Preview: Newman on the Wedding Feast at Cana and "adoring the glory of Christ"

On Monday, January 20, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will look at how Saint John Henry Newman, in two of his Anglican sermons, reflected on the Miracle of Water Changed into Wine at the Wedding Feast of Cana, described in the Gospel of John (2:1-12) and depicted above by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel. 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.

In the first of these sermons, "The Season of Epiphany", sermon number 6 in Volume 7 of the Parochial and Plain Sermons, Newman examines this miracle in the context of how "the glory of Christ" is most apparent in the liturgy in that Church of England season (the Anglican Ordinariate uses the same language; instead of numbered Sundays in Ordinary Time, it lists numbered Sundays after the Epiphany):

THE Epiphany is a season especially set apart for adoring the glory of Christ. The word may be taken to mean the manifestation of His glory, and leads us to the contemplation of Him as a King upon His throne in the midst of His court, with His servants around Him, and His guards in attendance. At Christmas we commemorate His grace; and in Lent His temptation; and on Good Friday His sufferings and death; and on Easter Day His victory; and on Holy Thursday His return to the Father; and in Advent we anticipate His second coming. And in all of these seasons He does something, or suffers something: but in the Epiphany and the weeks after it, we celebrate Him, not as on His field of battle, or in His solitary retreat, but as an august and glorious King; we view Him as the Object of our worship. Then only, during His {75} whole earthly history, did He fulfil the type of Solomon, and held (as I may say) a court, and received the homage of His subjects . . .

Jesus doesn't face the opposition of the Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, or his hometown in the Gospels for the Sundays after the Christmas season. Newman outlines the sequence thus:

I said that at this time of year the portions of our services which are proper to the season are of a character to remind us of a king on his throne, receiving the devotion of his subjects. Such is the narrative itself, already referred to, of the coming of the wise men, who sought Him with their gifts from a place afar off, and fell down and worshipped Him. Such too, is the account of His baptism, which forms the Second Lesson of the feast of the Epiphany, when the Holy Ghost descended on Him, and a Voice from heaven acknowledged Him to be the Son of God. And if we look at the Gospels read throughout the season, we shall find them all containing some kingly action of Christ, the Mediator between God and man. Thus in the Gospel for the First Sunday, He manifests His glory in the temple at the age of twelve years, sitting among the doctors, and astonishing them with His wisdom. In the Gospel for the Second Sunday He manifests His glory at the wedding feast, when He turned the water into wine, a miracle not of necessity or urgency, but {77} especially an august and bountiful act—the act of a King, who out of His abundance gave a gift to His own, therewith to make merry with their friends.

In another Anglican sermon from a collection titled Sermons on Subjects of the Day, "The Lord's Last Supper and His First," Newman focuses more on the Marriage Feast of Cana, noting that as Our Lord celebrated the Passover with the Apostles the night before His Crucifixion, He began His ministry, and confirmed His disciples' belief in Him at Mary's request. The sermon becomes a meditation on the relationship between Mother and Son:

Nay, may we not say that our Lord Himself had commenced His ministry, that is, bade farewell to His earthly home, at a feast? for it was at the marriage entertainment at Cana of Galilee that He did His first miracle, and manifested forth His glory. He was in the house of friends, He was surrounded by intimates and followers, and He took a familiar interest in the exigencies of the feast. He supplied a principal want which was interfering with their festivity. It was His contribution to it. By supplying it miraculously He showed that He was beginning a new life, the life of a Messenger {32} from God, and that that feast was the last scene of the old life. And, moreover, He made use of one remarkable expression, which seems to imply that this change of condition really was in His thoughts, if we may dare so to speak of them, or at all to interpret them. For when His Mother said unto Him, "They have no wine," He answered, "What have I to do with thee?" (John 2:3, 4) He had had to do with her for thirty years. She had borne Him, she had nursed Him, she had taught Him. And when He had reached twelve years old, at the age when the young may expect to be separated from their parents, He had only become more intimately one with them, for we are told that "He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them." (Luke 2:51)

Rather poignantly, Newman reflects on how Jesus will soon part from His Mother at the end of these "hidden years" in Nazareth: 

