Preview: St. J.H. Newman and the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Since August is the month traditionally dedicated to devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we thought it appropriate to continue our Monday morning Summer Newman series on the Son Rise Morning Show on August 1st with some comments about Saint John Henry Newman's devotion to Mary, the Mother of God. Either Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will discuss this topic at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern.

Please listen live here on EWTN or on your local EWTN affiliate.

In chapter four of the Apologia pro Vita Sua, Newman remembers the tug at his heart he was feeling as the Vicar of St. Mary's the Virgin and Fellow at Oriel College, founded in 1326 as "the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary":

In spite of my ingrained fears of Rome, and the decision of my reason and conscience against her usages, in spite of my affection for Oxford and Oriel, yet I had a secret longing love of Rome the Mother of English Christianity, and I had a true devotion to the Blessed Virgin, in whose College I lived, whose Altar I served, and whose Immaculate Purity I had in one of my earliest printed Sermons made much of. (p. 165)

Newman was on his "death-bed" as an Anglican when he felt that secret longing and true devotion, and I think we can safely say that when he became a Catholic he was able to demonstrate that love and devotion. In 1849, he published his Discourses to Mixed Congregations and included two sermons on the Blessed Virgin Mary, "The Glories of Mary for the Sake of her Son" and "On the Fitness of the Glories of Mary" in that volume.

In the first sermon, we can see that Newman recognizes (having experienced them) the difficulties those outside the Church have with what Catholics believe about the Mother of God and how we practice devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. After speaking about how "great truths of Revelation are all connected together and form a whole", he states:

I am going to apply this remark to the subject of the prerogatives with which the Church invests the Blessed Mother of God. They are startling and difficult to those whose imagination is not accustomed to them, and whose reason has not reflected on them; but the more carefully and religiously they are dwelt on, the more, I am sure, will they be found essential to the Catholic faith, and integral to the worship of Christ. This simply is the point which I shall insist on—disputable indeed by aliens from the Church, but most clear to her children—that the glories of Mary are for the sake of Jesus; and that we praise and bless her as the first of creatures, that we may confess Him as our sole Creator.

So his first thoughts are on the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity:

When the Eternal Word decreed to come on earth, He did not purpose, He did not work, by halves; but He came to be a man like any of us, to take a human soul and body, and to make them His own. He did not come in a mere apparent or accidental form, as Angels appear to men; nor did He merely over-shadow {345} an existing man, as He overshadows His saints, and call Him by the name of God; but He "was made flesh". He attached to Himself a manhood, and became as really and truly man as He was God, so that henceforth He was both God and man, or, in other words, He was One Person in two natures, divine and human. This is a mystery so marvellous, so difficult, that faith alone firmly receives it; the natural man may receive it for a while, may think he receives it, but never really receives it; begins, as soon as he has professed it, secretly to rebel against it, evades it, or revolts from it. This he has done from the first; even in the lifetime of the beloved disciple [St. John] men arose who said that our Lord had no body at all, or a body framed in the heavens, or that He did not suffer, but another suffered in His stead, or that He was but for a time possessed of the human form which was born and which suffered, coming into it at its baptism, and leaving it before its crucifixion, or, again, that He was a mere man. That "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," was too hard a thing for the unregenerate reason.

Then, after reviewing some of the history of how the Catholic Church developed our understanding of this truth through the early Church Councils, wrestling with how to define the truth of the Incarnation against the various heresies (Arianism, Apollinarism, Nestorianism, etc) that conflicted with what the Church believed, Newman concludes:

