Overview

From the Forward: Father Bede Jarrett, OP (1881-1934), true to the religious vocation given to him by God, was above all a preacher. By reason of his natural gifts, combined with an unlimited capacity for concentrated work, he could have become a notable scholar and a prolific writer. The administrative duties, imposed upon him relatively early in his Dominican life and fulfilled by him with exemplary conscientiousness and abundant fruit until the day of his untimely death, prevented him from developing his gift for scholarship and his capacity for writing. But nothing could prevent him from being a great preacher. To this primary and beloved duty he brought all his outstanding natural gifts of understanding and sympathy, of gentleness and friendliness, of affability and unwearied patience, of personal charm and appealing oratory. But it was not this that made him a great preacher. Much that he was and did might have been purely natural; in actual fact it was not, for it was inspired and illuminated throughout by an intense love of God and of all things, especially of all men, that burned in him as an unquench-able fire. As I have written in another place, 'the keynote of his whole life was that of integrity, an integrity that came of a transcendental vision of truth and goodness and beauty which became clearer and more compelling as the years of his life passed from youth to the fullness of his manhood. . . .He saw the truth of God expressed in terms of goodness and he could see only goodness in the works of the Creator. Out of this came a joyousness of soul that adversity could not diminish, a confidence in his fellow-men that experi- ence could not undermine, a sublime trust in Providence that was abundantly fruitful in its reward.' It was this vision of truth that set him afire with charity, that made him a true son of St Dominic and so worthy a member of his Order of Preachers.This outstanding aspect of Father Bede Jarrett's life and work is of particular significance in relation to the present anthology, for it is an anthology of the spoken, rather than of the written, word. Notwithstanding the number of published volumes that bear his name, he actually wrote few spiritual treatises. A number of the books from which extracts have been taken are in fact verbatim reports of courses of sermons taken down as he delivered them. FR HILARY CARPENTER, O.P. Prior Provincial