"The Choral" and "The Dream of Gerontius"

I made a presentation on the First Friday of October at Mary, Seat of Wisdom, a classical high school here in Wichita on Saint John Henry Newman and "the Wichita Connection", tracing the history of the the programs, events, topics, and speakers presented at different venues here since 1979 and my memories of them. This was after Pope Leo XIV had approved the Cause for Saint John Henry Newman to be named the 38th Doctor of the Church. 

I noted that Newman was indeed in the news, not only for that proclamation but for other reasons: King Charles III visiting the Birmingham Oratory, Newman being the co-patron of Catholic Education with Saint Thomas Aquinas by Pope Leo XIV--and the ongoing attention paid to Sir Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius based on Newman's poem of the same name. I also mentioned that more and more books and studies will be published about Newman and I just finished reading one of the latest, The Most Dangerous Man in England: Newman & the Laity by Paul Shrimpton, published by Word On Fire (review to come).

I highlighted Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius because yet another CD had been announced, a live performance from the 2022 BBC Proms--and now there's yet another announced by Hyperion. And those two on the heels of one from Finland!

Not only that but now there's a film, The Choral, which features a performance of that great work in an English village during the crisis of World War I. As the young men of the village, the basses, baritones, and tenors who sing in the Church of England's choir, enlist for military service--including the chorus master himself--how will the traditions of the community survive?

By hiring a new chorus master and performing Elgar's Dream of Gerontius! In spite of the fact the chorus master's been working in Germany (the enemy) and the work is all about a Soul destined for Purgatory, which Anglicans don't believe in!

Presto Music has posted a summary of the film and reactions of several men who have conducted or performed in the work (no mezzo-soprano Angels!?!?):

Starring Ralph Fiennes as a brilliant, controversial conductor, Roger Allam as an enthusiastic but overparted amateur tenor and Simon Russell Beale* as an irascible Edward Elgar, Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner's The Choral centres on a Yorkshire choral society's ambitious quest to perform Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius in 1916 - with their tenor and bass sections depleted by conscription, a Palm Court trio standing in for Elgar's vast orchestra, and a traumatised young soldier newly returned from the Front in the daunting title-role.

* Coincidentally, I had just re-watched God's Composer (Music by Tomás Luis de Victoria from the Church of San Antonio de los Alemanes, Madrid (Single DVD) Presented by Simon Russell Beale; Featuring Harry Christophers & The Sixteen)!

The new release from Hyperion of yet another Dream has a tie-in with the movie in a way because it features a village choral society, from a village much like the one featured in the film, as the Huddersfield Choral Society website emphasizes:

There are just so many parallels between the fictitious choral society in the film and HCS: The Choral is set in a mill town called Ramsden; and the choir is set to perform Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. Well, we thought, we’re known as The Choral by those who love us; Huddersfield was owned by the Ramsden estate until the 1920s; and we’re the choral society that made the first recording of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. And we’ve just made another!

Choir member and social history enthusiast, Gaynor Haliday, decided to delve deeper into the archives and uncover the experiences of HCS during the First World War. And with the season of Remembrance upon us we’d like to share this with you. It’s longer than our usual posts, so you might want to settle down with a cuppa . . .

If you click on that link, there's another link to a document describing how the village of Huddersfield endured the losses of World War I. Hyperion Records--the CD will be released in January, 2026--also provides a .pdf of their booklet with the same article, and notes the strong connection between the society and the Dream:

It was the Huddersfield Choral Society which made the first complete recording of ‘Gerontius’ on 8-12 April 1945; this latest chapter in the Society’s ties to the work was recorded eighty years later, virtually to the day, on 5 April 2025 and displays as deep an affinity for Elgar’s masterpiece as ever, especially with a conductor of Martyn Brabbins’s Elgarian credentials.

The Huddersfield Choral Society were featured on two mid-20th century recordings by Sir Malcolm Sargent, in 1945 and 1955, according to this comparative review.

The movie--which I hope will come to Wichita, Kansas--is scheduled to be released in the USA on Christmas Day this year! 

That is a picture of me giving my presentation at the first First Friday Tea at the top of the post. The second in November featured the story of Whittaker Chambers, given by the headmaster, Dr. Susan Orr Traffas, and the third in December will feature a lecture by John Traffas (her husband) on "Pope Benedict XVI and his teaching on political life": 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. with tea, coffee, treats, and other libations! It's my new First Friday tradition!

Preview: The Composition and Publication of the "Dream of the Gerontius" in 1865

Before Edward Elgar set the text of Newman's Dream of Gerontius to music in 1900, of course, Newman had written that eloquent poem about death, judgment, Heaven, and hell in 1865, 160 years ago this year. 

So, since two weeks ago on the Son Rise Morning Show we featured the Elgar anniversary, this coming Monday, September 8, we'll look at the composition and publication of Saint (Doctor) John Henry Newman's poem itself in 1865. (The Son Rise Morning hosts were busy the week before at the EWTN Radio Conference in Washington, DC and took the Monday, September 1 Labor Day holiday off!) I'll be on the air at my usual time around 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Newman's other most famous poem is "The Pillar of the Cloud", better known as "Lead, Kindly Light". He wrote that poem and many others while he was travelling with his friend Hurrell Froude in Italy and the Mediterranean. He wrote those verses in the Romantic mode as defined by William Wordsworth in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800): as ". . . the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity", reflecting on his experiences on that journey.

Newman wrote this poem, the longest we have of his, on 52 scraps of paper between January 17 and February 7, 1865. There was a sudden inspiration and an urge to write it--and a definite end to the inspiration. One of his biographers, Wilfrid Ward, describes its composition:

Now, after the abandonment of the Oxford scheme [to found an Oratory for Catholic students, who could at last attend Oxford] gave him leisure for it, he set down in dramatic form the vision of a Christian's death on which his imagination had been dwelling. The writing of it was a sudden inspiration, and his work was begun in January and completed in February 1865. "On the 17th of January last," he writes to Mr. Allies in October, "it came into my head to write it, I really can't tell how. And I wrote on till it was finished on small bits of paper, and I could no more write anything else by willing it than I could fly." To another correspondent [The Rev. John Telford, priest at Ryde] also, who was fascinated by the Dream, and longed to have the picture it gave still further filled in, he wrote:

"You do me too much honour if you think I am to see in a dream everything that is to be seen in the subject dreamed about. I have said what I saw. Various spiritual writers see various aspects of it; and under their protection and pattern I have set down the dream as it came before the sleeper. It is not my fault if the sleeper did not dream more. Perhaps something woke him. Dreams are generally fragmentary. I have nothing more to tell."

