Preview: John Keble's Poem for the Feast of Saint James the Greater

On Monday, July 20, we'll continue our Son Rise Morning Show series on John Keble's book of poetry celebrating The Christian Year, the liturgical year according to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. This poem is for the feast of Saint James the Apostle, which we will celebrate on Saturday, July 25. The Gospel for that day at Mass (in the Catholic Church) is Matthew 20: 20-28, the passage in which the "Mother of the sons of Zebedee [James and John] approached Jesus with her sons and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something" for her sons--something that will make the other ten Apostles "indignant at the brothers"!

Keble chooses the verse in which Jesus explains the situation further to the brothers, and probably to the confusion and consternation of their Mother (does she know what Jesus means by the "chalice that [He] is going to drink" and what that baptism is?):

Ye shall drink indeed of My cup, and be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with: but to sit on My right hand, and on My left, is not Mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of My Father.  St. Matthew xx. 23.

Sit down and take thy fill of joy
   At God’s right hand, a bidden guest,
Drink of the cup that cannot cloy,
   Eat of the bread that cannot waste.
O great Apostle! rightly now
   Thou readest all thy Saviour meant,
What time His grave yet gentle brow
   In sweet reproof on thee was bent.

“Seek ye to sit enthroned by me?
   Alas! ye know not what ye ask,
The first in shame and agony,
   The lowest in the meanest task—
This can ye be? and came ye drink
   The cup that I in tears must steep,
Nor from the ’whelming waters shrink
   That o’er Me roll so dark and deep?”

“We can—Thine are we, dearest Lord,
   In glory and in agony,
To do and suffer all Thy word;
   Only be Thou for ever nigh.”—
“Then be it so—My cup receive,
   And of My woes baptismal taste:
But for the crown, that angels weave
   For those next Me in glory placed,

“I give it not by partial love;
   But in My Father’s book are writ
What names on earth shall lowliest prove,
   That they in Heaven may highest sit.”
Take up the lesson, O my heart;
   Thou Lord of meekness, write it there,
Thine own meek self to me impart,
   Thy lofty hope, thy lowly prayer.

If ever on the mount with Thee
   I seem to soar in vision bright,
With thoughts of coming agony,
   Stay Thou the too presumptuous flight:
Gently along the vale of tears
   Lead me from Tabor’s sunbright steep,
Let me not grudge a few short years
   With thee t’ward Heaven to walk and weep:

Too happy, on my silent path,
   If now and then allowed, with Thee
Watching some placid holy death,
   Thy secret work of love to see;
But, oh! most happy, should Thy call,
   Thy welcome call, at last be given—
“Come where thou long hast storeth thy all
   Come see thy place prepared in Heaven.”

Keble first addresses Saint James the Greater in Heaven, who knows fully what this Gospel story means, the suffering (and martyrdom) and joy, with highs and lows and consolations, on Earth and the eternal joy of Heaven. 

He expands the dialogue between Jesus and the Sons of Zebedee to explore exactly what that chalice or cup meant and then in the fourth stanza addresses his own heart ("Take up thy lesson") and even applies the experience of the Transfiguration to his own Christian life, with its highs and lows.

Most of all, he prays for that happy and welcome call (even noting the provisional aspect of this call) when he will be invited into Heaven!

My late father was named James and he converted to Catholicism after years of attending Sunday Mass with our family when I was in high school. He chose Saint Joseph as his Confirmation name.

Saint James the Greater, pray for us!

Image Credit (public domain): St James the Elder (c. 1612–1613) by Peter Paul Rubens

Preview: Keble on the Angels of God and "One Sinner that Repenteth"

On Monday, June 15, we'll continue our summer series on the Son Rise Morning Show as we examine and explicate the liturgical poetry of John Keble, the Anglican minister and friend of Saint John Henry Newman. I selected this poem from The Christian Year for the Third Sunday After Trinity because Keble and Newman shared this devotion to the Angels of God, and particularly, each Christian's Guardian Angel.

The Verse that inspired the poem: "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." (St. Luke 15:10)

The first six stanzas describe the general effects of sin on Christian souls, as thoughts of past sins can be oppressive and divisive. Their consciences will not let them find rest anywhere, because their angels urge them to acknowledge their sins and repent:

O hateful spell of Sin! when friends are nigh,
To make stern Memory tell her tale unsought,
And raise accusing shades of hours gone by,
To come between us and all kindly thought!

Chilled at her touch, the self-reproaching soul
Flies from the heart and home she dearest loves,
To where lone mountains tower, or billows roll,
Or to your endless depth, ye solemn groves.

In vain: the averted cheek in loneliest dell
Is conscious of a gaze it cannot bear,
The leaves that rustle near us seem to tell
Our heart’s sad secret to the silent air.

Nor is the dream untrue; for all around
The heavens are watching with their thousand eyes,
We cannot pass our guardian angel’s bound,
Resigned or sullen, he will hear our sighs.

He in the mazes of the budding wood
Is near, and mourns to see our thankless glance
Dwell coldly, where the fresh green earth is strewed
With the first flowers that lead the vernal dance.

In wasteful bounty showered, they smile unseen,
Unseen by man—but what if purer sprights
By moonlight o’er their dewy bosoms lean
To adore the Father of all gentle lights?

Then Keble addresses an individual sinner, perhaps reading this verse from Saint Luke, to urge her to repent for the sake of relieving God's angel's "grief and shame" and because, once she has repented, she will "be turned" and she will be "fearless" and won't have to "shudder at the Eye that saw" her sin but receive a "dearest welcome" from "the angels of God" as her heart changes:

If such there be, O grief and shame to think
That sight of thee should overcloud their joy,
A new-born soul, just waiting on the brink
Of endless life, yet wrapt in earth’s annoy!

O turn, and be thou turned! the selfish tear,
In bitter thoughts of low-born care begun,
Let it flow on, but flow refined and clear,
The turbid waters brightening as they run.

Let it flow on, till all thine earthly heart
In penitential drops have ebbed away,
Then fearless turn where Heaven hath set thy part,
Nor shudder at the Eye that saw thee stray.

O lost and found! all gentle souls below
Their dearest welcome shall prepare, and prove
Such joy o’er thee, as raptured seraphs know,
Who learn their lesson at the Throne of Love.

As an Anglican, Newman wrote a poem about Angels too, not doubting their existence, but wondering about how well he can perceive their influence on his life, sinful and fallen as he is:

31. Angelic Guidance

{73} ARE these the tracks of some unearthly Friend,

His foot prints, and his vesture-skirts of light,

Who, as I talk with men, conforms aright

Their sympathetic words, or deeds that blend

With my hid thought;—or stoops him to attend

My doubtful-pleading grief;—or blunts the might

Of ill I see not;—or in dreams of night

Figures the scope, in which what is will end?

Were I Christ's own, then fitly might I call

That vision real; for to the thoughtful mind

That walks with Him, He half unveils His face;

But, when on earth-stain'd souls such tokens fall,

These dare not claim as theirs what there they find,

Yet, not all hopeless, eye His boundless grace.

Whitchurch (in Shropshire). December 8, 1832.

