What I'm Reading Now: "John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed"

My, I had an eventful weekend: Adoration and Mass Friday morning; our annual Chesterton Advent/Christmas party at Eighth Day Books that evening; a Shakespeare play reading Saturday night (As You Like It); the monthly Lovers of Newman reading at the local IHM Convent ("Religious Joy") and Sunday evening Mass. Plus, I have discovered Ida Friederike Görres(1901-1971), by starting John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed from Ignatius Press:

This unparalleled introduction to St. John Henry Newman—mind, heart, soul, and personality—brings the great cardinal to life before our eyes, and with him the charged air of nineteenth-century England. Drawing from his letters, writings, and journal entries with precision and poetic flair, the book is one of Ida Friederike Görres’ masterworks.

While famous for his brilliance, Cardinal Newman did not hide in an ivory tower. His life was one of risk, sacrifice, and immense charity. His sharp turn to Catholicism rocked the University of Oxford, costing him his friendships, his livelihood, and his identity. Through failures and disappointments, over and over again, Newman let himself be recreated by God.

This work, in Görres’ words, is a portrait of “the boy, puzzled, who was startled and overwhelmed by God; the active, creative young prophet of his church in crisis; the hermit, who he was and wanted to be all his life; and the fighter, who he was with and against his will: the saint of the Church and the saint of humility, the one perfected in sacrifice”.

With an in-depth introduction by Ratzinger Prize winner Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, an extensive commentary by translator Jennifer S. Bryson, and a detailed index*, the book introduces readers not only to St. John Henry Newman, but to Görres, one of the greatest hagiographers of the twentieth century, whose spiritual writings have only recently been discovered by the English-speaking world.

*plus an extensive bibliography!

I bought my copy at Eighth Day Books before we started our Chesterton party, reminiscing about our favorite Christmas memories and reading a few selections from our author! We'll continue our discussion of his Autobiography in January, 2025!

More about Gorres here.

Preview: "Shrinking from Christ's Coming" on the SRMS

Before we enter the final liturgical preparations for the Coming of Jesus as an infant in Bethlehem, the Church has us thinking about Our Lord's Second Coming. Saint John Henry Newman reflected on this theme in one of his Advent Parochial and Plain Sermons, "Shrinking from Christ's Coming" and that will be our subject on Monday, December 16 on the Son Rise Morning Show. 

(The hosts will take a well-deserved Christmas/New Year break the weeks of December 23 and 30, and we'll continue this Newman Advent/Christmas series on January 6, 2025).

But on Monday, December 16, I'll be on the air at my usual time at the top of the second national hour, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux preached a famous Advent sermon commenting on the Three Comings of Christ: 

In the first coming he was seen on earth, dwelling among men; he himself testifies that they saw him and hated him. In the final coming all flesh will see the salvation of our God, and they will look on him whom they pierced. The intermediate coming is a hidden one; in it only the elect see the Lord within their own selves, and they are saved. In his first coming our Lord came in our flesh and in our weakness; in this middle coming he comes in spirit and in power; in the final coming he will be seen in glory and majesty.This middle coming is like a road that leads from the first coming to the last. At the first, Christ was our redemption; at the last, he will become manifest as our life; but in this middle way he is our rest and our consolation.

I have often heard Advent sermons in which the priest commented on that "intermediate coming" in different ways: comparing it to when each of us dies and sees Jesus in our particular judgment, or in the way that Saint Bernard did, as the indwelling of the Spirit of God (discussed as an influence of the Greek Fathers on Newman in a recent series), or as when we receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus in Holy Communion.

In this Advent PPS, Newman speaks of both that intermediate coming now and the Second Coming to come and describes how we should pray for those comings with both hopefulness and awe. The verse for this sermon is "Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off." Isaiah 33:17 and Newman begins with the Old Testament prophecies:

BEFORE Christ came, the faithful remnant of Israel were consoled with the promise that "their eyes should see" Him, who was to be their salvation. "For you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings" (Malachi 4:2). Yet it is observable that the prophecy, though cheering and encouraging, had with it something of an awful character too. First, it was said, "The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight." Yet it is soon added, "But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap." (Malachi 3:1-2)

Reading those verses from Malachi immediately makes me think of Handel's Messiah (without the soap).

Newman then turns from those Old Testament prophecies to Christians now praying and waiting for Christ to return and asks: can any of us think that we are ready if He comes sooner rather than later? Are we ready for judgement?

We too are looking out for Christ's coming,—we are bid look out,—we are bid pray for it; and yet it is to be a time of judgment. It is to be the deliverance of all Saints from sin and sorrow for ever; yet they, every one of them, must undergo an awful trial. How then can any look forward to it with joy, not knowing (for no one knows) the certainty of his own salvation? And the difficulty is increased when we come to pray for it,—to pray for its coming soon: how can we pray that Christ would come, that the day of judgment would hasten, that His kingdom would come, that His kingdom may be at once,—may come on us this day or tomorrow,—when by so coming He would be shortening the time of our present life, and cut off those precious years given us for conversion, amendment, repentance and sanctification? Is there not an inconsistency in professing to wish our Judge already come, when we do not feel ourselves ready for Him? In what sense can we really and heartily pray that He would cut short the time, when our conscience tells us that, even were our life longest, we should have much to do in a few years?