As I wrote in an earlier post about this poem, Newman was able to turn away from controversy and difficulties to contemplate eternal truths:

Perhaps after such strain of confusion, controversy, and confrontation, it was restful to contemplate the certainties of God's justice and mercy when a man dies. No more secrecy and indirection; the soul meets Jesus, knows Him, knows himself, and looks forward to being with the Holy Trinity and the saints in Heaven after his purgation. Newman explored the Church's dogmatic teachings about death and judgement, heaven and hell in a mystical, dreamy poem, harking back to his childhood love of fantasy and wonder--his sense that life was somehow a dream--while reflecting his assent to the certainties of divine revelation and his faith in the reality of God. He also includes liturgical and devotional prayers for the dying and the death, including the Litany of the Saints and the Proficiscere prayer ("Go forth, Christian Soul") in a supremely, confidently Catholic poem.

Although though it is "a supremely, confidently Catholic poem" The Dream met with ecumenical approval--even his former defamer Charles Kingsley liked it! William Gladstone and Algernon Charles Swinburne, the decadent school poet, admired the poem's verse and power. Francis Hastings Doyle, the Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, gave a lecture on The Dream of Gerontius in 1868. News that General George Gordon, "Chinese Gordon", had a copy of the poem with him at Khartoum--and that he had annotated it--when he was attacked and killed in January 1885 gave the poem even greater notoriety. As Father Ian Ker of happy memory noted in his biography of Newman, "interest in the fate of Gordon of Khartoum" was so intense that William Neville transcribed Gordon's annotations into copies of The Dream of Gerontius (p. 741).

The Dream of Gerontius was then published in the May and June issues of The Month, a periodical founded in 1864 by the convert Frances Margaret Taylor (Mother Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, Poor Servants of the Mother of God). The Jesuits in England bought The Month in 1865 and Father Henry James Coleridge, another convert (great nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), became the publisher and editor.

So the 160th anniversary of this poem is worth remembering as the work continues to have its impact artistically and theologically. It may not always be, as Francis Hastings Doyle commented, the greatest artistic success, but it has perdured through the decades through its beauty and depth.

[In 2022, throughout the month of November, Matt and Anna and I went through The Dream of Gerontius in as much detail as we could in our Monday morning segments!]

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Preview: The Premiere of Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius", 1900

There's yet another new recording of Sir Edward Elgar's Dream of Gerontius (from Finland!), based on Saint John Henry Newman's epic poem--in scope if not in length--of the Four Last Things. The last recording won multiple awards this year. 

And yet when it premiered in 1900 in Birmingham, things did not go well, and reviews of performances lately often include comments about "how Catholic" and esoteric the work is, qualified by praise of the music and orchestration! Nevertheless, it's an often performed and recorded choral masterpiece. 

Since this year marks the 125th anniversary of Elgar composing it and of its premier in 1900, it's up next in our Son Rise Morning Show 2025 Anniversaries series on Monday, August 25. I'll be on the air around 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Elgar (June 2, 1857-February 23, 1934) composed this work (not really an oratorio) 60 years after Saint John Henry Newman wrote the Dream of Gerontius in 1865--so 2025 is also the 160th anniversary of the poem from which Elgar excerpted sections.

Edward Elgar's mother Ann was a convert to Catholicism while his father remained Anglican; Edward was baptized and raised Catholic. His father William disapproved--while at the same time serving as the organist at Saint George's Catholic Church in Worcester from 1846 to 1885--and became a Catholic on his deathbed! As the BBC classical magazine website explains, Elgar was coming off the great success of the Enigma Variations in 1900 when he decided to compose a great choral work based on Newman's poem for the Three Choirs Festival in Birmingham that year. He composed quickly and concluded that "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another: my life was as the vapour and is not; but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory."

Unfortunately,

the first performance was plagued by mishaps. The choirmaster, Charles Swinnerton Heap, died shortly after rehearsals began and was replaced by the ageing William Stockley, who wasn’t equal to the task and who, in any case, didn’t try to mask his distaste for the subject matter. Hans Richter, the conductor, only received the full score one day before orchestra rehearsals began and only one of the soloists was in good voice on the day. Although the press generally conceded that a decent work had been presented, it was widely accepted that the first performance had been a disaster.

Fortunately,

The German conductor Julius Buths was in the Birmingham audience and recognised that Gerontius merited a decent hearing. It was Buths’s performances in Düsseldorf in 1901 and ’02 that alerted the British musical world to the fact that Elgar had indeed produced something extraordinary. The occasions were a huge success, Elgar was fêted as a hero and was presented with two enormous laurel wreaths which he and Alice somehow managed to lug back to Malvern. Richard Strauss wrote ‘I raise my glass to the welfare and success of the first English progressivist, Meister Elgar’. If the Catholic Elgar hadn’t arrived before, the Anglican establishment had no choice but to concede that he certainly had done so now.

In spite of reviews like this (or in defiance of them!), Elgar's Dream of Gerontius is one of my favorite works. I've three recordings on CD and the DVD record of a great performance at Canterbury Cathedral by Dame Janet Baker as the Angel and Peter Pears as Gerontius/the Soul, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. 

When my mother was in her final days, I was called by the Hospice nurse to come early one more morning and I took my 1962 Roman Missal with the prayers for the dying. When I prayed the priest's prayer "PROFICISCERE, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!"--

Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!
Go from this world! Go, in the name of God
The omnipotent Father, who created thee!
Go, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord,
Son of the living God, who bled for thee!
Go, in the name of the Holy Spirit, who
Hath been poured out on thee! Go, in the name
Of Angels and Archangels; in the name
Of Thrones and Dominations; in the name
Of Princedoms and of Powers; and in the name
Of Cherubim and Seraphim, go forth! . . .

--I heard Elgar's music in my "mind's ear"!

What's sad about Elgar's own life is that the initial failure of the Dream of Gerontius had lasting effects on his faith in God and religious devotion, as this website explains:

Ironically, it was the early failure of The Dream of Gerontius itself that led him to make the oft-quoted remark “I always knew God was against art…”, continuing “I have allowed my heart to open once – it is now shut against every religious feeling…”, this shortly before beginning work on The Apostles and The Kingdom, two oratorios viewed from an admittedly more neutral religious perspective.

As he grew older, his belief gradually withered. Although on his deathbed he is reported to have reaffirmed his commitment to the Roman Catholic faith and, while unconscious, received the last rites, he had not attended a church service for many a year. He claimed to have no belief in a life after death and to have taken exception to the dogma of the Catholic liturgy.

