The Cause of the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

“Let it not be supposed, because I say this, that I think that in the life-time of each one of us there is some clearly marked date at which he began to seek God, and from which he has served Him faithfully. This may be so in the case of this person or that, but [...]

In Lent, Christians are called to grow in the grace of Christ through the practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In an 1838 sermon Newman concentrates on the meaning of fasting, and approaches it from a strikingly new angle: its apparently negative effects. But as in the fasting of Christ himself, during the forty days [...]

Today’s feast, the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple (also called Candlemas), is the anniversary of Newman’s foundation of the English Oratory in 1848. In 1831, he had reflected in his sermon ‘Secrecy and Suddenness of Divine Visitations’ on what this episode, in which Christ is brought to the temple by the Blessed [...]

In the 1856 Dublin sermon ‘The Secret Power of Divine Grace’ Newman preaches on the Church as the manifestation of Christ’s Kingdom. In this passage, he identifies those who think Christianity is like any other religious or social group. In reality, the Church is the ’spouse of Christ’, from whom she draws all her spiritual [...]

In his 1842 sermon ‘The Principle of Continuity between the Jewish and Christian Churches’ Newman considers the connection between the Law and ritual tradition of the Old Testament and the sacramental and liturgical practices of the Christian Church, between which, as here in the case of Baptism, he finds a profound correspondence.

In this passage from his Meditations and Devotions, Newman speaks of Jesus Christ as the ‘Beginning of the New Creation’. He concludes his reflection with a prayer to Christ, ‘Splendour of the eternal light, and the Sun of Justice’, for ‘all ranks and conditions of men in Thy Holy Church’:
Our Lord Jesus Christ is said [...]

In this passage from his 1840 sermon ‘The New Works of the Gospel’, Newman reflects on the nature of faith and the fruits of grace in the Christian life, shedding light on the words of St Elizabeth to the Blessed Virgin Mary in today’s Gospel, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to [...]

In the sermon ‘Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness‘ (1826), Newman reflects on the implications of the vocation to holiness, giving his own answer to the question put to St John the Baptist, by those who seek God’s salvation: ‘What should we do?’ What is Newman’s answer? Only through Christian conversion – the search for ‘truth [...]