“So you really go to the early service every day, do you, Bull? Well, I wish I had your power of concentration, to say nothing of your power of getting up in the morning! Not that there’s any real difficulty about getting up when once one gets to middle life. But, frankly, I could not go through that same service every morning. My attention would be all over the place, and I should soon feel I had much better have stayed away.

“Mind you, it isn’t that I don’t appreciate the Mass. I tell you I simply love our half-past ten service on Sundays. I go out from it feeling I have had an inspiration. But then, of course, a great deal of that comes from the music and the hymns: and they are different every Sunday, and there’s not the same difficulty about keeping one’s thoughts on what one’s supposed to be doing. It’s these long silences at the early service that I can’t do with. I don’t mean on Sundays. When one’s going to receive, it seems different. I’ve got a book, too, by a fellow called Walsham How, which gives you prayers to say, and that fills up the empty spaces, so to speak.”

Colonel Ashley had grown very familiar with his co-warden, and always found that he could talk to him about big things more freely than to more conventional people.

“Well, Colonel, I hardly know how to put it. You’ve been a Churchman all your life, and I’ve only come to it gradually, picking up first [1/2] one thing and then another. I’ll not forget how it was you yourself who taught me about Confession, and helped me to pluck up my courage and make the plunge. That was the big step, and it all goes back to that day really. I suppose I kind of felt I could never do enough after that. And when my hours at the works were changed it just seemed natural to go on getting up at the same time and go to church instead.

“Of course, the Vicar has given me a lot of help. It was he who really taught me how to hear Mass.”

“I wish he would do the same for me,” said Colonel Ashley. “But priests are. always the same. When they think a man has had the same brand of education as themselves, they seem to think he’ll be offended if they try to teach him anything.”

“What he said,” went on Mr. Bull, “was that there were two kinds of public worship. Putting it roughly, he said, there was one you do for yourself, and the other that Christ does for you. The kind you do for yourself consists of reading the Bible and saying prayers. Matins and Evensong are made up of that entirely. The kind Christ does for you is called sacrifice.

“Then he explained that the Mass contains both these kinds of worship. The beginning and the end are prayer and Bible-reading, but the central part is sacrifice. And it is the central part which is the important part, because that is the part which our Lord gave us as a constant memorial of himself. It is a sacrifice because it is really part of the same act in which our [2/3] Saviour offered his life to God, and God accepted it.

“And in this central part of the Mass he said—and I’ve found it’s true—it is not the words that matter so much as the actions. There were four things that Jesus did at the Last Supper. He took bread and wine. He blessed them by giving thanks. He broke the bread. He gave the bread and wine to the disciples. And these are the four things which are done at every Mass. The real Priest is Christ himself. It is he who takes the bread and wine at the Offertory, and blesses them at the Consecration, and breaks the bread at the Fraction, and gives the bread and wine at the Communion. But Christ is not only Priest, but Victim also. So he himself has taught us to think of the consecrated bread and wine as being the outward signs of his own true Body and Blood. The effect of the Consecration is to change the bread and wine spiritually, so that we do not think of them as bread and wine any longer, but as the Body and Blood of Christ.

“Well, now, all this is not something we do at all: it is something that Christ does on our behalf. It is Christ who takes the lead in our worship, not Christ as God so much as the human Heart of Christ making its answer to God’s Love. Only, of course, we must come into’ it ourselves; and I take it that what we have got to do is just to say Amen to what Christ has already done. Jesus Christ comes and renews before our very eyes his great act of obedience on the Cross. And we just have to make his act our own, as it were. What I try to mean when I say Amen at Mass is: ‘Yes, God, that’s the [3/4] truth, that’s what you claim, and Jesus is the only one that ever gave it you. And if I want to come to you that way—the way Christ came—you won’t turn me back, will you? Not if I come hanging on to the skirts of his garment, as it were?’ And then God seems to say to me, ‘You can have much more than the skirts of my Son’s garment to hold on to. Don’t you know that you are yourself a part of his Body? Don’t you realise that you can feed on him when you will and refresh your spiritual life?’ That’s what encourages me to make my Communion pretty often. But even when I don’t do that—and sometimes I feel somehow that I can’t—I always make what the Vicar calls an act of spiritual communion.”