That same website offers a snarky comment about Elgar's memorial stained glass window being in the Anglican Worcester Cathedral (image use under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license: "The Elgar Window by A. K. Nicholson, 1935, based on the Dream of Gerontius. The window shows Gerontius ascending to the Heavenly City, surrounded by figures from the Bible [?]*." 

I could be snarky too and point out that Worcester Cathedral was a Catholic church from 680 to 1535 (and 1555-1559 during Mary I's reign)! *There are Catholic saints depicted there, including two canonized bishops of Worcester, Oswald and Wulfstan, Saint Cecilia, Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Peter (with the keys!) the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, and King David with his harp, etc.

The memorial plaque to Elgar in the cathedral includes the words from the prayers he may or may not have heard on his deathbed: "PROFICISCERE, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!"

Edward Elgar and his wife Alice are buried in the cemetery of St. Wulstan’s Catholic Church at Little Malvern in Worcestershire, where a 75th anniversary memorial Mass was offered for him in 2009.

May Edward and Alice Elgar rest in peace!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): English composer Edward Elgar, likely in the early 1900s.

McCreesh and Gabrieli's "The Dream of Gerontius 1900"

This latest recording of Sir Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius features period instruments--not of the Renaissance or Romantic periods, but of the early Twentieth Century. As this review from PrestoMusic's website explains:

As with all their recordings, McCreesh and his players have made enormous effort to research the types of instruments that would likely have been used at the Birmingham premiere, from Érard harps and a Lorée oboe previously owned by celebrated oboist Léon Goossens, to piston horns and narrow-bore trombones (including Elgar's own instrument).

The differences are striking and immediately apparent: from the opening moments of the prelude where violas are doubled by clarinets and bassoons, to a few bars later where the cor anglais takes over, the subtleties of Elgar's orchestration are realised to great effect. Similarly, the brass are capable of being loud without obliterating the rest of the orchestra; the way that the horns and trombones spit out their beastly contributions to the Demon Chorus is especially satisfying.

Most beguiling of all, however, is the timbre of the strings. The extensive use of gut strings allows for a haunting transparency of sound, which pays enormous dividends at the hushed start of Part Two. . . .

And I agree with the reviewer that the moment when the Soul of Gerontius sees God for Judgment is tremendous! There's a generous playlist here. Listen to the Prelude!

The vocalists are also splendid, especially Nicky Spence as Gerontius. He doesn't seem as strained by the heldentenor passages and sensitively expresses the emotions of the more lyrical moments. Anna Stéphany can't replace Janet Baker in my memory, but is quite good. I still like Gerard Finley's Priest/Angel of the Agony from Sir Colin Davis's 2008 performance much better than this soloist (Andrew Foster-Williams). Listening to some samples from Daniel Barenboim's recording by Thomas Hampson from 2017 places him in close second place.

Please note that I purchased my copy--and it came from Australia!! The two cds from Signum Classics are packaged very nicely in a book format with an essay by Stephen Hough ("Angelical Choirs") on the religious power of Newman's poem: acknowledging that not everyone who appreciates Elgar's achievement in this work has the same Catholic faith that Newman and Hough have, but that the power of the music is faithful to that religion upon which Newman based his poem. Hough quotes a letter from Newman to Georgiana, Lady Chatterton: "As to my own Gerontius, it was not the versification which sold it, but the subject. It is a RELIGIOUS subject which appeals to the feelings of everyone." (September 18, 1870.) 

You might be interested in listening to this BBC interview with Stephen Hough in which he:

reveals how Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius helped him back into the world of classical music after suffering a breakdown while at Cheetham's School of Music, and began his conversion to Catholicism as a teenager. (at 19:03)

Hough even chose the "Proficiscere"in a 2016 BBC Dessert Island Disc episode!

Mahan Esfahani, an Iranian-American harpsichordist, wrote the essay about Elgar's composition of the work and his disappointment in its first performance and its effect on his religious faith--his Catholicism in still anti-Catholic England ("Devilish Crossings"). As Esfahani notes, Elgar took a great risk in choosing Newman's poem to set to Wagnerian music for an English/Anglican choral festival. I don't think Elgar's faith ever recovered from that failure and rejection but I hope by the Grace of God, he knows what a success it has since become.

I'd recommend this set as a great addition to your Gerontius library.

Preview: Part Two of Three: Newman on "The Greatness and Littleness of Human Life"

On Monday, June 17, we'll continue our discussion of Newman's "The Greatness and Littleness of Human Life" on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on 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.

To remind you of last week's introduction to this Parochial and Plain Sermon: Newman had answered one question: why Jacob spoke of his life, at his advanced age, as being shorter than his ancestors, and in spite of the blessing of many sons and wealth, as being "evil". That's just how human life is, Newman concludes, full of promise, disappointing, and yet inspiring the hope for something more. 

In this next section, he helps someone who has never thought of this idea before imagine it by describing how we might see it happen before our eyes:

This is a thought which will come upon us not always, but under circumstances. And many perhaps of those who at first hearing may think they never felt it, may recognize what I mean, while I describe it.

And then Newman does he does so well: he helps us picture an event and our thoughts about it so it becomes real to us!

Newman fleshes out the circumstances of one human life--of one person we think well of--who is dying and what we might think of him or her:

I mean, when one sees some excellent person, whose graces we know, whose kindliness, affectionateness, tenderness, and generosity,—when we see him dying (let him have lived ever so long; I am not supposing a premature death; let him live out his days), the thought is forced upon us with a sort of surprise; "Surely, he is not to die yet; he has not yet had any opportunity of exercising duly those excellent gifts with which God has endowed him." Let him have lived seventy or eighty years, yet it seems as if he had done nothing at all, and his life were scarcely begun. . . . His days have been but few and evil [like Jacob's], and have become old unseasonably, compared with his capabilities; and we are driven by a sense of them, to look on to a future state as a time when they will be brought out and come into effect. . . . The very greatness of our powers makes this life look pitiful; the very pitifulness of this life forces on our thoughts to another; and the prospect of another gives a dignity and value to this life which promises it; and thus this life is at once great and little, and we rightly contemn it while we exalt its importance.

And Newman has been at deathbeds and knows the truth of them: 

True Christians die as other men. One dies by a sudden accident, another in battle, another without friends to see how he dies, a fourth is insensible or not himself. Thus the opportunity seems thrown away, and we are forcibly reminded that "the manifestation of the sons of God" [Rom. viii. 19.] is hereafter; that "the earnest expectation of the creature" is but waiting for it; that this life is unequal to the burden of so great an office as the due exhibition of those secret ones who shall one day "shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." [Matt. xiii. 43.]

