified. Revealed in h u m a n guise,
this meant Jesus' life and death as we know them; Jesus' devotion to
the Father's will is the visible revelation of what constitutes his
divine Person.
It is into this relationship that we are taken up when we come to
be 'in Christ', led by the Holy Spirit to be sons and daughters of God
the Father in Christ the Son. To grow in the Christ-life is to become
more and more 'relational', more and more dead to self and alive to
God, more and more simply centred on the Father's will, till in
Christ we can say, and know that thereby we are saying everything
that it is of any importance to say about ourselves: 'I live because of
the Father'.

1 Jn6,57.

~ Jn4,34.

8 J n S , I 9.

4 Jn14,9-Io.

N O T MY W I L L
By W I L L I A M

YEOMANS

E O P L E who regularly make an eight or ten day retreat often

find themselves, just as regularly, facing the problem of what
they should expect to get out of it. The importance of their
retreat is emphasized by spiritual writers. They are told that
the retreat is the spiritual climax of the year; that a person is what
he is in retreat, and so on. But sometimes there is, deep down, a
nagging thought that were they, through some reason, to miss their
retreat, liI~ would go on as usual and no irreparable harm would be
done. T h e y may feel that really their retreat is like lifeboat drill on
board ship: useful, but only in the unlikely eventuality of shipwreck.
Where there is no likelihood of a major crisis in life, where a priest,
religious or married man, is quite content in his vocation, quite
convinced that this is what God wants of him in life and quite happy
in his work, what more is to be desired? Surely the will of God is
plain to see and there is no problem in life. Nevertheless, such people
feel that they must get something out of the retreat; so they direct
their efforts to choosing a resolution. Often the resolution bears only
on some practical detail of their lives; and a moment's reflection
would show that there was no need to spend eight days of prayer in
order to resolve to be more orderly, to go to bed earlier, to organise
one's leisure. If that is the sole result of a retreat then quite frankly
it is not worth it. They feel that a retreat should yield more than
that; and so it ought.
It would be disastrous for those who have dedicated their lives to
God in the priestly, religious or married state to imagine that God
had nothing further to say to them. Married people who imagine
that after their wedding, or after a few years of happily married life,
they have nothing more to learn about the mystery of the sacrament,
or about the mystery of each other, run the risk of living a life not of
real unifying love but of faithful compromise. Similarly, those who
give themselves to God in the priestly or religious life cannot take it
for granted that they have gone as far as they can go in finding the
will of God. Nor can they presume that the sacrament of orders or
vows are a guarantee that henceforward every pious or apostolic
notion that comes to them is a direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

188

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Such was the mistake of St Peter after his profession of faith; and it
earned him the stern rebuke, 'Get behind me Satan! You are a
hindrance to me for you are not on the side of God, but of men'. 1
The will of God is found only by those who search for it all their lives,
reaching out continually towards the unknown, and refusing to live
on their spiritual capital.
St Ignatius writes that his Spiritual Exercises are to help the soul
'to seek and find the divine will in the arrangement of its, life ibr the
well-being of the soul'. 2 When he wrote those words he had in mind
the full thirty days Exercises involving the choice of a permanent
state of life; but it would be wrong to presume that they cannot be
given a wider application. Once a state of life has been chosen as a
permanent God-given vocation, there is still a possibility of penetrating more deeply into the mystery of that vocation. The response
to a vocation is the free submission of oneself to the pedagogy of God,
a disposing of oneself to be taught by him. Like the response of
Israel to Yahweh, it is a dedication to co-operate with God in the
movement of history. As God revealed himself progressively to his
people, so too he reveals himself progressively to each individual.
God leads those who follow him along the ways of eternity; and we
can none of us presume to know beforehand every turn of the road.
Those who seriously seek the will of God, in an ever closer co-operadon with the Spirit at work in their lives, will always have their
prayer answered. Christ himself has guaranteed that what we ask in
his name will be granted, 3 and that the Father will give the Spirit
to those who ask insistently# But if we are to recognise that Spirit
when it comes, we must not presume to know beforehand the form
in which it will appear. Ambition in the service of Christ is essential
for the apostle. We have to desire the coming of the kingdom of God
with all our hearts, but we must beware of modelling that kingdom
according to our own ambitions. The higher our ideals and the
greater our generosity, the greater is the need for discernment and
for complete spiritual poverty in our lives. We all tend in some measure to want to find ourselves in our apostolate: to catch a glimpse
of ourselves, out of the corner of our eye, as we work for God. But if
we are to find only Christ in our work and recognise his spirit, we
must begin by 'counting everything as loss because of the surpassing
worth of knowing Jesus Christ our Lord'. 5 This means admitting
that 'the Spirit breathes where he wills' and that we do not know
1

M t I6, 03 .

E x x I.

Jn I6,23.

Lk II, 5-I3.

P h l l 3, 8.

NOT

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I89

where it comes from or where it is going. 1 It means admitting that

even in our most generous desires and ambitions we may not understand what Spirit it is that we share.
Gamaliel's words, 'You run the risk of finding yourselves fighting
against God', ~ made the jews reconsider their decision to kill the
apostles; and it was to their credit that they understood the spiritual
wisdom of those wordsl The desire to do battle for God is not a giltedged guarantee that we are fighting on his side. One of the commonest ways in which the devil seduces good people is to persuade them
that because a particular good work is arduous, self-sacrificing and
courageous , therefore it is the will of God for them. This is not a
temptation to obvious gross sin but a veritable seduction, a subtle
perversion of what is in itself good and desirable. It capitalises on
genuine, apostolic zeal and is properly the temptation of the generous soul who wants to give everything in the service of Christ. When
the devil sees that he can no longer tempt us to satisfy unlawfully the
grosser demands of unregenerate nature, he may dangle before us
the bait Of a successful apostolate.
Every apostle knows the insidious fascination of the devil's invitation to j u m p off the pinnacle of the Temple: to make the grand,
spectacular gesture which will impress, and produce immediate and
startling results. The devil's work is done if he can lull us into thinking we are trying to impress others for Christ's sake, and can hide
from us the fact that we are really trying to impress ourselves. He is
constantly at work to pervert our good qualities and use them for his
own ends. H e will try to make the zealous and intelligent young
priest into a minor prophet. He will try to deform courage into
rashness, conviction into intolerance, enthusiasm into obsession.
He is as content when he can get the hard worker to overwork as
when he can get the lazy man to do too little. If he cannot discourage us by getting us t o c o m m i t serious sin, he will try to discourage us
by leading us to give ourselves indiscreetly to an impossible and
impractical ideal. His ways, like his name, are legion; and, like any
really subtle fighter, he tries to make us underestimate him and
overestimate ourselves. He can talk as demurely and devoutly as a
saint about the will of God, and he is never busier than during the
annual retreat.
This should not discourage us, but it should make us pause. As
Goethe says somewhere, there is nothing more frightening than
1 I n 3, 8.

Acts 5, 39.

19o

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ignorance in action; and ignorance can be not merely a lack of

knowledge, but also a conviction that there is nothing more to be
learnt. Would St Peter have been so bewildered by the passion of
Christ had he not, as usual, thought that he knew exactly what the
mission of Christ should and should not entail for his Master? The
crafty father of lies will only too readily give us confidence by telling
us that we know and have always known what we were doing. Once
he has succeeded in persuading us that we know what God is trying
to do with us we can soon be led to presume to know what God,
through our superiors, ought to do with us. He will conceal from us
the fundamental fact of our service of God, namely that it is a life
of faith, and that faith is believing what one does not see. 1
When we took our vows or received the sacrament of Orders, we
did not know in detail what we were letting ourselves in for, any
more than married people realise it when they say 'I will'. Did
M a r y fully understand the meaning of her words 'Be it done unto
me according to your word 'S until after the resurrection? As we have
committed ourselves to a life of faith, so the devil will seek to turn
the very occasions God gives us of deepening our faith and hope into
reasons for doubt and despair, even about the validity of our original
engagement in God's service. The truth is that those who live with
Christ must be prepared to be continually disconcerted and even
shattered by what he asks of them. We shall continue to discover the
will of God all our lives, and each discovery will be a radical renewal of ourselves and of our basic dedication to Christ. Furthermore,
nothing can stop this renewal in those who come before God not to
lay down terms, even pious ones, but to learn what he wants of
them. 'Though the outward part of our nature is being worn down',
by sickness, old age, uncongenial work, the apparent waste of our
talents, or limitations in ourselves and others, 'our inner life is
renewed day by day'. 3
The annual retreat can be the time when we lay hold upon the
elements of renewal which are present in our lives: learning in
prayer to recognise them in the particular circumstances of our
daily routine, and see in them the grace of God. For this grace is
never lacking to us. W h a t is lacking only too often is our own perception and grasp of it; so that we must endeavour to dispose ourselves
as best we can to the action of God. It was the genius of St Ignatius
which succeeded in organising this disposing of oneself into a meth1

t-Ieb I I , I.

L k I, 38.

2 Cor4,

I6.

NOT MY WILL

I9I

odic process of prayer in his Spiritual Exercises. Though these are a

method of finding the will of God, Ignatius would be the first to
stress that they are not the only method: as though no one before
Ignatius ever found out the will of God. What Ignatius did was to
draw upon the vast spiritual experience of the Church, which he had
encountered through his own experience, and to arrange it in a way
that goes straight to the essentials. Hence it is true to say that whatever method a soul finds helpful in its search for the will of God, that
method will be based on the same principles which guided Ignatius.
A method is an attempt and a way, not a goal: a means and not an
end in itself. It would be wrong to look upon the Exercises as an
automatic process which infallibly brings results. M a n stands ever
as a beggar before God, patiently waiting for the gift from his bounty
which he will give in his own time and not before.
Ignatius places the time for election in the second week of the
Exercises. At this stage he considers that the retreatant should have
become aware of a personal will of God for himself and should reach
out to accept that will and unite himself with it. Before examining
the process to which he subjects the retreatant during that second
week, we must note that the second week is preceded by the process
of purification from sin, which is the work of the first week. This is an
essential step which can never be neglected. The second prerequisite
for the finding of the will of God is a generous heart. Unless Ignatius
saw that the retreatant had the desire to give himself to God wholeheartedly and unconditionally, he would not admit him to the
Exercises of the second week. These two fundamental dispositions,
the desire for purification and for generosity, are the raw material
Which is to be refined throughout the rest of the Exercises. Where one
or other element is missing the purpose of the Exercises will be thwarted, and the retreatant will suffer spiritual harm.
Ignatius leads the generous soul who desires the complete purification of" his life to the contemplation of the life of Christ. This is not
simply a matter of putting the gospels into his hands and encouraging him to get on with it. The contemplations of the second week
are prefaced by another contemplation which sets the tone of"
Ignatius' approach to the mysteries of Jesus' life. This preface is
known as the kingdom of Christ; but the title Ignatius gives to it
is: ' T h e call of the temporal King helps to contemplate the life of
the eternal King'. 1 As he makes this contemplation the retreatant
1

E~

9 x.

I92

NOT MY WILL

asks for grace 'not to be deaf to his (Christ's) call but carefully to
carry out his most holy will without delay'. 1
Both the title and the prayer show the fundamental and distinctive attitude of soul in which the retreatant comes before Christ. H e
looks upon the mysteries of Christ as a personal invitation, as so
many calls of Christ to himself; and his attitude in prayer is therefore
one of receptivity, of listening and being on the watch. This attitude
will characterise his contemplation of all the events of Christ's life.
For example, when assisting at the mystery of Christ's birth, the
retreatant will be like a pobrecito esclavito, one of those ragged little
spanish urchins of Velasquez, open eyed, drinking everything in,
and longing to be asked to render some service, whilst realising that
he is there only on sufferance.
At the same time Ignatius, aware that he is dealing with a generous heart which demands some outlet, does not allow the retreatant
to remain passive. God demands the cooperation of his creatures;
so the retreatant is encouraged to make his offering to Christ. This
is not merely an offer of service but an offer of total service, of higher
value and greater importance.
Eternal Lord of all things, in the presence of your infinite
goodness, of your glorious Mother, and all the saints of the
court of heaven, by your favour and with your help I make
my offering. I want and desire and it is my deliberate resolve,
provided it be for your greater service and your greater
praise, to imitate you in enduring every injustice and abuse,
and complete poverty, material as well as spiritual, if your
sacred Majesty wants to choose me and admit me to this life
and this situation 2.
Two points may be noted in this offering: first of all, its generosity I offer myself for everything and for what is hardest; secondly, the
conditional nature of the offering - it is conditioned first of all by the
life of Christ. I offer myself for poverty, injustice, abuse; but only in
order to imitate him, not because this seems to be the right thing
for me. Furthermore, just as the initiative in this offering comes from
Christ, 'by his favour and help', so too the fulfilment of the offering
will come only from Christ. I do not presume that just because I
offer, Christ will accept me. I have no right to impose my own
ambitions on God, no matter how heroic they may seem. Generosity
1 Exx ibid.

~ Exx 97-8.

NOT M'Y WILL

~93

is not enough in the service of God; something more is needed.

Precisely what that is Ignatius shows in the key meditations of this
Second Week; the Two Standards, the Three Types of Men, the
Three Kinds of Humility.
In the meditation of the T w o Standards Ignatius wants the retreatant to pray for light to know 'the deceits of the bad chief and for
help to be on my guard against them; and to know also the true life
which the supreme and true captain teaches, and grace to imitate
h i m ' } There is nothing detached about this meditation. I cannot
stand aloof and disinterested; for 'Christ calls everyone and wants
them under his standard, whilst Lucifer, in opposition wants them
under his'. 2 The battle between Christ and Satan is being waged
within me; and I, my generosity, my talents, my desires, are what
e a c h seeks to conquer. The effect of this meditation is precisely to
disconcert b u t not to disquiet the retreatant. It is meant to reveal to
him, with the help of divine light, the duality within him, and to
make him vividly aware of the utter need of discernment in his life,
if he is going to follow Christ and avoid the risk of finding himself at
odds with everyone whom he wants to serve.
The tactics of the enemy of h u m a n nature are, according to
Ignatius, threefold: wealth, position, pride. 'From these three steps
he leads men on to all other vices'. 3 It would be playing into the
devil's hands to interpret these three steps in purely material terms,
for that would mean that they have little or no application in the life
of the religious already vowed to poverty, chastity, and obedience.
By wealth Ignatius is indicating concretely that instinct for possession which is deep in the heart of man, and which the devil is forever
trying to deform into possessiveness. Self-possession is very much a
christian value, in so far as it is a grateful recognition of the gifts
God has given us and of his abiding presence in our lives. In this
sense it is diametrically opposed to that possessiveness about oneself
which puts into the word 'my' all the rapacity and exclusiveness of
the miser. It is possible to be possessive about our virtue, our prayer,
our work; for the instinct of selfishness dies hard in us. Parents can
genuinely love their children, and yet mar that love by being possessive
about them. The intellectual can be a sincere hard worker and yet
be possessive about his ideas, as can the zealous preacher. The mark
of Satan in all this is apparent in the unwillingness to share, and the
sour trace of jealousy. M y class, my parish, my apostulate: it is
a Exx i39.

~ Exx i37.

3 Exx i42.

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precisely here that the devil can find an entrance, where perhaps I
imagine that I am impervious to his attacks.
Once this entrance has been obtained he leads us on to the next
step. The term Ignatius uses is 'honour', which we have translated as
position. Again there is question of a basic h u m a n instinct, that of
being recognised as someone. W h a t is the use of having a pocketful
of money if one cannot jingle it? To all appearances there is nothing
outrageous ill this desire for recognition. Is it too much to ask that
others recognise as ours what we know to be ours? I f we are making
sincere efforts in our spiritual lives, why does not God give some sign
of recognition of our efforts? Is it too much to ask that superiors
recognise the talents we have brought into religion, by putting them
to use? In this attitude of mind we can easily seek recognition for
ourselves by making up signs of our own spiritual progress. It is so
easy to choose the apostolic work where we are most appreciated
and persuade ourselves that such appreciation is a sign that we are
there doing most good. We can gradually come to worship the god
of visible results, and feed our hunger for recognition on fran6c
activity. Once we start on this road, the very occasions in our fives
which should lead us closer to Christ serve only to separate us from
him. Humiliations which are the way to humility arouse bitter
indignation or discouragement. We become incapable of appreciating the good work of others and impervious to any sort of criticism
of our own.
The final step in this descent is overweening pride. The search for
recognition and position leads to the persuasion that we are our own
best reason for living. We become indispensable to ourselves and to
the spread of the kingdom of God. Our own apostolate becomes the
only real apostolate and we ourselves are the centre of it. Instead of
leading people to Christ we gather them round ourselves (for the
best of reasons), in some sort of personality cult. Such a state of
mind is not incompatible with the performance of a vast amount of
hard work. But there is no one more dangerous to the true spread of
the kingdom of Christ than the man who is persuaded thatwere he
to cease his efforts the cause of Christ would be lost. It was the mentality of many a great heretic from Tertullian downwards;
for such
rebellion is the justifiable reply to all serious opposition. The tragedy
is that it is never seen as rebellion but only as a heroic sacrifice in the
cause of Christ. The kingdom of Christ has gradually become the
kingdom of our own heart. We have identified him with our own
interests, and are making use of him whom we set out to serve.

