The Cause of the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

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Looking forward to Lent with Newman: is suffering a ‘passport to heaven’?

Categorised as Featured and published Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
Christ at Prayer: looking forward to Lent with Newman
Newman on Lent: ‘Now is the accepted time, now the day of salvation’

In his 1834 sermon for Sexagesima Sunday (falling two Sundays before Ash Wednesday in the older liturgical calendars), Newman draws attention to the spiritual value of suffering. But, in the following extract, he also reminds his hearers that the trials of life don’t necessarily make us better people – they can have the opposite effect:

Now, in speaking of the benefits of trial and suffering, we should of course never forget that these things by themselves have no power to make us holier or more heavenly. They make many men morose, selfish, and envious. The only sympathy they create in many minds, is the wish that others should suffer with them, not they with others. Affliction, when love is away, leads a man to wish others to be as he is; it leads to repining [viz. discontented or low in spirits], malevolence, hatred, rejoicing in evil. … The devils are not incited by their own torments to any endeavour but that of making others devils also. Such is the effect of pain and sorrow, when unsanctified by God’s saving grace. And this is instanced very widely and in a variety of cases. All afflictions of the flesh, such as the Gospel enjoins, and St. Paul practised, watchings and fastings, and subjecting of the body, have no tendency whatever in themselves to make men better; they often have made men worse; they often (to appearance) have left them just as they were before. They are no sure test of holiness and true faith, taken by themselves. A man may be most austere in his life, and, by that very austerity, learn to be cruel to others, not tender. And, on the other hand (what seems strange), he may be austere in his personal habits, and yet be a waverer and a coward in his conduct.

Such things have been,—I do not say they are likely in this state of society,—but I mean, it should ever be borne in mind, that the severest and most mortified life is as little a passport to heaven, or a criterion of saintliness, as benevolence is, or usefulness, or amiableness. Self-discipline is a necessary condition, but not a sure sign of holiness. It may leave a man worldly, or it may make him a tyrant. It is only in the hands of God that it is God’s instrument. It only ministers to God’s purposes when God uses it. It is only when grace is in the heart, when power from above dwells in a man, that anything outward or inward turns to his salvation. Whether persecution, or famine, or the sword, they as little bring the soul to Christ, as they separate it from Him. He alone can work, and He can work through all things. He can make the stones bread. He can feed us with “every word which proceedeth from His mouth.” [Matt. 4:4] He could, did He so will, make us calm, resigned, tender-hearted, and sympathising, without trial; but it is His will ordinarily to do so by means of trial. Even He Himself, when He came on earth, condescended to gain knowledge by experience; and what He did Himself, that He makes His brethren do.

For the full text click here (leaves site)

(Picture: Anonymous (Umbria, Italy), Crucifixion with the Virgin and Child among Saints, Angels and the Symbols of the Evangelists, early 14th century, Museum of Art, São Paulo, Brazil)