Also among his Verses on Various Occasions, Saint John Henry Newman wrote a personal reflection on his "Guardian Angel", reflecting on how he'd been accompanied throughout his life, from his baptism, through his youthful rebellion, during his conversion to Catholicism ("To place me under Mary's smile,/And Peter's royal feet!")--with the hope that his Angel will be there on his deathbed. The last two stanzas definitely anticipate The Dream of Gerontius (1865)!

{300} MY oldest friend, mine from the hour

When first I drew my breath;

My faithful friend, that shall be mine,

Unfailing, till my death;

Thou hast been ever at my side;

My Maker to thy trust

Consign'd my soul, what time He framed

The infant child of dust.

No beating heart in holy prayer,

No faith, inform'd aright,

Gave me to Joseph's tutelage,

Or Michael's conquering might.

Nor patron Saint, nor Mary's love,

The dearest and the best,

Has known my being, as thou hast known,

And blest, as thou hast blest. {301}

Thou wast my sponsor at the font;

And thou, each budding year,

Didst whisper elements of truth

Into my childish ear.

And when, ere boyhood yet was gone,

My rebel spirit fell,

Ah! thou didst see, and shudder too,

Yet bear each deed of Hell.

And then in turn, when judgments came,

And scared me back again,

Thy quick soft breath was near to soothe

And hallow every pain.

Oh! who of all thy toils and cares

Can tell the tale complete,

To place me under Mary's smile,

And Peter's royal feet!

And thou wilt hang about my bed,

When life is ebbing low;

Of doubt, impatience, and of gloom,

The jealous sleepless foe. {302}

Mine, when I stand before the Judge;

And mine, if spared to stay

Within the golden furnace, till

My sin is burn'd away.

And mine, O Brother of my soul,

When my release shall come;

Thy gentle arms shall lift me then,

Thy wings shall waft me home.

The Oratory. 1853.

Preview: Keble's Poem on Trinity Sunday

On June 1 Anna Mitchell and I started our series on John Keble's The Christian Year, commenting on how much Saint John Henry Newman appreciated Keble's humility, simplicity, and purity. Newman also remarked on how Keble's poetry elucidated "the Sacramental system; that is, the doctrine that material phenomena are both the types and the instruments of real things unseen" which I think we can see in this poem on the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. So on Monday, June 8, Anna or Matt and I will discuss this poem and how Keble deals with this great theological mystery on the Son Rise Morning Show near the end of the show's national broadcast.

As the Reverend William G. Most wrote:

Perhaps the deepest, the most profound of all mysteries is the mystery of the Trinity. The Church teaches us that although there is only one God, yet, somehow, there are three Persons in God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet we do not speak of three Gods, but only one God. They have the same nature, substance, and being. 

Keble begins by praying to the Holy Trinity as he celebrates this Sunday after the seasons of Lent and Easter:

Creator, Saviour, strengthening Guide,
Now on Thy mercy’s ocean wide
Far out of sight we seem to glide.

Help us, each hour, with steadier eye
To search the deepening mystery,
The wonders of Thy sea and sky.

The blessèd Angels look and long
To praise Thee with a worthier song,
And yet our silence does Thee wrong.—

Along the Church’s central space
The sacred weeks, with unfelt pace,
Hath borne us on from grace to grace.

He turns from the mysteries of the Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost celebrated during those "sacred weeks" to the experience of Nature as an entrance to a hidden shrine: those mysteries lead to this one:

As travellers on some woodland height,
When wintry suns are gleaming bright,
Lose in arched glades their tangled sight;—

By glimpses such as dreamers love
Through her grey veil the leafless grove
Shows where the distant shadows rove;—

Such trembling joy the soul o’er-awes
As nearer to Thy shrine she draws:—
And now before the choir we pause.

The door is closed—but soft and deep
Around the awful arches sweep,
Such airs as soothe a hermit’s sleep.

From each carved nook and fretted bend
Cornice and gallery seem to send
Tones that with seraphs hymns might blend.

Keble suggests an analogy in the structure of the shrine:

Three solemn parts together twine
In harmony’s mysterious line;
Three solemn aisles approach the shrine:

Yet all are One—together all,
In thoughts that awe but not appall,
Teach the adoring heart to fall.

But there's a problem: some travellers don't even seek the shrine but are too busy to notice the "flowers . . . showers . . . bowers" that would guide them to the shrine:

Within these walls each fluttering guest
Is gently lured to one safe nest—
Without, ’tis moaning and unrest.

The busy world a thousand ways
Is hurrying by, nor ever stays
To catch a note of Thy dear praise.

Why tarries not her chariot wheel,
That o’er her with no vain appeal
One gust of heavenly song might steal?

Alas! for her Thy opening flowers
Unheeded breathe to summer showers,
Unheard the music of Thy bowers.

What echoes from the sacred dome
The selfish spirit may o’ercome
That will not hear of love or home!

Keble laments the sins and faults that keep us from loving God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

The heart that scorned a father’s care,
How can it rise in filial prayer?
How an all-seeing Guardian bear?

Or how shall envious brethren own
A Brother on the eternal throne,
Their Father’s joy, their hopes alone?

How shall Thy Spirit’s gracious wile
The sullen brow of gloom beguile,
That frowns on sweet Affection’s smile?

And the poem ends with prayer:

Eternal One, Almighty Trine!
(Since Thou art ours, and we are Thine,)
By all Thy love did once resign,

By all the grace Thy heavens still hide,
We pray Thee, keep us at Thy side,
Creator, Saviour, strengthening Guide!

As ever with poetry, it's important to read this out loud to hear the rhymes and rhythms, the alliteration and patterns of repetition, even the pauses designated by dashes and periods, etc. You might note a slight echo of Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" ("Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near") in stanza 14: "Why tarries not her chariot wheel", and that there are 21 stanzas of rhymed triplets--you can do the math.

Preview: Christ Our Friend's Last Word to His Mother and John the Beloved

Next in our Son Rise Morning Show Lenten Series, on Monday, March 9, Anna or Matt and I will discuss Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the next of the Seven Last Words of Christ: “Jesus, then, seeing his Mother and the disciple he loved, said to his Mother, ‘Woman, this is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘This is your Mother.’ And from that moment the disciple took her with him.” (John: 19: 26-27)

Benson mentioned Mary and John standing at the foot of the Cross in the meditation on Jesus's Last Word to the Good Thief and he continues that reflection:

Two of the personages standing beside the Cross are, for all Christians, for all time, the supreme types of Divine and human love. There is Mary, loved into immaculate being by the Eternal Father, the Mother Herself of Immaculate Love, and John the chosen disciple, allowed to rest his head, even before he had attained heaven, upon the breast of that same Immaculate Love. Surely these two, Mary and John, are already as wholly one as Love can make them. Those who love God so perfectly cannot love one another less perfectly.

Yet Jesus, in His seven words upon the Cross, devotes one to make them closer still.

Jesus, Our Friend, wants us to be friends with others too and with this Last Word He "unite[s] these friends in divine charity to one another" to demonstrate what He desires among His followers:

"He that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not?"{1} "As long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me."{2} The second commandment is like "unto the first": "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."{3}{4}

Benson's meditation on how we in society form these friendships to love our neighbor as ourself, forming communities of cooperation by submitting ourselves to the good of all, posits that this is usually in the pursuit of rejoicing and prosperity, alleviating poverty and sorrow. 

