of her Spouse, so she confides to some chosen ones a more important and special share in her mission of praise: this phalanx is formed of priests and religious orders invested with the functions of the choir. The Church, in her name and that of her Bridegroom, deputes them as her ambassadors before God's throne.

An ambassador does not present himself in his own private capacity, he stands in the place of his sovereign or of his country; these are involved when he speaks in virtue of his mission. Therefore he has a right to all the honours and privileges which would be given to his sovereign, and there is a juridical obligation that these should be granted to him. The reasons and arguments that he brings to bear in his diplomatic interviews have not only a private value resulting from the qualities and talents of the man, but they acquire a special weight, more or less powerful, according to the greatness of the country or the rank of the sovereign represented by him. This is not a simple fiction, but is a moral and juridical reality which defines the very rôle of the ambassador.

It is proportionately the same with those whom the Church, the Bride of Christ, deputes in her name to hold her place before God, that is to say the priests and religious obliged to the Divine Office in virtue of the rules approved by ecclesiastical authority. They stand before the Father as ambassadors appointed by the Church, whose homage they offer, and whose interests they represent. And as the Church is Christ's Bride, these ambassadors share in the privileges conferred upon the Church by her supernatural dignity, as the Spouse of Jesus. When we are in choir, we bear a twofold personality: our own individual personality, that of our misery, our frailty, our faults, but also that of members of Christ's Mystical Body deputed by the Church. In this second capacity we have to guard the numerous and varied interests of Christendom. If we know how to use our power, we are sure, in spite of our imperfections, of being pleasing to God and heard by Him. For, when we are acquitting ourselves of our official functions, all our miseries are as it were veiled by the prestige with which the Bride of Christ invests us. The Father sees us, during these hours of the Divine Office, no longer as souls coming before Him with their private interests and personal merits, but as ambassadors of the Bride of His Well-Beloved Son, treating of the cause of souls with every right to do so; we are officially invested with the dignity and power of the Bride of Jesus,

and with those of Jesus Himself. Moreover, Christ Himself is in the midst of us; He has formally promised to be so ; He is the supreme Hierarch Who receives our prayers and gathers up our praises to bear them to the throne of God: Ad thronum gratiae1. Therefore, in God's sight, this praise surpasses, in value and efficacy, all other praise, all other prayer, all other work 2.

This truth is absolutely beyond doubt, and the saints, who lived in God's light, so understood it. St. Magdalen of Pazzi put assistance in choir before all the private devotions that pious persons can make; and when one of her nuns asked to be dispensed from choir in order to give herself up to mental prayer, she replied: "No, my daughter, I should certainly deceive you in giving you such a permission, for it would be making you believe that this private devotion would honour God more and render you more pleasing to the Divine Majesty, while in comparison with this public office which you sing with your sisters, private prayer is but a small thing." St. Alphonsus Liguori relates, while making this opinion this own, the saying of a wise religious : "If time is lacking to us, it is much better to shorten mental prayer, and give more time to the Divine Office that we may be enabled to recite it with the devotion due to it 4.

Such is the opinion of the saints, such is the language of faith. There is no work that comes anywhere near the Divine Office. All other works are opera hominum. This is truly" the Work of God" pre-eminently, because it is a work of praise that comes from God through the Word Incarnate and is offered by the Church, in Christ's Name.

IV.

Another reason of the transcendency of the Divine Praise is that it directly tends to procure God's glory.

Doubtless, as we have said, God finds His essential giory in Himself independently of any creature: Deus meus es tu, bonorum meorum non eges 5. But from the moment that there are creatures, "it is truly meet and just " that they should praise God, magnify His name and give thanks to Him; this is in the right order of things, it is justice; it is from this principle that the virtue of religion is born: Vere 1. Hebr. IV, 16. 2. Evidently supposing that the degree of love be the same, and setting apart the Sacraments. 3. Life by P. Cepari, S. J. 4. L'Office méprisé; Euvres complètes. Paris, 1836, t. XI, p. 39. 5. Ps. xv,

dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere1.

Now, in creation, there are many beings who do not know God. They assuredly praise Him after their manner by the simple fact of their obedience to the laws that He ordained for them on their coming forth from nothingness: Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei et opera manuum ejus annuntiat firmamentum 2. However the heavens do not know their own canticle, any more than they know their Creator. Whence is the song of inanimate creation to take life? Upon our own lips, the lips of humanity. Hear what Bossuet so admirably says; the text is rather long but it renders the idea very clearly. "The inanimate creature cannot see, it is seen; it cannot love, it urges us to do so; and this God Whom it knows not, it does not allow us to ignore. Thus imperfectly and in its own manner it glorifies the Heavenly Father. But in order that it may consummate its adoration, man must be its mediator. He must lend a voice, an understanding, and a heart burning with love, to all visible nature that it may love, in man and through him, the invisible beauty of the Creator. This is why he is placed in the midst of the world, himself the world in brief... a great world in the little world, because although the world contains him, he has a mind and a heart greater than the world; in order that contemplating the whole universe and gathering it up in himself, he may offer, sanctify, and consecrate it to the Living God3.

We acquit ourselves of this sublime rôle each day at the Divine Office. The Church wills that every creature should take life upon the lips of the priest or religious, so that every creature may praise its Lord: Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino, laudate et superexaltate eum in saecula1.

