From “Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification” Lecture 11. Click here for full text (leaves site)

Resurrection of Christ, unknown Bulgarian master, c. 1675, Vatican Museum

Let us never forget that in proportion as our love is “rooted and grounded” in the next world, our faith must branch forth like a fruitful tree into this. The calmer our hearts, the more active be our lives; the more tranquil we are, the more busy; the more resigned, the more zealous; the more unruffled, the more fervent. This is one of the many paradoxes in the world’s judgment of him, which the Christian realizes in himself. Christ is risen; He is risen from the dead. We may well cry out, “Alleluia, the Lord Omnipotent reigneth.” He has crushed all the power of the enemy under His feet. He has gone upon the lion and the adder. He has stopped the lion’s mouth for us His people, and has bruised the serpent’s head. There is nothing impossible to us now, if we do but enter into the fulness of our privileges, the wondrous power of our gifts. The thing cannot be named in heaven or earth within the limits of truth and obedience which we cannot do through Christ; the petition cannot be named which may not be accorded to us for His Name’s sake. For, we who have risen with Him from the grave, stand in His might, and are allowed to use His weapons. His infinite influence with the Father is ours,—not always to use, for perhaps in this or that effort we make, or petition we prefer, it would not be good for us; but so far ours, so fully ours, that when we ask and do things according to His will, we are really possessed of a power with God, and do prevail:—so that little as we may know when and when not, we are continually possessed of heavenly weapons, we are continually touching the springs of the most wonderful providences in heaven and earth; and by the Name, and the Sign, and the Blood of the Son of God, we are able to make devils tremble and Saints rejoice.

Such are the arms which faith uses, small in appearance, yet “not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds;” [2 Cor. 10:4] despised by the world, what seems a mere word, or a mere symbol, or mere bread and wine; but God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, and foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and as all things spring from small beginnings, from seeds and elements invisible or insignificant, so when God would renew the race of man, and reverse the course of human life and earthly affairs, He chose cheap things for the rudiments of His work, and bade us believe that He could work through them, and He would do so. As then we Christians discern in Him, when He came on earth, not the carpenter’s son, but the Eternal Word Incarnate, as we see beauty in Him in whom the world saw no form or comeliness, as we discern in that death an Atonement for sin in which the world saw nothing but a malefactor’s sentence; so let us believe with full persuasion that all that He has bequeathed to us has power from Him. Let us accept His Ordinances, and His Creed, and His precepts; and let us stand upright with an undaunted faith, resolute, with faces like flint, to serve Him in and through them; to inflict them upon the world without misgiving, without wavering, without anxiety; being sure that He who saved us from hell through a Body of flesh which the world insulted, tortured, and triumphed over, much more can now apply the benefits of His passion through Ordinances which the world has lacerated and now mocks.

From the sermon ‘Keeping Fast and Festival’ (1838) Click here to see the full text (leaves site)

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons Vol 4 (1839) Sermon no. 23, p. 341-43)

Andrea del Castagno, Crucifixion and Saints, c. 1440, Ospedale Santa Maria Nuova, Florence

From Meditations and Devotions (1893)

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Meditations and Devotions of the Late Cardinal Newman (1893), Part II, ‘Short Meditations on the Stations of the Cross’, p. 166)

Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, St-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, c. 1842

In ‘The Cross of Christ the Measure of the World’ (1841) Newman argues that this world can only be truly understood in the light of the cross of Christ, for we must experience the sufferings of this world before we can understand ourselves, our weakness and sin, and so realise our eternal destiny. So is this world somehow bad, and not to be enjoyed? No, says Newman, but: ‘they alone can truly feast, who have first fasted’.

And thus, too, all that is bright and beautiful, even on the surface of this world, though it has no substance, and may not suitably be enjoyed for its own sake, yet is a figure and promise of that true joy which issues out of the Atonement [for our sins which Christ worked on the cross]. It is a promise beforehand of what is to be: it is a shadow, raising hope because the substance is to follow, but not to be rashly taken instead of the substance. And it is God’s usual mode of dealing with us, in mercy to send the shadow before the substance, that we may take comfort in what is to be, before it comes. Thus our Lord before His Passion rode into Jerusalem in triumph, with the multitudes crying Hosanna, and strewing His road with palm branches and their garments. This was but a vain and hollow pageant, nor did our Lord take pleasure in it. It was a shadow which stayed not, but flitted away. It could not be more than a shadow, for the Passion had not been undergone by which His true triumph was wrought out. He could not enter into His glory before He had first suffered. He could not take pleasure in this semblance of it, knowing that it was unreal. Yet that first shadowy triumph was the omen and presage of the true victory to come, when He had overcome the sharpness of death. And we commemorate this figurative triumph on the last Sunday in Lent, to cheer us in the sorrow of the week that follows, and to remind us of the true joy which comes with Easter-Day.