NOT MY WILL

I95

Ignatius has good reason for making his retreatant meditate first
on the deceits of the bad chief before meditating on the true life
which Christ reveals. He wants him to feel that the possibility of his
being deceived is real, and to bring home to him his need for the
light of Christ. Generosity is not enough. Who more generous than
Peter? Virtue is not enough by itself. Were not the nuns of Port
Royal as chaste as angels and as proud as devils? Only one thing can
give generosity and virtue their true direction and value: and that is
to enrol both under the banner of the cross of Christ.
The true life which Christ reveals consists in a threefold movement which is diametrically opposed to the movement of the evil
spirit. The progression is from poverty of spirit and even actual,
material, poverty, to humiliations and abuse, and then to humility.
There is a gradual dispossessing of self, which fits the follower of
Christ to be a perfect apostle o f his Master. The follower of Christ
possesses the world only in order to use it in the service of his Christ;
and in the same way he possesses his life, his talents, and all the circumstances of his life: not as a means of bolstering up his own ego,
but as ways in which to give himself to others. Here Ignatius inculcates the basic attitude of christianity and leads the retreatant to the
very heart of scripture - 'Blessed are the poor of spirit, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven'. 1 The 'poor in spirit' are those who realise
that of themselves they are quite incapable of fulfilling their spiritual
ambitions, and who stand before God as those who need everything
and look only to him for the fulfilment of their needs.
Ignatius has already prepared the retreatant to see the rightness
of this attitude by the way of attentive prayer. Now this attitude in
prayer is revealed as a communion in the spirit of Christ. Its authenticity will be seen in the attitude it produces to self and to the world.
The formation of the contemplative in action has begun. Those who
wish to find God in their work must first of all receive that work in
prayer as a complete gift of God, not as the fruit of their own ingenuity, talent, and hard work.
The second step is the desire for humiliations, injustice and abuse.
These are obviously not good in themselves, nor are they to be desired for their own sake, but because they are the way to humility. In
order to understand more clearly the point of these humiliations it
will be well to consider briefly Ignatius' notion of humility, as he
gives it in the consideration of the Three Kinds of Humility. 2 The
Mt 5, 3.

~ Exx i64-8.

i96

NOT MY W I L L

first kind is complete submission, without any sort of deliberation,

to the law of God in the matter of eternal salvation. The second kind
consists in a complete submission to God in all the circumstances of
my life, to the extent of complete exclusion of any deliberation about
venial sin. The third sort of humility includes the previous two, and
adds to submission to God a positive choice and preference for what
Christ chose, for no other reason than that he chose it, and that I
want to be more like him. Because Christ chose to be humiliated and
crucified, the apostle of Christ desires ardently the same for himself.
It can be seen from this how humility differs in practice from the
poverty of spirit which is the first step in the following of Christ.
Poverty of spirit is the complete renunciation of possessiveness in
one's attitude to material and spiritual gifts. Humility is a complete
acceptance of the wisdom of God as revealed in his Son. Poverty of
spirit awaits for the coming of the kingdom from the hands o f God.
Humility recognises that coming in the pierced hands of Christ. In
short, humility is the desire to see one's apostolate marked with the
sign of the cross.
But only Christ himself can stamp a particular work with the
mark of the cross. All that the individual can do is to prepare himself for this by accepting injustice, and lack of recognition of his
efforts or talents as occasions for submitting himself to the designs of
God, in the hope of being invited to suffer with Christ. Humility is
born of the conviction that the w a y Christ chose is the right way;
and consequently that no human means are of themselves indispensable to the fruitfulness of an apostolate. In particular, none of
my own particular gifts are indispensable to the salvation of the
world. Christ was expendable" 'it is best for us if one man is pu t to
death for the sake of the whole people'} S0 I too must want to be
seen as expendable, and be ready to see myself and my work as
expendable. This attitude is not opposed to the generosity which
inspires the search for the will of God. Rather it guides the force of
generosity towards a deeper sharing in the mystery of the cross. It
does not lead a man to give himself less to his work, but tO give himself to it all the more. A deserved rebuke is not the cross; to be passed
over because of obvious inefficiency or laziness is not the cross. I
have to ensure that there is no cause in me for injustice, or lack of
appreciation; and yet at the same time I have t o expect both.
This can only be done at the invitation of Christ; and the meditation
i Jn I,, 50.

NOT

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197

ends with an intense prayer of request to our Lady, to Christ and to

the Father that I may be received under Christ's standard.
As we have said, the effect of this meditation is to disconcert the
retreatant but not disquiet him. It is designed to purify him of the
self-love, self-will and self interest, which are, perhaps, present in his
attitude to his service of Christ. I It subjects every pious desire to the
piercing light of the mystery of salvation through the cross. It
teaches the apostle to look at his life first from the point of view of
faith before measuring it against any standard of h u m a n efficiency
and efficacy. H u m a n efficiency is required, it is even demanded of
us; but it must be produced by an act of faith in the rightness of
Christ's way and not by any sort of mystique of efficacy. Enrolment
under the banner of Christ does not mean renouncing all hope of
success; it does mean refusing to measure success according to any
other norm than that of the cross.
Even when the grace o f seeing the rightness of Christ's way has
been given, the battle is not won. The retreatant in this insight
must engage himself from the heart. So Ignatius leads him to a final
meditation, that of the Three Types of Men, which is designed to
help the retreatant choose what is more perfect. ~ In order to help
him to arrive at this disposition Ignatius recounts the little parable,
or rather case of conscience 3 a b o u t three different attitudes. He puts
the case of three men each of whom has acquired a s u m of money to
which they are attached. In the acquisition of this money they have
n o t sinned, b u t it has been acquired without consideration of the will
of God. Now they w a n t to be at peace with God, and to see their
money from his point of view. The question they have to answer is:
W h a t does God want me to do with my money? The first man never
takes any means towards finding out the answer. The second type
genuinely wants to get rid of the attitude of attachment, but he wants
to strike a bargain with God. He will do whatever God wants as long
as he does not have to give up his money. After all, there is nothing
sinful in keeping it. The third type wants to get rid of his attachment; and until the will of God in made known, the cuts himself off
affectively from his money. In other words, he refuses to regard it as
his own before God gives it to him to do so. In so far as the third
type of man is concerned, the money simply does not belong to him.

Exx i89b.
2 Exx 152.
8 This is the point of the three 'blnarios', couples of men. This was the convention for
cases of conscience in Ignatius' day.

I98

NOT MY WILL

In the depths of his heart and in his practical attitudes he refuses to

put the word 'my' before the word 'money'.
Here Ignatius reaches the level of the heart; and here the real
battle is fought out. He is well aware of this and in the note at the
end of the meditation indicates the type of prayer suited to this state.
A man must pray against himself and 'want, ask and beg '1 that God
take out of his heart the disordered attachment.
The effect of this meditation is to bring the soul to a state of
balance, where it can truly make a decision based not on its own
desires or on its own generosity but purely on the principle Ignatius
continually repeats; 'the service and praise of God our Lord and the
eternal salvation of my soul'. ~
These three meditations, The Call of the Temporal King, the Two
Standards, the Three Types of Men, are the heart of the Spiritual
Exercises and formulate in prayer the basic attitudes by which man
disposes himself to find the will of God: generosity which is content
to wait expectantly before God and to be purified by the principle of
discernment laid down in the Two Standards, and purification of
the heart effected through the prayer of detachment. This subjection
of what one regards as the purest of one's motives and the most generous and legitimate of one's ambitions to the judgment of God in
Christ; this refusal to accept the pious desires on their face value is
the hall mark of the spirit of Ignatius. These are the elements which
must direct a n y search for the will of God.
W h a t theft are we to expect from the annual retreat? A complete
change in the structure of our lives? A sudden call to go off and
bury ourselves in the leper colonies of Africa? Or a deeper understanding of the mystery in which we share each of us in our own way,
in the classroom, in the streets of our parish, the ward of a hospital,
at the editorial desk? The mystery of the cross: the fact that in order
to find all we must be prepared to lose all; to such an extent that if
God takes everything from us we are ready to say, 'Not my will but
thine be done', and dying to ourselves, enter with Christ upon an
agony, which is not even ours but which belongs to him alone who
went before us, and in whom is contained all our suffering.

1 Exx i57.

2 Exx i69 cf45, i79, I8I etc.

OUR

REBELLIOUS
by P L A C I D

WILLS

MURRAY

STI/DY of a particular theme in our liturgical texts can

be a useful contribution to spiritual theology, provided
that one follows an objective method, and does not force
the liturgical data into an artificial synthesis. For this theme of ' O u r Rebellious Wills' I have limited my investigations to the
collects of the missal, in order to take advantage of the systematic treatment offered in the works of the late Dom Capelle and Dom Brou. 1
One basic fact on which both our authors insist, and which has a
direct bearing on our subject, is that many of our collects were originally composed with an ulterior motive of staring the Catholic
doctrine on grace against the pelagian heresy. Since this is so, we
may expect the prayers to offer us some exquisite flowers of St
Augustine's doctrine on grace. The formulation of the phrases does
not come from St Augustine himself, but the substance of the doctrine is his. Dom Brou has gone to considerable trouble to vindicate
as frequently as possible the authorship of St Gregory the Great for
many of these prayers; he is assiduous in illustrating the vocabulary
of the prayers from parallel passages in St Gregory's scriptural commentaries; In one interesting confrontation of this type, Dom Brou
is able to establish - I think, conclusively - that the pravae,ogitationes
mentioned in one of the prayers, are not the 'bad thoughts' of impurity, but the 'evil attitude of murmuring'.

x B. Capelle, O.S.B., Travaux liturglques de doctrine et d'histoire. I (1955) I97-266; L.

Brou, O.S.B., Les Oraisons des Dimanches aprOsla Pentecdte, Commentaire liturgique (1959), a n d
Les Oraisons Dominicales (deuxikme sgrie) , De l'Avent ~ la Trinitd (I 96o). I n the following notes,
these three books are referred to respectively as Capelle I, Brou I, Brou II. Dora Capelle's
treatment of the prayers dates from about I93O , while Dorn Brou's is of the decade I95o196o. Brou is more minutely historical, while Capelle takes a wider view. T h e i r j u d g m e n t s
as to the authorship of the prayers do not always coincide; they differ too in some details
oflnterpretation; but, on the whole, taken together, they provide a reasonably comprehensive t r e a t m e n t of the entire temporal cycle of the missal, sufficient for the purposes o f
this article.
I have not treated of the season of Lent, although this should obviously come first in
a n y t r e a t m e n t of the teaching of the liturgy on p e n a n c e a n d conversion. Nos. 55 a n d 56
of La Maison-Dieu ( 1958) on La pgnitence dans la Liturgie contain m u c h excellent material on
Lent, notably La Pgnitenee quadraggslmale dans le missel romain by Pierre Jounel, loc. clt.
no. 56 , pp. 3o-49.

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Since murmuring is .the most characteristic state of a will in

rebellion, let us have a closer look at the text of this prayer. It is the
collect of the second Sunday of Lent, and in these days of ecumenism we may adopt here the translation given in the Book of Common Prayer:
Almightly God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves
to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and
inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all
adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil
thoughts which may assault a n d hurt the soul (eta pravis

cogitationibus mundemur in mente).

Having established, on textual grounds, St Gregory's authorship
of this prayer, Dom Brou finds the true meaning ofpravae cogitationes
in a parallel passage of the same author's - his commentary on J o b
19, 12. The bad thoughts in question here are precisely those which
adversity brings in its train: the urge to complain against God. The
opening phrase of this prayer, ' . . . we have no power of ourselves to
help ourselves', as well as being a tacit correction of any pelagian or
semi-pelagian denial of the necessity of grace, is a sharp lesson to the
'rebellious will' of its inability to subdue its own fault-finding with
God's ways?
The very phrase 'rebellious wills' occurs in the secret of the fourth
Sunday after Pentecost:

Oblationibus (nostris), quaesumus, Domine placate susceptis : et ad

te nostras etiam rebelles compellepropitius voluntates. Per Dominum.
The original context of this prayer is a Mass In tribulatione of the
Gelasian Sacramentary. 2 Here again, we shall not be far wrong in
seeing the connection between 'tribulation' and our rebellion: it is
adversity which makes us bridle against God's ways. In this prayer
we ask that our unwilling wills be forced by God to turn to him, so
that having accepted our gifts, he may receive our Mils as well.
The secret of the fifth Sunday after Epiphany, curiously enough,
also derived from a similar passage in the Gelasian Sacramentary,
has a synonymous phrase nutantia corda tu dirigas? To explain the
Deus qui conspicls omni nos virtute destituti. C f Brou II, 77-82, on the co1Iect for the secon d

Suday in Lent.
Ed. L. C. Mohlberg (Rome I96O), Liber Tertius X X X I I I , p. I97.
3 Ibid., Liber Tertius X X X V I I , p. z99.

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word nutantia Brou refers us to Ephesians: 'we are no longer to be

children, no longer to be like storm-tossed sailors, driven before the
wind of each new doctrine that h u m a n sublety may propound';1
and to the Epistle of St James: 'One who hesitates is like a wave out
at sea, driven to and fro by the w i n d . . , a m a n who is in two minds
will find no rest wherever he goes'. ~' 'Wavering hearts' are those
which fail to set themselves steadily on God.
Although these two secrets deal with our wills and our hearts in an
immediately eucharistic context, oddly enough most of the texts
which treat of our subject are to be found in the collects rather than
in the secrets; nor is there any explicit reference to the effects of the
eucharist in them. From a close scrutiny of these prayers, one can
see what a mistake it would be to make any of our future liturgical
prayers too self-consciously 'liturgical'. Although these collects were
composed for liturgical use, they do not hesitate to draw on the most
explicitly theological language to formulate their petitions. Incidentally, we may recognize the validity of Baumstark's 'law', that theological prayers of this nature always betoken adeveloped, not a primitive
state of the liturgy, a
In the last text which we were considering, nutantia corda, there
occurs the incisive word dirigas. The collect of the Sunday after
Christmas makes the specific request of God: dirige actus nostros in
beneplacito tuo. In a fine commentary on this prayer, Capelle notes:
'certainly our will regulates and directs our acts. But how weak it is I
and on what disastrous paths does it entangle so often our life ! Then
the christian, taught by experience, or by a secret fear and hope,
turns to God. He knows that God holds the helm of the soul, and
that with a skilful hand, without violence, he is able to influence
h e a r t s . . ?4
The need for God's direction of our acts is expressed equivalently
in several other prayers by the phrase sine Te, without thee. The
translations in the Book of Common Prayer run as follows:
1 E p h 4, I4.
Jas I, 8. Accoi'ding to Bruylants' Index Verborum of the R o m a n Missal (P. Bruylants,
O.S.B., Les Oraisons du Missel romain, Texte et Histoire, I (I952 217-281 ) the word nutantia
does not occur elsewhere in the missal, and Brou tells us he has not come across the
word in St Gregory's works. To have recourse then to the New Testament is justifiable
since, as a recent study by Dora Ashworth points out (H. Ashworth, O.S.B., 'Some Missal Prayers in the light of Pauline Theology', LiturgyVol. X X X I I , no. 2, April i963, 3i),
biblical theology is one of the important sources of our missal texts.
8 A. Baumstark, Liturgie compar&, 3rd. ed., revised by B. Botte O.S.B., 1953, 68-69.
4 Capelle I, 2i 3.

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and because through the weakness of our mortal nature

we can do no good thing without thee (First Sunday after
Trinity),
that we, who cannot do anything that is good without
thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will
(Ninth Sunday after Trinity),
because the frailty of man without thee cannot b u t fall
(Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity),
. . because it cannot continue in safety without thy succour
(Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity),
without thee we are not able to please thee (Nineteenth
Sunday after Trinity).