BUT:

. . . Jesus Christ does something that has never been done before. He uses suffering as the supreme bond of love. "Love one another," He cries from the Cross, "because you are strong enough to suffer together." "Mother," cries the dying Friend of us all, "behold thy son. Son, behold thy Mother!"

This word, then, is no less significant of an immense spiritual principle than are the rest. Mary and John have loved one another perfectly -- as perfectly, that is to say, as a common joy has made possible. Together they have watched His triumph: Mary has seen Him, the Child of Joy, upon her breast: John upon His breast has seen Him rejoice in spirit. But, from to-day onwards, their common love rises to yet greater heights: they love one another now, not merely in the Sacred Heart, but in the pierced and broken Sacred Heart. Hitherto they have been perfect friends; henceforth they are Blood-relations -- relations in a blood more intimate to them than their own -- a Blood shed for the remission of sins. It is not, "Friend, behold thy friend"; but, "Mother, behold thy son. Son, behold thy Mother!"

Benson meditates further on our friendship with the Mother of God, noting that it is through her Sorrows as much as it is through her Joys; that the Sorrows are really the stronger bonds:

First, then, this is the bond which unites Mary to ourselves -- not that she sang the Magnificat, but that the sword pierced her own heart also. Sorrow, wrongly received, is a mightier force than all ordinary human affections: sorrow, borne with resentment and bitterness, isolates the soul not only from God but from her own fellows. The wounded stag creeps away to die in loneliness. But, on the other hand, if sorrow is welcomed and taken in, if it is made, by the very effort which welcomes it, a bond of union with others that suffer, a link is forged which all the powers of hell cannot break. If Mary had been given us as our Mother in Bethlehem, if she had wrapped herself in her unique joy, if she had been to us but a figure of incarnate bliss; then when the horror of darkness fell upon us, we too should have crept away from even Her, to suffer in loneliness. A religion that presented to us Mary with her living child in her arms, and had no Mary with her dead Son across her knees, could not have been the religion to which we should turn in utter confidence when all else had failed. . . .

Indeed she is the Mother of the redeemed, because she was the Mother of Redemption: she stood by the Cross of Jesus, as she had knelt by His cradle; and she is our Mother, then, by that very blood by which both she and we are alike redeemed. The "Mother of Sorrows" must always be nearer to the human race than even the "Cause of our Joy."

Benson's spiritual advice is first, to make sure that our religious duties do not separate us from our friends:

It is an appalling fact that again and again those who claim to be enjoying the most intimate friendship with God are distinguished by selfishness and a lack of charity towards their neighbours -- that it is those, again and again, above all others who live what are called "misunderstood" lives, who actually advance their "Rule of Life" or the calls of their devotion as arguments against their having time or energy to be kind to their servants or acquaintances. "She is at her prayers, therefore she must not be disturbed. He is getting ready for the sacraments; therefore it is natural that he should be a little peevish and preoccupied.". . .

Then, he gives some practical direction:

Go home, then, and make up that foolish quarrel once and for all: go home and apologize simply and sincerely for your share in that trouble in which perhaps the other was even more to blame than yourself. It is intolerable that the friends of the Crucified -- that those even who aspire to be friends of the Crucified -- should think it conceivable to be at peace with God, who are not at peace with wife or husband or parents.

"Behold your Mother . . . your son!" That soul with whom you are at variance has a bond with you far greater than that of a common creation. The fact that the Eternal Word died for you both upon the Cross is an infinitely stronger link of union than the fact that the Eternal Word willed you both into being. For while the Fall broke the harmony of creation, the Redemption restored it; and this restoration is a far greater marvel than even Creation itself.

No man can be a Friend of Jesus Christ who is not a friend to his neighbour.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

Saint John the Beloved Apostle, pray for us! 

Postscript: My best friend and I read an Easter book last year (The Easter Impact: How the Resurrection Restores and Strengthens Our Faith by Georges Chevrot) in which the author comments on Saint John's faith in the Resurrection at the empty tomb as an immediate result of this close relationship between Mary and John: "The crucified Lord had also asked Mary to look on John as her son and had entrusted his holy mother to him. Did Mary and John merely weep and pray together from Friday evening until Sunday morning, without exchanging any conversation?"

Chevrot doesn't think so and suggests that Mary had "been guiding the apostle's faith toward the reality what was to come . . ." reminding John "of the assurance of resurrection that her Son had given them . . . ("Peter and John at the Tomb" p. 30).

 

It is certainly the hope of the Resurrection of the Dead we share as we grieve for friends and family: I'll be attending the Funeral Mass for a good friend Monday morning, and heard this week of the death of a high school and classmate's mother. May Constance and Kay rest in the peace of Christ in hope of the Resurrection!

Image credit (both public domain): "What Jesus Saw from the Cross" by James Tissot and Crucifixion Brazil, 19th century

A "Son Rise Morning Show" Advent Series: Benson's "Friendship of Christ"

Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson didn't use the term "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ"; instead he refers to "The Friendship of Christ" in his 1912 book of the same title. He emphasizes that Jesus wants to be our friend; indeed He is Our Savior and Redeemer, Our Lord and Our God, AND in His human nature He wants to be our friend and for us to take Him as our friend. We'll begin an Advent series on the Son Rise Morning Show--Anna Mitchell is on maternity leave--on December 1 as Matt Swaim and I look at this collection of sermons. I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central; please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

There are several editions of this book available and because it's out of copyright, it's also readily available on line. I have an older Scepter edition.

The book is in three parts: I) Christ in the Interior Soul (including a general overview of "the Friendship of Christ and chapters on the Purgative and Illuminative Way); II) Christ in the Exterior (seven chapters) and III) Christ in His Historical Life (Good Friday meditations on the Seven Last Words and an Easter Sunday sermon on "Christ Our Friend Vindicated). In this Advent series, we'll start with the General overview on December 1 and discuss some highlights from section two, especially "Christ in the Saint" for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8.

The book begins with a poem:

THIS IS MY FRIEND

From an old manuscript.

Let me tell you how I made His acquaintance.
I had heard much of Him, but took no heed.
He sent daily gifts and presents, but I never thanked Him.
He often seemed to want my friendship, but I remained cold.
I was homeless, and wretched, and starving and in peril every hour; and He offered me shelter and comfort and food and safety; but I was ungrateful still.
At last He crossed my path and with tears in His eyes He besought me saying, Come and abide with me.

Let me tell you how he treats me now.
He supplies all my wants.
He gives me more than I dare ask.
He anticipates my every need.
He begs me to ask for more.
He never reminds me of my past ingratitude.
He never rebukes me for my past follies.

Let me tell you further what I think of Him.
He is as good as He is great.
His love is as ardent as it is true.
He is as lavish of His promises as He is faithful in keeping them.
He is as jealous of my love as He is deserving of it.
I am in all things His debtor, but He bids me call Him Friend.