And yet he reminds his congregation that while we are aware of our sinfulness and unworthiness, not just when we think about His Second Coming but whenever we pray, because, as he states "I am in myself nothing but a sinner, a man of unclean lips and earthly heart. I am not worthy to enter into His presence. I am not worthy of the least of all His mercies. I know He is All-holy, yet I come before Him .  . ." There is no one else we can go to, he says, and we have to rely on God's mercy: we know that "He is All-merciful, and that He so sincerely desires my salvation that He has died for me."

Newman offers consolation to one afraid of judgement because of her sin:

And yet there is a certain composure and dignity which become us who are born of immortal seed, when we come before our Father. If indeed we have habitually lived to the world, then truly it is natural we should attempt to fly from Him whom we have pierced. Then may we well call on the mountains to fall on us, and on the hills to cover us. But if we have lived, however imperfectly, yet habitually, in His fear, if we trust that His Spirit is in us, then we need not be ashamed before Him. We shall then come before Him, as now we come to pray—with profound abasement, with awe, with self-renunciation, still as relying upon the Spirit which He has given us, with our faculties about us, with a collected and determined mind, and with hope. He who cannot pray for Christ's coming, ought not in consistency to pray at all.

Newman does not think that we are all "sinners in the hands of an angry God"!

Finally, Newman brings up the Anglican sacrament of Holy Communion, in which he believed there was a Real Presence of Jesus (we discussed his sermon "The Eucharistic Presence" in April this year):

I have spoken of coming to God in prayer generally; but if this is awful, much more is coming to Him in the Sacrament of Holy Communion; for this is in very form an anticipation of His coming, a near presence of Him in earnest of it. They indeed who are in the religious practice of communicating, understand well enough how it is possible to feel afraid and yet to come. Surely it is possible, and the case is the same as regards the future day of Christ. You must tremble, and yet pray for it. . . . Such is the temper in which we desire to come to the Lord's table; such in which we must pray for His coming; such in which His elect will stand before Him when He comes.

Since the pontificate of Pope Saint Pius X we the laity have been encouraged to receive Holy Communion more often, even daily at Mass, but we are also encouraged to examine our consciences and prepare ourselves with Confession if we have committed Mortal Sin before receiving the Eucharist, and of course to fast and pray.  I appreciate Newman's warning not to take this privilege for granted or thoughtlessly.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

More from St. John Henry Newman on the BVM

At the end of my post for Newman's Catholic sermon on "The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son", excerpted in Waiting for Christ: Meditations for Christmas and Advent, edited by Christopher O. Blum, I mentioned that Blum had also included another Catholic sermon in that book for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Since today is that feast, I thought it appropriate to highlight "On the Fitness of the Glories of Mary."

Blessed Mary has no chance place in the Divine Dispensation; the Word of God did not merely come to her and go from her; He did not pass through her, as He visits us in Holy Communion. It was no heavenly body which the Eternal Son assumed, fashioned by the angels, and brought down to this lower world: no; He imbibed, He absorbed into His Divine Person, her blood and the substance of her flesh; by becoming man of her, He received her lineaments and features, as the appropriate character in which He was to manifest Himself to mankind. The child is like the parent, and we may well suppose that by His likeness to her was manifested her relationship to Him. Her sanctity comes, not only of her being His mother, but also of His being her son. "If the first fruit be holy," says St. Paul, "the mass also is holy; if the mass be holy, so are the branches." And hence the titles which we are accustomed to give her. He is the Wisdom of God, she therefore is the Seat of Wisdom; His Presence is Heaven, she therefore is the Gate of Heaven; He is infinite Mercy, she then is the Mother of Mercy. She is the Mother of "fair love and fear, and knowledge and holy hope"; is it wonderful then that she has left behind her in the Church below "an odour like cinnamon and balm, and sweetness like to choice myrrh"?

Newman thus hints that Jesus resembled Mary as his one human parent. 

In this sermon he does complete the intimation in the first sermon and affirm her Assumption into Heaven upon her death--more than 100 years before it would be declared a doctrine of the Church. 

He concludes the sermon with a meditation on how Mary's glories and virtues should be guides for our lives as Christians:

Her glories are not only for the sake of her Son, they are for our sakes also. Let us copy her faith, who received God's message by the angel without a doubt; her patience, who endured St. Joseph's surprise without a word; her obedience, who went up to Bethlehem in the winter and bore our Lord in a stable; her meditative spirit, who pondered in her heart what she saw and heard about Him; her fortitude, whose heart the sword went through; her self-surrender, who gave Him up during His ministry and consented to His death. . . .

