The Cause of the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

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A Meditation for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday of the Year: Suffering and Joy

Categorised as Featured and published Friday, September 18th, 2009
A Meditation for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday of the Year: Conversion, Truth and Love
A Meditation for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday of the Year: Christian Self-Knowledge

Albrecht Dürer, The Adoration of the Trinity, 1511, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

In 1839 Newman preached his striking sermon ‘The Yoke of Christ’. In it, he confronts the challenging nature of the Christan vocation, and shows how some think it too demanding. How do we attain to the blessedness and joyfulness that the Christian life promises?

“Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls; for My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” [Matthew 11: 29-30] … If you call to mind some of the traits of that special religious character to which we are called, you will readily understand how both it, and the discipline by which it is formed in us, are not naturally pleasant to us. That character is described in the text as meekness and lowliness; for we are told to “learn” of Him who was “meek and lowly in heart.” The same character is presented to us at greater length in our Saviour’s sermon on the Mount, in which seven notes of a Christian are given to us, in themselves of a painful and humbling character, but joyful, because they are blessed by Him. He mentions, first, “the poor in spirit;” this is denoted in the text, under the word “lowly in heart;”—secondly, those “that mourn;” and this surely is their peculiarity who are bearing on their shoulders the yoke of Christ;—thirdly, “the meek;” and these too are spoken of in the text, when He bids us to be like Himself who “is meek;”—fourthly, those which do “hunger and thirst after righteousness;” and what righteousness, but that which Christ’s Cross wrought out, and which becomes our righteousness when we take on us the yoke of the Cross? Fifthly, “the merciful;” and as the Cross is in itself the work of infinite mercy, so when we bear it, it makes us merciful. Sixthly, “the pure in heart;” and this is the very benefit which the Cross first does to us when marked on our forehead when infants, to sever us from the world, the flesh, and the devil, to circumcise us from the first Adam, and to make us pure as He is pure. Seventhly, “the peace-makers,” and as He “made peace by the blood of His Cross,” [Col 1: 20] so do we become peace-makers after His pattern. And, lastly, after all seven, He adds, those “which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake;” which is nothing but the Cross itself, and the truest form of His yoke, spoken of last of all, after mention has been made of its fruits.

A man who is poor in spirit, meek, pure in heart, merciful, peace-making, penitent, and eager after righteousness, is truly (according to a term in current use) a mortified man. He is of a character which does not please us by nature even to see, and much less to imitate. We do not even approve or love the character itself, till we have some portion of the grace of God. We do not like the look of mortification till we are used to it, and associate pleasant thoughts with it. “And when we shall see Him, there is no beauty, that we should desire Him,” says the Prophet.

To whom has some picture of saint or doctor of the Church any charm at first sight? Who does not prefer the ruddy glow of health and brightness of the eyes? “He hath no form nor comeliness,” [Isaiah 53: 2] as his Lord and Master before him. And as we do not like the look of saintliness, neither do we like the life. When Christ first announced His destined sufferings, Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Be it far from Thee, Lord, this shall not be unto Thee.” [Matthew 16: 22] Here was the feeling of one who was as yet a mere child in grace; “When he was a child, he spake as a child, he understood as a child, he thought as a child,” before he had “become a man and had put away childish things.” [1 Cor 13: 11]