The last line seems the key to Benson's argument in the first chapter with the General overview of the Friendship of Christ, using Genesis 2:18 as the starting point "It is not good for man to be alone.":

THE emotion of friendship is amongst the most mighty and the most mysterious of human instincts. Materialistic philosophers delight in tracing even the most exalted emotions -- art, religion, romance -- to purely carnal sources; to the instincts of the propagation or sustentation of physical life; and yet in this single experience at any rate -- when we class together, as we can, all those varied relationships between men and men, women and women, as well as between men and women, under the common title of friendship -- materialistic philosophy wholly breaks down. It is not a manifestation of sex, for David can cry to Jonathan "Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women"; it is not a sympathy arising from common interests, for the sage and the fool can form a friendship at least as strong as any between two sages or two fools; it is not a relationship based on the exchange of ideas, for the deepest friendships thrive better in silence than in speech. "No man is truly my friend," says Maeterlinck, "until we have each learned to be silent in one another's company."

Benson notes that friends can hurt us more than others because of the love and loyalty we share with them; when those friendships fail (and even when they succeed), however, that points to our one true Friend, Jesus Christ:

There is but one intelligible explanation then for the desires which it generates yet never fulfils; there is but one supreme friendship to which all human friendships point; one Ideal Friend in whom we find perfect and complete that for which we look in type and shadow in the faces of our human lovers.

Benson suggests that Catholics can rely too much on their own efforts in practicing their faith and miss this fulfillment of the friendship and companionship they crave:

They pray, they frequent the sacraments, they do their utmost to fulfil the Christian precepts; and, when all is done, they find themselves solitary. They adore Christ as God, they feed on Him in Communion, cleanse themselves in His precious Blood, look to the time when they shall see Him as their Judge; yet of that intimate knowledge of and companionship with Him in which the Divine Friendship consists, they have experienced little or nothing. They long, they say, for one who can stand by their side and upon their own level, who can not merely remove suffering, but can himself suffer with them, one to whom they can express in silence the thoughts which no speech can utter; and they seem not to understand that this is the very post which Jesus Christ Himself desires to win, that the supreme longing of His Sacred Heart is that He should be admitted, not merely to the throne of the heart or to the tribunal of conscience, but to that inner secret chamber of the soul where a man is most himself, and therefore most utterly alone.

James Tissot (1836-1902), “Jesus in Bethany”

"Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister Mary, and Lazarus." (John 11:5)

Benson cites various examples from the Gospels to prove that Jesus wanted friends during His time with us: John 11:5; Mark 10:21; Matthew 26:41, 28:20, etc. These examples, Benson writes, demonstrate that this remains true now:

If then there is anything clear in the Gospels it is this -- that Jesus Christ first and foremost desires our friendship. It is His reproach to the world, not that the Saviour came to the lost, and that the lost ran from Him to lose themselves more deeply, not that the Creator came to the Creature and that the Creature rejected Him; but that the Friend "came unto His own, and that His own received Him not." (John 1:11)

While we can use the model of human friendship to some extent, the Friendship of Christ is something much greater:

Now it must be remembered that while this friendship between Christ and the soul is, from one point of view, perfectly comparable to friendship between man and man, from another point of view it is incomparable. Certainly it is a friendship between His Soul and ours; but that Soul of His is united to Divinity. A single individualistic friendship with Him therefore does not exhaust His capacities. He is Man, but He is not merely A Man: He is The Son, rather than A Son of man. He is the Eternal Word by whom all things were made and are sustained. . . .

He approaches us therefore along countless avenues, although it is the same Figure that advances down each. It is not enough to know Him interiorly only: He must be known (if His relation with us is to be that which He desires) in all those activities and manifestations in which He displays Himself.

And Benson concludes this introduction:

Let us then consider the Friendship of Christ under some of these aspects. Truly we cannot live without Him, for He is the Life. It is impossible to come to the Father except by Him who is the Way. It is useless to toil in pursuit of truth, unless we first possess It. Even the most sacred experiences of life are barren unless His Friendship sanctifies them. The holiest love is obscure except it burns in His shadow. The purest affection -- that affection that unites my dearest friend to myself -- is a counterfeit and an usurper unless I love my friend in Christ -- unless He, the Ideal and Absolute Friend, is the personal bond that unites us.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, be to me a Jesus! 

Preview: The 420th Anniversary of The Gunpowder Plot

Why do people in England still "Remember, remember, the fifth of November?" Why do they still shoot off fireworks and light up bonfires? This year is the 420th anniversary of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot--that's almost 14 generations ago! We'll discuss these issues in our 2025 Anniversary Series on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, November 17. 

I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to discuss this anniversary and its importance. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Of course, it was a fiendish, horrible, and murderous plot! Blow up Parliament with King James VI and his family and the members of Parliament, kidnap the Princess Elizabeth to make her a figurehead monarch, orchestrate a violent uprising to overthrow the government! Who knows how horrible it could have been? Well, we do know as the French Revolution offers us an example. So yes, in some way there is "no reason/Why the Gunpowder treason/Should ever be forgot!"

One of the lessons, however, of the context of the Gunpowder Plot was highlighted by Father Paolo Molinari, S.J., postulator of the cause of 40 Martyrs of England and Wales 55 years ago: the government of England was forcing religious compliance and church attendance: it was violating its subjects' freedom of conscience. How many bonfire night celebrators in England on November Fifth today accept that? Even in Lewes and other parts of Sussex, where there are still wild celebrations of Bonfire Night?

Until 1859 the Church of England remembered the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, expressed as God's protection of the Church of England against the "Church of Rome"! The Act establishing the commemoration required attendance:

II. Be it therefore enacted by the King’s most excellent majesty, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, That all and singular ministers in every cathedral and parish church, or other usual place for common prayer, within this realm of England and the dominions of the same, shall always upon the fifth day of November say morning prayer, and give unto Almighty God thanks for this most happy deliverance: (2) and that all and every person and persons inhabiting within this realm of England and the dominions of the same, shall always upon that day diligently and faithfully resort to the parish church or chapel accustomed, or to some usual church or chapel where the said morning prayer, preaching, or other service of God shall be used, and then and there to abide orderly and soberly during the time of the said prayers, preaching, or other service of God there to be used and ministred.

III. And because all and every person may be put in mind of this duty, and be then better prepared to the said holy service, be it enacted by authority aforesaid, That every minister shall give warning to his parishioners publickly in the church at morning prayer, the Sunday before every such fifth day of November, for the due observation of the said day; and that after morning prayer or preaching upon the said fifth day of November, they read publickly, distinctly and plainly this present act.

There were no penalties, however, for not attending, because the remembrance did not replace the regularly scheduled Sunday liturgy, when there were penalties.

Since like some other holidays, officially recognized or not, some of the cultural, historical, and religious significance of the Fifth of November/Bonfire Night has deteriorated and in most parts of the country it's just a party with fireworks--with concerns every year about dogs being scared or humans with PTSD being affected--what about the tradition of burning the Pope (Saint Paul V) in effigy--or any living or dead figure? 

The BBC reported some of the trouble at this year's Bonfire Night in Lewes (Loo-is) with the comment: "Sussex Police said the Lewes Bonfire event was "both unique and challenging"." With 40,000 people in the streets, bonfires and torches being lit, etc., only seven going to hospital and a few arrests isn't that bad. 

