can doubt this.  The essence of love is sacrifice; voluntary, nay eager sacrifice.  Before our Blessed Lord died He was mocked and ridiculed, He suffered physical hardship, falling under the weight of the cross, and He was lifted up, crucified, to suffer the ignominious death of a felon.  He was made a spectacle for the jests and laughter of the multitude.  In our own time and amongst ourselves, except for periods of war, there is little necessity for physical suffering for our faith, but the need to endure ridicule is as great as ever, perhaps even greater because of the absence of physical suffering.  Since we are trying to apply these things in small and simple ways to the individual life let us each one consider how much moral courage it takes to defend Christian virtues when they are sneered at under the guise of “jokes.”  Let us exercise charity by not quoting instances, but let us be watchful of our laughter and our fellowship, which are both gifts of God, and see that we do not confuse pagan pleasure with Christian joy, the evil sneer with the tender recognition of the absurd in ourselves and in others.  It is Mr. Chesterton again who points out the fact that the pagan virtues of justice and the like which he calls the “sad virtues” were superseded, when the great Christian revelation came, by the “gay and exuberant virtues,” the virtues of grace, faith, hope and charity; and who says, “the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity are in their essence as unreasonable as they can be.  Charity means pardoning what is unpardonable or it is no virtue at all.  Hope means hoping when things are hopeless or it is no virtue at all.  And faith means believing the incredible or it is no virtue at all.”  If you say this is a paradox I reply:  it must be so, since it requires faith to accept a paradox.  The realm of reason is the one in which we walk by sight, and of this fact our age in its pride of intellect has need to be reminded.  If Christ be not the Son of God, and His revelation of the “faith once delivered” be not the divine and final guide, fulfilling, completing and at the same time reversing every other ethic, religion and moral code, then these things be indeed foolishness, for there is no explaining them on the ground of logic or philosophy.  But if, by the gift of grace, we have faith, we remember “I thank Thee, Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes:  even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.”

Again, and if as persons we are to grow in relationship to a personal God, we must both speak and listen to our Father; in other words we must use the great dynamic of prayer.  “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”  We are told that one of the requisites of the really good talker is to be a good listener; the apparently good talker is in reality a monologuist.  In our prayer-life today do we recognize sufficiently the need for listening