The Cause of the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

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A Meditation for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday of the Year: sons of God, the new life of Christians

Categorised as Featured and published Friday, October 2nd, 2009
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Pius XII on the Anniversary of Newman’s Conversion

Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Child, c. 1455, Uffizi, Florence

In the following passage reflecting on this Sunday’s Epistle, taken from the sermon ‘The Mystery of Godliness’ (1837), Newman speaks of what it means for Christ to have taken human nature on himself:

“Both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.” [Heb. 2: 11] Our Saviour’s birth in the flesh is an earnest, and, as it were, beginning of our birth in the Spirit. It is a figure, promise, or pledge of our new birth, and it effects what it promises. As He was born, so are we born also; and since He was born, therefore we too are born. As He is the Son of God by nature, so are we sons of God by grace; and it is He who has made us such. This is what the text says; He is the “Sanctifier,” we the “sanctified.” Moreover, He and we, says the text, “are all of one.” God sanctifies the Angels, but there the Creator and the creature are not of one. But the Son of God and we are of one; He has become “the firstborn of every creature;” [Col. 1: 15] He has taken our nature, and in and through it He sanctifies us. He is our brother by virtue of His incarnation, and, as the text says, “He is not ashamed to call us brethren;” and, having sanctified our nature in Himself, He communicates it to us.