She will comfort you in your discouragements, solace you in your fatigues, raise you after your falls, reward you for your successes. She will show you her Son, your God and your all. . . . It is the boast of the Catholic Religion, that it has the gift of making the young heart chaste; and why is this, but that it gives us Jesus Christ for our food, and Mary for our nursing Mother? Fulfill this boast in yourselves; prove to the world that you are following no false teaching, vindicate the glory of your Mother Mary, whom the world blasphemes, in the very face of the world, by the simplicity of your own deportment, and the sanctity of your words and deeds. Go to her for the royal heart of innocence. She is the beautiful gift of God, which outshines the fascinations of a bad world, and which no one ever sought in sincerity and was disappointed. She is the personal type and representative image of that spiritual life and renovation in grace, "without which no one shall see God". 

Our pastor at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament here in Wichita, Kansas, included this exhortation in Sunday's bulletin:

P.S. This Thursday is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Please, please, please pray for an end to abortion and the conversion of heart of all who support it, especially in our city. Our Lady of Guadalupe is a powerful intercessor for life (and the protectress of life since she appeared visibly pregnant in her visit to Juan Diego). 

Amen.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

Saint Juan Diego, pray for us!

Preview: Newman on "The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son"

For our first discussion of an Advent/Christmas sermon by Saint John Henry Newman, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim of the Son Rise Morning Show and I will celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on Monday, December 9! This feast has been transferred from its usual date, December 8 since it falls on the Second Sunday of Advent this year. It is still a Holy day of Obligation (or of Opportunity!) in most dioceses of the USA. 

I'll be on the air at my usual time! about 7:50 a.m. Eastern Time/6:50 a.m. Central Time. Please listen live here or listen to the podcast later.

The Catholic sermon we'll reflect on "The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son" was published in Newman's Discourses to Mixed Congregations in 1849, about five years before Pope Pius IX declared the doctrine of Mary's Immaculate Conception to be official Catholic Church teaching: 

We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful. Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854

We are using the excerpt from this longer sermon as it appears in Waiting for Christ: Meditations for Christmas and Advent, edited by Christopher O. Blum.

Newman begins his discourse with the bold statement: "that the glories of Mary are for the sake of Jesus; and that we praise and bless her as the first of creatures, [so] that we may confess Him as our sole Creator."

Then this disciple of Saint Athanasius of Alexandra proclaims the Mystery of the Incarnation and how difficult it really is for us to wrap our minds around it and really believe it: "When the Eternal Word decreed to come on earth, He did not purpose, He did not work, by halves; but He came to be a man like any of us, to take a human soul and body, and to make them His own."

But when we consider not just that the Second Person of the Trinity was Incarnate as a man but how He came to us as man, we discover the mysterious historical reality: the Son of God is also the Son of Mary:

The world allows that God is man; the admission costs it little, for God is everywhere, and (as it may say) is everything; but it shrinks from confessing that God is the Son of Mary. It shrinks, for it is at once confronted with a severe fact, which violates and shatters its own unbelieving view of things; the revealed doctrine forthwith takes its true shape, and receives an historical reality; and the Almighty is introduced into His own world at a certain time and in a definite way. Dreams are broken and shadows depart; the Divine truth is no longer a poetical expression, or a devotional exaggeration, or a mystical economy, or a mythical representation. 

Newman quotes both the Letter to the Hebrews and the First Letter of St. John the Apostle to demonstrate the particular bodily reality of the Incarnation: 

"Sacrifice and offering," the shadows of the Law, "you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me" (Hebrews 10:5). "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have diligently looked upon, and our hands have handled," (1 John 1:1), such is the record of the Apostle, in opposition to those who denied that "Jesus Christ had appeared in the flesh" (1 John 4:2).

Declaring that Mary is the Mother of God, the Theotokos, is a key to the reality of the Incarnation:

And the confession that Mary is the Mother of God is that safeguard wherewith we seal up and secure the doctrine of the Apostle from all evasion. It declares that He is God; it implies that He is man; it suggests to us that He is God still, though He has become man, and that He is true man though He is God. By witnessing to the process of the union, it secures the reality of the two subjects of the union, of the divinity and of the manhood. If Mary is the Mother of God, Christ must be literally Emmanuel, God with us.

From this mysterious reality, Newman declares, all the glories accorded to Mary, including her freedom from sin from the moment of her conception, are fitting, for "the sake of Jesus", her Son because:

If she is to witness and remind the world that God became man, she must be on a high and eminent station for the purpose. She must be made to fill the mind, in order to suggest the lesson. When she once attracts our attention, then, and not till then, she begins to preach Jesus. "Why should she have such prerogatives," we ask, "unless He be God? and what must He be by nature, when she is so high by grace?" This is why she has other prerogatives besides, namely, the gifts of personal purity and intercessory power, distinct from her maternity; she is personally endowed that she may perform her office well; she is exalted in herself that she may minister to Christ. 

