AS will be seen from the above calendar, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week are Rogation Days, when the l-itany of the Saints arc recited. Antiphons and versicles recall the Sunday Gosoel wherein we hear our Lord promising: " if you ask the Father any thing in My name. He will give it you." The emphasis, therefore, is on the power of oraym when this js directed and assisted by the Holy Spirit, Who, as St. Paul tells us in the Lesson at Matins, " Himself pleads for us with unutterable Runnings."
The spectacle of the Resurrection with which Easter has presented us is calculated to make us specially responsive to this truth. Can anything he impossible to the Power by which Christ rose from the dead?
It will not he inappropriate if we approach the Feast of the Ascension from the same point of view. What bearing has our Lord's exhaltation on the efficacy of our petitions? That the ascension to highest heaven as our High Priest of One Who is fully representative of our humanity ehould give us the fullest guarantee is an obvious reflection, especially when we consider that it is His Own Blood which He offers on our behalf. Were our faith equal to it, this combination of power and love would prove irresistible.
In this world we see, on the tole hand, power, regarded as an end in itself, wedded to the spirit of domination and. on the other hand, love wringing its hands at the impotence which prevents it effecting the good it would. The divotdce on earth between power and pity is so familiar that our minds almost invariably associate the one with self-seeking and the other with weakness, Contemplation or the Ascension will help us to overcome this mental habit and to associate Power with Love and Love with Power and to develop an audacious faith that literally " stops at nothing." Can we persuade ourselves that the Church, seemingly the plaything of Governments, being substantially united with her ascended and enthroned Lord, Pas the power to control history—international, social and individual?
STANLEY B. JAMES