silence and solitude. He removed Himself _about a stone's throw_ in the
garden of Gethsemane from those who loved Him best; He broke His silence
on the Cross to bid farewell even to His holy Mother herself. Above all,
he explicitly and emphatically commended the Life of Contemplative
Prayer as the highest that can be lived on earth, telling Martha that
activity, even in the most necessary duties, was not after all the best
use to which time and love could be put, but rather that _Mary had
chosen the best part ... the one thing that is necessary_, and that it
_shall not be taken away from her_ even by a sister's loving zeal.

Finally, fault was found with Jesus Christ, as with His Church, on
precisely these two points. When He was living the life of retirement in
the country He was rebuked that He did not go up to the feast and state
His claims plainly--justify, that is, by activity, His pretensions to
the Messiahship; and when He did so, He was entreated to bid his
acclaimants _to hold their peace_--to justify, that is, by humility and
retirement, His pretensions to spirituality.

III. The reconciliation, therefore, of these two elements in the
Catholic system is very easy to find.

(i) First, it is the Church's Divinity that accounts for her passion for
God. To her as to none else on earth is the very face of God revealed as
the Absolute and Final Beauty that lies beyond the limits of all
Creation. She in her Divinity enjoys it may be said, even in her sojourn
on earth, that very Beatific Vision that enraptured always the Sacred
Humanity of Jesus Christ. With all the company of heaven then, with Mary
Immaculate, with the Seraphim and with the glorified saints of God, she
_endures, seeing Him Who is invisible_. Even while the eyes of her
humanity are held, while her human members _walk by faith and not by