Then Newman rehearses the defense of the the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception he would make in reply to E.B. Pusey in 1866: Mary is the Second Eve (as Jesus is the Second Adam); she would have the same privileges as Eve, the "mother of all the living" as Adam named her:

It was fitting that she should triumph, where Eve had failed, and should "bruise the serpent's head" by the spotlessness of her sanctity. In some respects, indeed, the curse was not reversed; Mary came into a fallen world, and resigned herself to its laws; she, as also the Son she bore, was exposed to pain of soul and body, she was subjected to death. 

But she was not put under the power of sin. As grace was infused into Adam from the first moment of his creation, so that he never had experience of his natural poverty, till sin reduced him to it; so was grace given from the first in still ampler measure to Mary, and she never incurred, in fact, Adam's deprivation. She began where others end, whether in knowledge or in love. She was from the first clothed in sanctity, destined for perseverance, luminous and glorious in God's sight, and incessantly employed in meritorious acts, which continued till her last breath. 

Hers was emphatically "the path of the righteous," which is "like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day" (Proverbs 4:18), and, sinlessness in thought, word, and deed, in small things as well as great, in venial matters as well as grievous, is surely but the natural and obvious sequel of such a beginning. If Adam might have kept himself from sin in his first state [or Eve hers!], much more shall we expect immaculate perfection in Mary. 

Such is her prerogative of sinless perfection, and it is, as her maternity, for the sake of Emmanuel.             

No wonder then that we ask the Mother of God to intercede for us:

If we have faith to admit the Incarnation itself, we must admit it in its fulness; why then should we be startled at the gracious appointments which arise out of it, or are necessary to it, or are included in it? If the Creator comes on earth in the form of a servant and a creature, why may not His Mother, on the other hand, rise to be the Queen of heaven, and be clothed with the sun, and have the moon under her feet?

For the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12, Blum has excerpted a similar sermon from the the Discourses to Mixed Congregations, "On the Fitness of the Glories of Mary."

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

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!

Preview: Father Faber on "What We Should Give Thanks For"

In our final Son Rise Morning Show segment on Father Frederick Faber's Little Book of Holy Gratitude, drawn from the seventh chapter of All For Jesus, on Monday, November 25, Matt or Anna and I will look at some of Faber's thoughts about what exactly we should thank God for. 

I'll be on the air at my usual time! about 7:50 a.m. Eastern Time/6:50 a.m. Central Time. Please listen live here or listen to the podcast later.

Faber begins in an intriguing direction, since we might be inclined to concentrate on the blessings we individually have received:

"We should thank God for the blessings that are common to the whole human race."

Among those blessings Faber lists that we are created with a body and a soul; health and temporal blessings; that "God not only created the world, he redeemed it, and prepared for us eternal glory, and He thinks specifically and distinctly of each one of us." Faber highlights "the graces of the sacred humanity of Jesus, the glorious privileges of the Mother of God, and all the splendor of the angels and the saints" as worthy of our gratitude.

He lists other things and events to be thankful for:

--Personal Blessings Received

--Afflictions and Tribulations

--Trifling Blessings

--Blessings We've Obstructed

--God's Non rational Creatures (birds, dogs, horses, even cats!)

--Blessings Given to Our Enemies

--All God's Angels and Saints

--The Gift of Faith

Some of these suggestions might seem odd. Why should we be thankful for our troubles? Because we trust that God only wants what's best for us. How do we thank God for blessings we didn't receive through our own fault? Because He wanted to bless us and we thank Him for that, Faber says. Faber comments that the non-rational creatures whose presence we enjoy are signs of "the presence of God, enabling us everywhere, and at all times, to rise to Him by means of his creatures." Being thankful for the blessings our enemies--if we have any--is a great act of charity and "brotherly love", Faber advises, as we will eventually feel "gentleness and tenderness, even toward those who have wronged us most, or who show the greatest dislike of us." Thus, we will be at peace with them and within ourselves.

In our era of the "nones" I think the gift of faith is one of the greatest things to be thankful for: To trust in God's holiness, truthfulness, and mercy; to be certain that He loves me and wants me to be happy; that He established His Church on earth to guide me to Heaven. Those are great blessings.

Most of all, of course, Faber returns to how thankful we should be for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, for the Real Presence, and for Holy Communion:

In our thanksgiving after receiving Holy Communion, he emphasizes the gratitude we should express for "the adorable Sacrifice of the Mass and the Personal Presence of Jesus with His Church," because "wheresoever He is, there is infinite praise, unspeakable worship, unfathomable thanksgiving!" He recommends the guidance of Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Alphonsus Liguori, and his own patron, Saint Philip Neri for different means and methods.

 

After urging Catholics to "think more immediately of the Blessed Sacrament and of the presence of Jesus within them at that moment", Faber closes this section on thanksgiving after receiving Holy Communion by citing the opening words of Canto 27 of Paradise in the Divine Comedy , when Dante is coming closer to the heights of heaven, as an image for meditation after Holy Communion:. 