This is indeed an eloquent litany of man's incapacity; in these

prayers, however, it is always joined to a petition full of confidence.
We appeal to God's miseratio, which is something much richer than
his forgiveness of our sin. God's mercy works beforehand with us, it
forestalls our difficulties by fortifying in advance our weakness.1 This
is expressed in the collect of the eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost:
M a y the working of your merciful goodness direct our hearts,
we pray you: because without you we are incapable of pleasing you. ~
A frequent petition in these collects is that we be given the grace
to love what God commands. The collect of the fourth Sunday after
Easter puts this grace before us in a most attractive light. First of all,
it acknowledges that God alone can give inner harmony and unity to
our minds, unius efficis voluntatis. This refers to the concentration of the
soul in a tendency which it will share in common with all the faithful. Next we glance at the glittering mundana varietas, the kaleidoscope of earthly change, and pray to have our hearts steadied against
these fluctuations by fixing them there where real joy abides. This
will be achieved if we love what God commands, if we long for what
he promises. We must take the phrase 'what you command' in its
most comprehensive sense, to include the detail of God's intimate
demands over our own secret loves. The mundana varietas solicits each
of us in a thousand ways: we pray for the grace to love what God
commands in order to keep to the one safe way, unius efficis voluntatis. 8
1 Capelle I, n6~-262. It is in this sense that Our Lady is the greatest masterpiece of
God's mercy.
s D#igat corda nostra, quaesumus, tuae miseratlonis operatio: quia tibi sine te placere non
possumus,
s Capelle I, 235; Brou II, I24-I25.

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I t is not enough however to steady the wavering, to subdue the

rebellious, will. We ,must produce the fruit of action, et voluntate et
actione placere. The first Sunday after Epiphany has this thought
developed in its collect:
O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of
thy people which call upon thee; and grant that they may
both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and
also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.
Capelle comments on this prayer: 'Man's intellectual weakness
and his moral impotence are presupposed here: the ability to see
and to be able to act must be asked from God with s u p p l i c a t i o n s . . .
it is the agony of so many souls that they do not see what they ought
to do (quae agenda sunt), and numberless too are the feeble wills which
beg to be supported in order to have the power to do (utconvalescant).l
Most of the foregoing texts make no direct reference to any one
mystery of Christ; each of them expresses in its own way some facet
of christianity. For a more direct consideration of Christ's influence
over our wills, we must turn to the collects of the greater feasts. Thus,
on Palm Sunday, we hear of Christ's example of humility: the passion of Christ is seen above all from the moral point of view, as an
example. It is pride which caused the fall of man; obedience and
humility, after the pattern of Christ, will be the way for each of us to
return to G o d . . . 'that we, w h o have the lesson of his rsuffering
before us, may enjoy the companionship of his resurrection' (ut et
patientiae ipsius habere documenta et resurrectionis consortia mereamur). ~
The prayer for Easter Sunday is the occasion of a friendly quarrel
between our authors: Capelle finds our present text disappointingly
weak in its conclusion, and opts for a variant reading: Brou energetically defends the text as it stands, both as being the original and
as offering a perfectly satisfying meaning. The following table will
enable the reader to judge the differences in the texts:

Hadrianum 88, I & Roman Missal.

Deus, qui hodierna die, per Unigenitum tuum,
aeternitatis nobis aditum devict~ morte reserasti ;
vota nostra, quae praeveniendo aspiras, etiam
adjuvando prosequere. Per Dominum. 3
Almightly God, who today through thine only-begotten Son
*

Capelle, I, 214-2i 5.

Capelle, I, 229.

Table as in Brou, II, Ioo.

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Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the

gate of everlasting life:
We humbly beseech thee, that as by thy special grace
preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires,
so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good
effect; through Jesus Christ our L o r d . . .
Gelasian I , XLVI: Dom Paschae
Deus, qui per Unigenitum tuum aeternitatis nobis aditum, devicta
morte, reserasti ;
da nobis quaesumus, ut qui Resurrectionis Dominicae solemnia colimus,
per innovationem tui Spiritus, a morte animae resurgamus. Per
Dominum.
Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus
Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of
everlasting life:
grant we beseech thee, that we who celebrate the solemn
liturgy of Easter day, may, through the renewal ofthy Spirit,
rise again from the death of the soul; through Jesus Christ
our L o r d . . .
Capelle feels that the second half of the prayer (in the missal text,
i.e.: the 'Gregorian' text) does not do justice to the paschal mystery
outlined in the first half. Brou, on the other hand, having argued
from textual evidence that the existing missal text is the original one,
finds the link between the two parts in the meaning to be given to
vota. St Gregory (the author of the prayer according to Brou) leaves
the content of vota very general and indeterminate. It covers all
those intimate movements of soul aroused in each of us by God's anticipating grace. The object prayed for, then, in this Easter collect is
that these vota would be brought to an effective fulfilment, now that
the gates of eternal life have swung back to admit entrance to us
through Christ's paschal victory over death. Here again, the clause
quae praeveniendo aspiras, etiam adjuvando prosequere, has a distinctly, if
not obtrusively, anti-pelagian note?
The four collects of Advent have a biblical background: partly
Psalm 79 Qui regis Israel, intende, ~ and partly the Benedictus. Though
addressed directly to Christ in the present ending, Qui vivis, they
were not originally so, since Brou has clearly shown this is a later
1 Bmu, II, ~9~.
2 Note particularly v. 3 'Rouse up thy power and come', exdta potentiam tuam et veni.

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substitution for the formula Per Dominum. 1 What are the imminentibus
peccatorum nostromm periculis? Brou is inclined to see in them the
political upheavals of St Gregory's day, looked on b y the saint as a
punishment for the sins of rebellious men.
The collect of the third Sunday of Advent is particularly relevant
to our theme:
Lord, we beg a hearing for our prayers.
By the grace of thy coming light up the darkness of our minds. 2
Capelle here opts for the variant reading in the Gelasian as being
the original text: cordis (heart) nostri tenebras, lumine (light) visitationis
illustra. H e then proceeds to comment: ' . . . the heart of the sinner
is more sombre than his mind. The mind deprived of light desires
to see, while the blinded heart dreads the light. It is this poor heart
which Christ is to light up by his coming. An intimate and secret
activity, penetrating t o the marrow; a radical conversion which
makes us long for the truth from which we had shrunk. H o w near
the mind is to enlightenment when the will desires the light'2
In the prayer for the feast of the baptism of our Lord, we have a
clear indication of Christ's action on us - or rather in us:

Deus, cuius Unigenitus in substantia nostrae carnis apparuit:

praesta, quaesumus ; ut per eum, quem similem nobisforis agnovimus,
intus reformari mereamur. 4
We recognize Christforis by our profession of faith in the Incarnation, similem nobis: we pray that we may become like him inwardly,
similes intus - intus reformari.
The influence of the eucharist on our wills is expressed in those
secrets and postcommunions which emphasize the propitiatory
character of the Mass. These texts are very frequent in the missal,
and D o m Brou has shown that in almost every case they come from
St Gregory, who both in his Sacramentary and in his other works
has insisted on this effect of the Mass. 5 It is interesting to find such an
explicit statement of the propitiatory nature of the Mass dating
from practically a thousand years before t h e Council of Trent.
1 Brou, II, 9"
Aurem tuam, quaesumus, Domine, predbus nostris accomoda : et mentls nostrae tenebras, gratla
tuae vlsitatlonls illustra.
8 Capelle, I, 2o2-2o3.
4 O God, whose only-begotten Son appeared in the reality of our mortal flesh, grant us,
we beg thee, that through him w h o m we recognise as llke to us in outward form, we m a y
be re-formed to his own inward likeness.
5 Brou, II, 36-39 .

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I n these p o s t c o m m u n i o n s , o u r texts take on a m o r e i n t i m a t e a n d

u r g e n t note. T h e y e n d e a v o u r to express in words, or at least to
suggest in words, t h a t o p e r a t i o n o f Christ's Spirit over us which
takes place t h r o u g h holy c o m m u n i o n . This wrestling o f the Spirit
of Christ with o u r rebellious will operates at a level w h e r e words are
i n a d e q u a t e : the soul is m o m e n t a r i l y arrested in its wilful way, a n d
like the psalmist c a n only say:
T r u l y I h a v e set m y soul
in silence a n d peace.
A w e a n e d child on its m o t h e r ! s breast,
even so is m y soul. 1
W e know, however, f r o m bitter experience t h a t this m o m e n t a r y
lulling of self-will c a n p r o v e to be evanescent, a n d t h a t is w h y the
p o s t c o m m u n i o n s constantly p r a y t h a t o u r c o n d u c t m a y be b r o u g h t
into line with o u r eucharistic faith a n d experience. C o m m e n t i n g on
the p o s t c o m m u n i o n of the eighth S u n d a y after Pentecost, Brou shows
us one e x a m p l e f r o m a m o n g m a n y of this petition. T h e original text
(Leonine S a c r a m e n t a r y ) runs: Sit nobis, Domine, reparatic mentis et
corporis caeleste mysterium et cuius exequimur a c t i o n e m sentiamus effectum.
Actio here m u s t be t a k e n in its splendid a n t i q u e m e a n i n g o f ' s a c r i fice'. W e are told in this p r a y e r t h a t the sacrifice which we r e n d e r to
G o d exequimur cultum is the v e r y m e a n s b y w h i c h G o d will restore o u r
bodies a n d o u r souls. 3 Again, on the eighteenth S u n d a y , a f t e r Pentecost we ask to be m a d e w o r t h y of the gift we h a v e received : Gratias
tibi referimus, Domine, sacro munere vegetati : tuam misericordiam deprecantes : ut dignos nos eius participatione perficias. ~
H e r e we do not stop at thanksgiving, b u t go on to a p r a y e r o f
petition, of almost disinterested love: to be m a d e m o r e w o r t h y , n o t
for o u r o w n satisfaction, b u t on a c c o u n t of the sacrum munus. 5 T h e
p o s t c o m m u n i o n of the t w e n t i e t h S u n d a y after Pentecost brings the
t h o u g h t one step f u r t h e r : Ut sa~ris, Domine, reddamur digni muneribus :
fac sos, quaesumus, tuis semper obedire mandatis. 6
T h e object d e m a n d e d , obedience to G o d ' s c o m m a n d s , is asked
not m e r e l y for its o w n sake, b u t in view o f the eucharist. O u r m o r a l

The Psalms: A New Translation.Fontana Books (I963). Ps I3o: 2.

May this heavenly sacrament, Lord, renew us in mind and body, that we may feel the
power of the mystery we celebrate.
~ Brou, I, 47-49Thou hast fed us, Lord, with thy sacred gift. We give thee thanks and beg thee in thy
mercy to make us worthy of our share in it.
~ Brou, 1, 95.
~le Leg thee, Lord, make us ever obedient to thy commands so that we m a y become
worthy of thy sacred gifts.

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life is a condition for our eucharistic union, and not vice versa (the
eucharist one among many supports of our moral life).
The secret of the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost links up our
eucharistic offerings with our conversion of heart. Having made a
reference to the receiving of the gifts offered by God's people, together with their prayers, we beg God to turn all our hearts to him.
Freed from earthly lusts, we may then pass over to desires of heaven.
To sum up. Liturgical prayer is often reproached with being too
cold, too formal, too ancient, too roman. I think the excellent studies of Capelle and Brou should, on the contrary, make us vibrate in
sympathy with these prayers. The anti-pelagian origin of m a n y of
them has only increased their usefulness for us, by their insistence on
the necessity for God's grace at the very root of our supernatural
i activity. They have rightly seen that the lessons of adversity may be
lost on us, because we become embittered against God's ways.They
put us on our guard against these 'bad thoughts'. Their authors
have felt the powerful tug of the mundana varietas with its insidious
claims on our attention. They teach us too that the real relation
between moral life and eucharistic union is that h u m a n life is to be
submitted to Christ.
One prayer of the ordinary of the Mass, which lies outside the
material for this article, but which is relevant to the theme, is the
second prayer before the priest's communion, Domine Jesu Christe
qui ex voluntate Patris. Father J u n g m a n n says that 'in bold strokes,
the whole pattern of christianity is presented to v i e w . . , the things
we ask are of magnitude: deliverance from all sin, the strength to be
true to his commandments, and - the same petition which we made
in the instant before the consecration- the grace of final perseverance,
so that we may never be separated from him . . 71 Fac me tuis
semper inhaereremandatis: In spirit and text this prayer is allied to the
medieval 'apologies' of which we still have a splendid example printed in our missals, amongst its prayers of preparation for Mass. The
passage of the prayer of St Ambrose for Thursdays contains a sentence which would well deserve to be used by any 'rebellious will' :
Aufer cot lapideum de came nostra et da nobis cot carneum, quod teamet, te
diligat, te delectatur, te sequatur, te perfruatur. 'Take from us our hearts
of stone, and give us hearts of flesh to love thee and long for thee and
delight in thee: hearts that in following thee shall find the consummation of all joy'. 2
1

The Mass of the Roman Rite, 2 (I955) p. 35 o.

The Missal in Latin and English (I 949) P. 668.

L I V I N G BY F A I T H
By M I C H A E L

KYNE

T is a paradox of the christian life that its end and purpose, which
is 'to attain to the measure and the full stature of Christ '1 according to the will of the Father and through the power of his Spirit,
seems constantly thwarted by the h u m a n and individual limitations and inadequacies which the divine will imposes upon us or
permits to remain in us. But instead of accepting the fact that it is
the Spirit who will fill us with all his fullness and accomplish his
purpose in us in his own good time and his own mysterious way, ~we
are constantly attempting to escape from our limitations by merely
h u m a n means.
One of the commonest of these is to cut down people and things to
a size comparable to or less than our own. A t i t s worst, this can be a
real butchery, a conscious dismembering of someone to give us a
sense of mastery over them. At its best, it can be a good-humoured
teasing aimed at someone's unfounded pretentions and poses. In
either case, we turn a blind eye to changes in ourselves, in others and
in the world around us, in order to make everything conform to the
self that we approve, or at least are accustomed to. We have our
own interests, and we absorb only what pleases us or fits in with our
own ideas. The result, of course, is that we impose upon ourselves a
far more radical limitation than that which God has imposed, by
effectively preventing the Holy Spirit from furthering our growth
across every h u m a n encounter. Christ himself, who grew in wisdom
as well as in age, 3 deepened his h u m a n knowledge of his Father's
creation through h u m a n encounter, in the process of living this
mortal life. For us, as for him, the business of living requires that we
adjust ourselves to the pressures of life, and common sense demands
that we recognize our inadequacy.
Christ himself, 'who must needs become altogether like his brethren', 4 was careful not to transgress the custom, rule and routine
according to which the devout Jew of his day lived his life. For us too,
rule and routine can be of immense assistance in the constant adjustment that ordinary living requires of us. It can liberate us for

1 Eph4, I3.

~ Eph3, I9-2o.

8 Lk~,52.

~ I"Ieb2, i 7.