But there's a spirit of disorder and anarchy in the celebration even in Lewes which not only recalls the discovery of Guy Fawkes checking on the explosives under Parliament and the Protestant martyrs executed there during the reign of Mary I, as this commentary notes: "Elsewhere, people might say it’s a tricky occasion to parse from the outside: full of fire and hollering, vaguely Pagan, expansively anti-establishment, sometimes intimidating in press photos — more so than it is in real life" and still very anti-Catholic, because "(Pope Paul V, the leader of the Catholic church during the Gunpowder Plot, remains a popular effigy today, and gets blown up in Lewes most years; some bonfire societies still march beneath signs reading ‘No Popery’)"! At least the Lewes Bonfire nights remain a localized celebration: "trains from London won’t stop at the stations nearest to Lewes, and roads in the vicinity will close" every year.

Can you imagine Catholics marching on May 4 near the site of Tyburn Tree burning Henry VIII, the head and governor of the Church of England at the time, in effigy while remembering the protomartyrs of 1535? Or, even more congruently, of James VI while remembering Saint Nicholas Owen, tortured to death, Saint Thomas Garnet, and Blesseds Edward Oldcorne and Ralph Ashley, martyred in 1606 and 1607? Of course you can't. Catholics in England wouldn't do it and shouldn't do it. As Father Paolo Molinari, S.J also emphasized in his article about the Canonization of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales: "Right from the first announcement of the Re-opening of the Cause of the 40 Martyrs, decreed by Pope John XXIII on 24 May 1961, the Hierarchy of England and Wales let it be clearly understood that nothing was further from the intentions of the Bishops than to stir up bad feelings and quarrels of the past."

I wonder what it's like to be a Catholic in Lewes on Bonfire Night. Here's a story about how the consecration of Saint Pancras Catholic Church was greeted in the 19th century (not well!):

When the Church was opened, there was a crowd estimated at between 2000 and 3000, reaching some distance above Ireland’s Lane and down below The Pelham Arms, the pavements and road being completely lined with people who were singing bonfire songs, howling and jeering. Then some of the bonfire boys were let out of a window of The Pelham Arms into the passage between the latter and the Church, and made such a disturbance that scarcely anything could be heard, and the service was brought to a rather abrupt conclusion. . . .

As a result of the disturbance in the passage, eight persons were arrested and sentenced to six weeks imprisonment each, the Magistrates threatening to take away the licence of The Pelham Arms, which used to be the meeting place of the Borough Bonfire Society, which is now the Brewers’ Arms. After this came a comparative calm, only the door now and then being sharply rapped and the windows in the front of the Church broken by stones until they were covered by wire . . .

These are just some reflections on how we remember history and how we commemorate or celebrate certain events. I look forward to discussing them with Matt or Anna on Monday and of learning what you think about them!

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us!

Holy Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us!

A Prayer Book Review: "Little Offices of the Passion"

I purchased this Little Offices of the Passion devotional from PrayLatin.com, but it is published by Angelus Press:

The saints of the Church have often produced aids for those desiring to grow in devotion to Our Lord, especially to his Passion; and while the saints have employed many different genres to inform devotion to Christ, there is perhaps none greater than the devotion offered in a liturgical Office.

This little book, which presents two of these Offices by two of the great saints of the Church, is what men and women of the medieval period would have called a Book of Hours. . . .

The two Offices presented here begin the narrative of the Passion in slightly different places: St. Bonaventure’s begins at Matins and Lauds, remembering Christ imprisoned in the early hours of the morning, while St. Francis’s Office begins at Compline the night prior by commemorating the Agony in the Garden.

These Offices invite us to enter more deeply into the memory of the Lord’s Passion, and more deeply into the devotional lives of St. Francis, St. Bonaventure, and even St. Louis IX. In St. Bonaventure’s Office we are taken by a more conventional route into the Passion of Christ. In St. Francis’s Office of the Passion, we find a more unique Office composed of texts that invite us into St. Francis’s own prayers. The Seraphic Father not only presses us to become more devoted to Christ’s suffering; he teaches us to praise God through the created world, to grow in devotion to Our Lady, and to more clearly recognize God as the source of all the goods we have, those of nature gifted to us through creation and those of grace gifted to us by God’s redeeming acts, especially Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. Here is how we can better know these saints and, with them, take on the mind of Christ, their Lord and Master: by taking up their prayers daily. . . .

Since I pray with some form of the liturgy most of the time, I've appreciated these Little Offices of the Liturgy and the meditation and devotion they've added to my prayers this Lent. The volume offers the texts of both Franciscans' versions of the Little Office, plus the Marian Antiphons, the four Gospel accounts of the Passion, and the Seven Penitential Psalms, with an introduction and explanation of the differences between the versions.

I've found Saint Bonaventure's more easy to adapt to so far because he begins in the morning of Good Friday and continues through the events of the Passion, matching them to Matins, Laud, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline; each hour includes the psalm, hymns, and prayers. 

Saint Francis's version of the Little Hours of the Passion begins with Compline and the Agony and the Garden, and one has to select the psalms, as adapted by Saint Francis, to be prayed at each hour according to the season of the year. Saint Francis also includes a meditation on the Our Father with prayers for each intercession, and a series of the praises of God. The psalms also contain interpolations selected by Saint Francis of Assisi.

The book is pocket sized, with texts in both England and Latin, beautiful illustrations from a book of the hours, three ribbons, and 179 pages. The Angelus Press website has several pictures to give you an idea of the size and beauty of this devotional.

It is not just for Lent, of course, as it could become part of anyone's Friday devotions, since each is Good as every Sunday is Easter! I'd recommend it.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us!

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us!

Picture Credits: (Public Domain): Saint Bonaventure by Claude Francis; Saint Francis of Assisi by Cigoli (Lodovico Cardi)

Preview: The 20th Anniversaries of Pope Saint John Paul II's Death and Funeral

Among the ten or so anniversaries I have listed that we could discuss on the Son Rise Morning Show in this series, the death of Pope Saint John Paul II's on April 2, 2005 is the most recent. I remember praying for him in his last days and the MSM coverage of his death that Saturday night before Divine Mercy Sunday, the broadcast of his funeral--and the cries of "Santo Subito" at the end of that Holy Mass on April 8, 2005. 

So on Monday, February 10, we'll discuss this great Millennial Pope's death and funeral at my usual time, at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

On September 20, 2005, the Vatican issued its official report on the last days of "the great Pope John Paul II", recounting his worsening condition from March 31 to April 2:

On March 31, shortly after 11 in the morning, while he was in his chapel to celebrate Mass, the Holy Father suffered a severe episode,  which was followed by a spiking of his body temperature. At this point, the AAS (Acta Apostolicae Sedis) account makes it clear, officials of the papal household realized that John Paul II was near death. However, no official announcement was made until that evening. "The explicit wish of the Holy Father to remain at his residence was respected," AAS recounts.

Cardinal Marian Jaworski of Lviv administered the last rites at 7:17. But Pope John Paul remained conscious and composed, and joined in the celebration of Mass on the morning of the next day: April 1. However, the raging fever led to a condition of septic shock and the "complete breakdown of the cardio-vascular system" during that day. That evening, as thousands of young people gathered in St. Peter's Square to pray for the dying Pontiff, John Paul said the words that his spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls reported at that time: "I have searched for you, and now you have come to me, and I thank you."