Reading the next paragraphs, I cannot help but think of Newman's later (Catholic) poetic meditation on death and the afterlife, The Dream of Gerontius:

But further (if it be allowable to speculate), one can conceive even the same kind of feeling, and a most transporting one, to come over the soul of the faithful Christian, when just separated from the body, and conscious that his trial is once for all over. Though his life has been a long and painful discipline, yet when it is over, we may suppose him to feel at the moment the same sort of surprise at its being ended, as generally follows any exertion in this life, when the object is gained and the anticipation over. . . . Such, but without any {221} mixture of pain, without any lassitude, dulness, or disappointment, may be the happy contemplation of the disembodied spirit; as if it said to itself, "So all is now over; this is what I have so long waited for; for which I have nerved myself; against which I have prepared, fasted, prayed, and wrought righteousness. Death is come and gone,—it is over. Ah! is it possible? What an easy trial, what a cheap price for eternal glory! A few sharp sicknesses, or some acute pain awhile, or some few and evil years, or some struggles of mind, dreary desolateness for a season, fightings and fears, afflicting bereavements, or the scorn and ill-usage of the world,—how they fretted me, how much I thought of them, yet how little really they are! How contemptible a thing is human life,—contemptible in itself, yet in its effects invaluable! for it has been to me like a small seed of easy purchase, germinating and ripening into bliss everlasting." . . . 

The regenerate soul is taken into communion with Saints and Angels, and its "life is hid with Christ in God;" [Col. iii. 3.] it has a place in God's court, and is not of this world,—looking into this world as a spectator might look at some show or pageant, except when called from time to time to take a part. And while it obeys the instinct of the senses, it does so for God's sake, and it submits itself to things of time so far as to be brought to perfection by them, that, when the veil is withdrawn and it sees itself to be, where it ever has been, in God's kingdom, it may be found worthy to enjoy it. It is this view of life, which removes from us all surprise and disappointment that it is so incomplete: as well might we expect any chance event which happens in the course of it to be complete, any casual conversation with a stranger, or the toil or amusement of an hour.

After death, the Soul of Gerontius speculates:

I went to sleep; and now I am refresh'd,
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense {332}
Of freedom, as I were at length myself,
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.
I had a dream; yes:—some one softly said
"He's gone;" and then a sigh went round the
room.
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Cry "Subvenite;" and they knelt in prayer.
I seem to hear him still; but thin and low,
And fainter and more faint the accents come,
As at an ever-widening interval.

And after the Soul has become conscious of the presence of the Angel:

Now know I surely that I am at length
Out of the body; had I part with earth,
I never could have drunk those accents in,
And not have worshipp'd as a god the voice
That was so musical; but now I am
So whole of heart, so calm, so self-possess'd,
With such a full content, and with a sense
So apprehensive and discriminant,
As no temptation can intoxicate.
Nor have I even terror at the thought
That I am clasp'd by such a saintliness.

Next week: The conclusion of the sermon.

Image credit (Public Domain): "The Death of the Good Old Man" by William Blake

Preview: "Take Me Away": Gerontius's Soul At and After Judgment

We'll conclude our series on Saint John Henry Newman's The Dream of Gerontius on Monday, November 28 on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on the air about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here.

(I usually post these previews on the Friday before. I'm posting this early because I know the Thanksgiving weekend is a busy time!)

The end is indeed nigh as his Guardian Angel leads Gerontius's Soul to the threshold of his particular judgment. The Angel prepares him for the experience:

When then—if such thy lot—thou seest thy Judge,
The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart
All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.
Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him,
And feel as though thou couldst but pity Him,
That one so sweet should e'er have placed Himself
At disadvantage such, as to be used
So vilely by a being so vile as thee.
There is a pleading in His pensive eyes
Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee.
And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though
Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinn'd, {360}
As never thou didst feel; and wilt desire
To slink away, and hide thee from His sight:
And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell
Within the beauty of His countenance.
And these two pains, so counter and so keen,—
The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not;
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him,—
Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.

This is one of Newman's great innovations in the Church's meditations on the Four Last Things. He does not dwell the wrath of Jesus at the particular judgment and the great fear of the sinner before his Judge. Rather, he dwells on the love and mercy of Jesus balanced with the Soul's own acknowledgment of his sinfulness. And yet, the love Jesus shows the Soul even as He judges Gerontius, has a great impact on him: it hurts perhaps more that wrath would in the Soul who has tried to prepare for eternal life with faith, hope, and charity.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, while not alluding to Newman's poem, might have been thinking of this when he wrote in Spe Salvi:

47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God.

And Father Juan Velez, my theological guide through this work, concurs that for:

a faithful soul . . . it is sorrow and love communicated to the soul by a glance of God. Particular judgment is followed by purgatory. The former involves the “glance” of the loving God which consumes the soul. Purgatory entails the absence of that marvelous vision, but the real assurance and anticipation of it are a source of peace and joy.

But just before the Soul reaches the Judgment Seat, Newman shows how time "works" in the afterlife, as the Soul hears the voices of the priest and the attendants, still praying for him at his deathbed, and Guardian Angel explains:

It is the voice of friends around thy bed,
Who say the "Subvenite" with the priest.
Hither the echoes come; before the Throne
Stands the great Angel of the Agony,
The same who strengthen'd Him, what time He knelt
Lone in that garden shade, bedew'd with blood.
That Angel best can plead with Him for all
Tormented souls, the dying and the dead.

So, there is one more angel, the Angel of the Agony (the Agony in the Garden):

Jesu! by that shuddering dread which fell on Thee;
Jesu! by that cold dismay which sicken'd Thee;
Jesu! by that pang of heart which thrill'd in Thee;
Jesu! by that mount of sins which crippled Thee;
Jesu! by that sense of guilt which stifled Thee;
Jesu! by that innocence which girdled Thee;
Jesu! by that sanctity which reign'd in Thee;
Jesu! by that Godhead which was one with Thee;
Jesu! spare these souls which are so dear to Thee;
Souls, who in prison, calm and patient, wait for
Thee; {366}
Hasten, Lord, their hour, and bid them come to Thee,
To that glorious Home, where they shall ever gaze on Thee.

The Soul endures his Judgment and is ready for Purgatory: he knows he must be purified and he wants to be purified:

Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be, {367}
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There, motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn,—
There will I sing my sad perpetual strain,
Until the morn.
There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne'er can cease
To throb, and pine, and languish, till possest
Of its Sole Peace.
There will I sing my absent Lord and Love:—
Take me away,
That sooner I may rise, and go above,
And see Him in the truth of everlasting day.