Then “Glory to the Father, to the Son,
And to the Holy Spirit,” rang aloud
Throughout all Paradise, that with the song
My spirit reel’d, so passing sweet the strain:
And what I saw was equal ecstasy;
One universal smile it seem’d of all things,
Joy past compare, gladness unutterable,
Imperishable life of peace and love,
Exhaustless riches and unmeasur’d bliss.

--Henry Francis Cary translation (1805-1814)

Who wouldn't be grateful for that?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Preview: Father Faber on the Holy Gratitude of the Saints

On Monday, November 18, we'll continue our Son Rise Morning show series on Father Frederick Faber's Little Book of Gratitude, drawn from the seventh chapter of All For Jesus, with a focus on how the canonized saints "Ever Gave Thanks to God". I'll be on the air at my usual time! about 7:50 a.m. Eastern Time/6:50 a.m. Central Time. Please listen live here or listen to the podcast later.

As Faber begins the chapter: "Thanksgiving has been in all ages the characteristic of the saints. Thanksgiving has been their favorite prayer . . . ." and then he offers several examples of saints, familiar and unfamiliar to readers in our time, at least, starting with Saint Laurence Justinian, the first Patriarch of Venice, whose feast is no longer celebrated on the universal Roman Calendar:

Bishop and first Patriarch of Venice, b. in 1381, and d. 8 January, 1456. He was a descendant of the Giustiniani, a Venetian patrician family which numbered several saints among its members. Lawrence's pious mother sowed the seeds of a devout religious life in the boy's youth. In 1400 when he was about nineteen years old, he entered the monastery of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine on the Island of Alga near Venice. In spite of his youth he excited admiration by his poverty, mortifications, and fervour in prayer. At that time the convent was changed into a congregation of secular canons living in community. After his ordination in 1406 Lawrence was chosen prior of the community, and shortly after that general of the congregation. He gave them their constitution, and was so zealous in spreading the same that he was looked upon as the founder. His reputation for saintliness as well as his zeal for souls attracted the notice of Eugene IV and on 12 May, 1433, he was raised to the Bishopric of Castello. The new prelate restored churches, established new parishes in Venice, aided the foundation of convents, and reformed the life of the canons. But above all he was noted for his Christian charity and his unbounded liberality. All the money he could raise he bestowed upon the poor, while he himself led a life of simplicity and poverty. He was greatly respected both in Italy and elsewhere by the dignitaries of both Church and State. He tried to foster the religious life by his sermons as well as by his writings. . . . Lawrence was named the first Patriarch of Venice, and exercised his office till his death somewhat more than four years later. His beatification was ratified by Clement VII in 1524, and he was canonized in 1690 by Alexander VIII. Innocent XII appointed 5 September for the celebration of his feast. The saint's ascetical writings have often been published, first in Brescia in 1506, later in Paris in 1524, and in Basle in 1560, etc. We are indebted to his nephew, Bernardo Giustiniani, for his biography.

Faber cites his Treatise on Obedience:

Whosoever should try to lay open all God's blessings to the full would be like a man trying to confine in a little vase the mighty currents of the wide ocean; for that would be an easier work than to publish with human eloquence the innumerable gifts of God. . . . They are to be confessed with the month, revered in the heart, and religiously worshipped, as far as the littleness of man can do. . . .

Only let God see you are thankful for what He has given you, and He will bestow more gifts upon you, and better gifts.

Among more familiar saints, perhaps, Faber mentions Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Bridget of Sweden, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi, Saint Bonaventure, and Saint Gregory of Nyssa.

Citing a revelation to Saint Bridget, Faber again emphasizes the connection between thanksgiving and Holy Communion:

Our Lord gives the increase of thanksgiving as a reason to St. Bridget for the sacrifice of the Mass. "My body," says He, "is daily immolated on the altar, that men may love me so much the more, and more frequently call to mind my blessings."

In his own words, Faber urges his readers to "meditate for a few minutes on the Eternal Word", the "Second Person, the eternally begotten Word of the Father, the splendor of His Majesty, uncreated Wisdom, the same Person who was incarnate and crucified for us, the same who sent us the Holy Spirit, who gave us Mary, who gives us Himself in the Blessed Sacrament . . . then think what His liberalities must be--no bound or measure to them. We cannot count their number, nor exhaust their fullness, nor understand their excellence . . ."

Through this kind of meditation, Faber says, we will "increase our devotion to His most dear humanity, and to learn how to watch at His Crib, to weep over His Cross, to worship at His tabernacle, and to nestle in His Sacred Heart."

The last saint Father Faber quotes is Saint Gregory of Nyssa, who urges us to be grateful for our past, our present, and our future because the blessings we've received and will receive are all from God:

That you were born was His blessing; and after you were born, your life and your death were, as the apostle Paul says, [in Romans 14:8, "If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord."] equally His blessing. Whatever your future hopes may be, they hang also upon His blessing.

Finally, Faber promises to help his readers to understand the "principal blessings for which we are bound continually to thank God" in the next chapter, "What We Should Give Thanks For."

