The Cause of the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

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A Meditation for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday of the Year: Conversion, Truth and Love

Categorised as Featured and published Friday, September 11th, 2009
A Meditation for the Twenty-Third Sunday of the Year: what is Salvation?
A Meditation for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday of the Year: Suffering and Joy

Gerrit van Honthorst, The Denial of St. Peter, c. 1623, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Newman’s sermon ‘Obedience the Remedy for Religious Perplexity’ dates from 1830. In it, he looks at the nature of conversion, the difficulty of following seriously the path of Christ, and the fruits of perseverance and trust. Newman shows his characteristic psychological insight in analysing what happens when we begin to learn to love God and his truth:

Every science has its difficulties at first; why then should the science of living well be without them? When the subject of religion is new to us, it is strange. We have heard truths all our lives without feeling them duly; at length, when they affect us, we cannot believe them to be the same we have long known. We are thrown out of our fixed notions of things; an embarrassment ensues; a general painful uncertainty. We say, “Is the Bible true? Is it possible?” and are distressed by evil doubts, which we can hardly explain to ourselves, much less to others. No one can help us. And the relative importance of present objects is so altered from what it was, that we can scarcely form any judgment upon them, or when we attempt it, we form a wrong judgment. Our eyes do not accommodate themselves to the various distances of the objects before us, and are dazzled; or like the blind man restored to sight, we “see men as trees, walking.” [Mark 8: 24] Moreover, our judgment of persons, as well as of things, is changed; and, if not every where changed, yet at first every where suspected by ourselves. And this general distrust of ourselves is the greater the longer we have been already living in inattention to sacred subjects, and the more we now are humbled and ashamed of ourselves. And it leads us to take up with the first religious guide who offers himself to us, whatever be his real fitness for the office.

To these agitations of mind about what is truth and what is error, is added an anxiety about ourselves, which, however sincere, is apt to lead us wrong. We do not feel, think, and act as religiously as we could wish; and while we are sorry for it, we are also (perhaps) somewhat surprised at it, and impatient at it,—which is natural but unreasonable. Instead of reflecting that we are just setting about our recovery from a most serious disease of long standing, we conceive we ought to be able to trace the course of our recovery by a sensible improvement. This same impatience is seen in persons who are recovering from bodily indisposition. They gain strength slowly, and are better perhaps for some days, and then worse again; and a slight relapse dispirits them. In the same way, when we begin to seek God in earnest, we are apt, not only to be humbled (which we ought to be), but to be discouraged at the slowness with which we are able to amend, in spite of all the assistances of God’s grace. [...]

But what says the text? “Wait on the Lord and keep His way.” [Psalm 37: 34] And Isaiah? “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” [Isaiah 40: 31] And St. Paul? “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” [Phil. 4: 13] The very fruit of Christ’s passion was the gift of the Holy Spirit, which was to enable us to do what otherwise we could not do—”to work out our own salvation.” [Phil. 2: 12]—Yet, while we must aim at this, and feel convinced of our ability to do it at length through the gifts bestowed on us, we cannot do it rightly without a deep settled conviction of the exceeding difficulty of the work. That is, not only shall we be tempted to negligence, but to impatience also … if we be possessed by a notion that religious discipline soon becomes easy to the believer, and that the heart is speedily changed.