Early on Saturday, April 2, Pope John Paul was slipping in and out of consciousness, AAS reports. Mass was celebrated at his bedside, and he received the Secretary of State for a final time late in the morning. At about 3:30 in the afternoon, speaking in Polish in a feeble voice, John Paul said, "Let me go to the Father's house." Those were his last words, AAS discloses for the first time.

Early on Saturday evening the Pope lapsed into a coma, and monitors showed a sharp drop in his vital functions. As the Pontiff breathed his last, the first prayers of the feast of Divine Mercy were said at his bedside. At 9:27-- after having run an electrocardiogram for more than 20 minutes, in accordance with the Vatican norms-- Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, the Pope's longtime personal physician, formally declared the Pope dead.

 As I recall the U.S. mainstream secular media reporting on these events, many of the correspondents seemed stunned by the devotion of the young people in Saint Peter's square and the outpouring of devotion to Pope John Paul II in the days and nights after as people lined up to see his body in the Saint Peter's Basilica! And the funeral Mass with the huge crowds there and in Poland where the liturgy was simulcast in a huge field near Krakow where he had often celebrated Mass.

Mark and I watched the broadcast on NBC; George Weigel was one of the commentators and he was thrilled as the cries of "Giovanni Paulo", "Magnus", and "Santo Subito" filled the square. Brian Williams (remember him?) commented that Pope John Paul II had really lived up John Lennon's "Imagine" lyrics: "Imagine no possessions . . ." when the author never did himself. And you might recall that then-Prince Charles postponed his wedding to Camilla so he could represent his mother along with Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

Those were incredible days as the scenes from Rome, Krakow, Paris, New York and other cities dominated the news cycle. Of course, there was some criticism of his pontificate but for the most part, the news reports were respectful.

Pope Saint John Paul II, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): "Borne on the shoulders of the Papal gentlemen, the coffin of Pope John Paul II is taken from the altar for the Rite of Interment. Archbishop Piero Marini, then-Master of Pontifical Liturgical Ceremonies, preceded the casket." (Eric Draper, photographer)

Preview: Newman on "Love, the One Thing Needful" on SRMS

Last Monday, January 6, the winter storm meant a couple of snow days for the Son Rise Morning Show team, so we skipped the Newman sermon we planned to discuss that day. We'll close out our Newman Advent/Christmas series with a Parochial and Plain Sermon, "Love the One Thing Needful". There's an excerpted portion of this sermon in Christopher O. Blum's Waiting for Christ: Meditations for Advent and Christmas.

So, on Monday, January 13, I'll be on the air at my usual time at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

As we are at the beginning of a New Year, even though the Christmas season has technically come to an end with the celebration of Our Lord's Baptism on Sunday, January 12, this sermon seems appropriate. At daily Mass we have been reading so much about love from the First Letter of Saint John; we are all in the midst of making, breaking, and remaking New Year's Resolutions; Newman seems to understand and to be encouraging us to remain resolute:

I suppose the greater number of persons who try to live Christian lives, and who observe themselves with any care, are dissatisfied with their own state on this point, namely. that, whatever their religious attainments may be, yet they feel that their motive is not the highest;—that the love of God, and of man for His sake, is not their ruling principle. They may do much, nay, if it so happen, they may suffer much; but they have little reason to think that they love much, that they do and suffer for love's sake. I do not mean that they thus express themselves exactly, but that they are dissatisfied with themselves, and that when this dissatisfaction is examined into, it will be found ultimately to come to this, though they will give different accounts of it. They may call themselves cold, or hard-hearted, or fickle, or double-minded, or doubting, or dim-sighted, or {328} weak in resolve, but they mean pretty much the same thing, that their affections do not rest on Almighty God as their great Object. And this will be found to be the complaint of religious men among ourselves, not less than others; their reason and their heart not going together; their reason tending heavenwards, and their heart earthwards.

As he points out, Jesus has told us "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15), but we may "feel that though [we] are, to a certain point, keeping God's commandments, yet love is not proportionate, does not keep pace, with [our] obedience; that obedience springs from some source short of love." We can feel "hollow; a fair outside, without a spirit within it." We can be conscientious; we can want to obey His commandments, and yet we can feel that something is missing. 

And Newman has some suggestions for how we can deal with these conflicts:

First, he recommends detachment:

Till we, in a certain sense, detach ourselves from our bodies, our minds will not be in a state to receive divine impressions, and to exert heavenly aspirations. A smooth and easy life, an uninterrupted enjoyment of the goods of Providence, full meals, soft raiment, well-furnished homes, the pleasures of sense, the feeling of security, the consciousness of wealth,—these, and the like, if we are not careful, choke up all the avenues of the soul, through which the light and breath of heaven might come to us. A hard life is, alas! no certain method of becoming spiritually minded, but it is one out of the means by which Almighty God makes us so. We must, at least at seasons, defraud ourselves of nature, if we would not be {338} defrauded of grace. If we attempt to force our minds into a loving and devotional temper, without this preparation, it is too plain what will follow: the grossness and coarseness, the affectation, the unreality, the presumption, the hollowness, in a word, what Scripture calls the Hypocrisy, which we see around us; that state of mind in which the reason, seeing what we should be, and the conscience enjoining it, and the heart being unequal to it, some or other pretence is set up, by way of compromise.

Then, we should think about what Jesus suffered for us, "to cherish . . . a constant sense of the love of [our] Lord and Saviour in dying on the cross" for us:

Think of the Cross when you rise and when you lie down, when you go out and when you come in, when you eat and when you walk and when you converse, when you buy and when you sell, when you labour and when you rest, consecrating and sealing all your doings with this one mental action, the thought of the Crucified. Do not talk of it to others; be silent, like the penitent woman, who showed her love in deep subdued acts. She "stood at His feet behind Him weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed His feet, and anointed them with the Ointment." And Christ said of her, "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven her, for she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." [Luke vii. 38, 47.]

And finally, we should think about the blessings we have received:

And, further, let us dwell often upon those His manifold mercies to us and to our brethren, which are the consequence of His coming upon earth; His adorable counsels, as manifested in our personal election,—how it is that we are called and others not; the wonders of His grace towards us, from our infancy until now; the gifts He has given us; the aid He has vouchsafed; the answers He has accorded to our prayers. And, further, let us, as far as we have the opportunity, meditate upon His dealings with His Church from age to age; on His faithfulness to His promises, and the mysterious mode of their fulfilment; how He has ever led His people forward safely and prosperously on the whole amid so many enemies; what unexpected events have worked {340} His purposes; how evil has been changed into good; how His sacred truth has ever been preserved unimpaired; how Saints have been brought on to their perfection in the darkest times. And, further, let us muse over the deep gifts and powers lodged in the Church: what thoughts do His ordinances raise in the believing mind!—what wonder, what awe, what transport, when duly dwelt upon!