Image Source (Public Domain): Portrait of Saint Lawrence Justinian by Gentile Bellini.

Preview: Father Faber on the Neglect of Gratitude

On Monday, November 11, Veterans Day here in the USA, Armistice or Remembrance Day (the end of World War I in the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month) in Europe and the Commonwealth, and the feast of Saint Martin of Tours, we'll continue our series on Father Frederick Faber's Little Book of Gratitude with chapter 3, "We Neglect Gratitude More Than Prayer". In All for Jesus (the 2000 Sophia Institute Press edition), much of this material is found on pages 164-174.

I'll be on the air at my usual time! about 7:50 a.m. Eastern Time/6:50 a.m. Central Time. Please listen live here or listen to the podcast later.

We pray, Faber concedes, because "our own interests drive us obviously to prayer; but it is love alone that leads us to thanksgiving."

Faber is concerned that when we pray for some need or blessing, we may not offer thanks and praise when our prayer has been granted--he cites the case of the ten lepers in Gospel of St. Luke (17:12-19)--because all ten were cleansed, but only one (the Samaritan, an outcast among the outcasts) returns to thank Jesus. And this stuns the "Sacred Heart of Jesus" Faber notes.

Citing St. Paul's letters to the Ephesians, Corinthians, etc., he emphasizes that our thanksgiving should be constant. He advises this pattern of praise and thanksgiving is a "preparation for our real life in heaven" and that "the Church on earth reflects the Church in heaven" as "the worship of the one is the echo of the worship of the other." 

That, of course, brings us to the Eucharist, "a sacrifice of thanksgiving" and Faber emphasizes that "The Spirit of the Eucharist must be found everywhere." As we practice gratitude during the Mass it will increase our love of God and the "neglect of it betokens how little love we have."

Faber even cautions us not to think so badly of fallen-away Catholics who don't receive the Sacraments, but examine our own lack of fervor in thanksgiving. He warns against lukewarmness in view of all the blessings we've received and encourages meditation, pondering "things as Mary did", to "treasure up God's mercies, and make much of them."

As Faber had been a Calvinist before his days as a Tractarian and a Catholic Oratorian priest, the last section in this chapter is important. He contrasts the dark side of God's severity and majesty and how we know little of it because "He has told us so little about it" with how much He has told us about His love:

When love is in question, He has been copious, explicit, minute. He explains, He repeats, He gives reasons, He argues, He persuades, He complains, He invites, He allures, He magnifies.

Of His rigor He drops but a word now and then . . . He startles only out of love . . . 

There is no end to the variety of the disclosures of His goodness, the inventions of His compassion, and the strangeness of His yearning over His creatures. . . .

Faber urges his readers not to dwell on "predestination and eternal punishment" but instead "ponder all those numberless signs of our heavenly Father's love" and be truly thankful.

Image Source (Public Domain): James Tissot's "The Healing of the Ten Lepers"

For November: Father Frederick Faber on "Holy Gratitude"

Anna Mitchell asked me to discuss and bring out highlights from a book published by Sophia Institute Press by Father Frederick Faber, The Little Book of Holy Gratitude, on the Son Rise Morning Show throughout November. We'll start our discussion with some biographical information about Father Faber on Monday, November 4. I'll be on the air at my usual time! about 7:50 a.m. Eastern Time/6:50 a.m. Central Time. 

Don't forget to "Fall Back" on Sunday as it applies in the USA and Canada!

Please listen live here or listen to the podcast later.

Father Frederick Faber was born and raised according to the religion of the Church of England; he was a convert and an Oratorian like Saint John Henry Newman. He and Newman, indeed, have much in common, although they did not always see eye-to-eye on certain matters, even as Catholics and Oratorians. Faber was born on June 28, 1814 and died on September 26, 1863 after suffering from Bright's disease. Like Newman, Faber had Huguenot ancestors and for a time he held Calvinist views of salvation; like Newman, Faber endured some setbacks in his academic career at Oxford, not quite achieving his goals. Like Newman, he was ordained a deacon and then a minister in the Church of England; like Newman, when he travelled on the Continent, he was at first disturbed by Catholic piety and worship.

Then he began to follow Newman, inspired by the Parochial and Plain Sermons, and became a follower of the Tractarian Movement. He vacationed in the Lake District, wrote poetry, and was befriended by William Wordsworth!

This 2013 tribute Faber posted on the New Liturgical Movement website describes what happened next:

In 1843 Faber was inducted into the University College living of Elton in Huntingdonshire. During the years 1839-43 he made two continental tours, and his letters give striking poetic descriptions of the scenes he visited; they glow with enthusiasm for Catholic rites and devotion. [Notice the change in attitude!] In Rome he was received in audience by Pope Gregory XVI and acquired a devotion to St Philip Neri [!], whose life he translated at Elton, where he turned his household servants into a brotherhood. He established the practice of confessions, preached Catholic doctrine, and wrote the life of St Wilfrid, controversially openly advocating the claims and supremacy of Rome. He was greatly loved by his people. It was only Newman’s influence that prevented him from entering the Church.

