people regularly to take part in this service. How often we should communicate is another question. The Rule does say we should be regular. That is, there should be a rule. It is not just a matter of going when we please, or feel like it. Many Churchmen see it their duty to communicate every Sunday, others once a month, others less frequently. All these are keeping the Church's rule. They are to be judged by none but their own consciences. The rubric in the revised Prayer Book of 1959 needs interpretation and must be understood in the light of ancient tradition and canon law. Before the Reformation, by the decrees of the Lateran Council of 1215, the minimum of three times a year was reduced to once a year, at Easter. At the Reformation the old rule or canon was restored, which required every lay person to communicate at Christmas, Easter and Whitsunday . We can see from this that at each of these great feasts there should be the same large number of communicants as at Easter. Bishop Mortimer says, "There is no question but that the ideal is that on every Sunday all the members of each local Church should be in their places at this service. The whole Church should be one in this supreme act of worship and union with the Master. The separation of the offering of the Eucharist from the Communion of the people is a decline from the primitive practice which the English Reformers sought to correct." The offering of the Eucharist has properly to be consummated by the people offering themselves in Communion, and in the act of receiving back into themselves the Lord's atoning, hallowing life. We should come regularly to the Holy Communion not because we are worthy but because he bids us come. It is in this spirit that we accept the rule to communicate regularly. 3. Fasting (a) The fact of fasting in the experience of man: Cruden's Concordance tells us that "Fasting has, in all ages, and among all nations, been an exercise much in use in times of mourning, sorrow and affliction. The sense of it is in some sort inspired by nature. 44