You see, then, my brethren, in this particular, the harmonious consistency of the revealed system, and the bearing of one doctrine upon another; Mary is exalted for the sake of Jesus. It was fitting that she, as being a creature, though the first of creatures, should have an office of ministration. She, as others, {349} came into the world to do a work, she had a mission to fulfil; her grace and her glory are not for her own sake, but for her Maker's; and to her is committed the custody of the Incarnation; this is her appointed office,—"A Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and they shall call His Name Emmanuel". As she was once on earth, and was personally the guardian of her Divine Child, as she carried Him in her womb, folded Him in her embrace, and suckled Him at her breast, so now, and to the latest hour of the Church, do her glories and the devotion paid her proclaim and define the right faith concerning Him as God and man. Every church which is dedicated to her, every altar which is raised under her invocation, every image which represents her, every litany in her praise, every Hail Mary for her continual memory, does but remind us that there was One who, though He was all-blessed from all eternity, yet for the sake of sinners, "did not shrink from the Virgin's womb". Thus she is the Turris Davidica, as the Church calls her, "the Tower of David"; the high and strong defence of the King of the true Israel; and hence the Church also addresses her in the Antiphon, as having "alone destroyed all heresies in the whole world".

And in the second sermon in that collection, he continues with the same theme, and with even more tender images of the human relationship between the Mother and her Son:

Now, as you know, it has been held from the first, and defined from an early age, that Mary is the Mother of God. She is not merely the Mother of our Lord's manhood, or of our Lord's body, but she is to be considered {362} the Mother of the Word Himself, the Word incarnate. God, in the person of the Word, the Second Person of the All-glorious Trinity, humbled Himself to become her Son. Non horruisti Virginis uterum, as the Church sings, "Thou didst not disdain the Virgin's womb" [in the Te Deum]. He took the substance of His human flesh from her, and clothed in it He lay within her; and He bore it about with Him after birth, as a sort of badge and witness that He, though God, was hers. He was nursed and tended by her; He was suckled by her; He lay in her arms. As time went on, He ministered to her, and obeyed her. He lived with her for thirty years, in one house, with an uninterrupted intercourse, and with only the saintly Joseph to share it with Him. She was the witness of His growth, of His joys, of His sorrows, of His prayers; she was blest with His smile, with the touch of His hand, with the whisper of His affection, with the expression of His thoughts and His feelings, for that length of time. Now, my brethren, what ought she to be, what is it becoming that she should be, who was so favoured?

These two longer sermons/discourses are most appropriate spiritual reading for the month of August.

In 1864 he answered his old Oxford Movement friend, E.B. Pusey, to defend the recent proclamation of the doctrine of Mary's Immaculate Conception with a public letter, but that's beyond the limits of these brief segments to get into!

In his Meditations and Devotions, he included a series of meditations on the Litany of Loretto for the month of May. He divided these meditations into four parts after two introductions to the month of May: The Immaculate Conception, The Annunciation, Our Lady's Dolours (Sorrows), and The Assumption.

Newman also wrote a Litany to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to be used from August 1 to 15 (the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady) for private devotion:

Heart of Mary, Pray for us.
Heart, after God’s own Heart, Pray for us.
Heart, in union with the Heart of Jesus, 
Heart, the vessel of the Holy Ghost,
Heart of Mary, shrine of the Trinity,
Heart of Mary, home of the Word,
Heart of Mary, immaculate in thy creation,
Heart of Mary, flooded with grace, {242}
Heart of Mary, blessed of all hearts,
Heart of Mary, Throne of glory,
Heart of Mary, Abyss of humbleness,
Heart of Mary, Victim of love,
Heart of Mary, nailed to the Cross,
Heart of Mary, comfort of the sad,
Heart of Mary, refuge of the sinner,
Heart of Mary, hope of the dying,
Heart of Mary, seat of mercy,

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O most merciful God, who for the salvation of sinners and the refuge of the wretched, hast made the Immaculate Heart of Mary most like in tenderness {243} and pity to the Heart of Jesus, grant that we, who now commemorate her most sweet and loving heart, may by her merits and intercession, ever live in the fellowship of the Hearts of both Mother and Son, through the same Christ our Lord.—Amen.

And for the rest of the month of August, he composed a Litany to the Holy Name of Mary.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image credit (Public Domain): Maria mit flammendem Herz; Hinterglasbild, 29 x 23 cm; Augsburg oder Murnau, 2. Hälfte 18. Jahrhundert