But on 9 October 1845, Newman was received into the Church at Littlemore. In November, with Francis Knox and ten other friends and servants, Faber was received into the Church at Northampton by Bishop William Wareing, vicar apostolic of the eastern district. They settled in Birmingham, where they informally organized themselves as a religious community, calling themselves the Brothers of the Will of God, or ‘Wilfridians’ (as they were mischievously called by St [Blessed] Dominic Barberi) from St Wilfrid, their patron, at Cotton Hall, near Cheadle, Staffordshire, the gift of the Earl of Shrewsbury.

Given that devotion to Saint Philip Neri, it makes sense that once Newman brought the Oratory to England, Faber and his followers were interested. Newman established the London (Brompton) Oratory (the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary) in 1849, and Faber was named its Provost. The Brompton Oratory posts these comments about Father Faber:

Faber the preacher, Faber the hymn-writer, Faber the spiritual author, must all give way to Faber the founder and first Provost of the London Oratory. Father Faber became an influential figure in the London of his day. His enthusiastic and, some might say, faintly flamboyant personality might lend itself to unsympathetic treatment by those who do not understand him, and by those who do not read his books. In the words of his early biographer, Fr. John Bowden [Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's brother], Faber's life was "from first to last religious". His character was not something fixed or static. His letters display a growing maturity of outlook. In this he may be fairly said to exemplify the wise insight of Newman himself who said that to be human is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. Faber described Newman as "the greatest scholar since St. Augustine" and referred to Newman as the one "who taught me all the good I know". 

Father Faber never enjoyed very good health and sometimes travelled to warmer climates (Malta or Italy) at his doctor's advice; he died at the rather young age of 49. He wrote many books of devotion and like Newman and other Oratorians (for example Edward Caswall), wrote and translated hymns for congregational singing at Mass and Vespers, so commonly celebrated on Sundays with Benediction at the Oratory. Among his famous hymns are "Faith of Our Fathers" (with its tribute to the Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation), "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy", "Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All"--

Jesus, my Lord, my God, my All,

How can I love thee as I ought?

And how revere this wondrous gift,

So far surpassing hope or thought?

Sweet Sacrament, we thee adore;

Oh, make us love thee more and more.

Oh, make us love thee more and more.

Had I but Mary's sinless heart

To love thee with, my dearest King,

Oh, with what bursts of fervent praise

Thy goodness, Jesus, would I sing.

Sweet Sacrament, we thee adore;

Oh, make us love thee more and more.

Oh, make us love thee more and more.

Thy Body, Soul, and Godhead, all,

O mystery of love divine.

I cannot compass all I have,

For all thou hast and art are mine.

Sweet Sacrament, we thee adore;

Oh, make us love thee more and more.

Oh, make us love thee more and more.

--and several hymns praising the Mother of God and St. Joseph.

The chapters in The Little Book of Holy Gratitude are drawn from chapter seven "Offer Thanks to God", of one of Father Faber's most popular books, All for Jesus: The Easy Way of Divine Love. He also translated St. Louis de Montfort's famous True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and wrote several other devotional works.

In just the two pages of one chapter, "Thankful Souls Are Happy" from the Sophia edition, Father Faber weaves a tapestry of virtue for us to examine. 

He begins with the models of the virtue of gratitude: the Blessed Virgin Mary, the patriarch Jacob, and King David. They remembered the blessings they'd received, meditated upon them, and, in the case of David, sang "of old mercies and [made] much of them" in the Psalms.

He also highlights the connection between our awareness of God's mercy in forgiving our sins and our thanksgiving: "a very grateful man is also a deeply penitent man".

Faber outlines the many virtues of gratitude to God and how they make us happy, because as we practice gratitude we begin to look for reasons to be grateful, even when they're not immediately apparent!, like seeing some slight delay as providential because we therefore weren't on the site of an accident when it happened, or we were blessed to see a friend we wouldn't have if we'd arrived earlier at our destination! 

The virtues expressed in holy gratitude: "promptitude of obedience, heroic effort, joyful perseverance". Holy Gratitude is "loyalty to God".

"Happy the man whose life is one long Te Deum"! he writes--constantly praising and thanking God with the Angels, the Cherubim, the Seraphim, the Apostles, the Prophets, and the Martyrs.

Faber says when we show this gratitude and rejoice in God's blessings, it's apostolic (evangelistic) because "it wins souls", and it "preaches God unconsciously".

"Joy is not a solitary thing!". he proclaims, as we share it.

There's much in these pages to meditation upon and discuss.

Preview: Newman on "How to Read the Fathers of the Church", Part Two

Last week I ended my post with the comment that after his "Monophysite mirror" moment, Saint John Henry Newman had a problem. 

Antiquity, meaning the early Church and the Fathers of the Church, was the foundation upon which he wanted to build the Anglican Via Media, but that foundation was crumbling. 