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larger tasks and problems, freeing us for a deeper penetration into

the richness of God's revelation of himself. But here again we are
constantly tempted to cut things down to our own size. We have our
routine of spiritual duties and apostolic work which we regard as the
unalterable structure of our lives, despite all the changes going on
within ourselves and the world around us.
We thus reduce the mystery and paradox of our life with God to a
commonplace which provokes no reaction and needs no conscious
thought and very little effort. To a certain extent, this is inevitable
in the very continuity of christian life; but if there is to be an integral
growth, much more is needed. There has also to be an openness in
our lives, a readiness to welcome new experiences and to modify our
attitudes and activities accordingly. In order to do this consistently,
to preserve this openness even in the midst of our daily routine, we
must pause occasionally to consider our lives as a whole. We must
stand back and see how plans have worked out in practice, con,
sciously assimilate new elements, and review the old with the eyes of
a person who has grown.
The annual retreat can be the ideal time for just such a work of
integrating into our lives the richness acquired by experience and of
disposing ourselves to profit more by future experience. Rightly
understood, the retreat is not some sort of spiritual stocktaking, but
a time for intensifying our efforts to keep our lives open and supple
to the activity of God. It is easy to run our spiritual lives in a way
which satisfies us but which does not lead to real growth. How easily
we can reduce the vast mystery of Providence, the eternal will of
God in action, to comfortable dimensions! We can make of it a sort
of nebulous feeling of love which we reserve for times of prayer,
within which we relax and think that we are abandoning ourselves
t o G o d , whereas we are really behaving as if neither we nor others
nor the movements in the world had any positive role within that
Providence. Or we can reduce Providence to the letter of the law,
identifying it with our own spiritual duties, which we have to obey
only in order to fulfil all justice. Providence can become a merely
episodic intervention of God in our lives, to which we advert to only
when it is forced upon our notice. We call Providence only what we
think we can recognise as Providence.
But the infinitely powerful activity of God, constantly at work at
the very heart of creation, can never be reduced to h u m a n categories
or measured by h u m a n standards. God does not merely put the
finishing touches on our h u m a n work, or intervene like a benevolent

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coach, to correct us gently w h e n we are making mistakes. T h e initiative in our lives as a whole comes from God. I t is we who are called
to lose ourselves in the mystery of his eternal work. W e co-operate
with him and he works t h r o u g h us. Far from a t t e m p t i n g to contain
the P r o v i d e n c e of G o d within our own meagre grasp w e must allow
ourselves to be taken out o f ourselves b y the v e r y vastness of the
work of God. Before h i m our attitude has to be one of adoration a n d
w o n d e r m e n t , which is the beginning of contemplation. T h e initiative
is his. We, for our part, must continually strive to walk in his
ways which are not ours, and accept t h e m more and more in love
and faith. T h e mystery is t h a t he can and does work ill US and
t h r o u g h us, despite the imperfection of o u r lives.
T o say that God's ways are not our ways does not m e a n t h a t we
are in complete ignorance of the w a y in which he is at work in this
world. God's plan is m a d e manifest in Christ, the W o r d of G o d w h i c h
reveals his thoughts a n d designs to man. Christ himself is the way
of G o d in history; in h i m the secret of G o d is laid bare. H e is tile
m a s t e r - t h o u g h t a n d master-plan b e h i n d all God's action. These are
phrases which we have h e a r d a h u n d r e d times; they have b e c o m e
p a r t of our routine thinking; b y a t t e m p t i n g to fit t h e m into a category, we deprive t h e m of their real meaning.
Living according to the gospel means the constant acceptance of
the fact t h a t God's redeeming plan in Christ is foolishness to the
worldlywise and an obstacle in tile p a t h of the ambitious. All too
often, o u r a p p r o a c h to the Gospel leads us to transpose the life of
Christ from the n o r m a l world, which is his and ours, into a realm of
m e l o d r a m a . W e read the account of the passion and d e a t h as
spectators, not as people who are personally c a u g h t u p ill the events
recounted. W e m a y imagine that it is the result of deep faith to be no
longer baffled b y the mystery t h a t 'divine folly is wiser t h a n the
wisdom of men, and divine weakness stronger t h a n man's strength'. 1
It can be m e r e l y the result of reducing the dimensions of the mystery,
so that it never touches o u r d a y - t o - d a y existence. T h e r e is no obstacle or scandal if the world of Christ is not our world. T h e r e is no
difficulty in paying lip-service to the cross as the means of salvation,
as long as it is not the p a t t e r n which repeats itself in the process of
our personal salvation and of the salvatio~l of the world. But once we
seriously accept t h a t we have to be 'closely fitted into the p a t t e r n o f
his death', 2 then there is foolishness and scandal.
1 I Cor 1,45.

~ Phil 3, Io.

LIVING

BY

FAITH

2II

Living by faith means to believe in practice that what happened

to Christ and what came about through him must also be brought
about in our own lives. We must feel the apparent injustice of the
treatment meted out to Christ as deeply as we feel about the injustice
which affects us personally. Only faith can accept the scandal of
hearing the words 'This is my beloved Son', and afterwards seeing
that Son, under the guidance of an all-powerful Father, advancing
in deepening loneliness and helplessness, till he dies on a cross,
rejected by the sins of ordinary men, without comfort from his
Father. Only faith can see that where the misunderstanding,
injustice and hatred of m a n k i n d broke over Christ and seemed to
obliterate his work, there precisely was the crux of God's victory of
life and love.
We need prayer to penetrate into the depths of this mystery, to
accept its working in our own lives and in the life of the Church. We
have to accept God's plan as valid not only for Christ but for his
body the Church, of which we are here and now the living manifestation. We need the light of Christ to enable us to see that where
sin and its effects, the cruelty, hate a n d suffering within the world,
deform men and dismember the Church, at that very point Christ's
victory continues in time a n d space. We have to make our act of
faith in Christ an act of faith in the fact that where the weakness,
selfishness and ingratitude of others seem to spoil my work and
hinder my prayer, there God can be working out their and my
salvation.
We have to say 'Father' to a God whom we feel could change
everything and yet does not. Indeed we must go further even than
that, and learn to accept fully the fact that God could change everything in our favour - 'even now he will send more than twelve
legions of angels to my side '1 - and not want him to do so. The
scriptures must be fulfilled, God's plan must work itself out in time
and through h u m a n agents, not by means of some thunderbolt from
on high. Here we touch the point where the cross enters into our
daily lives through the stupidity, pettiness, blindness and obstinacy
of humanity, ourselves included. The real 'cross' is never the one
which we make to our own measurements. It is the one on which we
are awkwardly distended, the faults we would like to eliminate but
cannot , the situation which is not ideal, the problem which admits
of no solution; in short, it is the constant awareness of my own in1

M t 26, 53.

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BY

FAITH

sufficiency and inadequacy in one or other aspect Of my life. To live

in Christ means to face up to the dimensions of the problem of our
own personal inadequacy on a h u m a n level, to commit ourselves to
the task of saving the world or even our own souls, and still to believe
that God Call work and win the victory through that same inadequacy.
This attitude of faith is one that shatters h u m a n complacency; it
drives us out of the comfortable positions in which we have taken
refuge. There is often a stage in our spiritual lives when we are tempted to remain on Thabor and contain ourselves within the limits
of present and past accomplishments. Few of us can really envisage
the possibility of losing all. We are quite prepared to admit that
Christ lost all to gain all, but we do not admit to ourselves that our
own lives should be a repetition of the same story: 'Never L o r d . . 71
Each of us has a task to perform which is a h u m a n work. There is a
parish or a school to be run, a church to be built, a magazine to be
edited, a house to be organised and cleaned. Into that work we have
to put the best of ourselves in terms of h u m a n efficiency. A school is
not automatically successful because it is taken over by priests or
religious. Public speaking which is confused and inaudible is not less
irritating because it happens to be a sermon in church. The fact that
work is being done for God means that we must use every possible
h u m a n means to further it. But at the same time we must admit
that h u m a n efficiency is not necessarily divine efficacy. We c a n
never reduce the spreading of the kingdom of God to the level of a
well-run business organisation. Yet it is all too easy to make a god of
efficiency and attempt to confine the mystery of salvation within the
limits of statistics. God means us to take encouragement from success
in our work, but we must be careful not to use this encouragement as
a shield against the unique source of christian courage: the passion
and death of Christ.
Christ allowed Peter, James and J o h n to witness his transfiguration in order that they might witness his degradation in the garden
of the agony. The lesson which they learnt in retrospect was that the
only way in which the transfiguration could become a permanent
reality in the lives of all men was through the death of Christ. H a d he
stayed with them on Thabor there would have been just the four of
them alone, and history would have passed them by. But through
the cross Christ, risen and glorious, was given to the whole world.
1

M t I6, 2~.

LIVING

BY

FAITH

2I 3

The Christ whom they had wanted to contain within the limits of
their own love and devotion escaped them; but at the same time he
took them with him and, making them his Church, gave himself
through them to history for all ages. It was necessary for Christ to
suffer; necessary for them to lose him if they were going to find him
as he wanted to be found. Thereafter they could 'rejoice that they
had been found worthy to suffer indignity for the sake of Jesus'
name'.t
The mystery of Christ is the mystery of each individual member
of the Church and the mystery of the Church in her totality. Before
the immense scandal of the cross we need have no fears about our
own limitations and insufficiency. The divinity of Christ is shown not
merely because he is risen and glorious, but because his life was born
of death; only God can bring life out of death. The presence of the
Spirit is made manifest in the Church not simply because of her
holiness but because this holiness grows out of the sinfulness of her
members. On a h u m a n level the m a n who has gone from rags to
riches can afford to boast about his humble beginnings, for they
enhance his success. But somehow we find it difficult to admit that
spiritually we have come along the same road, from utter poverty to
the richness of life in Christ. We diminish the mystery of the Church
by trying to turn a blind eye to the defects of her members and of her
rulers. We try to bolster up our own spiritual lives by excluding our
own weaknesses from immediate consciousness. We find it difficult
or morbid to pray about sin, not because we are sinless but because
we fear to look our inadequacy in the face. T h a t fear is born of a
lack of understanding of the greatness of the power of God. It can
often indicate to us that we are in reality basing our spiritual lives on
our own efforts rather than on the power of God. We are doing our
will and not his, finding ourselves and not him in our work. The
one reality in our lives which reveals our pretence is sin; and therefore we are always reluctant to look at it. In the same way we can be
afraid of looking at the changing face of the Church in the twentieth century. But we must conquer that fear and not dread losing a
church we have created for ourselves in order to find the Church
which God is building through the Spirit.
In our prayer, over and again we must be ready to reject routine
habits, unafraid of launching out into the unknown and apparently
unprofitable deep. M a n y souls who complain of aridity in prayer,
1 Acts 5, 4 I.

2I~

LIVING

BY FAITH

who spend their time in resigning themselves to 'never getting

anything out of prayer' and piously accept dryness as a cross from
God, are in reality their own worst enemies. They are trying to
conserve their gains in prayer, to bury the talent the Lord has given
them, instead of risking it. in order to gain more. They cling to ways
of praying which they have found helpful even when they are obviously no longer helpful, because fear and routine rob them of all
spiritual initiative. They are afraid of doing something they have
never done before. They profess to live by faith but demand from
God constant reassurance. Their agony and their cross is a false one.
Their struggle and suffering is not that fruitful christian birth out of
death, but rather a sterile and hopeless struggle against the real
death to self that God is asking of them. They are struggling against
God because they have become preoccupied with themselves instead of keeping their eyes fixed upon Christ.
We are disconcerted when we find that our spiritual life is escaping our grasp. Perhaps we accuse ourselves of backsliding, and try
to recover lost ground by encumbering ourselves with additional resolutions which soon fade. W h a t we fail to see is that God is attempting
to take us out of our routine by directing our attention to him. Even
the tiniest glimpse of the reality of God, whom no man can look
upon and live, will be a shattering experience; and we must not be
afraid of being shattered. The very routine of our lives makes this
process possible if we look upon that routine as a means of directing
ourselves towards a deeper experience of God, rather than a means
of insulating ourselves from all shocks. The mystery of Christ is ours.
But unlike him we embody within ourselves contradictions to the
work that we share with him. Original sin and our personal sins
have misshapen us. The reshaping of our lives and of our work by
the power of the Spirit will inevitably follow the pattern of the history of salvation. The only constants that we must seek to preserve
in our lives are those which enable us to live in the spirit of continual
re-creation. Faith indeed seeks understanding; but it is the understanding that Christ is continually inviting us to lose ourselves in the
mystery of his infinite love.

HAVE I A VOCATION?
By M I C H E L

RONDET

I-IE first reply which must be given to one who asks this
question is that every christian life is itself a calling to the
perfection of charity. For every christian, baptism is the
sacrament which consecrates this primary and essential
vocation. Pope Pius XI, when someone asked him, 'What is the
finest day in the life of a Pope?' replied, with as much humour as
truth, 'The day of his baptism !' His answer makes the point that the
priestly fullness of the office of sovereign pontiff is itself interior to
the holy vocation which is given us through the washing of regeneration in water and the Spirit. Nevertheless, it is not without reason
that the faithful spontaneously apply the word vocation first of all to
the priestly and religious vocation. For this represents a type of
exemplary realisation of baptismal life, and corresponds to a more
precise call which clearly manifests the mystery of divine election in
the lives of men. It is a privileged example of the discernment of and
fidelity to a divine call; and, as such, can be a guiding light for all
who desire to order their lives according to the divine will. In addition, a vocation to the priestly or religious life is, like every grace,
always given for the sake .of the whole body. Its birth and development are the concern of the entire Church. Indeed, priests and religious are not only those who are set apart from the rest of the faithful
by their function and their way of life; they are the recipients of
graces which must give life to the mystical body of Christ in its
entirety.
Whether they are called to prolong the priesthood of Christ
amongst us or to be witnesses, in their poor, chaste and obedient life,
of the essential values of the kingdom of God, the work they have to
accomplish amongst us is eminently a work of grace, a charism to be
welcomed, and a light which must shine for the sake of the Church.
Priests and religious are not only responsible for the functions and
services of the Church, to which it would be possible to consecrate
oneself partially or for a time. They are truly called to a new life
which is to transform their whole being, in some w a y to re-create it
and to consecrate it for a charismatic mission. Consequently, only
those who have recognized in the depths of their being a movement

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I-IAVE I A VOCATION

of grace impelling them to follow Christ in a particular vocation can

enter upon this way. It is a formidable and blessed choice which sets
some of the faithful apart for the work of the gospel and consecrates
them to the spiritual service of their brothers, placing them on a
lamp-stand, like blazing torches, to light up the whole house. What
is born in the depth of the soul is destined to develop in the light of
the day: the grace received is given to an individual person, but for
the sake of the whole Church; or, more exactly, to the whole Church
in one person, whose life from now on will be transformed by that
choice. We should not, therefore, be surprised to see that the problem of the discernment of vocation affects not only the young men
or women who think they recognize a vocation in themselves, but
also the Church, which will welcome it as a grace. The Church, in
order to live, has need of these graces of vocation; she cannot be
indifferent to the way in which these charisms, these dispositions,
to the priestly or the religious life, are to be recognized and lived.
But she knows as well that here she is in the presence of the mystery
of divine choice, a mystery which is beyond her, and which she must
receive in hope and faith in the Spirit who rules her completely.
Thus the problem of the discernment of vocation brings us to the
very heart of a process of grace which demands a constant reference
to the Holy Spirit, the author of all grace, and to the Church, the
judge of the authenticity of charisms. That is what Pope Pius X I I
recalled most firmly in the apostolic constitution Sedes Sapientiae:
What is called divine vocation, that foundation of all religious life as of all sacerdotal and apostolic life, consists, as
everyone should know, of a twofold essential element, the one
divine, the other ecclesiastical. The first of these elements, the
call by God to the religious or the sacerdotal state, must be
considered as so necessary that, were it lacking, the very
foundation would be lacking on Which the whole building
rests. I-Iim whom God does not call, the grace of God neither
moves nor h e l p s . . .
Turning now to the second element in religious and sacerdotal vocation, according to the teaching of the R o m a n
Catechism, they are said to be called by God who are called
by the legitimate ministers of the Church. That teaching, far
from contradicting our words on the divine character of
vocation, is on the contrary closely linked with them. Because
divine vocation to the religious and clerical state destines

HAVE

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217

him whom it calls to live publicly a life of sanctification and

to exercise a ministry proper to the hierarchy in the Church,
a visible and hierarchial society, the vocation must be approved, admitted and authoritatively ruled by the representatives of that hierarchy to which God has entrusted the government of the Church?
These lines, which express very clearly the thought and practice
of the Church on the subject of sacerdotal and religious vocations,
invite us to distinguish the two essential components of any vocation: divine call and consecration through the Church. Not that
they are to be dissociated, still less opposed to one another. O n the
contrary, they are to be found indissolubly united in that movement
of grace which is vocation, and from their meeting a vocation is
b o r n . Consequently it is this meeting which must be looked for,
verified, and tested in the course of the discernment of a vocation.
The faithful are ready enough to admit at the origin of every
sacerdotal and religious vocation the presence of a particular grace
which operates in the depths of the soul. But some theologians have
been k n o w n to challenge this presentation of vocation. 2 To base
everything on the interpretation of an interior call, they say, is
surely to hand over the sacred functions and the witness of religious
life to the risks of doubtful fervour and deluded generosity. O f course
it could be answered that the help and control of a spiritual director
are there to aid in dissipating illusions and testing fervour; but is
that enough ? Does not the director run the risk of sometimes sharing
the illusions of one whom he knows only through a manifestation
of conscience, which, even unconsciously, might not be entirely true ?
And if he were really prudent, would he ever agree that the will
o f God can be seen in the desire or interior attraction of the soul
which he directs?
These questions are not without foundation, and we shall see
that they presuppose great supernatural prudence in the interpretation of the divine call. But they have no force against the massive
1 Acta Apostollcae &dis, (A.A.S.) I956 pp. 354 ft.
2 E.g. Canon Lahitton in a work entitled La Vocation Sacerdotale (Paris 19o9). Some of
the opinions expressed in this book are still rightly debated, in spite of the partial approbation given to them by the commission of cardinals charged with giving an opinion on
the controversy to which they had given rise (A.A.S., I5 July 1912 , p. 485). I n fact, from
the point of view of roman documents, if we would have the problem set in its true
spiritual climate, and have the discussion removed from narrow and prejudiced positions,
we need to refer to the text of Pins X I I , cited above.

