None have so many motives and means as we, to make us conceive an affection for prayer, give our selves to it with love and seek, above all things, union with God. The world, alas! Absorbed by its pursuits and its pleasures, hardly ever thinks of God. Martha, overburdened with the pious labours to which she devotes herself all day long in the service of God and of souls, has but little leisure for repose and contemplation. Our vocation is that of Mary, who, keeping at Our Lord's feet, looks upon Him, loves Him, listens to Him and speaks to Him; our function in the house of God is to be attached to the person of Our Divine Master, to have frequent and familiar intercourse with Him, to be united to Him in a life of prayer; we are contemplatives by the peculiar duties of our profes sion. Can any lot be more sweet or more desir able?