And so, too, as regards this world, with all its enjoyments, yet disappointments. Let us not trust it; let us not give our hearts to it; let us not begin with it. Let us begin with faith; let us begin with Christ; let us begin with His Cross and the humiliation to which it leads. Let us first be drawn to Him who is lifted up, that so He may, with Himself, freely give us all things. Let us “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” and then all those things of this world “will be added to us.” They alone are able truly to enjoy this world, who begin with the world unseen. They alone enjoy it, who have first abstained from it. They alone can truly feast, who have first fasted; they alone are able to use the world, who have learned not to abuse it; they alone inherit it, who take it as a shadow of the world to come, and who for that world to come relinquish it.

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons Vol 6 (1842) Sermon no. 7, p. 92-3)

Priests hear confessions before the Papal Mass in Washington D.C., April 2008

“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 it is far from being the rule. We may not so limit the mysterious work of the Holy Ghost. He condescends to plead with us continually, and what He cannot gain from us at one time, He gains at another. Repentance is a work carried on at diverse times, and but gradually and with many reverses perfected. Or rather, and without any change in the meaning of the word repentance, it is a work never complete, never entire—unfinished both in its inherent imperfection, and on account of the fresh and fresh occasions which arise for exercising it. We are ever sinning, we must ever be renewing our sorrow and our purpose of obedience, repeating our confessions and our prayers for pardon. No need to look back to the first beginnings of our repentance, should we be able to trace these, as something solitary and peculiar in our religious course; we are ever but beginning; the most perfect Christian is to himself but a beginner, a penitent prodigal, who has squandered God’s gifts, and comes to Him to be tried over again, not as a son, but as a hired servant.

From the sermon ‘Christian Repentance’  (1831)

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons Vol 3 (1836) Sermon no. 7, p. 90-1)

Pope Benedict XVI arrives at the Church of St Sabina in Rome, Ash Wednesday, February 2010 (Credit: Reuters)

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 and forty nights in the wilderness, trial is but a foretaste of glory:

“And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry.” [Matthew 4: 2 RSV]

It is commonly said, that fasting is intended to make us better Christians, to sober us, and to bring us more entirely at Christ’s feet in faith and humility. This is true, viewing matters on the whole. On the whole, and at last, this effect will be produced, but it is not at all certain that it will follow at once. On the contrary, such mortifications have at the time very various effects on different persons, and are to be observed, not from their visible benefits, but from faith in the Word of God. Some men, indeed, are subdued by fasting and brought at once nearer to God; but others find it, however slight, scarcely more than an occasion of temptation.

For instance, it is sometimes even made an objection to fasting, as if it were a reason for not practising it, that it makes a man irritable and ill-tempered. I confess it often may do this. Again, what very often follows from it is, a feebleness which deprives him of his command over his bodily acts, feelings, and expressions. Thus it makes him seem, for instance, to be out of temper when he is not; I mean, because his tongue, his lips, nay his brain, are not in his power. He does not use the words he wishes to use, nor the accent and tone. … Or again, weakness of body often hinders him from fixing his mind on his prayers, instead of making him pray more fervently; or again, weakness of body is often attended with languor and listlessness, and strongly tempts a man to sloth. [...]

It is undeniably a means of temptation, and I say so, lest persons should be surprised, and despond when they find it so. And the merciful Lord knows that so it is from experience; and that He has experienced and thus knows it, as Scripture records, is to us a thought full of comfort. I do not mean to say, God forbid, that aught of sinful infirmity sullied His immaculate soul; but it is plain from the sacred history, that in His case, as in ours, fasting opened the way to temptation. And, perhaps, this is the truest view of such exercises, that in some wonderful unknown way they open the next world for good and evil upon us, and are an introduction to somewhat of an extraordinary conflict with the powers of evil.

Stories are afloat (whether themselves true or not matters not, they show what the voice of mankind thinks likely to be true), of hermits in deserts being assaulted by Satan in strange ways, yet resisting the evil one, and chasing him away, after our Lord’s pattern, and in His strength; and, I suppose, if we knew the secret history of men’s minds in any age, we should find this (at least, I think I am not theorizing),—viz. a remarkable union in the case of those who by God’s grace have made advances in holy things … [viz.] a union on the one hand of temptations offered to the mind, and on the other, of the mind’s not being affected by them, not consenting to them, even in momentary acts of the will, but simply hating them, and receiving no harm from them. At least, I can conceive this—and so far persons are evidently brought into fellowship and conformity with Christ’s temptation, who was tempted, yet without sin.