Eighteen years had passed away since this occurred. St. Joseph (as it seems) had been taken to his rest. Mary remained; but from Mary, His Mother, He must now part, for the three years of His ministry. He had gently intimated this to her at the very time of His becoming subject to her, intimated that His heavenly Father's work was a higher call than any earthly duty. "Wist ye not," He said, when found in the Temple, "that I must be about My Father's business?" (Luke 2:49.) The time was now come when this was to be fulfilled, and, therefore, when His Mother addressed Him at the marriage feast, He answered, "What have I to do with thee?" What is between Me and thee, My Mother, any longer? "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand." (Mark 1:15)

Newman continues to emphasize this separation between Mother and Son, highlighting those passages from Matthew (12:48-50) and Luke (11:27-28) in which His Mother is mentioned. Then he concludes:

Nor is there any token recorded in the Gospels of His affection for His Mother, till His ministry was brought to an end, and we know well what were the tender words which almost immediately preceded "It is finished." His love revived, that is, He allowed it to appear, as His Father's work was ending. "There stood by the cross of Jesus, His Mother, and His Mother's sister, Mary {34} the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His Mother, and the disciple standing by whom He loved, He saith unto His Mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy Mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home." (John 19:25-27)

He took leave then of His Mother at a feast, as He afterwards took leave of His disciples at a feast. . . . 

[The illustration above is (Public Domain) is of Jesus leaving His Mother as Peter and the others wait for Him by Bernhard Strigel, a 16th century German painter to the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.]

Among the meditations on the Litany of Loreto Newman wrote years later as a Catholic priest at the Birmingham Oratory, we can find an echo of these thoughts about Jesus and His Mother:

For thirty years she was blessed with the continual presence of her Son—nay, she had Him in subjection. But the time came when that war called for Him for which He had come upon earth. Certainly He came, not simply to be the Son of Mary, but to be the Saviour of Man, and {47} therefore at length He parted from her. She knew then what it was to be the mother of a soldier. He left her side; she saw Him no longer; she tried in vain to get near Him. He had for years lived in her embrace, and after that, at least in her dwelling—but now, in His own words, "The Son of Man had not where to lay His head." And then, when years had run out, she heard of His arrest, His mock trial, and His passion. At last she got near Him—when and where?—on the way to Calvary: and when He had been lifted upon the Cross. And at length she held Him again in her arms: yes—when He was dead. True, He rose from the dead; but still she did not thereby gain Him, for He ascended on high, and she did not at once follow Him.

At the end of the first sermon, "The Season of Epiphany", Newman describes how the liturgical seasons of the Church should teach us a lesson about the seasons of our lives:

For all seasons we must thank Him, for time of sorrow and time of joy, time of warfare and time of peace. And the more we thank Him for the one, the more we shall be drawn to thank Him for the other. Each has its own proper fruit, and its own peculiar blessedness. Yet our mortal flesh shrinks from the one, and of itself prefers the other;—it prefers rest to toil, peace to war, joy to sorrow, health to pain and sickness. When then Christ gives us what is pleasant, let us take it as a refreshment by the way, that we may, when God calls, go in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb, the mount of God. Let us rejoice in Epiphany with trembling, that at Septuagesima we may go into the vineyard with the labourers with cheerfulness, and may sorrow in Lent with thankfulness; let us rejoice now, not as if we have attained, but in hope of attaining. Let us take our present happiness, not as our true rest, but, as what the land of Canaan was to the Israelites,—a type and shadow of it. If we now {85} enjoy God's ordinances, let us not cease to pray that they may prepare us for His presence hereafter. If we enjoy the presence of friends, let them remind us of the communion of saints before His throne. Let us trust in nothing here, yet draw hope from every thing—that at length the Lord may be our everlasting light, and the days of our mourning may be ended.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

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! 

Preview: Newman on "The Mystery of Divine Condescension"

Happy New Year!

We'll resume our Advent/Christmas series on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, January 6, 2025 (the traditional date of Epiphany) with one of Saint John Henry Newman's Catholic sermons, "The Mystery of Divine Condescension", from his Discourses to Mixed Congregations. 

Newman dedicated his first published work as a priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri to the then Bishop of Melipotamus and Vicar Apostolic of the London District, Nichols Wiseman, in 1849 (before the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850--when he would become the first Archbishop of Westminster). In his great biography of Newman, Father Ian Ker notes that the rhetoric in these sermons "is often more Italianate than Newmanian"! (p. 342)

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.