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HAVE I A VOCATION

fact, attested b y scripture and tradition, that no one can aspire to the
priesthood without having been called to it b y God, and t h a t only
those can u n d e r s t a n d truly the spirit of the evangelical counsels to
w h o m this u n d e r s t a n d i n g has been given b y God. 1 In the C h u r c h
of Christ priesthood and religious witness are two charismatic vocations lived in the Spirit and b y the Spirit; to d e n y that would be to
m a k e o f two institutions, essential to the life a n d to the holiness of
the Church, mere sociological functions in the diversity of a hierarchical body. T h e priesthood is certainly a function and religious life
is certainly an institution; b u t b o t h of them, each in its own fashion,
are charismatic and prophetic. 2 It is therefore true that at the origin
of every sacerdotal or religious vocation there is a divine grace which
calls a m a n or a w o m a n to a p a r t i c u l a r mission for the whole b o d y
of the Church.
W h a t is the n a t u r e of t h a t grace? I t is often t h o u g h t of as a n
interior voice which forces itself on the conscience of the one chosen.
T h e reality is more complex and more beautiful. T h a t call can c o m e
in m a n y ways: awareness in G o d and t h r o u g h G o d of the misery a n d
enslavement of a whole people, as for Moses; the discovery of a
personal responsibility in view of God's plan, as for Isaias: ' W h o m
shall I send? W h o shall be our messenger? I answered: H e r e I am.
Send me' ;3 an irresistible feeling t h a t a r e t u r n must be m a d e for
graces received b y the offering of a whole life, as for the psalmist:
' H o w can I r e p a y the L o r d for his goodness to me? T h e cup of
salvation I shall raise; I will call on the Lord's n a m e ' ;~ the p r o f o u n d
compulsion of love which demands dedication to the work of the
Lord, as for Peter and, after him, for so m a n y pastors and apostles;
love's need of likeness, which tore Francis of Assisi f r o m an easy life,
and m a d e Ignatius o f L o y o l a write in his Spiritual Exercises:
' T h o s e who wish to love m o r e . . , will make a more costly offeri n g . . , saying: I wish a n d desire to imitate you b y e n d u r i n g all
injustices and all c o n t e m p t and all p o v e r t y . . , i f y o u r most sacred
Majesty wills to choose me and a d m i t me to that life and that state' ;5
the deep echoes of a gospel phrase which sink into the soul so as to
transform the whole of life, as for A n t h o n y and all those who, follow1 Cf. Heb5, I &4andMtI9, ii.
2 It is not our business here to distinguish them, to show what is specificin each and
how they are complementary. From the point of view of vocation, which alone interests
us here, there is diversityin the specificationofgraces and calls, but profound unity in the
charismatic character of the call. Pope Pins XII stressed that in the text we have quoted.
3 Isai6,8.
4 Ps 115, I2.
~ Exx97-98.

HAVE

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VOCATION

219

ing him, heard the appeal addressed to the rich young man: ' I f you
you want to be perfect, go, sell all you possess, and come, follow
me'. 1 Through all this diversity, it is ultimately one of the faces of
Christ which conquers the soul: the face of Christ poor, for Francis
of Assisi: the face of Christ carrying his cross in the world for the
salvation of men, for Ignatius of Loyola: the face of Christ hidden in
the humility of his condition as an artisan, for Charles de Foucauld:
the face of Christ weeping for the sins of men, for the Curd of Ars.
Stock examples, one may say. But the very fact that they are, shows
that they reveal the charismatic element in vocation which we are
trying to describe. At the end of such different paths there is always
a face of Christ at our point of arrival, a face which conquers the
soul that is called, with a mounting power of seduction, and which
will take full possession of the soul if it is welcomed. From then on
the chosen of God cannot better express what he feels than by taking
up the cry of Jeremiah: 'You have led me away, Lord, and I let
myself be led'. ~
But this is the call which has reached its conclusion, and has been
recognized in its blessed reality: the moment when a h u m a n life
utters its fiat to God in a blaze of light, as at the Annunciation.
Before getting there , the soul will often have a long road to travel.
T h a t face of Christ which will thenceforth be everything in its life
must first be recognized, and his features must gradually be discerned. The stages of that recognition also admit a great diversity.
Sometimes it happens that a veil is torn away, revealing what
suddenly becomes so obvious that the soul is surprised that it has
been so long in the search. More often, it is only by successive
touches, feature by feature, that the portrait is completed: and one
day, without knowing how long it has been so, someone is there
whom we know well and who awaits our assent.
In the one case as in the other, it is from the whole of life that the
light is born. The divine call is not a summons reaching us from outside; it is a recognition in love. It is the history of two lives which
find themselves indissolubly united and desirous of sealing their
coming together with genuine faithfulness. It is therefore in life that
one must look for the signs and premisses of that meeting. It is often
by directing an honest look at their past, at the graces and events
which mark it, that a young man or a young woman will see how the
divine mission, which will henceforth be their vocation, gradually
1 Mt I9,21.

2 Jerno, 7.

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HAVE I A VOCATION

took shape. It was in the heart of their own destiny, in the recognition of the graces which marked their route, that the chosen people
became aware of their vocation. It is the same for each one of us.
Because we kept all these things in our heart, and then, one day,
considered them with an honest mind, we saw God in our life.
Is it necessary then to say that the will of God no longer appears as
something outside us or foreign to us? It harmonises with the profound movement of our life, it makes itself felt as the light illuminating all that is within. To recognize it there is no need of a special
relevation: the calm use of intelligence guided by love is sufficient.
Divine grace and human freedom meet in the same certainty and
the same desire. What a man recognizes as his vocation cannot but be
the will of God; for grace is given to him in the very honesty of his
effort, without his needing to seek elsewhere for the place of his
encounter with God.
This way of recognising, in the depths of my life and of my personal history, a movement, a continuity, a coherence which express
themselves as a call, is not yielding to a subjective attraction open to
many illusions. It is truly making up my mind before God. To deny
that this is possible in all honesty and all truth would be both to
doubt the Holy Spirit and to reject the clear witness of innumerable
lives which have in this way made generous answer to an authentic
call from God. True, here more than ever, life must be guided by the
evangelical counsel of prudence given to the man who wished to
build a tower. 1 To sit down and estimate one's strength means in
practice testing the purity and sincerity of the motives for the proposed decision. Do they really come from the Spirit of Christ, a spirit
of humility, charity, obedience? Are they really characteristic of
what is specific in the vocation envisaged? It is here, perhaps, that
illusions and errors are most frequent. There is a risk of taking as a
call to religious life or to the priesthood what is simply a call to a
more generous and more fervent christian life not directed towards
(as it is often without the qualities for) the priesthood or the religious
life. Advice, prudence and humility are necessary here, to avoid the
illusions of a vague or a presumptuous generosity.
The help of the community of the Church will already play its
part at this level, through the advice of parents or older people who
are genuinely christian, and through the prudent and enlightened
direction of a spiritual father. He, above all, will have t h e duty of
Lk ~4, 28.

HAVE

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22I

guiding the one under his direction in so delicate a choice. In particular he will need to tell him in detail the spiritual characteristics
of the vocation envisaged, aiding him to a clear insight into his
motivations and to a correct interpretation of the graces received.
It is a work of discernment which requires a very frank and honest
dialogue on both sides. The one under direction must hide nothing
of what he is and what he desires, and the director must have the
courage to say with complete frankness what he thinks of the decision envisaged, the motives for it, and the possible obstacles.
The best criterion of judgment will often be the spiritual fruitfulness of the decision, which is a certain sign of its maturity. A good
tree bears good fruit. A choice is good if it leaves the soul in peace, if
it achieves the unification of the whole being in truth: that is to say,
if intellect, feelings and will, if past, present and future, are therein
reconciled and unified in a movement of spiritual progress. There
m a y b e many obstacles stilt to be surmounted, progress still to be
made; b u t the vocation can be considered authentic if it already
appears as the centre round which everything is built in harmony,
with every element of personality and every stage of life finding there
its place and meaning.
Unifying and pacifying for the person who accepts it, the will of
God is light and life for the whole Body of Christ. This is a second
element in estimating the value of a vocation. If it is a faithful
response to an authentic divine call, it will inevitably bear spiritual
fruit; the entire theological life will be enlivened. The constancy of
faith, vigour of hope, and fire of charity will grow in strength and
intensity. The witness borne in one's life will gain in depth and
radiance. The personal charism will now show itself in life as a
source of grace for the whole community. Any vocation which does
not thus express itself in living must be suspected of immaturity or
illusions; for life remains the final criterion of the authenticity of
charisms. Certainly one must keep in mind the candidate's age, and
give his decision time to bear fruit. Delays and times of trial may
prove necessary. But there is here a demand for truth which must not
be neglected, to which director and directed must give their m i n d ?
When a young man or woman, helped, guided and tested by their
spiritual father, have recognized in themselves a call to a charisma1 On this whole question of discernment of vocation and of the judgment to be made of
deep motives, see the valuable book by Fr lZ. Hostie, S..l. Le Discernement de Vocations,
(Descl6e de Brouwer, 1962): The Discernment of Vocations (Geoffrey Chapman, 1963).

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tic vocation, which really seems to come from God because it shows
the spiritual guarantees of maturity and authenticity, they must,
before they can give themselves wholly to the mission in view,
submit their project to the judgment of the Church. It is only the
Church's guarantee that can make of this project a spiritual decision
in which they can be certain of recognizing the will of God. That
judgment of the Church cannot come from the spiritual father alone.
His task, as we have seen, is performed earlier, when there is need of
help and guidance in discernment of the divine call. Now it is for the
bishop and the religious superior, or their delegates, the superior of
the seminary and the master of novices, to pronounce, in the name of
the Church, on thevalue ofthevocation andits deep correspondence
with the mission that it postulates in the Church. That is so,
whether there is question of admitting to the sacred functions of the
priesthood, or to a manner of life officially approved by the Church
as witnessing to her holiness and as a living prophecy of the kingdom
of God. In fact, in both cases, though in different ways, there is
question of a vocation which has an official character in the Church:
a character which is expressed in institutions within the Church,
whose sanctity the Church must promote and protect. She must
therefore reserve access to them only for those who seem to her
capable of truly doing honour in Christ to the mission which will be
entrusted to them. That is a task which the superiors responsible
may not shirk; for it concerns the good of the whole body, the holiness of the Church and its spread.
If they can and ought to take into account the opinion of the spiritual director, they must not put the whole burden on him; for the
role and function of the spiritual father are directed primarily to
the person of the one under direction, to his particular spiritua! benefit and development. It could also be that the spiritual father would
not have a sufficiently wide and exact view of the needs and requirements of the Church. Even if he has, it could be difficult for him to
free himself sufficiently from the view proper to a spiritual father so
as to be capable of a completely objective judgment. Besides, it
would be harmful, in case of refusal, if he bore the responsibility of
it vis-a-vis the one he is directing, who would at that time need all
possible help to accept a painful decision. It belongs, therefore, to
the hierarchical superior to commit the Church, and to give to the
candidate for the priesthood or the religious life the guarantee of her
spiritual au~ha~ity.
In this task the superior knows that his essential role is one of con-

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223

trol and discernment. H e can take note of a call, throw light on it,
and ratify it; it is, however, not he, but Christ by his grace, who
calls and chooses. The word of a superior conferring a mission in the
Church has no spiritual efficacy except through the charism with
which it unites, which it helps to discern, and which it finally declares authentic. To call or Mlow to proceed to priesthood or religious
life candidates in whom one has not taken the trouble to recognize
and test that movement of grace would be to sin against the Spirit,
and at the same time to be guilty of a grave abuse of the confidence
of the faithful, who have a right to count on the presence of genuine
charisms in those who have a sacerdotal or prophetic mission.
Before confirming Peter in his mission, our Lord asked him three
times: 'Peter, do you love me?', and it was only after receiving a
humble and sincere confession of that love that he added: 'Feed my
sheep. '1 Peter's pastoral office demanded that love. Only in that love
is the office given and confirmed. Only in love could it be lived.
Whilst giving his attention to the discernment of God's ways, the
superior must continue to respect their mystery, reminding himself
that God frequently chooses what is weak in order to display his
power, and never seeking to substitute his own ways of seeing or
judging for the sometimes disconcerting ways which the divine
pedagogy will reveal to him. The greater the authority given him
by his experience and his position, the more he must remember that
he remains a servant of the Spirit, a witness to the infinite gratuitousness of divine love.
To play his part in discernment, it is essential for the superior to
have a profound knowledge of the vocation to which he admits the
candidate. He must understand the demands it makes and the graces proper to it, the spiritual climate in which it ought to be lived,
the aptitudes it requires, and the dangers it brings with it. His first
task, in fact, is to enlighten the candidate on the spiritual character
and the role in the Church of the vocation to which he thinks himself called. H e must then as far as he can, verify and test the human
and spiritual aptitudes of the candidate for that vocation. He must
find out if there is the deep conformity and the genuine meeting
between the spiritual ideal incarnate in such a vocation and the
interior movement, the human and spiritual personality seen in the
candidate. It is this conformity which enables the superior to confirm,
with his full authority, the candidate, s desire and to make of it a
1 J n ~ I , 17.

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true vocation. If, in all prudence and humility of judgment, he does

not find that profound correspondence, he should refuse or postpone
admission, and help the candidate to understand his error of interpretation, or the insufficient maturity of his decision. The superior's
task is to bring about the confrontation of a personal grace and a
charism lived institutionally in tile Church, in order to help them to
recognize one another. He must therefore be on his guard against
making facile and superficial equiparations: 'He's a good b o y . . .
t h e r e f o r e . . . ' ; and he must admit only those conjunctions where the
whole spiritual personality of the candidate, and not just this or that
good desire, is deeply united with the spirit of a religious Order or of
a sacred function. Here also the ultimate criterion is the deep harmony of two graces: that which is discerned in the candidate, and
that which is alive in the Order or the function. It is in that encounter, in actual fact, that the true Spirit of Christ which builds up
the Church into unity is revealed.
Thus, to the question which we asked at the beginning of this
article, 'Have I a vocation?', it is possible to give an answer which
is not an imprudent wager in face of a difficult future, but a spiritual
choice founded on the faithfulness of the Lord who calls, and on the
power of his grace recognized in the life of a man or a woman. The
ways of God go beyond us because they are the expression of a love
whose grandeur will always astonish us, but they are part of the
daily life of the Church and of every christian. It is therefore possible
humbly to recognize them. The effort to do so must often be slow and
patient, and it may have its share of uncertainty and painful hesitation; but eventually it will issue into the light. 'He who lives the
truth comes to the light', was our Lord's reminder to Nicodemus
who had come to question him in the night of his doubts; 1 and this
promise comes true for all those who honestly try to order their life
according to the will of God. To the young man and woman who
have thus been able to recognize God's call and welcome it into
their lives, who have humbly submitted that grace to the judgment
of the Church, the ways of God will appear finally as a blessing: a
blessing that is austere and demanding, but which already has
within it all the promises of life which the Lord's faithfulness guarantees for ever.

j n 3, 21"

SCRIPTURE

READING

THE BIBLE AND THE ROSARY

L L Y the rosary was intended to be a simple way of contemplaO RtingI G ItheN Amysteries
of Christ. O u r attitude towards them is m e a n t to be that
of the Mother of God who shared her Son's life a n d 'kept all these things in her
heart' pondering them i n the silence of deep faith. Each mystery has a biblical
content that can assist our daily recitation of the rosary a n d make it a refreshm e n t of the spirit rather t h a n a duty to be performed. During our retreat we
m a y hope to imitate the faith of Mary, and penetrate more deeply into the
mysteries of her Son. The following suggestions indicate some of the ways in
which the bible can help the prayer of the rosary a n d how the rosary can
lead to a deeper understanding of the bible.

T H E A N N U N C I A T I O N . Lk I, 26-38.
Theme of joy.

Sing aloud, O daughter of Sion!

Rejoice a n d exult with all your heart,
O daughter of Jerusalem.
T h e K i n g of Israel is in your midst;
You shall fear evil no more

Zeph 3, I 4 - I 5 .

Give us, Lord, a surer understanding of the mysteries of the true faith,
so that we shall recognise as true God a n d true m a n him whom the
Virgin conceived. M a y the power of his resurrection make us worthy
to attain eternal happiness.
Secret prayer March 25.
THEMES
I.

FOR

MEDITATION

The 'annunciations' o f t he Old Testament

. . . . to Abraham 'the father o f all those who believe' : 'Look toward heaven,
a n d n u m b e r the stars, if you are able to n u m b e r them. T h e n he said
to him, So shall your descendents be. A n d he believed the Lord a n d
he reckoned it to him as righteousness' Gen 15, I - I I.
. . to Sarah: 'Is anything too wonderful to the Lord?' Gen 18, i - i 4.
. . to David: 'His throne shall be established forever. H o s a n n a h to the
Son of David'. I Chr I7, 3-15.
. . . . to Isaiah: 'Behold a Virgin shall conceive a n d bear a son, a n d his
n a m e shall be called E m m a n u e l ' . Isai 7, IO-I5. Cf M t I, 22-23.
. . to Zachary and Elizabeth: 'He will go before him in the spirit a n d
power of Elias to make ready for the Lord a people prepared'
Lk i, 5-25.

