prayer without meditation is lukewarm, but meditation without prayer is unfruitful; prayer with devotion obtains contemplation, and the obtaining of contemplation without prayer is rare or miraculous."

St. Thomas fixes upon this same truth, and explains to us that reading lifts the mind up to God; meditation enables us to preserve and digest what we read, and through the means of affective prayer the soul is inflamed with the love that enables it to enjoy God, lifts it out of itself, gives it a sense of calm and peace in the things it is considering, fills it with rapturous wonder at the truths that fall beneath its ken, and inundates it with the spiritual sweetness of the divine Presence. And this work of love within the soul is Contemplation."

VI. Of the Active Life

By Action we mean external works performed with such motive and spirit as to constitute them exercises of the virtues, especially of the virtue of mercy whereby we contribute to the corporal or spiritual relief of our neighbour.

The Active Life is that which is lived by such communities as are instituted primarily for external works of charity. The purest form of the Active community that has existed in the Church is that of the Military Religious Orders of the Middle Ages, which devoted themselves to the protection of the holy places in Palestine from profanation, and to the care of pilgrims. In our own time communities such as the 1 Guigo, Scala Claustralium, cap. xii, col. 657.

2 See Doyle, Principles of Religious Life, pp. 219-20.

Sisters of Charity and Sisters of Mercy, the Christian Brothers, etc., represent the Active Life especially. Those living the Active Life, while bound by the ordinary vows of Religion, in many cases are not required to give any more time to devotion than if they were employed in merely secular engagements.

The Active Life, however, must not be thought to be wholly devoid of special exercises of Religious devotion, although the Divine Office, meditation and other like duties, are here appointed only as auxiliary to the external work of charity. The Active Religious engages in special devotions not for the sake of the life of formal prayer itself, but for the purpose of forming through such exercises, that interior character which will enable him the better to accomplish his outward activities as a worthy offering to God. With him, prayer, over and above that which is of precept to every Christian, is a means to an end, the end being union with God through serving his neighbour.

The Contemplative, we have seen, may perform many external works, but he does so only that he may the better pursue the life of prayer which is the essential end of his profession. The Active Religious, on the other hand, may perform many devotions, but he does so only that he may be the better prepared for his external works of mercy, which is the essential end of his profession. Nevertheless the Active Life, equally with the Contemplative, is designed, as every form of Religion must essentially be, for the acquiring of perfection, and both have equally in view the final perfection of love whereby alone complete union with God may be attained. As we have considered

before, the ultimate aim is identical, although the means that each employs to gain this end, are different.

In many respects the Active Life is a difficult form of Religion, owing to the many external duties of a distracting nature that are involved in it. It enjoys a less sheltered condition, and those who, labouring under such devotional disadvantages, are still able to attain to perfection, may be said to have accomplished a more difficult task than those who are hedged in by stricter rules and Religious enclosure.

The Active Life being particularly one of works as differentiated from formal exercises of prayer, must be pre-eminently a life of oblation, that is to say, it is to find its chief merit in the perpetual oblation to God of those active labours that are done for His glory and for the love of one's neighbour. The Active Religious must ever find Jesus Christ in those to whom he ministers, having always in his thoughts the words: "I was an hungred and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in; naked and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me."1

The spirit of the Active Life is expressed in the directions of St. Vincent de Paul to the founders of the Sisters of Charity : The Sister of Charity shall have for her convent the house of the sick, for her cell the chamber of suffering, for her chapel the parish church, for her cloister the streets of the city or the wards of an hospital. Obedience shall be her 1 St. Matthew xxv. 35, 36.

enclosure, the fear of God her grate, and modesty her veil."1

VII. Of the Mixed Life

The Mixed Life is that form of Religion that combines both Contemplation and Action. This form of the Life requires one to divide his time and energies between prayer and work, and neither of these is subsidiary to the other. Both are performed for their own sakes, and union with God is sought directly through both the life of Contemplation and the external service of one's neighbour.

Action and Contemplation are in no way opposed to each other, and they both can at the same time and by the same person be arrived at and attained to in a high and relatively perfect degree. St. Gregory the Great2 interprets Ezekiel's vision of the Seraphim as showing by the figure of the hands (indicating action) and the wings (indicating the flight of contemplation), that this is possible."

It must be borne in mind that when it is said that the Mixed Life combines both Contemplation and Action, this does not mean that certain elements are taken from the Active, and certain others from the Contemplative, Life; and are, as it were, fused together, producing as a product a third element which is the essential characteristic of the so-called 1 Quoted in Bougaud's History of Saint Vincent de Paul, Vol. i, P. 309.

2 St. Gregory Mag., Hom. in Ezech., Lib. i, Hom. iii, 9. Migne, P. L., Tom. lxxvi, col. 809.

3 St. Gregory Mag., Moral. Lib. xxxv, cap. ii. Migne, P. L., Tom. lxxvi, col. 751.

Mixed Life. The latter form of Religion in combining the Contemplative and the Active, holds them both to be of equal importance—and those professing it are bound to exercise the life of contemplation side by side with active ministries for the corporal or spiritual relief of their neighbour. "The Mixed Life includes the whole of the Perfection of the Contemplative Life, and it in no way diminishes it," and unless in it the Contemplative Life is actually arrived at, and exercised, it is not really the Mixed Life.1

The Mixed Life is analogous to the life of the ordinary Christian, since in some real sense every baptized soul must live a life partly contemplative and partly active. The life of prayer (and all true prayer partakes of contemplation) is necessary to the right ordering of the external activities of love and mercy.

VIII. Of the Comparative Excellence of Various Forms of Religion

Authorities agree that the Contemplative is of greater excellence than the Active Life. Action is a means to an end, whereas Contemplation is an end in itself. The work of contemplation will not cease with this life, but is a part of the Beatific Life in heaven.2 A more difficult question to decide is the relative excellence of the Contemplative and the Mixed Life. The authorities devote much argument and consideration to it, and, following St. Thomas, the general

1 Humphrey, Elements of Religious Life, p. 288.

2 St. Gregory Mag., Hom. in Ezech., Lib. i, Hom. iii, 9. Migne, P. L., Tom. lxxvi, col. 809.