Newman delivered this sermon at the end of the pre-Lenten period called Septuagesima, on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday (Quinquagesima), and he ends with these final words of encouragement:

It is by such deeds and such thoughts that our services, our repenting, our prayers, our intercourse with men, will become instinct with the spirit of love. Then we do everything thankfully and joyfully, when we are temples of Christ, with His Image set up in us. Then it is that we mix with the world without loving it, for our affections are given to another. We can bear to look on the world's beauty, for we have no heart for it. We are not disturbed at its frowns, for we live not in its smiles. We rejoice in the House of Prayer, because He is there "whom our soul loveth." We can condescend to the poor and lowly, for they are the presence of Him who is Invisible. We are patient in bereavement, adversity, or pain, for they are Christ's tokens.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us! 

A Preview of a Preview: "Waiting for Christ" on the Son Rise Morning Show

Just to prepare you: After a Thanksgiving break, I'll start an Advent/Christmas series on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, December 9 (which this year is the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Holy Day of Obligation transferred from its usual date of December 8, the Second Sunday of Advent this year). 

Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will discuss four sermons by Saint John Henry Newman: on December 9th and 16th, and then after the show's Christmas holiday break, on January 6th and 13th. I'll be on the air at my usual time! about 7:50 a.m. Eastern Time/6:50 a.m. Central Time.

We'll use the edited/excerpted sermons from Waiting for Christ: Meditations for Advent and Christmas, from Ascension Press, which I reviewed for the National Catholic Register in 2018.

If you're still looking for Advent/Christmas spiritual reading, the book is available here from the Augustine Institute, other on-line sellers, and, I hope, at your local Catholic bookstore!

The Season of Novenas: Starting with the Holy Spirit

May and June seem to be prime Novena months. We start with the one Novena that the Catholic Church recommends to all for prayer: the Novena--nine days of prayer--between the Solemnity of the Ascension and Pentecost (Friday after Ascension Thursday to Saturday, the Vigil of Pentecost). EWTN's website describes the Novena to the Holy Spirit as:

 . . . the prototype of all novenas. It commemorates the nine days between the Ascension of Our Lord and the descent of the Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost Sunday. During this time Our Lady and the twelve Apostles prayed in the upper room for the coming of the Paraclete.

After Pentecost, there are two other great Solemnities to prepare for: Corpus Christi (celebrated on Sunday, June 2) and the Sacred Heart of Jesus (celebrated on Friday, June 7), which will overlap. Add to that a Novena for Life, sponsored by the USCCB, leading up to the Feast of the Visitation: this is the season of Novenas indeed. 

And in my diocese of Wichita, Kansas, we're encouraged to pray a Novena from June 1 to 9 "for Father Kapaun’s cause, that meetings this summer in Rome may see him named Venerable". On the website for the Novena, we're told the source for these days of prayer:

While stationed in Japan before the outbreak of the Korean War, Chaplain Emil Kapaun gave a series of radio broadcasts based on the Eight Beatitudes to his troops. Two months later he and his men were sent to the defense of South Korea. Over the last year of his life, both on the front lines and facing inhumane captivity, Chaplain Kapaun’s actions showed his own deep understanding and fidelity to the Beatitudes. Aside from day one and a few additions, each of the reflections in this novena comes from these radio broadcasts.

A portion of the final two days of the broadcast were recorded on audio- the only surviving sound we have of Father Kapaun’s voice.

You may listen to Servant of God, Father Emil J. Kapaun's voice here.

There's also an update on the status of his cause. Today, May 23, is the anniversary of his death in 1951.

The practice of prayers for Nine Days or Nine Weeks, or Nine Months, of course, begins with the nine months between the Annunciation and the Nativity of Our Lord: from March 25 to December 25. There are also connections to prayers for the recently departed souls of loved ones. More on novenas here at the old Catholic Encyclopedia.

Corpus Christi, have mercy on us.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.

St. Elizabeth, pray for us.

St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

Servant of God, Emil J. Kapaun, pray for us.

Image source (Public Domain): Father Emil Kapaun celebrating Mass using the hood of a jeep as his altar, October 7, 1950

Preview: Newman's Sermon for the Ascension of Christ

Since by then we will have celebrated the Solemnity of the Ascension of Jesus Christ, either on Thursday, May 9 or Sunday, May 12, it seems appropriate to continue our Son Rise Morning Show Easter Season series with Newman's sermon "Mysteries in Religion" on Monday, May 13.

So I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here and/or catch the podcast later (and sometimes the show does repeat these segments later in the week during the first national hour).

This is sermon number 18 in volume two of his Parochial and Plain Sermons, featuring the verse "It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, Who is even at the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us." (Romans 8:34)

Newman is focused in this sermon on helping his congregation delve more deeply into the mysteries of the Ascension. They've heard this story many times before; they--we--may have begun to take it for granted. Yet the Ascension is not just an event in the past. It influences, or should influence, our lives as Christians centuries after Jesus ascended to the Father and yet promised to remain with us always and intercede for us:

{206} [Note 1] THE Ascension of our Lord and Saviour is an event ever to be commemorated with joy and thanksgiving, for St. Paul tells us in the text that He ascended to the right hand of God, and there makes intercession for us. Hence it is our comfort to know, that "if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins." [1 John ii. 1, 2.] As the Jewish High Priest, after the solemn sacrifice for the people on the great day of Atonement, went into the Holy of Holies with the blood of the victim, and sprinkled it upon the Mercy-Seat, so Christ has entered into Heaven itself, to present (as it were) before the Throne that sacred Tabernacle which was the instrument of His passion,—His pierced hands and wounded {207} side,—in token of the atonement which He has effected for the sins of the world.

Wonder and awe must always mingle with the thankfulness which the revealed dispensation of mercy raises in our minds. And this, indeed, is an additional cause of thankfulness, that Almighty God has disclosed to us enough of His high Providence to raise such sacred and reverent feelings. Had He merely told us that He had pardoned us, we should have had overabundant cause for blessing and praising Him; but in showing us somewhat of the means, in vouchsafing to tell what cannot wholly be told, in condescending to abase heavenly things to the weak and stammering tongues of earth, He has enlarged our gratitude, yet sobered it with fear. We are allowed with the Angels to obtain a glimpse of the mysteries of Heaven, "to rejoice with trembling." Therefore, so far from considering the Truths of the Gospel as a burden, because they are beyond our understanding, we shall rather welcome them and exult in them, nay, and feel an antecedent stirring of heart towards them, for the very reason that they are above us. Under these feelings I will attempt to suggest to you on the present Festival some of the incentives to wonder and awe, humility, implicit faith, and adoration, supplied by the Ascension of Christ.

As Newman lists these reasons for wonder and awe, etc., he confronts the limitations of philosophy and science--and indeed of our intellects and reasoning--to deal with these true mysteries. As an Oxford scholar and Fellow/Tutor, Newman values the human intellect and our ability to reason but he sees our limitations withal.

For example: the fact proved by the bodily Ascension of Our Lord to Heaven that Heaven is a place, is real and fixed:

First, Christ's Ascension to the right hand of God is marvellous, because it is a sure token that heaven is a certain fixed place, and not a mere state. That bodily presence of the Saviour which the Apostles handled is not here; it is elsewhere,—it is in heaven. This contradicts the notions of cultivated and speculative minds, {208} and humbles the reason.