Today, February 21^st, is the anniversary of the birthday of John Henry Newman in 1801.

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons Vol 6 (1842) Sermon no. 1, p. 6-8

Altar of the Our Lady, the Oratory, Birmingham

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 Virgin and St Joseph, tells us about God’s dealing with mankind:

I say, we are today reminded of the noiseless course of God’s providence,—His tranquil accomplishment, in the course of nature, of great events long designed; and again, of the suddenness and stillness of His visitations. Consider what the occurrence in question consists in. A little child is brought to the Temple, as all first-born children were brought. There is nothing here uncommon or striking, so far. His parents are with him, poor people, bringing the offering of pigeons or doves, for the purification of the mother. They are met in the Temple by an old man, who takes the child in his arms, offers a thanksgiving to God, and blesses the parents; and next are joined by a woman of a great age, a widow of eighty-four years, who had exceeded the time of useful service, and seemed to be but a fit prey for death. She gives thanks also, and speaks concerning the child to other persons who are present. Then all retire.

Now, there is evidently nothing great or impressive in this; nothing to excite the feelings, or interest the imagination. We know what the world thinks of such a group as I have described. The weak and helpless, whether from age or infancy, it looks upon negligently and passes by. Yet all this that happened was really the solemn fulfilment of an ancient and emphatic prophecy. The infant in arms was the Saviour of the world, the rightful heir, come in disguise of a stranger to visit His own house. The Scripture had said, “The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His Temple: but who may abide the day of His coming, and who may stand when He appeareth?” [Mal. 3: 1] He had now taken possession. …

Such has ever been the manner of His visitations, in the destruction of His enemies as well as in the deliverance of His own people;—silent, sudden, unforeseen, as regards the world, though predicted in the face of all men, and in their measure comprehended and waited for by His true Church. …

And it is impossible that it should be otherwise, in spite of warnings ever so clear, considering how the world goes on in every age. Men, who are plunged in the pursuits of active life, are no judges of its course and tendency on the whole. They confuse great events with little, and measure the importance of objects, as in perspective, by the mere standard of nearness or remoteness. It is only at a distance that one can take in the outlines and features of a whole country. It is but holy Daniel, solitary among princes, or Elijah the recluse of Mount Carmel, who can withstand [the pagan god] Baal, or forecast the time of God’s providences among the nations.

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons Vol 2 (1835) Sermon no. 10, p. 109-112)

Duccio di Buoninsegna, Wedding at Cana, c. 1310, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena

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 power:

My Brethren, there are those who imagine that, when we use great words of the Church, invest her with heavenly privileges, and apply to her the evangelical promises, we speak merely of some external and political structure. They think we mean to spend our devotion upon a human cause, and that we toil for an object of human ambition. They think that we should acknowledge, if cross-examined, that our ultimate purpose was the success of persons and parties, to whom we were bound in honour, or by interest, or by gratitude; and that, if we looked to objects above the world or beyond the grave, we did so with very secondary aims and faint perceptions. They fancy, as the largest concession of their liberality, that we are working from the desire, generous, but still human, of the praise of earthly superiors, and that, after all, in some way or other, we are living on the breath, and basking in the smile, of man.

But … the train of thought which I have been pursuing remind[s] us of the true view of the matter, were we ever likely to forget it. The Church is a collection of souls, brought together in one by God’s secret grace, though that grace comes to them through visible instruments, and unites them to a visible hierarchy. What is seen, is not the whole of the Church, but the visible part of it. When we say that Christ loves His Church, we mean that He loves, nothing of earthly nature, but the fruit of His own grace;—the varied fruits of His grace in innumerable hearts, viewed as brought together in unity of faith and love and obedience, of sacraments, and doctrine, and order, and worship. The object which He contemplates, which He loves in the Church, is not human nature simply, but human nature illuminated and renovated by His own supernatural power. If He has called the visible Church His spouse, it is because she is the special seat of this divine gift. If He loved Peter, it was not simply because he was His Apostle, but because Peter had that intense, unearthly love of Him, and that faith which flesh and blood could not exercise, which were the fitting endowments of an Apostle. If He loved John, it was not as merely one of the Twelve, but because he again was adorned with the special gift of supernatural chastity. If He loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, it was not only as His friends and guests, but for their burning charity, and their pure contrition, and their self-sacrificing devotion. So it is now: what He creates, what He contemplates, what He loves, what He rewards, is (in St. Peter’s words) “the hidden man of the heart,” of which the visible Church is the expression, the protection, the instrumental cause, and the outward perfection.