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SCRIPTURE

READING

The 'vocations' of the Old Testament

of Abraham: 'Go from your country and your kindred and your
father's house to the land that I will show you. Gen 12, 1- 4.
of Moses: 'Who a m I that I should go to Pharaoh a n d bring the
sons of Israel out of Egypt?' Exod 3.
of Amos: 'The Lord took me from following the flock and the Lord
said to me, Go prophesy to my people Israel' Amos 7, 15.
of Isaiah: ' A n d he said, Go, a n d say to this p e o p l e . . . ' Isai 6, 9of Jeremiah: 'Jeremiah, to all to whom I shall send you, you shall
go.' Jer i, 7.
of Ezechiel: 'Ezechiel, son of man, go, get you to the house of
Israel'. Ezek 3, I, 4.

Each vocation entails a mission to the people of God, the exigencies of that
mission are implied in the command - Go. The response to the vocation is
an act of faith in obedience to the command. Mary sums all this up in her
'Be it done unto me according to thy word', which echoes the etemaI Fiatof the Son come to fulfil his own mission.

tn the liturgy the Church usespsalm 43for thefeast of the Annunciation. This royal
wedding song expresses the joy and the exigencies of the mystery of vocation:
Listen O daughter give ear to m y words;
forget your own people and your Father's house.
So will the King desire your beauty:
He is your Lord, pay homage to him.
She is led to the king with her m a i d e n companions.
They are escorted amid gladness and joy;
they pass within the palace of the King.
T H E V I S I T A T I O N . Lk I, 39-45

Theme of joy.
W h e n the voice of your greeting came to m y ears the babe in my womb
leapt for joy. A n d Mary said, M y soul magnifies the Lord a n d my
spirit exults in God my Saviour. Lk I, 44, 46.
M a y the h u m a n i t y of your only Son be our salvation, Lord; his birth
did not destroy but instead consecrated the virginal integrity of his
mother; on this feast of the Visitation may he cleanse us from our sins
so as to make our sacrifice acceptable to you. Secret firayer July 2.
THEMES FOR MEDITATION
I,

The visitation of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.

A n d David and all the house of Israel were making merry before the
Lord with all their might 2 Sam 6, 1-19. CfPss 67, 25ff; 131, 6-IO,
13-14; I5O, 3-5-

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2.

READING

227

The Lord's visitation brings universalpeace.

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down
with the k i d . . , for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the
Lord as the waters cover the sea. Isai I I, I-IO.
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings
good tidings, who publishes peace, who announces salvation, who says
to Sion - Your God reigns. Hark, your watchmen lift up their voice,
together they sing for joy, for eye to eye they see the return of the Lord
to Sion. Isai 52, 7-I i.

3.

The Lord's visitation is like the coming of spring.

The voice of m y beloved! Behold he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the h i l l s . . , the winter is past, the rain is over
and gone. Cant 2, 8 - I 3.

4.

John the Baptist the herald of the Lord.

T h e voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the
Lord, make his paths straight. Lk 3, 4.
A n d this is the testimony of J o h n . . . he confessed, he did not deny
b u t confessed, I a m not the Christ. J n I, I9-23.
T H E B I R T H O F C H R I S T . Lk 2, i-2o.

Theme of joy.
Shout to the Lord of all the earth, ring out your joy. Ps 97, 4, used in

the third Mass of Christmas.

O God, you have made the brighmess of the true light shine out u p o n
this most holy night; may we, to whom you have given light to know
his mystery on earth, also share in his joy in the glory of heaven.

Collect of Midnight Mass.

THEMES FOR MEDITATION
I.

The historical birth of Christ:

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are little to be among the
clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler
in Israel. Mic 5, I-5.
I n those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the
world should be enrolled. Lk 2, I-2o. The gospelreading at Midnight Mass.
W h e n the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
Gal 4, I-7.
He dispossessed himself a n d took the nature of a slave, fashioned in the
likeness of m e n and~ presenting himself to us in h u m a n form.
Phil 2, 6-I I.

SCRIPTURE READING

228
2.

The mystery of the God-man in whom we become like God.

A son, who is the radiance of his Father's splendour, and the full expression of his being; all creation depends for support on his enabling
w o r d . . . The Son who sanctifies a n d the sons who are sanctified have a
c o m m o n origin. H e b I, I-2, 13.
I t was through him that all things came into b e i n g . . . All who
welcomed him, he empowered to become children of G o d . . . Through
Jesus Christ grace came to us a n d truth. J n I, I - I 8 .
Those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of
the S p i r i t . . . All who are led b y the Spirit are sons of God. R o m 8,
I-I7.

3"

Rebirth through baptism.

W h a t we once were a n d what we now are: through 'the goodness a n d
loving-kindness of G o d our Saviour'. T i t 3, I-7. C f J n 3, 3-8.

4"

Christ the light of the world.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great l i g h t . . , for to
us a child is born. Isai 9, 2, 6.
I a m the light of the world. H e who follows me can never walk in
darkness; he will possess the fight which is life. J n 8, I2.
T h y word is a l a m p to m y feet and a fight to m y path. Ps I I 8 , IO5.
You O Lord are m y lamp, m y G o d who lightens m y darkness.
Ps I7, 29.
F o r w h a t we preach is not ourselves b u t Jesus Christ as Lord, with
ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For it is the G o d who said,
Let light shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of G o d in the face of Christ.
2 Cor 4, 5- 6 . Cf Gen I, 3; Isai 9, 2.
T h e city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the g l o w of
G o d is its light, and its l a m p is the L a m b . By its light shall the nations
walk a n d the kings of the earth shall bring their g l o w into i t . . .
Apoc 2I, 22-27.
Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has
risen upon you. Isai 6o, i.

T H E P R E S E N T A T I O N I N T H E T E M P L E . Lk 2, 22-40.

Theme of joy.
O G o d we ponder your love within your temple. Your praise, O G o d
like your name, reaches to the end of the earth.
-With justice your right h a n d is filled.
M o u n t Sion rejoices;

SCRIPT

URE

READING

229

T h e people of J u d a h rejoice at the sight of your judgements.

Ps 47 : Introit and gradual psalm on Feb. 2.
Almighty a n d eternal God, we h u m b l y beg your Majesty that we m a y
follow your only Son who today was presented in the temple in the
reality of our flesh, a n d be presented to you with hearts that are purified. Collect Feb. 5.
THEMES
I.

FOR

MEDITATION

Christ the true temple: God will come to establish a new liturgy agreeable in
his sight. M a l 3, 1-4.
T a k e these things away, you shall not make m y Father's house a house
of trade. His disciples remembered that it was written, Zeal for thy
house will consume me. J n 2, 13-22. Cf Ps 68, 9.
T h e hour is coming, a n d now is, when the true worshippers will
worship the F a t h e r in spirit a n d truth. J n 4, 21-24.
W h e n Christ came into the world he said: Sacrifices a n d offerings
thou hast not desired, but a b o d y thou hast prepared for me; in b u r n t
offerings a n d sin offerings thou hast taken no pleasure. T h e n I said,
Lo, I h a v e come to do thy will O God. H e b 9, 6 - I 4 . C f P s 39, 6-8.
You are fellow citizens of the saints a n d members of the household of
God, built upon the foundations of the apostles a n d prophets, Christ
Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone. E p h 2, 19-22.

2.

Consecration to the service of God.

T h e Lord's is the earth a n d its fullness, the world and all its peoples.
Ps 23.
The Lord said to Moses, Consecrate to me all the first born; whatever
is first to open the w o m b among the people of Israel, both of m a n a n d
of beast is mine. Exod 13, 1-16.
As Jesus was speaking to the multitude, a certain w o m a n from the
crowd raised her voice a n d said to him, Blessed is the w o m b t h a t bore
you and the breasts that you sucked. But he said, Blessed rather are
those who hear the word of G o d and keep it. Lk I I, 27-28.
T H E F I N D I N G I N T H E T E M P L E . Lk 2, 42-52.

Theme of joy.
Cry out with j o y to the Lord, all the earth!
Serve the L o r d with gladness. Ps 99.
I n your divine goodness, Lord, answer the prayers of your people who
cry out to you; give them sight of what they have to do a n d the
strength to do what they have seen. Collect ~st Sunday after Epiphany.

23

SCRIPTURE
THEMES

FOR

READING
MEDITATION.

All who heard him were amazed at his understanding.

H e who believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent m e . . .
I have not spoken on m y own authority; the Father who sent me has
himself given me c o m m a n d m e n t what to say and what to speak.
J n I2, 44-5o.
I have given them the words which thou gavest me, a n d they have
received them and know in truth that I came from thee. J n 17, 6-8,
24-26.
W e i m p a r t the secret a n d hidden wisdom of God. I Cor 2, 6 - I 6 .

2.

The holy Family.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved c h i l d r e n . . . Wives be subj e c t to your husbands. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the
Church a n d gave himself u p for h e r . . . Children obey your parents
in the L o r d . . . Fathers do not provoke your children to anger. E p h 5,
2 i - 6 , 4Your wife hke a fruitful vine in the heart of your house
Your children like shoots of the olive around your t a b l e . Ps I27.

TEXTS
Aelred of Rievaulx is one of the most lovable personalities in the history of English
spirituality. The prayer we offer here in translation reveals him at his best. It must have
been no easy task in that tough and brutal age to govern a monastery, and Aelred had his
critics. But the picture which remains is of a man consumed with charity and compassion.
His biographer and enthusiastic admirer, Walter Daniel, who lived for seventeenyears
under Aelred's rule, has left this impression of Rievaulx ; 'He (Aelred) turned the house
of Rievaulx into a strongholdfor sustaining the weak, and nourishing the strong and
whole; it was the home of peace and of piety in thefuUest possession of the love of God
and neighbour. Was there ever anyone, no matter how despised and rejected, who did not
find there a place of refuge? Was there ever anyone who came there in his weakness and
did not find a father's love in Aelred and the help he needed in the brethren? So it was
that monks in need of brotherly understanding and compassionflocked to Rievaulx from
foreign nations and from the ends of the earth... Aelred would say:
All, whether weak or strong, must find in Rievaulx a place of peace, and there like fish
in spacious waters, possess the welcome, joyous, unconstrained peace of charity...
The house that refuses to support the weak is not to be regarded as a house of religion'.

I.

The Prayer of a Superior

]~Esus, good shepherd, you tend your flock with kindness, merciful love
J and fatherly care. Here is another shepherd, pitiful and needing pity, who
cries out to you. I n spite of his weakness, ignorance a n d uselessness, he is still
in some sort a shepherd of your sheep. To you, good shepherd, this ungodly
shepherd makes anxious appeal for himself and for your sheep.
W h e n with bitterness of soul I reflect o n m y early years as shepherd, the
very title fills me with fear and trembling. I f I do nor realise that I a m wholly
unworthy of it, I a m a fool indeed. You show p a r d o n and merciful love according to your good pleasure; your forgiveness of sins is such that there is neither
condemnation nor vengeance, discomfiture nor censure, withdrawal of love
nor accusation. Your holy a n d steadfast love for me is such that you rescued
m y miserable soul from the depths of hell. Yet though I realise your goodness,
I a m filled with confusion a n d distress in the awareness of m y ingratitude.
Here, then, is the confession m y heart makes to you, a tale of countless sins,
from whose power you have delivered m y u n h a p p y soul by your merciful
decree. For all these blessings I offer you all the praise a n d thanksgiving of
which m y heart is capable. But I a m equally indebted to you because there
are sins I have not committed; for whatever evil I have avoided has been
wholly through your guidance; for you removed the opportunity, or straightened m y crooked will, or gave me the power to resist.
But w h a t of the innumerable occasions, Lord m y God, when in accordance

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with your jnst decree you still permit your servant, the son of your handmaid,
to be wearied or overthrown? For m y sinful soul reveals its anxiety in your
presence, though not with the sorrow and care which my nesessity should
demand a n d m y will should seek.
So I confess to you, my Jesus, m y saviour, m y hope a n d solace; to you, m y
God, I confess that I a m not so sorrowful nor fearful for the past, nor so
solicitous for the present, as t ought to be. A n d yet, dear Lord, into my keeping
you have given your household and the sheep of your pasture. You bid me,
who am so untroubled for myself, to be anxious for them: who a m utterly
incapable of praying for m y own sins, to pray fo r them: who have taught
myself so little, to teach them. Wretch that I am, what have I done? W h a t
presumption have I shown? How could I have consented? O r rather, dear
Lord, why did you consent to choose such a wretch? Is not this your household, dear Lord, your own people whom you succeeded in bringing out of
Egypt, whom you created and redeemed? A n d finally, y o u have brought
them together from every quarter of the earth, and made them to dwell with
one accord in your house. W h y then, source of kindly mercy, did you decide
to entrust those who are so dear to you to someone like me, an outcast from
your favour? Did you wish to concur with m y inclinations to enslave me to
my desires, that I might undergo your sterner accusations and your more
relentless condemnation, that you might punish me not only for m y sins but
also for those of others? Was it right, most kindly father, to expose so m a n y
precious souls to danger so that it might become clearer why a single sinner
should be punished so severely? W h a t could be more perilous for subjects than
a stupid a n d sinful superior? But your great kindness suggests a reason more
worthy of belief and m o r e p a l a t a b l e ; have you subjected your household to a
m a n like me so that your mercy may shine forth a n d your wisdom be known?
A n d that your transcending strength, which has no h u m a n source, may govern your household well through such a one as me, if that should be your
gracious pleasure? So 'let not the wise m a n glory in his wisdom nor the just
m a n in his righteousness, nor the strong m a n in his might' (Jet 9,23); for
when these govern your people well, you are governing rather than they. So it
is written, 'not unto us, Lord, not unto us, but unto your n a m e the glory'
(Ps 1 I3, 9).
But whatever your reasons were for giving or allowing m e , an unworthy
sinner, to be given this office, still, for as long as you permit me to rule them,
you c o m m a n d me to take care of them and to pray all the more earnestly for
them. So, Lord, it is not in the consciousness of my merits b u t of your m a n y
mercies that I pour out m y prayers in your presence. A n d where my merits
are dumb, m y office cries out for me. So let your eyes be upon me, and your
ears hear my prayer. But since, according to the divine law, a priest is b o u n d
to offer sacrifice first for himself and then for the people, it is for m y sins first
that I offer to your Majesty this poor sacrifice of m y prayer.
See, Lord, my soul's wounds. For your gaze penetrates all things, is living
a n d active, piercing to the division of soul and spirit. M y Lord, you surely see

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233

in m y soul the traces of past sins, the perils of present ones, a n d the source a n d
opportunity of future sins. You see these, O Lord, and I want you to see them.
F o r you, who look into m y heart, know that I would desire nothing in m y
soul to escape your eyes, even if I could avoid their scrutiny. W o e to them
who wish to be hidden from you. T h e y succeed in avoiding not your gaze, b u t
rather your healing a n d your chastisement. Look at me, d e a r Lord, look at
me. M y hope is in your fatherly love a n d great mercy, for you will look at m e
like a kindly doctor to heal me, or like a most benevolent master to correct
me, or like a most forgiving father to p a r d o n me.
So, trusting in your all powerful mercy a n d your merciful omnipotence, O
source of fatherly love, I ask you, b y the power of your most sweet name a n d
the mystery of your sacred humanity, to absolve me of m y sins and heal the
sickness of m y soul. Be mindful not of ray ingratitude, b u t of your goodness.
M a y your sweet grace endow me with courage a n d strength against sins a n d
wicked passions. F o r these still war on my soul because of m y long-standing
evil ways, or because of those innumerable day-to-day sins of omission, or
because of the weakness of m y debased a n d vile nature, or because of the
insidious temptation of wicked spirits. Let me not give consent to tl~em; let
me refuse to offer to them m y limbs as the weapons of iniquity; instead, completely cure m y diseasesand heal m y wounds a n d straighten m y deformities.
M a y your kind, sweet Spirit enter m y heart, a n d prepare for himself a lodging
there, cleansing it of all bodily a n d spiritual defilement, a n d instilling in it
the growth of faith, hope and charity, of compunction, filial love a n d kindness. M a y he quench with the dew of his blessing the heat of m y evil desires,
a n d with his strength mortify m y lustful emotions a n d m y fleshly feelings. M a y
he bring me fervour and true discretion in m y labouring, watching, a n d fasting,
so that I m a y love a n d praise you, p r a y to a n d think on you. M a y he make
m y every act a n d every thought according to your will, instilling devotion
a n d fulfilment a n d perseverance in all these actions to the end of m y life.
All this is essential for me, O m y hope, on m y own account. There are other
things I need, not simply for myself, but also for those whom you bid me not
so much to govern as to serve. One of the men of old once asked that wisdom
b e given him to enable him to rule your people. H e was asking, his words were
pleasing in your sight, you heard his p r a y e r ; a n d you h a d not yet died on the
cross; you h a d not yet given proof of your marvellous love to your people.
Here, dear Lord, here in your presence, are your own chosen people; your
cross is before their eyes, the memorial of your passion is amongst them. T o
rule them is the charge you have given to this sinner, your poor servant. You
know m y witlessness, O m y G o d ; m y weakness is not hidden from you. I ask,
dear Lord, not for gold, silver, or precious stones, b u t for the wisdom which will
enable me to rule Your people. Sofirce of wisdom, send forth from the throne
of your power the wisdom that will be with me, that will toil a n d travail
with me. Let it speak in me a n d order all m y thoughts, words, works a n d
counsels according to your good pleasure a n d for the honour of your name,
for your people's profit and for m y salvation.

