1. Ascetical theology makes the bold and exciting assumption that every truth flowing from the Incarnation, from the entrance of God into the human world as man, must have its practical lesson. If theology is incarnational, then it must be pastoral. It is a common dilemma of theological students, absorbed, or otherwise, in a lecture on Old Testament sources, the synoptic problem, or some intricate piece of Scholastic philosophy, to sit back and ask themselves “if I am training to be a parish priest,