“Look here, Bull. Don’t think me intrusive. But I wish you would tell me a bit more about the way you join in the Mass. I am afraid it never occurred to me to do anything except follow in my Prayer-Book. I am so afraid that if I came more often on weekdays I should find it very monotonous. And really there is a great deal, is there not, which is repeated word for word the same every day?”

“I find there is a good deal of variety in the first part of the Mass. Of course, there are a great many special days which they keep at St. Silas’ which are not in the Prayer-Book. I believe the Vicar had some understanding with the Bishop about that being all right. It would be very motononous certainly to have the same Collect, Epistle, and Gospel every day in the week! And then, of course, there are Requiems, and so on: and that gives a little variety to the [4/5] part we have to do for ourselves. The Vicar gave me a book called ‘St. Swithun’s Prayer-Book,’ which has all that sort of thing in it, so I am never at a loss to know what is going on. Not that I really should mind very much if I were. One can always go on praying, I suppose.

“Well, now, Colonel, you’ve asked me to talk straight, and I’m plain John Bull: I couldn’t wrap things up if I wanted to. The first thing is to get up in time, and to be at church in time. I start with just saying my ordinary morning prayers as well as I can. Then I try to remember what I’ve come for: to get Christ to do something for me I can’t do myself, and to join in with his action as well as I can. In the Mass I remember Christ is going to express all the worship, the thanks, the prayer, the penitence even, which I know I ought to offer, only I can’t. And there is generally some special thing I want to pray about: well, I just call it to mind—no more.

“Then I follow the service closely, word for word,” till the end of the Gospel or the Creed. Then there comes one of those silences you spoke about. That, of course, is for the offering of the bread and wine on the altar. I always use that time for renewing the special intention for which I am praying, and also for asking God to accept the offering of myself along with the bread and wine. When I see the priest mix wine and water, I try to think how closely united we may be to Christ through the Sacraments. And then, of course, the washing of his hands reminds us of how we ought [5/6] to come pure and holy to the Communion.

“Then, while he says the prayer for the Church, which is the same every day, I don’t feel bound to keep my thoughts on it all the time, word for word. I just try to make that my time for praying for others. I have special people to pray for each day of the week, but I need not trouble you with that.

“Then there comes part of the special preparation for Communion—the confession and so on, I mean. I follow that if I am going to communicate: otherwise I go on with my own prayers.

“Then comes ‘Lift up your hearts,’ and it always seems to me that so long as I do that it does not much-matter whether I have any particular words in my mind or not. Sometimes I do listen to every word of the Preface and the Sanctus: sometimes I just lift my heart, or try to, to Heaven, or to the Upper Room, or to Calvary, or to the Transfiguration, or to the Ascension. And I think: Jesus worshipped God, and worships him still, as God ought to be worshipped. I must join in as well as I can, and, mean my Amen when I come to it. Then, when the bell rings, and I know that the bread and wine have been changed by the Holy Ghost into the Body and the Blood, I lift my eyes for a moment to look at this mystery which God has shown us, and. then I bow down and worship Jesus as my God. That seems like turning away from the main idea of the service, but I think anyone who believed what we do would feel he had to pay an act of worship to our Saviour when he comes among us, even though [5/6] he does come more to lead our worship than to be worshipped himself.

“Then I very often say that hymn, ‘And now, O Father, mindful of the love,’ which seems to say exactly what we want at that moment—it’s another of your pauses, Colonel. Or on other days I just think of Christ dying, rising again, and ascending into Heaven, and try to put all that between my soul and God. Then I listen to the Lord’s Prayer, when the priest says it, or if he doesn’t say it then, I say it under my breath. Then there’s ‘O Lamb of God’ and ‘Lord, I am not worthy.’ And then there’s Communion, whether I go up to the altar or simply make a spiritual Communion. And, of course, the Communion is our Lord’s work, not ours, isn’t it? There’s nothing for us to do then except keep our souls quiet. And it’s the same afterwards, I suppose. I always remember that Christ said that Mary had chosen the good part, when she really did nothing at all except sit at his feet. And for my part I simply can’t find anything to say at all. I just let him sink in. . . .

“Colonel, you won’t talk about all this, will you? I never meant to say it at all. Only somehow I couldn’t keep it in.”

“Talk about it! My friend, would a man read his brother’s love-letters and talk about them?”