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Sermons preached on Various Occasions (1870) Sermon no. 4, p. 56-8)

Baptism of Christ with Saints, Bacchiacca, 16th Century, Borgo a Buggiano, Italy

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:

The Sabbath then is one instance in point; though the Apostle implies that it has come to nought, yet it endures, though in a new manifestation. Another instance, suggested by the passage before us, is the rite of circumcision. This is altogether done away with in the Gospel; yet not so done away with, but it leaves behind it a representative. It is abolished as a type fulfilled, a type of Christian renewal; yet still there is such a rite as Christian circumcision, and it is called Baptism. This is what St. Paul expressly says in the chapter before us. “Ye are complete in Christ,” he says, “which is the Head of all principality and power. In whom all ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: buried with Him in baptism.” [Col. 2: 10-12] Here he says, first, that the Colossians had received a circumcision, though not the Jewish; and then names what it is, “buried with Him in Baptism.” Thus, though circumcision is abolished, Scripture has not left us without its substitute, lest the great and fundamental rule which circumcision implied, of entering God’s service by a formal act of dedication, should be slighted. And on account of this correspondence between the two rites, we infer the duty of baptizing infants, because infants were circumcised, though there is no command to that effect in Scripture. Nor need there be, if, as I am here showing, the Law contains in it the ecclesiastical and ritual rules of the Gospel, only under a veil.

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Sermons bearing on Subjects of the Day (1843) Sermon no. 15, p. 209-10)

Fra Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Child Jesus, c. 1455, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

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 by His Almighty power to have begun a new creation, and to be Himself the first fruit and work of it. Mankind were lost in sin, and were thereby, not only not heirs of heaven, but the slaves of the Evil one. Therefore He who made Adam in the beginning resolved in His mercy to make a new Adam, and by a further ineffable condescension determined that that new Adam should be Himself. And therefore, by His holy Prophet Isaias, He announced before He came, “Behold I create new heavens and a new earth” [Isaiah 65: 17]. On the other hand St. Paul calls Him “The image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature” [Col. 1: 15]. And St. John calls Him “the Amen, the faithful and true witness, who is the beginning of the creation of God” [Rev. 3: 14]. The Creator came as if He were a creature, because He took upon Him a created nature—and as, at the first, Eve was formed out of the side of Adam, so now, when He hung on the cross, though not a bone of Him was broken, his side was pierced, and out of it came the grace, represented by the blood and the water, out of which His bride and spouse, His Holy Church, was made. And thus all the sanctity of all portions of that Holy Church is derived from Him as a beginning; and He feeds us with His Divine Flesh in the Holy Eucharist, in order to spread within us, in the hearts of all of us, the blessed leaven of the New Creation. All the wisdom of the Doctors, and the courage and endurance of the Martyrs, and the purity of Virgins, and the zeal of Preachers, and the humility and mortification of religious men, is from Him, as the beginning of the new and heavenly creation of God.

Let us pray for all ranks and conditions of men in Thy Holy Church.

O Lord, who art called the Branch, the Orient, the Splendour of the eternal light, and the Sun of Justice, who art that Tree, of whom Thy beloved disciple speaks as the Tree of life, bearing twelve fruits, and its leaves for the healing of the nations, give Thy grace and blessing on all those various states and conditions in Thy Holy Church, which have sprung from Thee and live in Thy Life. Give to all Bishops the gifts of knowledge, discernment, prudence, and love. Give to all priests to be humble, tender, and pure; give to all pastors of Thy flock to be zealous, vigilant, and unworldly; give to all religious bodies to act up to their rule, to be simple and without guile, and to set their hearts upon invisible things and them only. Grant to fathers of families to recollect that they will have hereafter to give account of the souls of their children; grant to all husbands to be tender and true; to all wives to be obedient and patient; grant to all children to be docile; to all young people to be chaste; to all the aged to be fervent in spirit; to all who are engaged in business, to be honest and unselfish; and to all of us the necessary graces of faith, hope, charity, and contrition. Amen.

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Meditations and Devotions of the Late Cardinal Newman (1893) Part 2, ‘Twelve Meditations and Intercessions for Good Friday, with Prayers for the Faithful Departed’, p. 193-95)