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TEXTS

Lord, you know m y heart and its desire; whatever you have given your
servant, all is to be spent on them, spent for their sakes. And more. With all
my heart I would spend myself for them. Let it happen so, Lord. My feelings
and m y words, my recreation and m y business, m y doing and my thinking,
my successes and m y setbacks, m y life and my death, m y health and my sickness; whatever I am, in m y living, m y awareness and my discernment, let it
all be spent on them and for them. You did not think yourself too grand to
spend yourself for them; and I, Lord, am your servant. Teach me, then, teach
me I beg you, through your holy Spirit, how to spend myself on them and for
them. Enable me, Lord, through your ineffable grace, to support with patience the burden of their weakness, to have a father's compassion, to judge
and help their needs truly. M a y I learnfrom your teaching Spirit to comfort
them in their distress, to strengthen them when they are faint of heart, to lift
them up when they fall; when they are weak to share their weakness, when
they are scandalised, to be properly indignant; to be all things to all men, so as
to win them all. Put convincing words of truth and righteousness in m y
mouth, to build them up in faith, hope and charity, in chastity and humility,
in patience and obedience, in true spiritual fervour and interior devotion.
You have given them a leader who is blind, a teacher who has learnt
nothing, a director who knows nothing; so for their sakes, then, i f not for
mine, teach him whom you have given them as teacher, lead him whom you
have bidden lead them, direct him whom you have appointed their director.
T e a c h me, then, dear Lord, to steady the unbalanced, to give strength to
faint hearts, to support the weak. Teach me to accommodate myself to each
one's nature, character, affections, capabilities and simplicity, according to
time and place, as you yourself see to be for the best. Whether it is because of
the weakness of m y flesh or my spirit's faint-heartedness or m y heart's evil
disposition, my efforts, vigils, abstinences do little or nothing to build them
up; then let my compassion, humility, charity and patience do so, through
your own unbounded mercy. M a y my words and instructions edify them;
and may m y prayer always assist them;
You are our merdiful God. Listen to me, because my duty compels me to
pray to you on their behalf, and m y affection for them and the thought of
your own loving-kindness persuade me to such prayer. Dear Lord, you know
how I love them, how m y heart bleeds for them, how all my love is poured out
over them. You know, m y Lord, that i a m not spiritually austere or forceful
enough to command them. But you know how, in m y love , I want to help
them rather than to rule over them, to put myself beneath them in meekness,
to be, in love, among tliem, as one of them. Listen, Lord m y God, listen to
me; keep watch over them day and night, spread over them the wings of your
deep fatherly love and protect them. Raise your holy hand in blessing upon
them; fill their hearts with your holy Spirit, who will preserve them in unity
of spirit and in the bond of peace, in bodily purity and humility of heart.
M a y he be at their side when they pray, and fill their hearts full with the
plentiful richness of your love. May he refresh their consciousness with gentle

TEXTS

235

compunction, and bring the light of your grace to their hearts. May he raise
them with hope, keep them lowly with fear, fire them with love. Let him
whisper to them the prayers which it is your merciful wish to answer. May
he, your gentle Spirit, be in them when they meditate, so that they may recognise you in his light; and keep always present before them him on whom
they may call in every difficulty and consult in every doubt. When they
wrestle with temptation, may he, the loving Strengthener, come to their
assistance; and in all the vicissitudes and troubles of this life may he support
their weakness. Through the workings of your Spirit, dear Lord, may they be
peaceable, sweetly reasonable and truly loving in themselves, towards each
other, and towards me. May they obey each other, serve each other, bear
each other's burdens. May they have a truly fervent spirit, joyful in hope,
patient and constant in poverty and fasting, in toil and in keeping vigil, in
silence and rest. Drive from their hearts, Lord, the spirit of pride and vainglory, of envy and sadness, of sloth and blasphemy, of despair and despondency,
of fornication and unclearmess, of presumption and discord.
Be, then, always in their midst, according to your faithful promise. Because
you know the needs of each one, I ask you to make firm what is unstable in
them, not to abandon them in their weakness, to heal them in their sickness,
to bring joy to their sadness, to fire with zeal their tepidity, to shore up what
is tottering, so that they may realise in all their temptations and necessities
that your grace is not wanting to them.
As for those temporal benefits which sustain the weakness of the poor body
in this wretched life, provide for your servants according to your own will and
discretion. One thing alone, Lord, I ask of your most sweet and fatherly love;
in all their needs, great and small, make me, your servant, a faithful minister,
a wise distributor, a prudent provider of all that you give. Inspire them, Lord,
when you do not give, to endure this patiently; and when you do give, to use
your gifts with moderation. May they always believe and truly experience at
my hands what is profitable to them. May they love and fear me, who am
your servant and theirs for your sake, in the way in which you see is good
for them.
I commend them to your holy hands, into your fatherly providential care;
that no-one may snatch them from you nor from your servant into whose care
you have given them. May they continue to fulfil your holy will, and by their
perseverance win eternal life from you, our most dear Lord, who live and
reign for ever. Amen.
The Oratio Pastoralis of St Aelred of Rievaulx' Ms 34, ft. 97r-99 r, Jesus
College, Cambridge.

SPIRITUAL

VOCABULARY

H~ word meditation, writes a modern author, 'is closely akin to mental

p r a y e r and m a y even be considered a form of it'. Another author entitles
a chapter ' M e n t a l Prayer' a n d begins, ' M e n t a l prayer or m e d i t a t i o n . . . '
These two quotations are symptomatic of the confusion reigning over the
meaning of the term meditation. T h e same confusion is found when one seeks
for the exact meaning of the word contemplation, which is often used as a
synonym for meditation. Confusion is worse confounded when one searches for
the exact difference between vocal and mental prayer; a n d the last straw is
placed on the camel's back when during a retreat one is instructed to reflect
on one's meditation. H o w does this reflection differ from meditation? A n d is
there any difference between reflection and consideration?
T h e Dictionnaire de Spiritualitd spends five hundred and fifty solid columus
of print on the article Contemplation, and will p r o b a b l y spend as m a n y on
the subject of Mdditation, but most of us have little time to read all this valuable
historical research. However, such scholarly investigation reveals that we must
tread warily, for the danger of over-simplification is great. W e hope that the
following analysis will provide some useful pointers.

C O N T E M P L A T I O N is derived from temple, which was originally an open

place for observation used for augury. It is the notion of observation which
remains as the basic idea of contemplation. St. Augustine calls it an illumination of the soul which draws the soul to the things of God. St. Bernard
describes it as a sure and true insight of the soul. R i c h a r d of St. Victor defines
it as an admirifig gaze of the soul on the things of God. H u g h of St. Victor
refers to the perspicacity of the intellect. One thing seems to be clear: contemplation has to do with looking; and this indeed is the meaning of the rare
latin w o r d contemplator - an observer or surveyor, and also the root idea of the
traditional greek word for contemplation, theoria. T o this idea of gazing or
looking we m a y a d d another. Contemplation is an over-all View, it sees its
object globally, it is the bird's eye view of an object which one can take when
one is sure of all its details. Hence the stress in m a n y of the definitions of
contemplation on the notion of truth a n d certainty as the object of contemplation.
M E D I T A T I O N denotes a different activity of the spirit, that of exercising
its powers on an object. T h e latin meditari was often used in the same sense as
exercitare. Unfortunately, this applying of oneself has often been interpreted
in a rationalising sense; and meditation is sometimes presented as a purely
intellectual operation h a r d l y distinguished from study. I n fact, meditation
m a y be described as the search for a viewpoint from which one can contemplate. Hence meditation is called discursive prayer, precisely because in it
m a n exercises his powers of imagination, memory, intellect and will in the
search for an observation point where he can rest.

SPIRITUAL VOCABULARY

237

Thus meditation a n d contemplation complement each other; a n d it is

possible that in one hour's p r a y e r there m a y be a mixture of meditation and
contemplation.
V O C A L A N D M E N T A L P R A Y E R . T h e distinction between vocal and
mental p r a y e r is a clumsy one. One of the surest guides in this matter is St.
Teresa of Avila, who defines mental prayer as 'nothing b u t a loving intercourse, frequent conversation in solitude, with him who knows we love'.
Vocal p r a y e r is the use of a fixed formula of words, e.g. the O u r F a t h e r :whereas in mental p r a y e r the words are either spontaneous or even quite unformulated. Both in vocal a n d mental prayer an attention of the whole person to
G o d is essential, since the mere parrot-like repetition of a formula is not a
prayer. Thus it is possible to speak of meditative a n d contemplative vocal
prayer; a n d it would be wrong to regard vocal p r a y e r as a n obstacle to
meditation o r contemplation.
R E F L E C T I O N a n d C O N S I D E R A T I O N are, properly speaking, not
p r a y e r b u t the preparation for prayer or its aftermath. T h e y are concerned
with investigating truths or mysteries in order to discover the ideas which will
form the matter of prayer. Reflection a n d consideration are rather intellectual
processes than actual prayer, where the emphasis will be p u t upon the affections of the heart a n d will. Reflection a n d consideration imply a detachment
from the subject under consideration; whereas p r a y e r is always a commitm e n t to and an engagement of oneself in the subject of prayer.

RECOMMENDED

READING

S C R I P T U R E . The Text of the New Testament, by Bruce M. Metzger; is an

informative study of the science and art of textual criticism and their application to the greek text of the New Testament. An excellent instrument of
work for the student, it will be a long time before it is replaced as a basic
work on textual criticism.
Early Christian Rhetoric, by Amos N. Wilder, examines the form and modes
o f the early christian utterance. Mr. Wilder sets out to show that the content
of Christ's message moulded and directed the way in which it was proclaimed
both by himself and his followers. Various of these forms are anlysed: the
dialogue, the story, the parable, the poem, with the object of gaining a deeper
understanding of Christ and his message. The value of the author's approach
can be seen in the last chapter on Image, Symbol and Myth, where he has
some very sound observations to make on the subject of demythologizing and
its abuse.
Enjoying the Wisdom Books has all the qualities of Margaret Monro's previous
introductions to scripture study. Her approach is simple and down-to-earth,
and she does not confuse the would-be student with too many technicalities.
An excellent book for beginners, which will make them want to read more.
A knowledge of the historical background of the bible is essential for a true
understanding of the text. Unfortunately most of the works dealing with that
background are expensive and often very technical. We are grateful to
Fr. Leonard Johnstone for giving a very competent, easily readable, and
inexpensive History of Israel. It is a valuable addition to existing literature
on the bible.
Scripture Services by Fr. J o h n Gallen S.J., provides fifteen bible themes
arranged for use as church services. The arrangement is excellent, as is the
introduction of titanic prayer using phrases from scripture. The author has
used the scheme of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius as a guide to his
thematic selection, so t h a t these services can be easily incorporated into a
retreat as well as into the liturgical year. A worthwhile project very well
executed. Also from the Liturgical Press, Collegeville, come two useful
pamphlets by Dr. Plus Parsch, The Parish Bible Class and Learning to Read the
Bible, the latter a reprint from the November issue of The Bible Today.
Turning to God, by William Barclay, is a study of the idea of conversion in
the New Testament. I n so far as it deals with scripture, the study is good, but
the application of that analysis relies too much o n the technique of citing
edifying examples, in the Moody and Sankey tradition.
Paul on Preaching, by Jerome M u r p h y - O ' C o n n o r O.P., is a very solid and
thorough piece of New Testament scholarship, which examines Paul's
preaching to non-believers. It has an immediate application for those engaged
in catechefical work; and this analysis of the content of preaching a n d the

RECOMMENDED READING

239

function of the preacher helps greatly towards a deeper understanding of the

ministry and liturgy of the word. This work has all the marks of a doctorate
thesis and does not make easy reading: but the effort is well worth while.
T H E O L O G Y . For long St. Bonaventure has been overshadowed by his
illustrious contemporary St. Thomas Aquinas. But Bonaventure deserves to
be studied as a theologian in his own right, as Fr. Bougerol indicates in his
Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure. This study gives an outline of the main
influences on Bonaventure and situates him in his Franciscan background,
and fulfils a need as a standard work of reference.
Sense, Nonsense and Christianity, by Hugo Meynell, is a penetrating analysis
of the criticism of religious belief by contemporary empiricist philosophy.
T h e value of the book is that it meets this criticism on a purely philosophical
and logical level. It is not written for any apologetic purpose, but as an
honest search for truth; a n d it fully achieves that aim. The author deals
competently with the relationship between philosophy and theology; and
his analyses reveal the essential elements of religious truth with a clarity
which is all too rare. This is an important work which deserves the serious
attention of philosophers and theologians.
One of the more interesting of recent symposia is New Horizons in Catholic
Thought, the work of a group of american clergy and laity. The topics cover
scripture, liturgy, moral theology, psychology, theology of the laity, and
sociology. The level of the contributions is that of popularisation, and most
of the contributors are content to assess facts. It is regrettable that there is
nothing about the renewal in dogmatic theology: a subject which could
have served to give greater coherence to the whole. Although the book adds
nothing original to any of the subjects treated, it will help those who wish to
know whav aggiornamento is about.
Theology and the University, edited by J o h n Coulson, is the latest of the
Downside Symposia in which Anglicans, Free Churchmen, and Catholics
collaborated to investigate the need for theology in university education and
the need theology has of a university setting flit is not to remain sterile. T h e
book is concerned mainly with the English scene, but there are two chapters
dealing respectively, with the american and continental universitites. The
issues discussed should be the preoccupation of every professor and student
of theology, and indeed of anyone engaged in university education. Honesty
and depth characterise the various contributions.
Basic Readings in Theology, edited by A. D. Galloway, gives readings from
twenty christian theologians from Irenaeus to Kierkegaard by way of Origen,
Augustine , Luther, Wesley, H e g e l and Newman a n d others. The selection,
to say the least, is heterodox and even though each individual reading iis
interesting in itself, it seems rather pointless to group them all together in a
book without providing a m o r e definite guiding line than that given in the
too brief Introduction. To say that 'The readings have tended to form a loose
unity round a christological and soteriological centre of interest' (p. I o) and

240

RECOMMENDED READING

leave it at that does not justify the selection of either the authors or the
extracts.
The Minister of Christ, b y J . M. Perrin, O.P., is a study of the priesthood
which does not live up to the promise of its Preface. There is too much
verbiage in the book; and the reflections on the priesthood, even though they
are true, add nothing to existing literature on the subject. In contrast, Saisi
par la Charitd de Dieu, by A. Simonet, is a serious effort to define more closely
the spirituality and role of the diocesan priest in view of the changing
situation of the world. This is really a well thought out study of the theology
of the priesthood, and priests will find it most helpful. We hope that it will
soon be translated. L'Episcopat dans l'Eglise is a serious theological study on
the priestly ministry. Canon Anciaux sets out to show the dimensions of the
questions concerning the episcopacy which are being debated at the Vatican
Council. His exposd is brief and clear, and he raises all the important points
and lines of reflection. A most helpful b o o k - all the more so for its admirable
brevity.
M A R I O L O G Y . Two important works on mariology have been published
recently: Mary, Archetype of the Church, by Otto Semmelroth, S.J., and Ma~y,
Mother of the Lord, Figure of the Church, by M a x Thurian, the well known
protestant theologian and prior of the abbey of Taiz6. Both are excellent and
largely complementary. Fr. Semmelroth approaches his subject as a dogmatic theologian writing within the context of marian controversy amongst
catholic .theologians; so that he must of necessity deal with certain exaggerations, which he does with great competence and finality. Max Thurian's
approach is more scriptural and he takes trouble to investigate the mariology
of the Reformers. Both books should be read by anyone who desires to have
a balanced view of the field of mariology, especially in its ecumenical issues.
P A T R O L O G Y . We welcome the translation of J o h n Meyendorff's Gregory
Palamas. This important study will be a valuable source for those who are
working seriously on the ecumenical dialogue between orthodoxy and
western christianity.
L I T U R G Y . I n The Signs of the New Covenant, Canon Martimort applies the
kerygmatic method to the teaching of the sacraments, and provides a most
excellent course in sacramental theology which should be immediately useful
for teaching and preaching. The sacraments are seen as the signs of the
reality of the fullness of the christian mystery. Through them the christian
enters upon and grows in his life with Christ in the Church. This is living
theology which makes a noteworthy contribution to the deeper understanding
of the sacraments, and in a way which is vital and compelling.
Death and Resurrection, by Vincent A. Yzermans, consists of a h a r m o n y of
the Gospel accounts of the Passion and Resurrection, using the Revised
Standard Version, arranged chronologically to cover the week from Palm

