re were sufficient Catholics
gathered in His Name; but put for Manchester, Exeter Hall or St. Paul's
Cathedral! The thought is blindingly absurd. No; the Christianity of
Jesus Christ lives only in the Catholic Church.

There alone in the whole round world do you find that combination of
lofty doctrine, magnificent moral teaching, the frank recognition of the
Cross; sacramentalism logically carried out, yet gripping the heart as
no amateur mysticism can do; and miracles. "Mercy and Truth have met
together." "These signs shall follow them that believe.... Faith can
remove mountains.... All things are possible to him that believes....
Whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in My Name.... Where two or three
are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them."
There alone, where souls are built upon Peter, do these things really
happen.

I have been asked lately whether I am "happy" in the Catholic Church.
Happy! What can one say to a question like that? Does one ask a man who
wakes up from a foolish dream to sunshine in his room, and to life and
reality, whether he is happy? Of course many non-Catholics are happy. I
was happy myself as an Anglican; but as a Catholic one does not use the
word; one does not think about it. The whole of life is different; that
is all that can be said. Faith is faith, not hope; God is Light, not
twilight; eternity, heaven, hell, purgatory, sin and its
consequences--these things are facts, not guesses and conjectures and
suspicions desperately clung to. "How hard it is to be a Christian!"
moans the persevering non-Catholic. "How impossible it is to be anything
else!" cries the Catholic.

We went round, then, singing. The procession was so huge that it seemed
to have no head and no tail. It involved itself a hundred times over; it
swirled in the square, it humped itself over the Rosary Church; it
elongated itself half a mile away up beyond our Mother's garlanded
statue; it eddied round the Grotto. It was one immense pool and river of
lights and song. Each group sang by itself till it was overpowered by
another; men and women and children strolled along patiently singing and
walking, knowing nothing of where they went, nothing of what they would
be singing five minutes hence. It depended on the voice-power of their
neighbours.

For myself, I found myself in a dozen groups, before, at last, after an
hour or so, I fell out of the procession and went home. Now I walked
cheek by jo