Newman's topic, of course, is the Incarnation and his purpose is to persuade his congregation to appreciate, as much as is humanly possible, the great mystery of God deigning, not just to come down to us as an infant in Bethlehem, to give us grace, and to redeem us, but to raise us up to be like Him. Then he presents us with an even greater challenge in this mystery.

There are indeed some glorious passages in his sermon (which you can read in its entirety here). I'm focusing on the paragraphs excerpted in Christopher O. Blum's Waiting for Christ: Meditations for Advent and Christmas:

You say that God and man never can be one, that man cannot bear the sight and touch of his Creator, nor the Creator condescend to the feebleness of the creature; but blush and be confounded to hear, O peevish, restless hearts, that He has come down from His high throne and humbled Himself to the creature, in order that the creature might be inspired and strengthened to rise to Him.

Your God has taken on Him your nature, and now prepare yourself to see in human flesh that glory and that beauty on which the Angels gaze. Since you are to see Emmanuel, since "the brilliancy of the Eternal Light and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the Image of His goodness," is to walk the earth, since the Son of the Highest is to be born of woman, since the manifold attributes of the Infinite are to be poured out before your eyes through material channels and the operations of a human soul, since He, whose contemplation did but trouble you in Nature, is coming to take you captive by a manifestation, which is both intelligible to you and a pledge that He loves you one by one, raise high your expectations, for surely they cannot suffer disappointment.

But even that is not enough, because Newman contrasts the glory we could expect from the Son of God becoming man to what we know of how Jesus lived among us; we think:

doubtless He will choose some calm and holy spot, and men will go out thither and find their Incarnate God. He will be tenant of some paradise, like Adam or Elias, or He will dwell in the mystic garden of the Canticles, where nature ministers its {301} best and purest to its Creator. "The fig-tree will put forth her green figs, the vines in flower yield their sweet smell;" "spikenard and saffron" will be there; "the sweet cane and cinnamon, myrrh and aloes, with all the chief perfumes;" "the glory of Libanus, the beauty of Carmel," before "the glory of the Lord and the beauty of our God". There will He show Himself at stated times, with Angels for His choristers and saints for His doorkeepers, to the poor and needy, to the humble and devout, to those who have kept their innocence undefiled, or have purged their sins away by long penance and masterful contrition.

Instead, 

He has come, not to assert a claim, but to pay a debt. Instead of wealth, He has come poor; instead of honour, He has come in ignominy; instead of blessedness, He has come to suffer. He has been delivered over from His birth to pain and contempt; His delicate frame is worn down by cold and heat, by hunger and sleeplessness; His hands are rough and bruised with {302} a mechanic's toil; His eyes are dimmed with weeping; His Name is cast out as evil. He is flung amid the throng of men; He wanders from place to place; He is the companion of sinners. . . . He hath no beauty nor comeliness; He is despised and the most abject of men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity;" nay, He is a "leper, and smitten of God, and afflicted". And so His clothes are torn off, and He is lifted up upon the bitter Cross, and there He hangs, a spectacle for profane, impure, and savage eyes, and a mockery for the evil spirit whom He had cast down into hell.  

We have travelled from Bethlehem to Nazareth to Jerusalem and finally to Golgotha. 

Finally, Newman offers a different model for us to follow when we struggle to comprehend this tremendous, mysterious condescension--His Mother:

Oh, wayward man! . . . when wilt thou cease to make thyself thine own centre, and learn that God is infinite in all He does, infinite when He reigns in heaven, infinite when He serves on earth, exacting our homage in the midst of His Angels, and winning homage from us in the midst of sinners? Adorable He is in His eternal rest, adorable in the glory of His court, adorable in the beauty of His works, most adorable of all, most royal, most persuasive in His deformity. Think you {303} not, my brethren, that to Mary, when she held Him in her maternal arms, when she gazed on the pale countenance and the dislocated limbs of her God, when she traced the wandering lines of blood, when she counted the weals, the bruises, and the wounds, which dishonoured that virginal flesh, think you not that to her eyes it was more beautiful than when she first worshipped it, pure, radiant, and fragrant, on the night of His nativity?

