14 papers in the library · publishing 1948-1964
Life of the Spirit September 1, 1964 Julian Walter
In my first article I suggested that the reader of Dom John's spiritual letters lost much because they are not arranged chronologically, I suggested that he should begin with the first three letters to a Jesuit, in which Dom John developed his rounded theological theory of the world, and then attempted to outline this theory; its outstanding characteristics seemed to me to be the importance...
Life of the Spirit December 1, 1960
I can never quite forgive St Jerome for being so cutting about St Ambrose's Latin. It seems to my ignorant mind that his Latin is only the shell of the kernel of the good nut within. Take at random, the homily for the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, almost at once, one finds this: ‘The food of heavenly grace is given, not to the idle, not in the city or to those accustomed to worldly dignity, but...
Life of the Spirit September 1, 1959 James Harrison
BY contemplation here I am not referring to any merely natural operation of the intellect, however sublime it may be, but to an operation much more elusive, namely, supernatural contemplation, called also mysticism. It may be defined as an immediate or experimental knowledge of God. Our ordinary knowledge of God, of his existence and. of his nature, comes to us not immediately but only...
Life of the Spirit November 1, 1956 Aėlred Sillem
It is sometimes felt that the inward tendency and logic of liturgical prayer, and those of contemplative prayer, are conflicting, so that these two types of prayer will always attract different temperaments and define different vocations. And indeed, there is an evident divergence between the tendency of contemplative prayer towards simplicity, as the soul is drawn away from multiplicity of...
Life of the Spirit September 1, 1955 J. Cartmell
It is with the intellect that we contemplate. Christian contemplation is an activity of faith, and faith is an intellectual virtue. The gift of the Holy Ghost which plays a leading role contemplation is wisdom, because, as St Thomas says, it belongs to wisdom, according to Aristotle, to consider the Highest Cause; and wisdom is obviously rooted in the intellect. But contemplation is also...
Life of the Spirit November 1, 1952 John Corson
With the publication in America of the translation of Father Arintero's great work on Mystical Development in the life of the Church and of Dr Greenstock's work on Christian perfection (both from the Herder Book Company of St Louis) a very important and decisive stage in the journey towards the more realistic attitude to the study of mystical theology has been reached. Father Arintero died, a...
Life of the Spirit December 1, 1951 Benedict Steuart
In the May issue of Life Of The Spirit, ‘A Challenge from inside the Cloister’ by a Carmelite nun denied with considerable force that there could be any real contemplative life in the world—mainly ‘because the essential “stripping” could never be accomplished outside Enclosure or the Rule nor could it be born', (p. 556.) It is true that the writer says that it is ‘A Carmelite life in the world’...
Life of the Spirit March 1, 1951 Dom Bede Griffiths
It is not often recognised that members of Orders devoted to such activities as that of preaching were sometimes allowed to shut themselves up in anchorholds and to give themselves entirely to contemplation and to the work of their hands. But this was in fact the case in the later middle ages; and we find a pleasant example of it at the Dominican Priory of Newcastle-on-Tyne at the beginning of...
Life of the Spirit September 1, 1950
The following ideas are thrown out in the hope that they may be useful to those who are attracted to the contemplative life, and who are looking for some kind of groundwork or training for it, either ‘in’ or ‘out’ of religious life.Ideas of apprenticeship—beginning at the beginning to master the first principles of a subject—are foreign to modern thought, but are nevertheless indispensable to...
Life of the Spirit June 1, 1950 Conrad Pepler
Quite often the modem type of spirituality is partially condemned as subjective and introverted, as too self-conscious to be fully God-conscious. No doubt some truth lies in this accusation; for the whole renaissance and post-renaissance attitude of mind as exhibited in philosophy, science, theology, has been centred on human experience and the analysis of human life and values. Perhaps this...
Life of the Spirit March 1, 1950
The Stimulus Amoris , long attributed to St Bonaventure but now known to be a composite work, the main part of which was written by James of Milan, a thirteenth century Franciscan, was extremely popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Walter Hiltou made a translation of it, adding many passages of great beauty and interest. The work has not been printed hitherto. We give a chapter in...
Life of the Spirit March 1, 1949 S. M. Frances
The contemplative life is of its nature a hidden life. It is often a reproach levelled at contemplatives that they separate themselves, not only materially, but also spiritually from the life of those living in the world. That the world of sin which the contemplative has quitted and that of grace where he intends to live, are opposed one to the other, is a fact. But that this includes an...
Life of the Spirit 1949 Paul Philippe
While the active life is the life of the soul acting as the form of the body (that is, the life of the individual as a member of the human race), the contemplative life is the life of the soul in its purely spiritual reality,, the life of the person, the complete being, the ‘whole'. For by definition the ‘whole’ suffices to itself. It has all.It lacks nothing. The contemplative life is the...
Life of the Spirit March 1, 1948 Aelred Graham
It may be as well to begin, in the approved scholastic manner, by defining one's terms; or at least by delimiting the field of discussion-a very necessary step surely with a paper so ambiguously worded as this one! Orthodoxy, my Lord'. said Bishop Warburton, is my doxy-heterodoxy is another man's doxy'. No doubt we could improve on that and together hit upon a less question-begging statement of...