This may seem to contradict science, but Newman offers a means of dealing with this (like Shakespeare's Hamlet admonishing his friend, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."):

And thus we are led on to consider, how different are the character and effect of the Scripture notices of the structure of the physical world, from those which philosophers deliver. I am not deciding whether or not the one and the other are reconcileable; I merely say their respective effect is different. And when we have deduced what we deduce by our reason from the study of visible nature, and then read what we read in His inspired word, and find the two apparently discordant, this is the feeling I think we ought to have on our {209} minds;—not an impatience to do what is beyond our powers, to weigh evidence, sum up, balance, decide, and reconcile, to arbitrate between the two voices of God,—but a sense of the utter nothingness of worms such as we are; of our plain and absolute incapacity to contemplate things as they really are; a perception of our emptiness, before the great Vision of God; of our "comeliness being turned into corruption, and our retaining no strength;" a conviction, that what is put before us, in nature or in grace, though true in such a full sense that we dare not tamper with it, yet is but an intimation useful for particular purposes, useful for practice, useful in its department, "until the day-break and the shadows flee away," useful in such a way that both the one and the other representation may at once be used, as two languages, as two separate approximations towards the Awful Unknown Truth, such as will not mislead us in their respective provinces. And thus while we use the language of science, without jealousy, for scientific purposes, we may confine it to these; and repel and reprove its upholders, should they attempt to exalt it and to "stretch it beyond its measure." In its own limited round it has its use, nay, may be made to fill a higher ministry, and stand as a proselyte under the shadow of the temple; but it must not dare profane the inner courts, in which the ladder of Angels is fixed for ever, reaching even to the Throne of God, and "Jesus standing on the right hand of God."

Secondly, Newman notes that we need to see the Ascension of Jesus as one part of the whole of the Gospel Revelation, one just as mysterious as the whole. Because Jesus, having redeemed us by His Passion and Resurrection, after His Ascension, intercedes for us with the Father in Heaven:

With the same view, let me observe upon the doctrine which accompanies the fact of the Ascension. Christ, we are told, has gone up on high "to present Himself before the face of God for us." He has "entered by His own blood once for all into the Holy Place, having effected eternal redemption." "He ever liveth to make intercession for those who come unto God by Him; He hath a priesthood which will not pass from Him." "We have such an High Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a Minister of the Sanctuary, and of the true Tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man." [Heb. ix. 12, 24, 25; vii. 24, 25; viii. 1, 2.] . . . 

Newman helps us imagine the sight of Jesus interceding for us in Heaven, up to a point, because again: it is beyond us to know everything about it and at the same time it is true and we rely upon it being true:

Shall we therefore explain away its language as merely figurative, which (as the word is now commonly understood) is next to saying it has no meaning at all? Far from it. Clouds and darkness are round about Him. We are not given to see into the secret shrine in which God dwells. Before Him stand the Seraphim, veiling their faces. Christ is within the veil. We must not search curiously what is His present office, what is meant by His pleading His sacrifice, and by His perpetual intercession for us. And, since we do not know, we will studiously keep to the figure given us in Scripture: we will not attempt to interpret it, or change the wording of it, being wise above what is written. We will not neglect it, because we do not understand it. We will hold it as a Mystery, or (what was anciently called) a Truth Sacramental; that is, a high invisible grace lodged in an outward form, a precious possession to be piously and thankfully guarded for the sake of the heavenly reality contained in it. Thus much we see in it, the pledge of a doctrine which reason cannot understand, viz. of the influence {212} of the prayer of faith upon the Divine counsels. The Intercessor directs or stays the hand of the Unchangeable and Sovereign Governor of the World; being at once the meritorious cause and the earnest of the intercessory power of His brethren. "Christ rose again for our justification," "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much," are both infinite mercies, and deep mysteries.

Finally, Newman deals with the question of why Jesus had to leave His Church on earth so the Holy Spirit could come to inspire us:

Now, proud and curious reason might seek to know why He could not "pray the Father," without going to Him; why He must depart in order to send the Spirit. But faith, without asking for one ray of light more than is given, muses over the wonderful system of Providence, as seen {213} in this world, which is ever connecting events, between which man sees no necessary bond. The whole system of what is called cause and effect, is one of mystery; and this instance, if it may be called one, supplies abundant matter of praise and adoration to a pious mind. It suggests to us, equally with the topics which have already come before us, how very much our knowledge of God's ways is but on the surface. What are those deep hidden reasons why Christ went and the Spirit came? Marvellous and glorious, beyond our understanding! Let us worship in silence; meanwhile, let us jealously maintain this, and every other portion of our Creed, lest, by dropping jot or tittle, we suffer the truths concealed therein to escape from us.

Moreover, this departure of Christ, and coming of the Holy Ghost, leads our minds with great comfort to the thought of many lower dispensations of Providence towards us. He, who, according to His inscrutable will, sent first His Co-equal Son, and then His Eternal Spirit, acts with deep counsel, which we may surely trust, when He sends from place to place those earthly instruments which carry on His purposes. . . .

Newman offers this beautiful insight about God's Providence and our beloved dead:

This is a thought which is particularly soothing as regards the loss of friends; or of especially gifted men, who seem in their day the earthly support of the Church. For what we know, their removal hence is as necessary for the furtherance of the very objects we have at heart, as was the departure of our Saviour.

Doubtless, "it is expedient" they should be taken away; otherwise some great mercy will not come to us. They are taken away perchance to other duties in {214} God's service, equally ministrative to the salvation of the elect, as earthly service. Christ went to intercede with the Father: we do not know, we may not boldly speculate,—yet, it may be, that Saints departed intercede, unknown to us, for the victory of the Truth upon earth; and their prayers above may be as really indispensable conditions of that victory, as the labours of those who remain among us. They are taken away for some purpose surely: their gifts are not lost to us; their soaring minds, the fire of their contemplations, the sanctity of their desires, the vigour of their faith, the sweetness and gentleness of their affections, were not given without an object. . . . Let us not forget that, though the prophecies of this sacred book may be still sealed from us, yet the doctrines and precepts are not; and that we lose much both in the way of comfort and instruction, if we do not use it for the purposes of faith and obedience. 

By looking at the mystery of the Ascension of Jesus through the lens of the loss we feel of family, friends, and acquaintances who were so important to us, Newman is demonstrating how effective this mystery is in our lives. This makes it real and personal. We think of both Christ's Ascension and the deaths of family and friends in a different way: God intends both for our good in ways we haven't dared considered before.

Newman concludes by applying the words of Jesus to Saint Thomas the Apostle when he saw and believed to us:

"Blessed," surely thrice blessed, "are they who have not seen, and yet have believed!" We will not wish for sight; we will enjoy our privilege; we will triumph in the leave given us to go forward, "not knowing whither we go," knowing that "this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." [1 John v. 4.] It is enough that our Redeemer liveth; that He has been on earth and will come again. On Him we venture our all; we can bear thankfully to put ourselves into His hands, our interests present and eternal, and the interests of all we love.  . . .

Newman did not "wish for sight" in his famous poem, "The Pillar of the Cloud": "I do not ask to see/The distant scene; one step enough for me. . . . I loved to choose and see my path; but now/Lead Thou me on!"

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Jesus' ascension to Heaven depicted by John Singleton Copley in Ascension (1775)

Image Credit (Public Domain): The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio (c. 1602)