be glad that hope in Thee... O Lord, Thou hast crowned us, as with a shield of Thy good will": Et laetentur omnes qui sperant in te... Scuto bonae voluntatis tuae coronasti nos1. In the Lord I put my trust, how then do you say to my soul: Get thee away from hence to the mountain 2 ? Hear,

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O Lord, the voice of my supplication, when I pray to Thee; when I lift up my hands to Thy holy temple... Save, O Lord, Thy people, and bless Thy inheritance: and rule them and exalt them for ever3.

Does the soul need light? strength? courage? Words wherewith to invoke God flow endlessly to our lips: "My soul is as earth without water unto Thee 4. Send forth Thy light and Thy truth, they have conducted me, and brought me unto Thy holy hill, and into Thy tabernacles. And I will go to the altar of God: to God Who giveth joy to my youth. To Thee, O God my God I will give praise upon the harp": Confitebor tibi in cithara Deus, Deus meus 5.

Then, above all, the holy longings of the soul to attain one day to God rise ardently from the sacred poesy, the expression of its thirst for the divine meeting: "For what have I in Heaven? and besides Thee what do I desire upon earth?... Thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion for ever": Quid mihi est in caelo et, a te, quid volui super terram ®?... As the hart panteth after the fountains of water; so my soul panteth after Thee... when shall I come and appear before the face of God?? I shall be satisfied when Thy glory shall appear": Satiabor cum apparuerit gloria tua ! Thus, the soul's most intense desires, its deepest aspirations, its most pressing and extensive needs find wonderful forms of expression furnished by the Holy Spirit. And each soul can appropriate to itself these forms as if they had been made for itself alone.

To the inspired texts are to be added the Collects", the prayers composed by the Church herself, where are daily gathered up the supplications that the Bride of Jesus offers in her children's name, in union with her Divine Spouse. They are ordinarily very concise, but contain, in their brevity, the true pith of doctrine. As you know their structure is almost always the same: the Church addresses her homage to the power and goodness of the Eternal Father, then a petition in correlation with the Feast of the day, the whole 1. Ps. v, 12-13. — 2. Ibid. x, 2. 3. Ibid. XXVII, 2, 9. 4. Ibid. CXLII, 5. Ibid. XLII, 3-4. 6. Ibid. XLXII. 25-26. 7. Ibid. XLI, 2-3. 8.

6.

Ibid. XVI, 15.

under a condensed, but often profound form; finally, the invoking of the infinite merits of Christ Jesus, the Beloved Son, equal to His Father, Who lives and reigns with Him and the Spirit, in the heavens: Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivum et regnat...

How should a like prayer fail to be powerful with God? How could God refuse His grace to whomsoever beseeches Him according to the words He Himself has inspired1? God loves all that comes from Himself or from His Son, and so this prayer which we address to Him in the name of His Son is most pleasing to Him, and efficacious for us : Pater ego sciebam quia semper me audis2.

On this head, the Divine Office possesses great power of sanctification. I am certain that a monk who gives himself up to it with devotion cannot fail to obtain from it an abundance of divine help for every circumstance of his life. This is so much the more true in that the devout recitation of the Office familiarises us with these holy forms of prayer: spontaneously then, in the course of the day, these arise again from his soul under the form of " ejaculatory" prayers, short but ardent aspirations, whereby the soul is lifted up to God to remain united to Him. St. Catherine of Siena had a special devotion to the Deus, in adjutorium meum intende; she often repeated it during the day. So many verses of the Psalms, after having served us in choir can thus become, outside the Divine Office, bonds of union between God and ourselves, uprisings from the heart to beseech His help or to tell Him that it is our will never to turn away from Him: "It is good for me to adhere to my God, to put my hope in the Lord God. Preserve me, O Lord, for I have put my trust in Thee. I have said to the Lord, Thou art my God. When my strength shall fail, do not Thou forsake me. My soul hath coveted to long for Thy justifications, at all times... I have stuck to Thy testimonies, O Lord : put me not to shame”.

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Each soul can thus choose from among so many formulas those which most aptly express its innermost aspirations, those which best help it to remain united to Our Lord. Often it has no need to seek them. When the Divine Office is recited with fervour, it is the Holy Spirit Who throws His Divine light upon some text of the Psalms or of the 1. We evidently do not give the word," inspired the same sense when it concerns the elements, of diverse origin, of the Divine Office. 2. Joan., XI, 42.3. Life by Drane, 1st part., ch. v. — 2. — 4. Ps. LXXII, 28. 6. Ps. LXX, 9. - 7. Ps. CXVIII, 20, 31.

I-2.

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- 5. Ps. xv,

Liturgy; this text then particularly strikes the soul, and by this vivid, penetrating and effectual action of the Spirit of Jesus, it hereafter becomes a principle of light and joy, and like a wellspring of living water where the soul may constantly allay its thirst, renew its strength, and find the secret of patience and inward gladness: Psalterium meum, gaudium meum1.

II.

It is not only in itself and directly that the Divine Office is a means of sanctification; it also gives us the occasion of practising many virtues several times a day. Now this practice, according to the Council of Trent, is a source of union with God and of progress in perfection.

When a soul is in God's friendship, each act of virtue it makes increases grace in it, and this is above all true of charity which is the queen of every virtue. Now, the Divine Office recited with fervour, is a continual exercise of the most varied virtues. We saw, in the last conference, the frequency with which acts of faith, hope, and charity occur in the course of the Divine Office; charity especially shines out in it; it finds the purest and most perfect expression in the Opus Dei, namely, complacency in God; and this complacency is manifested at almost each moment in accents of admiration and joy3. When, for example, we have recited Matins and Lauds with devotion, we have made numerous acts of perfect love.