These passages may be, as Newman himself commented, "more rhetorical than my former sermons" in a letter (LD, xiii, 335, according to Father Ker), but that rhetoric certainly has a great impact, offering us, as we conclude this Christmas season after the Baptism of Our Lord, insights into "The Mystery of Divine Condescension". Like the hymn, "What Child is This?", Newman brings the Nativity and the Passion together:

Why lies He in such mean estate
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christian, fear: for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spear shall pierce him through,
The Cross be borne for me, for you;
Hail, hail the Word Made Flesh,
The babe, the son of Mary!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Book Review: "John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed"

Please note, I purchased this book from Eighth Day Books: John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed by Ida Friederike Gorres. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2024.

Edited and with an introduction by Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz

Translated by Jennifer S. Bryson

Contents:

Translator's Preface 

• Quotations and Citations: Hunting and Reverse Engineering
• "Dark, 17" and Detective Work
• The Citations: Layers of Complications
• Orthography: A Patchwork Quilt
• Acknowledgements

Introduction: A New Discovery. Ida Friederike Gorres on Newman

• Hagiography: A Segment of Gorres' Life's Work
• A New Discovery: A Newman Draft
• The Postwar Period: Exiting the Ark, Friendship with Newman Specialist Father Breucha
• Searching for What is Distinctive about This Book
• Circling Back Later On
• Unique Approach

The Book:

I. The Life of Newman

    1. The Man Who Was Sacrificed

        An Initial Reconnaissance of His Life

    2. The Golden Apple

    3. Newman's Religious and Human Character in Letters and Sketches

    4. Passion for the Truth

    5. Taking Christianity Seriously: The Tracts and Sermons

    6. Rome: A Mix of Hatred and Love

    7. Newman Brought Low

    8. Newman's Piety

    9. Two Poems by Newman ("The Two Worlds" The Oratory, 1862; The Death of Moses" Off Ithaca, December 30, 1832)

II. Conscience

    10. On Conscience

III. Encore

    11. A Sketch of the Life of Newman

Appendix A: Timeline of the Life of John Henry Newman

Appendix Be: Timeline of the Life of Ida Friederike Gorres

Register of Persons

Bibliography 

Index

This book takes me back, takes me way back to the January of 1979 when I attended the Newman School of Catholic Thought at (then named) St. Paul's Parish-Newman Center. From Ida Friederike Gorres I hear, among other things, what many of the college students, including me, there and then cried out: "Why didn't the Catholic Church in England listen to Newman? Why didn't they support his goals to revive Catholicism in Victorian England and beyond by engaging the laity, especially young men and women? Why did the leaders of Church relegate him to the Oratory in Birmingham? Why did they waste his talents?"

As Gorres examines the sacrifice(s) of Newman's life, she notes not only his loss of friends, family and influence because of his conversion to Catholicism, but how he sacrificed his intellect to the Truth, by not discovering it through his efforts but to finding what was objectively true and outside himself, so that he had to decrease so that He could increase. 

In the chapter on Rome (6.), I was impressed by Gorres' explanation of how the Vatican's over site of justice and order in Rome (and in the Papal States) caused Newman great difficulty: he saw "Roman corruptions" and "priestly rule" creating "physical and moral distress" (pp. 142-145), and that influenced his distaste for the Papacy. (But was England that much better at that time: debtors prisons, poor houses, and slums?, she notes.)

In the chapter "Newman Brought Low", Gorres contrasts how the hierarchy wasted his talents with how the laity wrote to him for advise and counsel, as he answered thousands of letter from potential converts to Catholicism, Catholics asking for spiritual direction, etc. So while he sacrificed the larger influence he could have had, he was sought out nonetheless.

As does Father William R. Lamm, Gorres offers excellent insights into Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons at Oxford and his wonderful efforts to lead his congregation, especially the students, to take "Christianity Seriously", to make it real for them and to impact their lives. In that context, and with the success of his efforts, Gorres frames the famous Tract 90, as Newman sought a firmer foundation for the doctrinal and liturgical reform of the Church of England. (Chapter 5)

Overall, however, I wanted more context for why, in 1940s Germany, Gorres was so attracted to Newman. She travelled to the Oratory in Birmingham in 1949, as the Introduction notes, and much of her research and reading into Newman took place between 1944 and 1949. I was surprised to read that there was a conference coinciding with the one hundred anniversary of Newman's conversion in Cologne, Germany when a similar celebratory conference couldn't be held in England during World War II, according to the Catholic University of America's American Essays for the Newman Centennial! (In the Introduction to that book, Father John K. Ryan is as certain that Newman would never be seriously considered a canonized saint as Gorres (in Chapter I of this book) is that Newman would be canonized and should be considered a Doctor of the Church! She's correct on one point so far, and both the UK and US bishops have presented arguments for the second point to the Vatican.)