RECOMMENDED READING

341

Sunday to Easter Sunday. Opposite this text Fr. Yzermans has arranged a
series of quotations from the Fathers, which he links by his own commentary
to provide m a t t e r for meditation on the mystery of Christ's passion, death
a n d resurrection. T h e idea is a good one; b u t more use could have been m a d e
of the liturgy. T h e quotations from the Fathers are apt, but unfortunately no
references are given.
C A T E C H E T I C S . Catholic Catechism is the new australian catechism a n d
it is a very fine work. There are two volumes, for the pupil a n d the teacher
respectively, a n d it incorporates the best in modern catechetics. Teachers
everywhere will find it immensely useful. W e recommend it unreservedly.
M I S S I O L O G Y . The House Stands Firm, by Sister Marie Andr~ du Sacrd
Coeur, is a very good sociological study of native customs and religion in
West Africa, by one who evidently knows the people a n d the country
extremely well. W e would like to see more of this sort of writing which cannot
b u t be of great help to missionaries and students of missiology.
S P I R I T U A L I T Y . Contemporary Thought and the Spiritual Exercises of St.
Ignatius Loyola are the proceedings of an Institute held in J u l y 1962 at Loyola
University, Chicago. T h e most valuable contributions are those of Fr. R. F.
M a c K e n z i e on biblical theology a n d the Spiritual Exercises, and Fr. W. L.
Kelly on M o d e r n Psychology a n d the Spiritual Exercises; b u t each of the
other contributors raises interesting points. There is plenty of matter here
for discussion, a n d the work should interest all students of the Spiritual
Exercises.
Eternal Answers for an Anxious Age offers innumerable Reader's Digest type
anecdotes a n d about a h u n d r e d and thirty 'Points to R e m e m b e r ' : enough to
make anyone even more anxious. I n The Priest is not his Own Bishop F u l t o n
Sheen propounds the idea of the priest as victim in his own individual style.
Histoire Spirituelle de la France reproduces very conveniently the lengthy
article (2 t 9 columns) of the Dictionnaire de Spirit uaIitd on France. I t traces the
development of christianity in France a n d French speaking countries from the
first beginnings down to 1914. T h e great merit of this work is its thoroughness.
Each period is dealt with by a specialist and there is a very full documentation.
I t is a most useful and valuable instrument of work. Vivre le Bon Plaisir de Dieu
is the spiritual history a n d letters of a French jesuit, Fr. Dubuquois, who
died in 1959. Fr. Rayez has performed his editorial task with all his usual skill
a n d care, as can be seen by the excellent indices a n d introduction. Ft.
Dububuois h a d great influence on the social apostolate in France a n d various
movements of Catholic Action. I t is then very useful to have this insight into
the spiritual fife of one who h a d the workers' apostolate so m u c h at heart.
You are called to Greatness, has everything in it which one has come
to expect from Leo Trese, a n d is well up to his usual standard. Eight
shillings and sixpence is very little by modern standards; it is the price of

242

RECOMMENDED READING

a bible, a n d also the price of The Risen Lord by J a m e s Sullivan, a series of

meditations on the risen life of Christ which are intended to complement the
gospels and, in the words of the blurb, 'turn our thoughts with regret to the
books that were never written' i.e. b y the evangelists. W e still prefer to be the
'average reader' and 'content ourselves w i t h the gospel account'. Understanding the Lord's Prayer is a commentary on the O u r Father translated from
the dutch. I t does not quite succeed a n d the author fails to make his points
with sufficient clarity. T h e result is a book which leaves us confused, a n d
with a feeling that we have failed to grasp the thread & t h e author's thoughts.
Spiritual Counsels and Letters of Baron Friedrich yon Hagel is an excellent study
of von I-Ifigel as a spiritual director. Douglas Steere has edited the book a n d
written a very fine introduction. V o n Hiigel was undoubtedly one of the
greatest religious figures of the last hundred years. This work presents him at
his best, a n d m a n y will find comfort a n d guidance in his wise advice.
HAGIOGRAPHY.
The World of St. Vincent de Paul justifies its title b y
situating St. Vincent in the world of his times. All too often hagiographers
have tended to neglect history and present a disembodied picture of their
subject. M a r y Purcell does not always quite succeed in bringing to life the
background of St. Vincent, a n d the narrative is sometimes rather disjointed.
Nevertheless it is worth reading.
St. John Berchmans by R i c h a r d Brenan, S.J. repeats a well-known story
without throwing any new light on a saint who makes m a n y feel uncomfortable. Fr. Brenan does his best, but the book reads too much like a piece of
special pleading. Francis M a c m a n u s ' St. Columban combines sound scholarship with real insight and a truly celtic flair for using the English language.
Mr. M a c m a n u s bases his life on the classical biography b y Jonas of Susa and
shows great understanding of the hagiographic conventions of the material
he is handling. T h e result is that he preserves all that is worthwhile in Jonas
a n d enhances it by his own fine sense of history a n d acute perception. The
Spirit of Mary Ward is a brief account of the spirituality and character of
the foundress of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The study is good as
far as it goes, but a w o m a n of the stature of M a r y W a r d needs more than
81 pages to do her justice.
St. Augustine of Hippo is not just another life of St. Augustine. There will
always be need of contemporary literature on St. Augustine, and Gerald
Bonner has given us an excellent twentieth century introduction to him.
No student of theology can neglect St. Augustine, but m a n y b a n d y his name
about whilst knowing comparatively little about him. Let them read this book,
which situates Augustine in his times a n d gives a clear account of the controversies in which he was engaged and which formed his theological thinking.
Mosa Anderson's St. Ninian is a very satisfying book. T h e sources for a life
of St. Ninian are meagre, but Miss Anderson makes full use of them without
falling back on imagination and hypothesis. Through the life of Ninian she
gives a full and lively picture of the christian world of his day a n d in particular
of christianity in 4th century Scotland.

RECOMMENDED

READIRI G

343

St. Angela, the life of St. Angela Merici, the foundress of the Ursuline
Order, Fr. Caraman makes the most of the scanty material at his disposal.
Though the parallel drawn between Angela a n d Ignatius of Loyola sometimes leads him to force the facts, this is a very readable book and fills a gap
in english hagiography.
Anderson, Mosa: St Ninian (Faith Press 25s, pp. 172).
Barclay, William: Turning to God (Epworth Press los 6d, pp. lO3).
Bonner, Gerald: St. Augustine ofHippo (SCM Press 5os, pp. 428).
Bougerol, O . F . M , Guy: Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure (Descl~e Co.
$6.00, pp. 240).
Brenan, S.J. Richard: St. John Berchmane (Clonmore & Reynolds I5S, pp.
149).
Caraman, S.J., Philip: St. Angela (Longmans, Green & Co. 3os, pp. 188).
Catholic Catechism, Book I, Children's book: Book II, Teacher's book (Burns
Oates los 6d, pp. 262; I6s, pp. io6).
Coulson, John (Ed): Theology & the University (Darton, Longman & Todd
15s, pp. 286).
GaUen, S.J., John: Scripture Services: Fifteen bible themes edited for group use
(Liturgical Press, Minnesota, $. 45, PP- lO8).
Galloway, A. D. (Ed) : B~IC Readings in Theology (George Allen & Unwin 45 s,
pp. 316).
Harvanek, S.J., Robert (Dir. by) : Contemporary Thought and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola [Proceedings of the Institute of Loyola University,
Chicago]. (West Baden College $ 2.4% pp. 88).
MacManus, Francis: St. Columban (Clonmore & Reynolds 2IS, pp. 164).
Martimort, A. G. : The Signs of the New Covenant (Liturgical Press $ 4.75,
pp. 32o).
Metzger, Bruce M. : The Text of the New Testament: its transmission, corruption
and restoration (Clarendon Press O.U.P. 42s, pp. 268).
Meyendorff, John: A Study of Gregory Palamas (Faith Press 4os, pp. 245 ).
Meynell, Hugo: Sense, Nonsense and Christianity (Sheed & Ward I2S 6d, pp.

28~).
Monro, Margaret T. : Enjoying the Wisdom Books (Longmans I5S, pp. I i I).
Murphy-O'Connor, Jerome: Paul on Preaching (Sheed & Ward 15s, pp. 314).
O'Brien John A.: Eternal Answers for an Anxious Age (W. H. Alien I8S, pp.

223).
Parker, I.B.V.M., Mother Pauline: The Spirit of Mary Ward (Fowler Wright
Books 8s 6d, pp. 93).
Parsch, Pins: The Parish Bible-Class (Liturgical Press $.4o, pp. 63).
Learning to read the Bible (Liturgical Press S. 15, pp. I7).
Perrin, O.P., J. M.: The Minister of Christ (Gill & Son I8S, pp. 141 ).
Purcell, Mary: The World of Monsieur Vincent (Collins 3os, pp. 254).
Semmelroth, S.J., Otto: Mary, Archetype of the Church (Gill & Son, 25 s, pp.
I75).

244

REGOMMENDED

I~]~AD IN G

Sheen, Fulton: The Priest is not h~s own (Peter Davies i8s, pp. 248).
Simonet, A. : Saisi par la charitd de Dieu (P. LethieUeux, Paris, 8.oo N. F.
pp. 15o).
Steere, Donglas : Spiritual Counsels & Letters of Baron Friedrich Von Hugel (Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd. 22s 6d, pp. 186).
Sullivan, James: The Risen Lord (Gill and Son 8s 6d, pp. 121).
Symposium: New Horizons in Catholic Thought (Sheed & Ward 9 s, pp. 85).
Thurian" Max: Mary, Mother of the Lord, Figure of the Church (Faith Press 21s,
pp. 2o4).
Trese, Leo: You are called to Greatness (Geoffrey Chapman Ltd. I5S, pp. 153).
Van den Bussche, Henri: Understanding the Lord's Prayer (Sheed & Ward 8s 6d,
Pp. 144).
Wilder, Amos: Early Christian Rhetoric (SCM Press, 25s, pp. 136).
Yzermans, Vincent: Death and Resurrection (Liturgical Press $ 2.0% pp.92).

We would like to call our readers' attention to the following.paperbacks and

reprints :
Blenkinsopp, Joseph: The Promise to David [Where We Stand series] (Darton,
Longman & Todd 4 s, pp. 124).
Bribosia, Paul: Enfants de Juges & dTugesd'Enfants (Editions du Soleil Levant
99 F.B~. pp. 164.).
de Rosa; Peter: Communion of the Sick (Pastoral Publications, IS 6d, pp. 20).
Fannon, Patrick: Let There be Life [Where We Stand series] (Darton, Longman
& Todd 2s, pp. 58).
Greenslade, S. L.: Schism in the Eearly Church (SCM Press I6S, pp. 253).
Jarrett, O. P. Bede: No Abiding City (Burns Oates 5s, pp. 86).
Knowles, O. S. B., David: English Mystical Tradition (Burns Oates lOS.6d,
pp. I97).
Lance, Derek: Till Christ beformed [Where We Stand series] (Darton, Longman & Todd 7s, pp. 144).
Phillips, Cecilia : Thoughts for Tertiaries (Fowler Wright Books 7s 6d, pp. 6o).
Rahner, Hugo Ignace de Loyola et lesfemmes de son temps, vols. I and I I (Descl6e
de Brouwer pp. 378 and pp. 37o).
Sillem, Edward: Groping For God [Where We Stand series] (Darton, Longman & Todd 2s, pp. 6o).
Soubigou, Mgr. L: Vers Ia Joie de Dieu (P. Lethielleux Paris, pp. I92 ).
Todd, John M. : African Mission (Burns Oates IOS 6d, pp. 222).
Van Zeller, O. S. B; Hubert: Famine of the Spirit (Burns Oates I6S, pp. 194).

NOTES

ON

CONTRIBUTORS

PR. BRUCE VAWTER, C.M., p a s t p r e s i d e n t o f t h e C a t h o l i c Biblical Assoc i a t i o n of A m e r i c a , is well k n o w n as a l e c t u r e r a n d w r i t e r o n b i b l i c a l subjects

i n E n g l a n d a n d i n t h e U n i t e d States. H e is d o c t o r of s a c r e d s c r i p t u r e o f t h e
Pontifical Biblical I n s t i t u t e .
ER. ROBERT MURRAY, s . J . , b o r n in C h i n a a n d e d u c a t e d a t C o r p u s C h r i s t i
College, O x f o r d , b e c a m e a C a t h o l i c i n 1946 a n d a J e s u i t in I949. H e has
r e c e n t l y t a k e n his d o c t o r a t e i n t h e o l o g y a t the G r e g o r i a n U n i v e r s i t y , R o m e ,
a n d is n o w t e a c h i n g t h e o l o g y a t t-Ieythrop College.
DOM PLACID MURRAY, O.S.B., is a m o n k of St. C o l u m b a ' s A b b e y , Glenstal,
Co. L i m e r i c k . A u t h o r of The Canon of the Mass: A Study and a new Translation
( 2 n d ed. 1961), h e has e d i t e d Studies in Pastoral Liturgy, vol. I ( I 9 6 I ) . H e is
also s e c r e t a r y of t h e I r i s h L i t u r g i c a l Congress.
FR. MICHAEL KYNE, S.J., e n t e r e d t h e Society of Jesus, E n g l i s h P r o v i n c e , i n
1947 a n d was o r d a i n e d p r i e s t i n I96O. A t p r e s e n t h e is s t u d y i n g for his
d o c t o r a t e in t h e o l o g y a t t h e I n s t i t u t C a t h o l i q u e , Paris.
PR. MICHEL RONDET, S.J., is M a s t e r of Novices i n t h e J e s u i t N o v i t i a t e
at Aix-en-Provence.

SIGLA
OLD TESTAMENT
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Josue
Judges
Ruth
I Kings
II Kings
III Kings
IV Kings
I Paralipomenon
II Paralipomenon
I Esdras
II Esdras

Gen
Exod
Lev
Num
Deut
Jos
Jg
Ruth
I Sam
2 Sam
I Kg
2 Kg
I Chr
2 Chr
Ezr
Neh

Tobias
Judith
Esther
Job
Psalms
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Canticle of Canticles
Wisdom
Ecclesiasticus
Isaias
Jeremias
Lamentations
Baruch
Ezechiel

Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Acts of the Apostles
Paul to the Romans
I Corinthians
II Corinthians
Galatians

Mt
Mk
Lk
Jn
Acts
Rom
I Cor
2 Cor
Gal

Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
I Thessalonians
II Thessalonlans
I Timothy
II Timothy
Titus
Philemon

Tob
Jud
Est
Job
Ps
Prov
Qoh
Cant
Wis
Sir
Isai
Jet
Lam
Bar
Ezek

Daniel
Osee
Joel
Amos
Abdias
Jonas
Micheas
Nahum
Habacuc
Sophonias
Aggeus
Zacharias
Malachias
I Machabees
II Machabees

Dan
Hos
Joel
Amos
Obad
Jon
Mic
Nah
Hab
Zeph
Hag
Zech
Mal
i Maec
2 Mace

NEW T E S T A M E N T
Eph
Phil
Col
I Thess
2 Thess
i Tim
2 Tom
Tit
Phm

To the Hebrews
Heb
The Epistle of JamesJas
I Peter
i Pet
II Peter
2 Pet
I John
I Jn
II John
2 Jn
I l l John
3 Jn
Jude
Jude
The Apocalypse of
St. J o h n
Apoc

FATHERS
Patrologia Latina (Migne) PL

Patrologia Graeca (Migne) PG

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