The Cause of the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

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Newman on the Communion of Saints

Categorised as Featured and published Saturday, July 4th, 2009
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Saints, Fra Angelico, 15th Century

In this passage from the 1837 sermon ‘The Communion of Saints’ Newman describes who the ‘Saints’ are: Christians on this earth who have become truly holy, and those who have died, and who now ’sleep in the Lord’. They are united in the ‘great company of the elect’. Newman adds a new perspective: it can be difficult for us to realise the existence of this ‘invisible company’, and so Christ founded a visible Church, so that we can be led by it to what is invisible, from ’something outward as a guide to what is inward, something visible as a guide to what is spiritual’:

The Church then, properly considered, is that great company of the elect, which has been separated by God’s free grace, and His Spirit working in due season, from this sinful world, regenerated, and vouchsafed perseverance unto life eternal. Viewed so far as it merely consists of persons now living in this world, it is of course a visible company; but in its nobler and truer character it is a body invisible, or nearly so, as being made up, not merely of the few who happen still to be on their trial, but of the many who sleep in the Lord. At first, indeed, in the lifetime of the Apostles, a great proportion of the whole body was in this world; that is, not taking into account those Saints, who had lived in Jewish times, and whom Christ, on His departure, made partakers of the privileges then purchased by His death for all believers. St. Stephen and St. James the Greater were the first distinguished Saints of the New Covenant, who were gathered in to enrich the elder company of Moses, Elias, and their brethren.

But from that time they have flowed in apace; and as years passed away, greater and greater has become the proportion which the assembly of spirits made perfect bears to the body militant which is its complement in God’s new creation. At present, we who live are but one generation out of fifty, which since its formation have been new born into it, and endowed with spiritual life and the hope of glory. Fifty times as many Saints are in the invisible world sealed for immortality, as are now struggling on upon earth towards it; unless indeed the later generations have a greater measure of Saints than the former ones. Well then may the Church be called invisible, not only as regards her vital principle, but in respect to her members. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit;” [John 3:6] and since God the Holy Ghost is invisible, so is His work. The Church is invisible, because the greater number of her true children have been perfected and removed, and because those who are still on earth cannot be ascertained by mortal eye; and had God so willed, she might have had no visible tokens at all of her existence, and been as entirely and absolutely hidden from us as the Holy Ghost is, her Lord and Governor.

But seeing that the Holy Ghost is our life, so that to gain life we must approach Him, in mercy to us, His place of abode, the Church of the Living God, is not so utterly veiled from our eyes as He is; but He has given us certain outward signs, as tokens for knowing, and means for entering that living Shrine in which He dwells. He dwells in the hearts of His Saints, in that temple of living stones, on earth and in heaven, which is ever showing the glory of His kingdom, and talking of His power; but since faith and love and joy and peace cannot be seen, since the company of His people are His secret ones, He has given us something outward as a guide to what is inward, something visible as a guide to what is spiritual.

Now, what is that outward visible guide, having the dispensation of what is unseen, but the Christian Ministry, which directs and leads us to the very Holy of Holies, in which Christ dwells by His Spirit?