To the theological virtues, which are the specific virtues of our state of children of God, must be joined the virtue of religion. Religion has no purer manifestation than the Divine Office gravitating around the Eucharistic Sacrifice which is its crown. The Divine Praise encompassing the altar, where the holy oblation is offered, is the purest expression of the virtue of religion; it is also the most pleasing to God, because this expression is determined by the Holy Spirit and by the Church, Christ's Bride; worship finds its plenitude in the Divine Office 1.

1. S. Augustin. Enarrat. in Psalm. 137, n. 3, P. L. 37, col. 1775.2. Sess. VI, C. IO-II. 3. "It is a great mistake to imagine that a sacrifice is only valuable and agreeable to God if it is sad and mortifying to nature. The Holy Bible gives testimony that God receives flowers and fruits as well as blood, and joy as well as tears. There are certainly many tears in the sacrifice of praise which is named the Psalter, but how joy overflows in it and how often one is made aware of a jubilant and ravished soul! Mgr. Gay. Entretiens sur les mystères du Rosaire, I. pp. 80-81. 4. Cf. Lottin, L'ame du culte, la vertu de religion.

It is in the Divine Office too that we learn reverence towards God; the Liturgy is the best school of respect; all within it is regulated by the Church herself in view of magnifying God's Sovereign Majesty. When the soul performs all the ceremonies, even the smallest, carefully and lovingly, it is gradually formed to that inward reverence which is, as we have said, the very root of humility. It is impossible for a monk to be devoutly assiduous at the "Work of God" without gaining in a short time a great knowledge of the divine perfections, and without that respect and reverence springing up in his soul from this contemplation.

We have likewise seen how the Divine Office is moreover a school where, on account of the common life, may be exercised the virtue of patience and self-forgetfulness.

Thus the virtues most necessary to our state as children of God, faith and confidence, humility, love, and religion, find each day not only the means of being exercised, but of being maintained, and strengthened; the Divine Office hence becomes an abundant source of holiness.

III.

The sanctifying power of the Divine Office however goes further than this. Not content with being the best form of impetration for our spiritual necessities and giving us the opportunity of daily practising lofty virtues, this praise constitutes for us the best way of being made one with Christ1. We must never forget this capital truth of the spiritual life: all is summed up, for the monk as for the simple Christian, in being united, in faith and love to Christ Jesus in order to imitate Him. Christ being the very form 2" of our predestination, is at the same time the ideal of all holiness for us. He is the centre of monasticism as of Christianity to contemplate Christ, to imitate Him, to unite our will to His will in order to please His Father, that is the sum total of all perfection. The Father has placed all things in His beloved Son; we find in Him all the treasures of redemption,justification, wisdom, heavenly knowledge, sanctification; for us everything lies in contemplating Him and drawing near to Him. For the thought of Jesus, the looking upon Jesus, are not only holy, but sanctifying.

And nowhere can we better contemplate Our Lord in His 1. See a remarkable commentary on this thought in D. Festugière. La liturgie catholique, essai de synthèse, ch. XIII. La Liturgie comme source et cause de vie religieuse, pp. III, sq. 2. Cf. Rom. vII, 29.

Person and in His mysteries, than in following the liturgical cycle established by the Church, His Bride, she herself guided in this by the Holy Spirit. From Advent to Pentecost, the liturgy is Christocentric; in it all leads back to Christ, all converges towards Him; it is a representation, but a living representation of His mysteries: His Incarnation, His most sweet Nativity, His hidden life, His public life, His sorrowful Passion, the triumph of His Resurrection, His admirable Ascension; the Mission of the Holy Spirit. The Church leads us by the hand in Jesus' footsteps; we have only to listen, only to open the eyes of faith: we are following Jesus.

The mysteries of Jesus thus contemplated with faith and love, give rise within us to the affections that we should have felt had we been present at the Birth of Jesus, had we followed Him to Egypt, been with Him at Nazareth, in His discourses, in the Garden of Gethsemani, upon the Way of Sorrows, and at Calvary; as we should have felt if we had been present at His Resurrection, and Ascension'. This is what was said by a holy Benedictine, Mother Deleloë: "At Christmastide, during all those solemnities of our Saviour's Birth, I received great favours; His Majesty often gave me a vivid light so that I knew these divine mysteries as if they were then really taking place2.

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Indeed, although Christ is no longer upon earth, although the historical reality of His mysteries has gone by, He ever remains our Head and the virtue of His actions and of His life is ever fruitful: Jesus Christus heri et hodie: ipse et in saecula3. It is as the Head of the human race, and for the human race, that He has lived these mysteries: therefore, simply by contemplating them with faith, the soul is moulded little by little upon Christ, its Ideal, and is gradually transformed into Him, by entering into the sentiments felt by His Divine Heart when He lived each of His mysteries. Jesus lives the reality of His mysteries in us, and when we have faith, and rest lovingly united to Him, He draws us with Him, making us partakers of the virtue proper to each of these states. Each year, as the soul follows the Liturgical cycle, it shares ever more intimately in these mysteries, and is identified more and more with Christ, with His thoughts, His feelings, His life. Hoc enim sentite in vobis, quod et in Christo Jesu. Gradually it is transformed into the likeness of the Divine Model; not only because 1. See the development of this idea in our work: Christ in His Mysteries, 1st Conference: Christ's Mysteries are our mysteries. 2. La Mère Jeanne Deleloë, p. 247, Collection" Pax ". 3. Hebr. XIII, 8. 4. Philip. 11, 5.

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