Then in post-war years Gorres found a mentor in Newman studies, Father Breucha, and she was deeply involved in the Synod of Wurzburg in 1971, collapsing after defending the Catholic doctrine and Sacrament of Marriage. I need to purchase and read her book The Church and the Flesh from Cluny Media, translated by Bryson, I suppose, to understand the context further since Newman is cited several times in that book, evidently. Bread Grows in Winter: Six Essays on the Crisis in the Church from 1970 might be helpful to me too. And her defense of Marriage at the Synod (meaning it was under attack, right?) is forthcoming from Catholic University of America Press (What Binds Marriage Forever: Reflections on the Indissolubility of Marriage), also translated by Bryson. A Letter to the Church and the response to it is also cited. Here's more about forthcoming translation of books by Gorres, etc.

So, as usual, one book leads to another, and another. For example, I'm already browsing a copy of John Henry Newman: Centenary Essays (1945), edited by Father Henry Tristram of the Oratory, highlighted in the bibliography and elsewhere in this volume as one of Gorres' sources (remember, she didn't have the newmanreader.org with almost everything Newman wrote at her fingertips!) 

Gorres succeeded remarkably well with the sources she had to present a saintly and human portrait of Newman. I recommend John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed most highly. In fact, I've already ordered two more copies from Eighth Day Books as gifts!

Belloc on Wolsey and Cranmer

Os Justi Press is carrying two books by Hilaire Belloc: Wolsey and Cranmer. They have been brought back into print by Mysterium Press in the U.K. The U.K. publisher has sent me copies of both books to read!

As the publisher describes the book about Wolsey:

In Christendom on the eve of its destruction, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was to be identified with England. In one hand was held the ropes of Church and State, and when he fell what he had made was used to destroy all that he had known. A peerless administrator who blundered abroad but remained supreme at home, Wolsey's intelligence and industry were matched by his ambition and myopia, and his inability to comprehend the inmost thoughts of man proved fatal. Master historian Hilaire Belloc paints a portrait of the low-born cleric who might have stopped the Reformation, but who in putting himself first, and distracted by the closest thing to hand, unwittingly steered England toward its ruin.

Belloc has not written biographies per se but studies about each man's role in the events of Henry VIII's reign and (in the case of Cranmer) Edward VI's.

In his study of Wolsey, for example, Belloc casts his story as a tragedy, with chapters titled The Stage, The Programme, The Plot, The Cast, and five Acts with an Interlude. Wolsey is his tragic hero with fatal flaws: lack of vision in spite of his intelligence and the "defect of ambition . . . the putting of oneself before one's chief task". (p. 3) Belloc narrates this tragic play in declarative, positive sentences even as he explains the complex and different world of Renaissance England and Europe, with the concentration of wealth, the powers of the Church, the aura of the princes, and divisions in Christendom in the background as the drama of Henry VIII's marital issues proceeded. He wants to help the reader understand "the mood" of a past era. Note that he wrote Wolsey and Cranmer in the 1930's.

Among the cast members are Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon (who possessed the courage of her mother without the astuteness of her father); Anne Boleyn, whom Belloc believes is older; Thomas Howard, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; three popes: Leo X, Adrian VI, and Clement VII; Francis I; Charles V; Lawrence Campeggio, the Papal Legate ("that kind of man to whom all men listen with respect and whom--since the fall of man--nobody follows", p. 79); Bainbridge, Cardinal and Archbishop of York (Wolsey's predecessor) who died in 1514 so that Wolsey could succeed him in those offices; Richard Foxe of Winchester; and Thomas Cromwell, the Supplanter.

Contradicting Mantel, Belloc posits Cromwell as the cause of Wolsey's fall; Henry VIII was still concerned about Wolsey's health and well-being even as offices and wealth were being taken away from him. Belloc describes Cromwell weeping after Wolsey's fall, mourning "the loss of goods; he complained that his service to his old master had impoverished him", so he went to see Henry VIII and then "he begins to supplant his master." (p. 240) Belloc ends his examination of Cromwell's character that he ended up "by the ax and whining for life."!

Reading this review of the characters reminded me that Anna Mitchell and I did a long series in 2017/18 on Belloc's Characters of the Reformation on the Son Rise Morning Show. Belloc excels at this kind of analysis.