The Souls in Purgatory welcome him, while the Guardian Angel--and here, you should listen to Janet Baker singing the Angel's loving farewell--promises to return soon:

Softly and gently, dearly-ransom'd soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And, o'er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.

And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance. {370}

Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And Masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.

Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.

As the Guardian Angel had told him before, time is of no matter in the afterlife; the Soul is among the Communion of Saints, the Church in Heaven, on Earth, and in Purgatory. What "the morrow" means to us after a night of sleep and waking the next day and what it means in Heavenly time is not the same.

And as at the beginning of the poem, Newman returns to how the dying and the dead need prayers and Masses offered for them, so that the bonds of the Communion of Saints remain close. We remember the faithful departed in the Eucharistic Prayers at every Mass, and in the month of November, we remember them in special ways.

One more thing: when you read and pray the Meditations and Devotions Newman composed for the boys of the Oratory School, you can get an insight into how he prepared for his own Particular Judgment, as he places all his faith, hope and love in Jesus alone, as in this "Act of Love":

2. And therefore, O my dear Lord, since I perceive Thee to be so beautiful, I love Thee, and desire to love Thee more and more. Since Thou art the One Goodness, Beautifulness, Gloriousness, in the whole world of being, and there is nothing like Thee, but Thou art infinitely more glorious and good than even the {332} most beautiful of creatures, therefore I love Thee with a singular love, a one, only, sovereign love. Everything, O my Lord, shall be dull and dim to me, after looking at Thee. There is nothing on earth, not even what is most naturally dear to me, that I can love in comparison of Thee. And I would lose everything whatever rather than lose Thee. For Thou, O my Lord, art my supreme and only Lord and love.

3. My God, Thou knowest infinitely better than I, how little I love Thee. I should not love Thee at all, except for Thy grace. It is Thy grace which has opened the eyes of my mind, and enabled them to see Thy glory. It is Thy grace which has touched my heart, and brought upon it the influence of what is so wonderfully beautiful and fair. How can I help loving Thee, O my Lord, except by some dreadful perversion, which hinders me from looking at Thee? O my God, whatever is nearer to me than Thou, things of this earth, and things more naturally pleasing to me, will be sure to interrupt the sight of Thee, unless Thy grace interfere. Keep Thou my eyes, my ears, my heart, from any such miserable tyranny. Break my bonds—raise my heart. Keep my whole being fixed on Thee. Let me never lose sight of Thee; and, while I gaze on Thee, let my love of Thee grow more and more every day.

We know that Father Newman prayed at the deathbeds of members of his congregation and that he prayed for those whom he loved in life after their deaths. Also, we have this poignant note, "Written in Prospect of Death", on March 13th, 1864, Passion Sunday, 7 o'clock a.m.:

I WRITE in the direct view of death as in prospect. No one in the house, I suppose, suspects anything of the kind. Nor anyone anywhere, unless it be the medical men.

I write at once—because, on my own feelings of mind and body, it is as if nothing at all were the matter with me, just now; but because I do not know how long this perfect possession of my sensible and available health and strength may last.

I die in the faith of the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. I trust I shall die prepared and protected by her Sacraments, which our Lord Jesus Christ has committed to her, and in that communion of Saints which He inaugurated when He ascended on high, and which will have no end. I hope to die in that Church which our Lord founded on Peter, and which will continue till His second coming. . . .

Perhaps this--in the midst of Charles Kingsley's attack on him in January of that year--is in the background of Newman's inspiration to write The Dream of Gerontius! From April to June he was writing and serially publishing the Apologia pro Vita Sua. 

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Preview: The Soul on the Way to Judgment in "The Dream of Gerontius"

On Monday, November 21, we'll continue our survey of highlights from Newman's The Dream of Gerontius on the Son Rise Morning Show. Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will discuss the Soul's progress to his judgment before God at about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live here.

Since November is the month of prayers for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, I have heard at least two sermons on the Four Last Things, and two of them for sure have cited Saint Paul's promise in I Corinthians 2:9, quoting Isaiah 64:4:

But, as it is written: That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him. (Douai-Rheims translation)

And that verse seems an appropriate lens through which to view this next meditation on Newman's imaginative vision of the afterlife, as he describes Gerontius' Soul on the way to Judgement, already enjoying some of the peace and joy of Heaven.

The soul of Gerontius has just encountered his Guardian Angel, whose remaining duties are to lead him to the judgment-court, and to Purgatory and thence to Heaven.

Although Gerontius on his deathbed feared death and judgment, now his Soul does not:

Dear Angel, say,
Why have I now no fear at meeting Him?
Along my earthly life, the thought of death
And judgment was to me most terrible.
I had it aye before me, and I saw
The Judge severe e'en in the Crucifix.
Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled;
And at this balance of my destiny,
Now close upon me, I can forward look

With a serenest joy.

So his Guardian Angel explains that it was because Gerontius had feared death and judgement during his life, and therefore had repented of any of the sins he'd committed:

It is because
Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear,
Thou hast forestall'd the agony, and so
For thee the bitterness of death is past.
Also, because already in thy soul
The judgment is begun. . . .

So now, too, ere thou comest to the Throne,
A presage falls upon thee, as a ray
Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot.
That calm and joy uprising in thy soul
Is first-fruit to thee of thy recompense,
And heaven begun.

At this point, I thought what if Newman had written a poem about an unrepentant soul, fearful on his deathbed, pleading for mercy, not really able to confess his sins, and with no time to make restitution for those sins? 

Would the un-Gerontius be greeted by his Guardian Angel singing Alleluia! and would that soul feel such calm and joy? I don't think so: It would be a completely different poem, filled with anguish and terror! 

But Newman did not want to wish anyone to go to Hell, not even a fictional character, because that's such a sin against charity, as our priest here in Wichita said at Mass last Sunday. No, Newman is giving us a model, even in a fictional character, of what a happy, holy death should be like--and what God has prepared for him because he loved Him.

Nevertheless, as his Guardian Angel leads the Soul to the Judgment Seat, he encounters some demons, who mock his humanity and striving for holiness. The angel explains that:

We are now arrived
Close on the judgment-court; that sullen howl
Is from the demons who assemble there.
It is the middle region, where of old
Satan appeared among the sons of God,
To cast his jibes and scoffs at holy Job.
So now his legions throng the vestibule,
Hungry and wild, to claim their property,
And gather souls for hell. Hist to their cry.

