As Christians, we are told in scripture - and if you are not, common sense with a little of common decency implores you - to help others. The Christian virtue of charity. I don't know what atheists call this. We are also warned not to be proud about anything and God has promised to humble the proud and exalt the humble. Again, if you are not a Christian, common sense tells you helping someone and bragging about it is not really helping. You are merely using that person as a means to satisfy your own pride. Which of course needs to be fed constantly.

So in the course of you helping someone. That is, practising charity and humility, you may actually in turn just feeding your pride. I wish to bring some of these ways the devil has been hitherto successful in deceiving us in presenting pride as humility.

The best way to approach this is to say that we need to give. But if we find within us the need to be needed so we can give then we are on the wrong track which is pride. Let me explain. The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift. We feed children in order that they may soon be able to feed themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching. Thus a heavy task is laid upon us. We must work towards our own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say "They need me no longer" should be our reward. But when we fear being no longer needed because we are proud, the ravenous need to be needed will gratify itself either by keeping its objects needy or by inventing for them imaginary needs. It will do this all the more ruthlessly because it thinks (in one sense truly) that it is charity and therefore regards itself as "unselfish" when it is really pride.

It is not only mothers who can do this. All those other affections which, whether by derivation from parental instinct or by similarity of function, need to be needed may fall into the same pit. In Jane Austen's novel, Emma intends that Harriet Smith should have a happy life; but only the sort of happy life which Emma herself has planned for her. My own profession - that of a university teacher - is in this way dangerous. Another illusion is when you can very well help a man to sort of "be a man" but because of that need to be needed which you mistakenly call charity but which is actually pride, you "help" him in such a way that ensures his return to you. If we are any good we must always be working towards the moment at which our pupils are fit to become our critics and rivals. We should be delighted when it arrives, as the fencing master is delighted when his pupil can pink and disarm him.

We are told in scripture to be as gentle as doves but as wise as serpents. Be gentle - humble and charitable and wise - intelligent and smart. Christ was making a statement of fact.

I think we should be careful not to have a school boy idea of Christianity. What really Mr. Lewis called "Christianity under water" because it cannot progress. It is simply confined to an idea, or in our case a book.

I set out to study philosophy because I wanted to "prove the existence" of God. Little did I know that God doesn't need proving. Philosophy gave me the knowledge of God, not how to acknowledge Him. It gave me belief in God, not how to believe. I knew God but I didn't know Him. I knew how to define contrition but I didn't feel it. All because God was confined to a book.

Christianity under water never grows. It is school boy Christianity. And faith will never grow because the school boy defines faith as "believing something you know is not true". If you are out there and you study philosophy and all the God-talk is getting at you. I can tell you what will happen to you within the first three years. You will be so full of theories of God that you will no longer be talking about the Christian God. You would be talking about religion as if it were a disease that man needs to be rid off and your course mates would see you as a role model because they have this wrong notion that the one who takes the less popular view is the intelligent one. Satan comes in various ways, mostly ways we never thought possible. I speak from experience.

Now I do not only have the knowledge of God, I acknowledge Him. Not only the belief in God, I believe in Him. Not only the definition of contrition, I feel it. And this last point is important. This does not make you a prefect or even a "good" person. Infact, since I acknowledged God, I have found that I have fallen short of His Grace many times in a single hour and even - God forgive me - do more evil than I thought I could in my previous level. But It only means, you will be able to know now that the things you used to call "human nature" or "frailty" is sin. And being able to acknowledge God and believe in His Goodness, you would feel sorry for having offended so good a God - contrition -  and this human nature and frailty you would consciously submit it to Christ, not to cure it but to kill it so that your will and thoughts and actions would no longer be yours but completely submitted to the will and influence of and one with Christ.

Will you do it today? I have and it has made all the difference.

Holy Mass does not consist only - even primarily - of words, although the Liturgy does include forms of divine service of which this is true: vespers, or choral prayer generally. The Mass, on the other hand, is fundamentally an act. The words The Lord used to establish it do not run: "Say this in memory of Me" or "witness, proclaim, praise what has taken place," but "do." Every professional footballer knows one must warm up before a match if one is to be at his best. The jogging and stretches are not the main event but only a necessary preparation. True, the Mass begins as an oral service and stretches as such from the preparation at the foot of the altar to the Credo, and it resumes this nature toward the end (from the Communion to the Last Gospel). Between the two parts comes action: the gift-offerings are prepared; the mystery of the Transubstantiation is executed; the sacred nourishment is proffered and received. Thus our task consists not only in hearing and speaking the text of the Mass, or singing the hymns beautifully but also in taking part in the sacred act, and once again the prerequisite of participation is inner composure. Only a fool, would be content with preparing his house for a very important visitor and when the visitor is within sight immediately shuts his door.

Today it is not easy to speak of genuine participation during Mass. This is due largely to the development which the liturgy of the Lord's memorial has undergone. The first congregation was the group of apostles at table. This original form of community at table continued for a short time, as long as the congregations were very small. The Acts of the Apostles describe them: "And continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread in their houses, they took their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and being in favor with all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their company such as were to be saved." Here all still participate directly in the execution of the sacred act: they sit together at table over the divine Supper. We get the same picture from the first Epistle to the Corinthians.

Then, however, the congregations began to grow, and their numbers forced a new form on the sacred action. It lost its original, immediate character, and became stylized, transposed to the plane of the liturgical-sacramental. In place of the realistic act we now have its symbolic representation. Table became altar, and thereby lost something of its direct associations. A large number of people was less able to participate than a small number, and involuntarily the believer's attitude shifted to that of a mere observer. The whole became more and more sharply divided into two parts: here the altar on which the sacred act is ritually executed; there the people, aware that they are represented by the priest, but no longer actually seated at table. As time went on and the rooms for divine service became larger, the new form took over more consistently.

To participate means to share in the task of another. Here that other is the priest. He is not there for himself, but for the congregation. By means of the words he speaks and gestures he makes in the power of his office, something happens - through Christ. Everyone present is called upon to share in that happening. The priest responds to it, not privately for himself, but for all. And again all are invited to share in his invocation, celebration, adoration, pleading, and thanksgiving. The celebrant's actions radiate in all directions far beyond his personal life. This is so primarily that all may - and should - enter into them.

The priest acts, but we must act with him by being inwardly present, by watching him every moment at the altar table, identifying ourselves with his every gesture. Thus I bring Myself to a profound consciousness of what is taking place, a consciousness that can overflow into action - I can personally go up and receive the sacred food. Naturally, we must be genuinely active, not simply watchful. We must overcome the unconcern, sleepiness, indolence, and inertia which keep us from the sacred act so that we may enter into it vitally.

Composure alone enables us to do this. When the mind is not collected and the heart is restless and inattentive, we will be occasionally conscious of a word or gesture, or the bell will remind us that one of the high points of the Mass is at hand; never will we be in that state of active, watchful vitality which alone permits genuine participation. Moreover, the sacred feast is preserved only for those in a state of grace. How many out of 100?

And so it is, Bell-ringing during Mass has become necessary - to our shame. It is meant to remind us that something really important is soon to take place; it also implies that without the totally foreign intrusion of the bells we would likely be unaware of it. Something precious - stillness - is destroyed by the sound. If we, were, in fact, really composed, the ringing would be superfluous: any persistent mind -wanderer would be called back to attention by the thundering silence of the congregation, a far better signal than the jingling of bells.

Until we undergo a lebenswelt of the Eucharist which would eliminate the Bell-ringing calling us to attention, Mass would still only remain a mechanical affair bereft of true sanctifying and saving grace on our part!