Preview: Newman on the Holy Spirit and the "Our Father"

On Monday, May 20, I mentioned that Saint John Henry Newman in his sermon "The Indwelling Spirit" had included an analysis of how the Holy Spirit inspires us to pray the Our Father (The Lord's Prayer), as the model Jesus taught His Apostles in the Gospel according to St. Matthew. Anna Mitchell asked me to explain this further on the Son Rise Morning Show on another broadcast.

Since Monday, May 27 was Memorial Day and they ran a "Best of the Son Rise Morning Show" program, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show to cover this passage on Monday, June 3 at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here or listen to the podcast later.

Newman's exposition on how the Holy Spirit helps us pray "The Our Father" occurs in the section on how the Holy Spirit helps us relate to Our Father:

Being then the sons of God, and one with Him, our souls mount up and cry to Him continually. This special characteristic of the regenerate soul is spoken of by St. Paul soon after the text. "Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Nor are we left to utter these cries to Him, in any vague uncertain way of our own; but He who sent the Spirit to dwell in us habitually, gave us also a form of words to sanctify the separate acts of our minds. Christ left His sacred Prayer to be the peculiar possession of His people, and the voice of the Spirit. If we examine it, we shall find in it the substance of that doctrine, to which St. Paul has given a name in the passage just quoted.

So the Holy Spirit helps us pray to the Father as the Son taught us, not just saying the words but reflecting upon their meaning:

Our Father:

We begin it by using our privilege of calling on Almighty God in express words as "Our Father."

Who art in Heaven; Hallowed be Thy Name; Thy Kingdom Come; Thy Will be Done on Earth as it is in Heaven: 

We proceed, according to this beginning, in that waiting, trusting, adoring, resigned temper, which children ought to feel; looking towards Him, rather than thinking of ourselves; zealous for His honour rather than fearful about our safety;

Give us this day our daily bread:

resting in His present help, not with eyes timorously glancing towards the future.

His name, His kingdom, His will, are the {226} great objects for the Christian to contemplate and make his portion, being stable and serene, and "complete in Him," as beseems one who has the gracious presence of His Spirit within him.

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil:

And, when he goes on to think of himself, he prays, that he may be enabled to have towards others what God has shown towards himself, a spirit of forgiveness and loving-kindness. Thus he pours himself out on all sides, first looking up to catch the heavenly gift, but, when he gains it, not keeping it to himself, but diffusing "rivers of living water" to the whole race of man, thinking of self as little as may be, and desiring ill and destruction to nothing but that principle of temptation and evil, which is rebellion against God;

And from some later manuscripts, as used in the Book of Common Prayer:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

—lastly, ending, as he began, with the contemplation of His kingdom, power, and glory ever-lasting.

This is the true "Abba, Father," which the Spirit of adoption utters within the Christian's heart, the infallible voice of Him who "maketh intercession for the Saints in God's way."  

In his final remarks about how the Holy Spirit inspires the Christian to pray the Lord's Prayer well to the Father, Newman advises her to silence and contemplation instead of sharing some special favors she thinks she may have received:

And if he has at times, for instance, amid trial or affliction, special visitations and comfortings from the Spirit, "plaints unutterable" within him, yearnings after the life to come, or bright and passing gleams of God's eternal election, and deep stirrings of wonder and thankfulness thence following, he thinks too reverently of "the secret of the Lord," to betray (as it were) His confidence, and, by vaunting it to the world, to exaggerate it perchance into more than it was meant to convey: but he is silent, and ponders it as choice encouragement to his soul, meaning something, but he knows not how much.

This discernment and care about responding to graces received--especially with "vaunting them to the world"--I think is reinforced by Newman's exhortation at the end of the sermon:

Thoughts, such as these, will affect us rightly, if they make us fear and be watchful, while we rejoice. They cannot surely do otherwise; for the mind of a Christian, as I have been attempting to describe it, is not so much what we have, as what we ought to have. . . . It is our concern only to look to ourselves, and to see that, as we have received the gift, we "grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby we are sealed unto the day of redemption;" remembering that "if any man destroy the temple of God, him shall God destroy."

Instead of exaggerating the spiritual or moral privileges we may have received through the Grace of God in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we should respond with humility and fear of the Lord:

This reflection and the recollection of our many backslidings, will ever keep us, please God, from judging others, or from priding ourselves on our privileges. Let us but consider how we have fallen from the light and grace of our Baptism. Were we now what that Holy Sacrament made us, we might ever ''go on our way rejoicing;" but having sullied our heavenly garments, in one way or other, in a greater or less degree (God knoweth! and our own consciences too in a measure), alas! the Spirit of adoption has in part receded from us, and the sense of guilt, remorse, sorrow, and penitence must take His place. 

We need to know how we have failed to respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit to live out the "light and grace of our Baptism", so we may respond appropriately to any suffering that comes:

We must renew our confession, and seek afresh our absolution day by day, before we dare call upon God as "our Father," or offer up Psalms and Intercessions to Him. And, whatever pain and affliction meets us through life, we must take it as a merciful penance imposed by a Father upon erring children, to be borne meekly and thankfully, and as intended to remind us of the weight of that infinitely greater punishment, which was our desert by nature, and which Christ bore for us on the Cross.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Source (Public Domain): "The Lord's Prayer" by James Tissot