our souls to God in acts of love, thanksgiving, filial fear, confidence, and joy, and spend thus as long a time as we desire before going on. And all this and much more on the first simple words, "Our Father."
Next come the words "Who art in heaven." Our Father is in heaven — therefore heaven is our country; and the devout soul may make acts of desire and longing for her heavenly home. Again, wherever God is, by His grace and love, there is heaven. His presence makes heaven. Now we know by divine faith that God is everywhere, and intimately present in all things and in all places; therefore, He is present in our own souls; and in a special manner, as He is more particularly present to spiritual substances than to other things. He is present there really and actually, at every moment, by His essence and His power, and, let us humbly and confidently trust, also by His grace and love. Therefore, heaven is in our souls. Every time we say: ' ' Our Father, Who art in heaven," we can look at God continually abiding in the very centre and essence of our souls, so that He is not far off from us, nor must we go to the heavens above to find Him, as St. Teresa says, but He is very near to us, as near as our own souls to our own bodies. And this all the time, at any and every moment; and with the Father we have the Son and the Holy Ghost. So there are the Three Persons of the Trinity, enacting their wonderful relations one with another, working Their mighty works, upholding the entire universe, all within our own soul — wondrous thought'. And since Jesus Christ our Lord is God the Son, then Jesus our Lord is present in our souls, making heaven there; and, by a sort of spiritual concomitance, we can represent to ourselves His sacred humanity as present also, and His blessed Mother, too, who is not separated from Him, and the saints and angels who constitute His court; these also we can represent to ourselves as present, though in a spiritual sense and not with the same actuality that the
