ordains some to suffer for the sanctification of priests and the multiplication of earnest workmen in His vineyard, which vocation, next to that of the ministry, is the noblest that can be entrusted to souls. Such special victims we know to have been Saints Catherine of Siena, Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, Aloysius Gonzaga, Rose of Lima, Blessed Margaret Mary, and many others who. innocent themselves, suffered for the guilty."
Nowadays the importance of the contemplative life as a means not only to the personal, individual sanctification of those who follow it, but also to the salvation of mankind in general, is perhaps not appreciated, or, rather, not realized, even by many who are of the household of the Faith. Apropos of this subject we read in a good little book, The Contemplative Life, by a Carthusian monk: "That the contemplative life has an apostolic aspect is an idea with which the feverish activity of modern life is unfamiliar. It is more apt to ask what can be the practical use of idle men, shut up alone in contemplation, at a time when there is so much to be done; what can they do in their state of isolation? On hearing that they live lives of prayer and self-sacrifice, the ordinary man is inclined to ask why? and for whom? And the answer is that they do so for the good of souls, that greatly need both prayer and self-sacrifice. Are we not too much in the habit of forgetting that prayer and penance are indispensable to the conversion of sinners, to the progress of the good, and to the perfection of the saints.
"In the Church prayer and penance are the duties that belong to the subsidiary ministry assigned to the Contemplative Orders, and they practise them for the conversion of sinners, for the progress of the good in virtue, and for the perfection of the saints.
"The late Cardinal
