180 Acta Apostolicae Sedis - Commentarium Officiale

may only hope to build it and enjoy it when their hearts and hands become again as those of little ones.

But if Our radio-greeting comes to you to-day, from Peter's home in Borne, with an extra note of nearness and endearment, it is because the Holy Father has good reason to remember that the hearts and hands of His American boys and girls, thanks to their Catholic schooling, are open wider during the holy season of Lent to the year-in, year-out invit- ation of our Teacher, our Lord and our Life : " Learn of Me ! Follow Me ! Remain in My love ! ". And what better moment could you choose to show your brothers and sisters all over the world that you belong to Our Lord, now and forever, all that you are and all that you have received from Him?

The ashes Mother Church placed on your brow as Lent began were one more sign, for all who have eyes to see, of your need of Him. The purple she drapes on her statues and Cross during the time of the Pas- sion, when we join our little sacrifice to His big one, to share His Easter victory, is one more sign of His strange, sweet need of you. You need Him now. He needs you now. He is our daily Lesson. He is our dally Companion. He is-O wonder of wonders!-our daily Bread. He is with us all days, even to the end of time, so that none of us may ever be able to say that we haven't the strenght or the light or the courage to follow wherever He leads, to love what He loves and hate only what He hates, to be good and do good for the world He asks us to help Him make one holy family at last.

What comfort it brings to Him now, and to His Body which is the Church, in face of the World's stubbornness and strife and sin, to notice that you, His little ones, are not living and studying, planning and praying through your years at school just for yourselves alone, but for all His far-flung family, with tenderness and pity like His own for those in poverty and pain?

As We were so proud and happy to tell you last year at this time, dear children, there are many hundreds of your little friends, in almost every country named in your geography, who live to thank and bless you, before the same altar and Cross of Christ, for remembering their need of Him and His need of them. Faithfully first in jour Lenten prayers; and then in the steady little stream of your Lenten gifts : food and clothes, games and toys, medicine and school-supplies, with the other simple good things the Lord meant each of them to have, as every Chris- tian knows.

We know how much your hearts and hands have done to bring them