But this Soul is not going to Hell, even though he hears hints of what Hell is through the cacophony and impotence of the Demons' chant:

Virtue and vice,
A knave's pretence,
'Tis all the same;
Ha! ha!
Dread of hell-fire,
Of the venomous flame,
A coward's plea.
Give him his price,
Saint though he be,
Ha! ha!
From shrewd good sense
He'll slave for hire
Ha! ha!
And does but aspire
To the heaven above
With sordid aim,
And not from love.
Ha! ha!

In Newman's vision of the Four Last Things, Hell is represented by these demons, who mock salvation, the Church, the Sacraments, and all that is good. Although this Soul is bound for Heaven, he hears their horrible blasphemies on his way to the Judgment Seat.

Their voices, however, are soon replaced by the Choirs of Angelicals; from the chant of the Fifth Choir of Angelicals another hymn has been composed, "Praise to the Holiest in the Height":

Praise to the Holiest in the height,
and in the depth be praise:
in all his words most wonderful,
most sure in all his ways.

O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
a second Adam to the fight
and to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood,
which did in Adam fail,
should strive afresh against the foe,
should strive and should prevail;

And that a higher gift than grace
should flesh and blood refine,
God's presence and his very self,
and essence all-divine.

O generous love! that he, who smote
in Man for man the foe,
the double agony in Man
for man should undergo;

And in the garden secretly,
and on the cross on high,
should teach his brethren, and inspire
to suffer and to die.

These five Choirs of Angelicals contradict entirely the rude chants of the demons, stressing human dignity based securely on the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery of Jesus, as the Angels have recounted the history of salvation, the reality the demons cannot accept. As Father Juan Velez explains:

The history of salvation reaches its climax with Christ’s redemptive suffering, which Newman wishes the reader to contemplate. Christology becomes the key to a proper reading of eschatology. As in his other works, the author has a Christological approach to the Holy Trinity, ecclesiology, sacramental theology and morality. In the Dream, the passion of Christ is the measure of God’s mercy. Newman shows Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane as the reference point from which man should realize the gravity of man’s sins and the need for forgiveness. The Incarnate God is the One who will be man’s judge. Christ is the second Adam who suffered in His flesh to obtain man’s recovery[ ].

In our concluding discussion on November 28, I'll highlight some themes from the Soul's Personal Judgment and his entry into Purgatory. In the few minutes we have each Monday, I can only give you glimpses of this great poem--you have to read it yourself and perhaps listen to Elgar's dramatic, semi-operatic work to appreciate it fully.

Saint John Henry Newman's prayer for a happy death:

O my Lord and Savior, support me in my last hour in the strong arms of Thy Sacraments and by the fresh fragrance of Thy consolations. Let the absolving words be said over me, and the holy oil sign and seal me; and let Thine own Body be my food, and Thy Blood my sprinkling; and let my sweet Mother, Mary, breathe on me, and my Angel whisper peace to me, and my glorious saints and my own dear patrons smile upon me, that, in them all and through them all, I may receive the gift of perseverance, and die as I desire to live, in Thy faith, in Thy Church, in Thy service, and in Thy love. Amen.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Christ the Judge and Praying Angels by Giovanni da Milano

Image Credit (Public Domain): The angelic choirs circling the abode of God, from Dante's Paradiso, illustrated by Gustave Doré. Hint: Think of the two figures in the foreground as the Soul of Gerontius and his Guardian Angel!

Preview: "The Immortality of the Soul" and The Soul of Gerontius

On Monday, November 14, Matt Swaim or Anna Mitchell of the Son Rise Morning Show and I will continue our series on Saint John Henry Newman's The Dream of Gerontius. I'll be on the air about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here.

In one of his Parochial and Plain Sermons, "The Immortality of the Soul", Newman spoke to his Anglican congregation on the reality of the immortality of the soul. As he so often did in these sermons, he remonstrated with them that although Christians in his day paid lip service to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, they lived as if they did not have immortal souls that would live beyond the life of their bodies after death:

And yet, in spite of our being able to speak about it and our "form of knowledge" [Rom. ii. 20.] (as St. Paul terms it), there seems scarcely room to doubt, that the greater number of those who are called Christians in no true sense realize it in their own minds at all. Indeed, it is a very difficult thing to bring home to us, and to feel, that we have souls; and there cannot be a more fatal mistake than to suppose we see what the doctrine means, as soon as we can use the words which signify it. So great a thing is it to understand that we have souls, that the knowing it, taken in connection with its results, is all one with being serious, i.e., truly religious. . . . Yet to this state of mind, and therefore to this true knowledge, the multitude of men called Christians are certainly strangers; a thick veil is drawn over their eyes; and in spite of their being able to talk of the doctrine, they are as if they never had heard of it. They go on just as the heathen did of old: they eat, they drink; or they amuse themselves in vanities, and live in the world, without fear and without sorrow, just as if God had not declared that their conduct in this life would decide their destiny in the next; just as if they either had no souls, or had nothing or little to do with the saving of them, which was the creed of the heathen.

And Newman thinks he knows why we have trouble discerning this truth in our every day lives--we are surrounded and enmeshed in a world of things, of objects, even of ourselves as objects. As he says, a child can grow up with this view and seldom think of any different sort of life:  "He views himself merely in his connection with this world, which is his all; he looks to this world for his good, as to an idol; and when he tries to look beyond this life, he is able to discern nothing in prospect, because he has no idea of any thing, nor can fancy any thing, but this life."

To comprehend what it means that we have immortal souls, we have to separate ourselves from this world: 

To understand that we have souls, is to feel our separation from things visible, our independence of them, our distinct existence in ourselves, our individuality, our power of acting for ourselves this way or that way, our accountableness for what we do. These are the great truths which lie wrapped up indeed even in a child's mind, and which God's grace can unfold there in spite of the influence of the external world; but at first this outward world prevails.

We have to be attentive to God's Providence in our lives, as He shows us how little we can depend on what we see and think so important in our lives:

And when He visits us, then in a little while there is a stirring within us. The unprofitableness and feebleness of the things of this world are forced upon our minds; they promise but cannot {20} perform, they disappoint us. Or, if they do perform what they promise, still (so it is) they do not satisfy us. We still crave for something, we do not well know what; but we are sure it is something which the world has not given us. And then its changes are so many, so sudden, so silent, so continual. It never leaves changing; it goes on to change, till we are quite sick at heart:—then it is that our reliance on it is broken. . . .

In our response to God's Grace, we hear the call to prepare for Eternal Life, for the immortality of our soul is more real to us:

And thus a man is drawn forward by all manner of powerful influences to turn from things temporal to things eternal, to deny himself, to take up his cross and follow Christ. For there are Christ's awful threats and warnings to make him serious, His precepts to attract and elevate him, His promises to cheer him, His gracious deeds and sufferings to humble him to the dust, and to bind his heart once and for ever in gratitude to Him who is so surpassing in mercy.

