The Cause of the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

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Meditation for the end of the Pauline Year: St Paul, the ‘most winning of teachers’

Categorised as Featured and published Saturday, June 27th, 2009
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Saint Paul Writing His Epistles, Valentin de Boulogne or Nicolas Tournier, 16th Century, Blaffer Foundation Collection, Houston, Texas

In an 1857 sermon ‘St. Paul’s Characteristic Gift’, Newman argues that this ‘characteristic gift’ of St Paul was a capacity to understand and enter into the depths of the human nature, in all its joys and pains, its brilliance and its weakness, applying to him the words of the classical poet Terence: ‘I am a man; nothing human is without interest to me’. At the end of the ‘Pauline Year’ in honour of the ‘Apostle of the Gentiles‘ which concludes on 29th June, we publish an extract from the sermon:

I have now explained to a certain extent what I meant when I spoke of St. Paul’s characteristic gift, as being a special apprehension of human nature as a fact, and an intimate familiarity with it as an object of continual contemplation and affection. He made it his own to the very full, instead of annihilating it; he sympathized with it, while he mortified it by penance, while he sanctified it by the grace given him. …  Thus, while he was a Saint inferior to none, he was emphatically still a man, and to his own apprehension still a sinner.

And this being so, do you not see, my Brethren, how well fitted [St Paul] was for the office of an Ecumenical Doctor, and an Apostle, not of the Jews only, but of the Gentiles? The Almighty sometimes works by miracle, but commonly He prepares His instruments by methods of this world; and, as He draws souls to Him, “by the cords of Adam,” so does He select them for His use according to their natural powers. St. John, who lay upon His breast, whose book was the sacred heart of Jesus, and whose special philosophy was the “scientia sanctorum,” [the science of the saints] he was not chosen to be the Doctor of the Nations. St. Peter, taught in the mysteries of the Creed, the Arbiter of doctrine and the Ruler of the faithful, he too was passed over in this work. To him [St Paul] specially was it given to preach to the world, who knew the world; he subdued the heart, who understood the heart. It was his sympathy that was his means of influence; it was his affectionateness which was his title and instrument of empire. “I became to the Jews a Jew,” he says, “that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the Law, as if I were under the Law, that I might gain them that were under the Law. To those that were without the Law, as if I were without the Law, that I might gain them that were without the Law. To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men, that I might save all.” [1 Cor 9: 20-22] [...]

May this glorious Apostle, this sweetest of inspired writers, this most touching and winning of teachers, may he do me some good turn, who have ever felt a special devotion towards him! May this great Saint, this man of large mind, of various sympathies, of affectionate heart, have a kind thought for every one of us here according to our respective needs! He has carried his human thoughts and feelings with him to his throne above; and, though he sees the Infinite and Eternal Essence, he still remembers well that troublous, restless ocean below, of hopes and fears, of impulses and aspirations, of efforts and failures, which is now what it was when he was here. Let us beg him to intercede for us with the Majesty on high, that we too may have some portion of that tenderness, compassion, mutual affection, love of brotherhood, abhorrence of strife and division, in which he excelled.

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