So in this second look on the Son Rise Morning Show at how Newman learned to read the Fathers of the Church, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will examine what Newman did next. I'll be on the air Monday, October 28 at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. EDT/6:50 a.m. CDT. Please listen live here or listen to the podcast later.

Father Joseph Carola's chapter on John Henry Newman in Engaging the Church Fathers in Nineteenth-Century Catholicism: The Patristic Legacy of the "Scuola Romana", published by Emmaus Academic, provides us with excellent insight into Newman's reading of the Fathers, and what he did after he realized that Antiquity was not enough. 

He includes a partial quotation from the 1875 Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, which I quote in full from chapter 2, "The Ancient Church":

In truth, this fidelity to the ancient Christian system, seen in modern Rome, was the luminous fact which more than any other turned men's minds at Oxford forty years ago to look towards her with reverence, interest, and love. It affected individual minds variously of course; some it even brought on eventually to conversion, others it only restrained from active opposition to her claims; but none of us could read the Fathers, and determine to be their disciples, without feeling that Rome, like a faithful steward, had kept in fulness and in vigour what our own communion had let drop. (p. 198)

 As Father Carola notes, 

By the early 1840s Newman's thought had clearly evolved from an effectively static vision of Christian antiquity to a dynamic understanding of doctrinal development. The Fathers had shown him that antiquity, while remaining normative, does not stand as an absolute rule in itself. The Fathers themselves point to the judgment of the living Church in every age. (p. 89)

In September of 1841, Newman moved out of Oxford to The College in Littlemore: he was as he said "on his deathbed" in the Church of England because he did not see in it "the living Church"--but was it in the Catholic Church, the feared and mistrusted 'Church of Rome'? 

By the Summer of 1843, this chronology of his life tells us that "Newman’s doubt about the Church of England is greater than his doubt about the Roman Church". From that date until October 9, 1845, Newman began to cut off more and more of his ties to the Church of England and Oxford, resigning his positions at St. Mary's and Oriel, while he prayed and studied Church History and the Fathers.

Because after that Monophysite crisis, Newman had faced another problem when he read Father Nicholas Wiseman's article about the Donatist heresy in the Dublin Review. Wiseman had cited Saint Augustine's dictum "Securus judicat orbis terrarum" (the whole world judges surely). 

Carola writes: that "axiom from one of antiquity's prime oracles decided, as far as Newman was concerned, against antiquity as an absolute rule in itself in favor of a temporal-geographical principle of magisterial catholicity," (p. 137) While Newman could temporarily argue that even Saint Augustine's statement can't be taken 'as an absolute rule' on its own, he soon had to acknowledge there was a "continuity-in-development that accounts for legitimate growth in Catholic doctrine and practice over the ages." (p. 139)

And so, at Littlemore, Newman studied the Fathers of the Church in a yet another way as he analyzed the development of doctrine during the first six centuries of Church History. Newman found in that history and in the Fathers a pattern of valid development in the Catholic Church. 

Where before he thought there was corruption, he found "continuity-in-development" as the Fathers and the Councils and the Magisterium dealt with both heresies that threatened and the growth in understanding the deposit of faith. According to his tests or notes of preservation of type, assimilation, logical sequence, etc., described in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Newman found chronic vigor in the Catholic Church he did not find in the Church of England or elsewhere.

Father Carola makes the interesting comment on page 143 that after Newman became a Catholic and priest of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, he continued his studies in "an unfolding doctrinal development" and sought "such continuity between the Church Fathers and the medieval Schoolman, especially Thomas Aquinas." Despite that "engagement with scholastic thought, the Church Fathers always remained Newman's first love".

Thus in his 1866 Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D.,on Occasion of His Eirenicon, Newman could write:

For myself, hopeless as you consider it, I am not ashamed still to take my stand upon the Fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of their times is not yet an old almanac to me. Of course I maintain the value and authority of the "Schola," as one of the loci theologici; nevertheless I sympathize with Petavius** in preferring to the "contentious and subtle theology" of the middle age, that "more elegant and fruitful teaching which is moulded after the image of erudite Antiquity." The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the Church. It is a ladder quite as serviceable for that purpose now, as it was twenty years ago. Though I hold, as you know, a process of development in Apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does not supersede the Fathers, but explains and completes them. (p. 24)

**Petavius, Denis Pétau (August 21, 1583 to December 11, 1652), also known as Dionysius Petavius, was a French Jesuit theologian. More about him here, if you are interested. The very fact that Newman read Petavius, who wrote about the history of doctrine among other subjects, demonstrates the validity of Carola's comment above!

In his biographic sketch of Newman's life, Father Carola mentions that Newman ended his publishing career where he began it, "with the Alexandrian Fathers" when he published an updated edition of Saint Athanasius' treatises against the Arians in 1881, nine years before his death. (p. 91)

This seems like an appropriate place to end this Son Rise Morning Show series on Newman and the Fathers of the Church. 

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!