According to the Newman Reader, Newman offered this sermon in 1833. Thirty-two (32) years later, in The Dream of Gerontius, Newman depicts the result of such awareness of his immortality in the "Soul" of Gerontius, as he is named throughout the rest of the poem:

I went to sleep; and now I am refresh'd,
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense {332}
Of freedom, as I were at length myself,
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.

The Soul knows he is alive, but does not understand what has happened to his body as he seems still to be in it yet not as he was before:

Am I alive or dead? I am not dead, {333}
But in the body still; for I possess
A sort of confidence which clings to me,
That each particular organ holds its place
As heretofore, combining with the rest
Into one symmetry, that wraps me round,
And makes me man; and surely I could move,
Did I but will it, every part of me. . . .

So much I know, not knowing how I know,
That the vast universe, where I have dwelt,
Is quitting me, or I am quitting it.
Or I or it is rushing on the wings
Of light or lightning on an onward course,
And we e'en now are million miles apart.

Then the Soul notices the presence of another: his Guardian Angel, who rejoices at the change in its responsibilities to its charge. Its work is done, as it rejoices that it helped guide this Soul throughout his life on earth to this moment. It had led Gerontius on the narrow way from earth to heaven, fighting a long fight against sin and corruption and weakness.

So the Soul comprehends what has happened and his transition from life on earth to Eternal Life is clear:

Now know I surely that I am at length
Out of the body; had I part with earth,
I never could have drunk those accents in,
And not have worshipp'd as a god the voice
That was so musical; but now I am
So whole of heart, so calm, so self-possess'd,
With such a full content, and with a sense
So apprehensive and discriminant,
As no temptation can intoxicate.
Nor have I even terror at the thought
That I am clasp'd by such a saintliness.

So I think it's valid to read these passages from The Dream in the context of that Sermon when as an Anglican he had moved away from the Calvinist doctrine of salvation and was reading the Fathers of the Church but not yet come to the fullness of Christianity (as +Father Ian Ker would title one of his books on Newman): Newman's embrace of the Catholic Faith has deepened through his years as a Catholic priest. As Father Juan Velez comments in a 2001 article for New Blackfriars, "Theological Themes in Newman's Dream of Gerontius":

In those first years as a Catholic he began to understand the important role of the sacraments in a Christian’s preparation for death [ ] and of the Sacrifice of the Mass as atonement for the lives of the faithful departed. Finally, the Dream of Gerontius constitutes Newman’s mature reflection on the Catholic doctrine of purgatory as purification of souls who die in a state of grace, a deeper awareness of the communion of saints, and his own understanding of the nature of purgatorial fire. 

When Newman composed his poem, made famous by Elgar’s musical arrangement [ ], he had reached a refined doctrinal and spiritual understanding of the Christian belief in life after death. In effect he had overcome various problems and interpretations of Calvinist and Anglican theology, and of Roman Catholic piety. [Please see the linked article for the bracketed lacuna (end notes).]

When I taught the "Newman and the New Evangelization" course at Newman University this summer, the priest who had designed the course wanted me to emphasize how Saint John Henry Newman used the imagination to help us more deeply grasp the crucial teachings of Jesus and His Church. He wants the students, preparing to be catechists in Catholic schools, parish OCIA/RCIA or CCD programs, etc, to adapt Newman's appeal to the imagination to their own efforts. 

While they--or I, or you--may not receive the inspiration to write a poem nor have the talent to compose it, the comparison of Newman's 1833 sermon and 1865 poem is illustrative. It shows that Newman not only continued to grow in his comprehension of the fullness of Catholic life, but he also continued to help his congregation, whether in the pews at the University Church of St. Mary's in Oxford or in the pages of The Month, comprehend these great Christian teachings, like the Immortality of Our Souls and the Eternal Life to come, more immediately, more intensely, and live as if--because--we believe they are True and Real and consequential in our lives, here on earth and in the life to come.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let Your perpetual light shine upon them.
May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed
rest in peace. Amen.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Saint Martin of Tours, pray for us!

Image credit (Public Domain): "The Death of the Good Old Man" by William Blake

Image credit (Public Domain): "Ascent of the Blessed" Detail from Visions of the Hereafter, polyptych by Hieronymus Bosch in the Palazzo Grimani, Venice, Italy

Preview: The Deathbed of Gerontius: "Go forth, Christian Soul"!

During this month of devotions for the Holy Souls in Purgatory--who are indeed holy and bound for Heaven--Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will discuss themes and imagery from St. John Henry Newman's poem, The Dream of Gerontius on the Son Rise Morning Show each Monday in November.

So on Monday, November 7, at about 6:50 a.m. Central Time/7:50 a.m. Eastern Time (don't forget to Fall Back this weekend!), we'll start the series. Please listen live here, and remember that you may subscribe to the Son Rise Morning Show website for a reminder of the daily broadcasts here.

First, some background on the poem:

The plot of Newman's poem The Dream of Gerontius is simple:

1) Gerontius is on his deathbed and receives Last Rites and prays before he dies
2) Gerontius dies and experiences the afterlife as a disembodied Soul
3) Gerontius' Soul meets his Guardian Angel
4) His Soul encounters the demons of Hell on his way to Judgment
5) The Soul hears the choirs of heavenly Angels on his way to Judgment
5) The Soul is judged and sent to Purgatory
6) The Soul's Guardian Angel deposits him in Purgatory and promises to come back to convey him to Heaven

Newman wrote this poem, the longest he'd ever written, on 52 scraps of paper between January 17 and February 7, 1865. One of his biographers, Wilfrid Ward, describes its composition:

Now, after the abandonment of the Oxford scheme* gave him leisure for it, he set down in dramatic form the vision of a Christian's death on which his imagination had been dwelling. The writing of it was a sudden inspiration, and his work was begun in January and completed in February 1865. "On the 17th of January last," he writes to Mr. Allies in October, "it came into my head to write it, I really can't tell how. And I wrote on till it was finished on small bits of paper, and I could no more write anything else by willing it than I could fly." . . .

*The Oxford Scheme mentioned by Ward (son of William George Ward, the ultramontanist) was the plan to found an Oratory in Oxford to serve Catholic men attending one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford.

