Preface

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If I have a public, this book, I fear, will be a severe test of its patience. That a priest should put on record his private thoughts about the Mass-there is nothing extravagant in that. But mine were put on record in a highly specialized art-form, that of sermons to school-girls; and this form they still impenitently wear. There are films which a child can frequent only by pretending to be an adult. Here are pages which an adult can enjoy only by pretending to be a child. Nisi efficiamini sicut parvuli . . .

The sermons were preached to the convent school of the Assumption Sisters, which was " evacuated " during the late war from Kensington to Aldenham Park in Shropshire. They appeared afterwards in The Tablet, much abridged; by reducing them to less than half their original size, it was possible to give them the air of a contribution designed for that paper. They are now offered to the public almost in their original form. The few excisions which have been made were made reluctantly; no word I had written but recalled some memory not lightly exorcised, and I will not pretend to have finished the business of proof-reading altogether dry-eyed.

Only the introductory sermon (though this, too, was preached at Aldenham) was written for grown ups. It is included here to give a preview of the whole subject; a breathless introduction to a slow motion picture. If you want to dip into the book, you need go no further. If you read it, and find yourself wanting to remember what it said, this first chapter will suffice to refresh your memory.

But this book must not be published without a special greeting to the Sisters of the Assumption, and some pupils of theirs who are school-girls no longer. These, with memories for their book-markers, will be (I hope) the indulgent critics they always were; even utility sermons grow easier with custom.

R. A. KNOX. 

MELLS,

Easter, 1948. 

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