h I've perhaps been
unsuccessful in giving you a picture of him as a priest. It's
always difficult to talk or write about one's intimate religious
feelings, and you've been the only person to whom I ever have been
able to talk about them. However much I admire and revere Father
Rowley I doubt if I could talk or write to him about myself as I do
to you.

Until I came here I don't think I ever quite realized all that the
Blessed Sacrament means. I had accepted the Sacrifice of the Mass
as one accepts so much in our creed, without grasping its full
implication. If anybody were to have put me through a catechism
about the dogma I should have answered with theological exactitude,
without any appearance of misapprehending the meaning of it; but it
was not until I came here that its practical reality--I don't know
if I'm expressing myself properly or not, I'm pretty sure I'm not;
I don't mean practical application and I don't mean any kind of
addition to my faith; perhaps what I mean is that I've learnt to
grasp the mystery of the Mass outside myself, outside that is to
say my own devotion, my own awe, as a practical fact alive to these
people here. Sometimes when I go to Mass I feel as people who
watched Our Lord with His disciples and followers must have felt. I
feel like one of those people who ran after Him and asked Him what
they could do to be saved. I feel when I look at what has been done
here as if I must go to each of these poor people in turn and beg
them to bring me to the feet of Christ, just as I suppose on the
shores of the sea of Galilee people must have begged St. Peter or
St. Andrew or St. James or St. John to introduce them, if one can
use such a word for such an occasion. This seems to me the great
work that Father Rowley has effected in this parish. I have only
had one rather shy talk with him about religion, and in the course
of it I said something in praise of what his personality had
effected.

"My personality has effected nothing," he answered. "Everything
here is effected by the Blessed Sacrament."

That is why he surely has the right without any consideration for
the dignity of churchy young men to box their ears if they question
his outward respect for the Blessed Sacrament. Even Our Lord found
it necessary at leas