The Dream of Gerontius was then published in The Month, a periodical founded in 1864 by the convert Frances Margaret Taylor (Mother Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, Poor Servants of the Mother of God). The Jesuits in England bought The Month in 1865 and Father Henry James Coleridge, another convert (great nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), became the publisher and editor. Read more about the rather surprising response to the poem here, as Anglicans like Charles Kingsley, William Gladstone, and General George Gordon admired it greatly!

But the focus in our discussion Monday is on the content of the poem itself, not that background!

The first part of the poem juxtaposes the protagonist's preparation for death with those at deathbed praying for him, according to Catholic ritual.

Gerontius is an old man, a faithful and practicing Catholic, and he is experiencing both the dread of death and the promise of eternal life:

JESU, MARIA—I am near to death,
And Thou art calling me; I know it now.
Not by the token of this faltering breath,
This chill at heart, this dampness on my brow,—
(Jesu, have mercy! Mary, pray for me!)
'Tis this new feeling, never felt before,
(Be with me, Lord, in my extremity!)
That I am going, that I am no more.
'Tis this strange innermost abandonment,
(Lover of souls! great God! I look to Thee,)
This emptying out of each constituent
And natural force, by which I come to be.

He asks for his friends and the priest with him to pray for him and they do, beginning with the Litany of the Saints:

Kyrie eleïson, Christe eleïson, Kyrie eleïson.
Holy Mary, pray for him.
All holy Angels, pray for him.
Choirs of the righteous, pray for him. 
Holy Abraham, pray for him.
St. John Baptist, St. Joseph, pray for him.
St. Peter, St. Paul, St Andrew, St. John,
All Apostles, all Evangelists, pray for him.
All holy Disciples of the Lord, pray for him.
All holy Innocents, pray for him.
All holy Martyrs, all holy Confessors,
All holy Hermits, all holy Virgins . . .

Hearing their prayers, he can pray as he thought he could not:

Rouse thee, my fainting soul, and play the man;
And through such waning span
Of life and thought as still has to be trod,
Prepare to meet thy God.
And while the storm of that bewilderment
Is for a season spent,
And, ere afresh the ruin on me fall,
Use well the interval.

Gerontius then prays what will become one of the popular hymns taken from this poem, "Firmly I believe and truly" as he confesses and professes a summary of Catholic belief:

Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
Parce mihi, Domine. 
Firmly I believe and truly
God is three, and God is One;
And I next acknowledge duly
Manhood taken by the Son. . . .

But then he weakens again ("I can no more") and indeed, he senses and fears the presence of something evil:

Some bodily form of ill
Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse
Tainting the hallow'd air, and laughs, and flaps
Its hideous wings,
And makes me wild with horror and dismay.
O Jesu, help! pray for me, Mary, pray!
Some Angel, Jesu! such as came to Thee
In Thine own agony …
Mary, pray for me. Joseph, pray for me. Mary,
pray for me.

So the attendants intercede for him again ("Rescue this Thy servant in his evil hour") and after he dies, the priest intones the traditional prayer as I find it in my 1962 Roman Missal (or you may find it here):

Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!
Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!
Go from this world! Go, in the Name of God
The Omnipotent Father, who created thee!
Go, in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord,
Son of the living God, who bled for thee!
Go, in the Name of the Holy Spirit, who
Hath been pour'd out on thee!

So what Newman has accomplished in this section is to convey even a faithful Catholic's human fear of death, describing both the physical and spiritual weakness that comes upon Gerontius. He cannot pray for himself as he wishes, so he asks others to do it for him. Gerontius faces the great mystery of death--he does not know what it is to not be alive and so he faces it with trepidation, even as he has faith in God and in the Church's prayers for him. 

And these prayers are both on earth and in heaven, as the "assistants" at his deathbed and the priest call upon Jesus Christ our Lord to have mercy on Gerontius, and implore the angels and saints to pray with them for him. Since Newman poetically adapted prayers that many a Catholic had heard while at a loved one's deathbed, this was familiar scene to them. They had made the responses in the Litany of the Saints and watched their mother or father, brother or sister, die; seen the Sacrament of Anointing, and heard the priest's commending prayers for their loved one:

Receive, Lord, Thy servant (handmaid) into the place of salvation, which he (she) hopes to obtain through Thy mercy.R.Amen. Deliver, Lord, the soul of Thy servant (handmaid) from all danger of Hell; and from all pain and tribulation.R.Amen . . . Let the heavens be opened to him (her), and the angels rejoice with him (her). Let the archangel St. Michael, whom Thou didst appoint the chief of the heavenly host, conduct him (her). Let the holy angels come out to meet him (her), and carry him (her) to the city of heavenly Jerusalem. Let blessed Peter the apostle, to whom God gave the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, receive him (her). Let St. Paul the apostle, who was a vessel of election, assist him (her). Let St. John the beloved disciple, to whom the secrets of Heaven were revealed, intercede for him (her). Let all the holy apostles, who received from Jesus Christ the power of binding and loosing, pray for him (her). Let all the saints and elect of God, who in this world have suffered torments in the name of Christ, intercede for him (her); that being freed from the prison of his (her) body, he (she) may be admitted into the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who with Thee and the Holy Ghost, lives and reigns, world without end. Amen.

Newman had dramatized it and brought to their imaginations afresh. In next week's highlight from The Death of Gerontius, we''ll see how Newman imagined the Soul of Gerontius after death and its meeting with its Guardian Angel!

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Source (Public Domain): Deathbed Scene from a 16th century Office of the Dead.

Preview of a Preview: November Series on the Son Rise Morning Show

As we end our series on the Son Rise Morning Show with Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I discussing St. Thomas More's Treatise to Receive the Blessed Body of Our Lord this morning (although it will probably be rebroadcast on Thursday, November 3 during the first EWTN hour), I wanted to post a link to these prayers of St Thomas More.

They include prayers from his Treatise upon the Passion, among them this one for Devotion to the Eucharist:

Our most dear Savior Christ, who after finishing the old Paschal sacrifice instituted the new sacrament of Your own Blessed Body and Blood for a memorial of Your bitter Passion: give us such true faith therein and such fervent devotion thereto that our souls may take fruitful spiritual food thereby.

Amen!

On this All Hallows Eve, as we prepare to celebrate All Saints and All Souls, I also want to announce that we'll begin a new series next Monday, November 7, with highlights every Monday morning in November from Saint John Henry Newman's poem about the Four Last Things (Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell), The Dream of Gerontius.

It seems like an appropriate series to air during the month of Prayers for the Faithful Departed, the Holy Souls in Purgatory! If you've followed my blog at all you know, dear reader, that I've commented often on this mini-epic poem: epic in scope if not in length, that is!

Please look for the first preview post in this series on Friday, November 4th!