Author Description

This book begins: "The versatile Monsignor Benson in one of his books pictures with great vividness a priest saying his Mass on Easter Sunday in the stirring days of Queen Elizabeth. The time is before dawn and the place a little "upper room" in an English country house of one of the Catholic remnant. The great drama of the Mass goes on, and the author speaks uniquely, but reverently, of the part played in It by the Heavenly Court. The Queen Mother, all glorious, hoaryheaded apostles and martyrs, youthful confessors, gentle virgins, each in turn steps out and answers by name as the priest proceeds with the Invocation. As I stand to offer the Holy Sacrifice at the humble altar of my little church on a Sunday I often think of the passage in the good Monsignor's book. How wonderfully, indeed, the grace of God sanctifies all that it touches! My friend, Father X. who presides over the destinies of a neighboring parish, says that he cannot understand my easy toleration of the interior ugliness of my modest temple. He faults the crudity of the Stations on its walls; the poverty of the sanctuary and its appointments; the sadly inadequate efforts of my children's choir."