Jesus loves to have us bring one another to Him.  It is so obviously the response to His Spirit, that carrying out of His teaching, so to love the brother that we may bring him to the healing of the Cross.  To care for the spiritual needs of the brother is a real ministry:  it is an extension of Christ in us that clothes us with the power to aid other souls in work or prayer.  What a beautiful picture of this work there is in the Gospel of St. John.  “And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast:  the same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus.  Philip cometh and telleth Andrew:  and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus.”  And this work of presenting souls to Jesus which is so clearly one of our chief privileges, how should not that be also the privilege of all the saints, and especially of the Holy Mother?  Blessed Mary, we may be sure, delights in leading souls who so hesitatingly come to her, to the presence of her Son,—­just presenting them in their need and with her prayer, which is all the plea that is needed to attract the love and mercy of Jesus.  “Why not,” ask certain people who have not thought out the meaning of Catholic dogma, “why not go at once to our Lord; why go in this roundabout way?” Why not?  Because of our human qualities.  Because we need company and sympathy.  For the same reason precisely that makes us ask one another’s prayers here.  “The Father Himself loveth you.”  Why in this roundabout way ask me to pray?  You do not come to me because you lack faith in God or in God’s love; you come to me because you feel, if only implicitly, that in the Body of Christ association in love and sympathy and work is a high privilege, and that it is God’s will that we should work together and “bear one another’s burdens.”  And the frontiers of the Kingdom of God are not the frontiers of the Church Militant, and its citizens are not only the citizens of the Church here below, but—­we believe in the Communion of saints.

The hour of God strikes for any soul when that soul yields to prevenient grace and places itself utterly at the disposal of God, confiding wholly in His divine wisdom.  When our Lord had answered His Blessed Mother she turned away satisfied.  She did not have to concern herself any further; it was now in Jesus’ hands to provide as He would.  It remained but to see that His will should be carried out when He made it known.

Submission is a difficult attitude to acquire; but it is such a happy attitude when once one has acquired it.  The critics of it wholly mistake it and confound it with fatalism.  It is not fatalism, or passive acquiescence in another’s will—­a will that we have no part in forming and cannot reject.  Submission is the acceptance of God’s will as the expression of the highest wisdom for us.  It is not true that we have no part in forming it; it is at any time an expression of God’s will