for the last time the "Bread of Eternal Life"—will be in contact with the Christ suspended upon the cross, the Victim of justice and of peace.
It does not seem to us, Holy Father, that we are thereby annihilating the authority of the Fathers, since our work is but the continuation of theirs, which we are seeking to know more perfectly than it has been known in the past. To recognize, to appreciate, and to imitate the Fathers does not mean to retrace our steps so as to do materially and identically what they did, to repeat word for word what they said. If they had thus acted with regard to the Apostles, and the Apostles with regard to Christ, neither Christianity nor the Church nor theology would now have existed. We accept integrally the whole Christian tradition, and the present-day production of books concerning it shows you how vast the object of our study is. But to imitate the Fathers means to penetrate into their