Upon our lips as in the Word, in ipso vita erat, all these creatures become animate that they may sing the Creator's perfections. Come," we say to all these creatures, come; you know not God, but you may know Him through the medium of my understanding, and sing to Him through my lips. Come, sun, moon, stars that He has sown in the firmament; come, cold and light, mountains and valleys, seas and rivers, plants and flowers, come and magnify Him Who created you. O my God I love Thee so much that I

1. Preface of the Mass. 2. Ps. XVIII, 2.-3. Annunciation, 1662. 3rd point. The great orator has and developed it in his Sermon on the worship due -4. Canticle for Sunday Lauds; Dan. III, 57.

Sermon for the Feast of the taken up this idea again to God, April 2nd. 1666.

would have the whole earth adore and praise Thee": Omnis terra adoret Te et psallat Tibi1! Through our lips, all the praise of creation rises up to God.

It rises up to Him because Christ, the Divine Word, makes His own this praise which we, guided by the Church, offer to Him. Man is the mediator of creation; but, says Bossuet again, man himself needs a mediator and this Mediator is Christ the Word Incarnate. We lend our lips to Christ, so that, through Him, our praise may be accepted in the Bosom of the Father: Per ipsum et cum ipso et in ipso est tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti in unitate Spiritus sancti, OMNIS honor et gloria. All things are ours, and we are Christ's, and Christ is His Father's: Omnia vestra sunt, vos autem Christi, Christus autem Dei4. Rejoice, O human nature, thou lendest thy heart to the visible world that it may love its Almighty Creator, and Jesus Christ lends thee His own Heart wherewith thou mayest worthily love the One Who can only be worthily loved by another Himself 5. '

Through the Divine Praise, we associate creation and ourselves, as intimately as possible, with the eternal praise that the Word gives to His Father. This participation in the eternal, thrice-holy canticle is realised above all in the doxology of the Gloria, repeated at the end of each psalm, and again in many other parts of the Office. As we bow down to give "glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost we unite ourselves to that ineffable glory that the Holy Trinity finds in Itself from all eternity: Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum. It is like the echo of the infinite mutual complacency of the Divine Persons in the plenitude and bliss of their adorable fellowship.

What work equals this in greatness? What work is more pleasing to God? None; let us be deeply convinced of this. The Opus Dei is what is most precious in the inheritance of our Order: Funes ceciderunt mihi in praeclaris, etenim hereditas mea praeclara est mihi. There are no other hours when we can do more for God's glory than those we spend in choir, in union with the Divine Word praising His Father; pernoctans in oratione Dei'. There is no work more pleasing to the Father than that whereby we join, in order to glorify Him, in the canticle sung in sinu Patris by "the Son of His love 8. There is no work that better pleases the Son than this which we borrow from Him and that is like the 1. Ps. LXV, 4. 2. Continuation of passage quoted. 3. Canon of the 4. I Cor. III, 22-23.

Mass.

12.

8. Col. 1, 13.

5. Bossuet, ibid.-6. Ps. xv, 6.

7. Luc. vi,

extension of His very essence as the Word, the splendour of infinite glory. Neither is there any work that glorifies the Spirit more for by the formulas that He has Himself inspired, we express our love under its most delicate forms, admiration continually renewed, and unending complacency. Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto.

When this work is performed with all the faith, all the heart-felt confidence and all the love whereof our soul is capable, it surpasses every other work, and therefore our great Patriarch "filled with the spirit of all the just1, wishes nothing to rank before this work: Nihil Operi Dei praeponatur2; without being exclusive,it comes before everything with us. Although we are not Canons Regular, we cannot put this work in the second place, because it concerns God directly and we came to the monastery especially to seek God. Ardent love of the Divine Praise is one of the most indubitable signs that we "are truly seeking God": Si revera Deum quaerit... si sollicitus est ad opus Dei3.

V.

What further renders the Divine Praise extremely pleasing to God is that it constitutes a homage of those virtues of faith, hope and love which are the specific virtues of our state as children of God.

Everything here let us repeat it is to be judged from the point of view of faith. To gather together several hours day by day to praise God is a homage of our faith; we thereby confess and proclaim that this Unseen God is alone worthy of adoration and praise. The acts of reverence, thanksgiving and complacency that we accomplish in the course of this work consecrated solely to extolling God, are, above all, acts of faith. Faith alone gives its meaning to the Divine Office. Those whose faith is null, pity men who pass a part of their life in chanting God's praises; they do not comprehend how people can, at certain hours, occupy themselves solely with the Infinite Being: Ut quid perditio haec1. Where faith is weak, the Divine Office is undervalued and other works are preferred before it. Souls which, like that of our Blessed, Patriarch are bathed in "the deifying light 5" of faith, give the first place to Divine Praise; they do so at least in their estimation, even if, in consequence of their state in life, they cannot devote themselves to it. Divine Praise becomes uninterrupted when the eternal

1. S. Greg. Dialog. Lib. II, C. VIII. 2. Rule, ch. XLIII. - 4. Matth. xxvi, 8. 5. Prologue of the Rule.

LVIII.

3. Ibid. ch.