Note that neither Thomas More nor Bishop John Fisher play any role in Belloc's telling; Belloc is more interested in Stephen Gardiner replacing Wolsey as Secretary to the King than More becoming Chancellor after his Wolsey's fall from favor (that's not even mentioned).

Belloc's Wolsey is a fascinating interpretation of the career of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, his energy, his ambition and ability, his flaws, and his ultimate tragedy: setting England on the path of separation from the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Belloc avers that for all his faults, Wolsey made a good death with all the Sacraments for the dying in his last illness, had been concerned for necessary reforms in the Church, and certainly would not have wanted to see Catholicism destroyed in England as it would be after his errors in responding to Henry VIII's matrimonial desires. 

There is no index and no bibliography, because Belloc didn't provide them,  I presume. There are some notes from A to K on matters like Wolsey's and Anne Boleyn's dates of birth, prices during Wolsey's time, the Duke of Buckingham's claim to the throne and Wolsey's role in his fall and execution, etc.

Whether or not I--or you when you read the book--agree with all of Belloc's interpretation of Wolsey's years of power, we must agree Frederick Wilhelmson's commendation of Belloc's achievements:

Time prohibits my detailing Belloc’s revolution in English historical writing. Suffice it to say — and this is said formally and altogether without rhetorical emphasis — that one man, Hilaire Belloc, turned the whole writing of British history around. Since Belloc, nobody can get away with understanding the Reformation as the work of high‑minded souls bent on liberty and democracy, noble souls who brought England out of the darkness of Catholic superstition and medieval obscurantism. Others footnoted Belloc and traded on his vision. They did well in doing so, but the vision was his — as was the persecution of silence that followed on his work.

The publication of this book--and the study of Cranmer which I'll read and review next--is another step in ending "the persecution of silence". Mysterium Press hopes to publish more of the Belloc's histories. (I'd really like to read his take on James II!) The books are high quality hardcovers, with nice sturdy paper and clear typefaces. Highly recommended.

Saint Robert Southwell's Nativity Poems

As readers of this blog know, I have posted often about Saint Robert Southwell, SJ; his life, his martyrdom, and his poetry. As the celebration of Christmas draws nearer, I'm reading some of his poems about the Nativity of Our Lord in this collection of poetry by the English Catholic martyrs of the Reformation era, from Saint Thomas More to Blessed Nicholas Postgate, with an appendix of the poetry of Catholics like Chidiock Tichborne (not a martyr but related to two Venerable martyrs, Father Thomas Tichborne and his brother Nicholas). The collection was first published in 1934, compiled by The Rev. Sir John R. O'Connell of Ireland (1868-December 28, 1943), who wrote the Preface with a Foreword by Francis Cardinal Bourne, the fourth Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. This second edition was Expanded and Revised with an Introduction by Benedict J. Whalen.

In this article from the Catholic Exchange, Louise Merrie writes about "A Martyred Saint’s Christmastime Poetry":

In his Nativity poems, Saint Robert Southwell wrote about his love for the Infant Jesus, Jesus’ love for us, and the amazing meaning of His Incarnation—even though Jesus came to us as a baby, He was still powerful because of His Divinity. This Christmas Season is an ideal time for Catholics to read Saint Robert’s poems on the Infant Jesus.

“The Burning Babe” may be Saint Robert Southwell’s most famous poem. It begins with a vision of the baby Jesus on a cold winter’s day, Christmas day. Jesus glows brightly with the warmth of His love, but crying, says, “Yet none approach to warm their hearts/Or feel my fire, but I.” Although written many years before Jesus’ revelations of His Sacred Heart to Saint Margaret Mary, the imagery and message are similar to the Sacred Heart devotion and the words of the Litany referring to Jesus’ Sacred Heart as a “burning furnace of charity.”

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,

Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed

As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.

“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,

For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,

      So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”

      With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,

      And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

“New Heaven, New War” is set in the stable of Bethlehem, where angels honor and care for the baby Jesus, in his new earthly home. Although seemingly helpless as a baby in His human nature, Jesus is powerful in His Divine nature, and has come to defeat the forces of evil. “This little Babe so few days old, /Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;… For in this weak unarmed wise, /The gates of hell he will surprise.”

Come to your heaven, you heavenly choirs,

Earth hath the heaven of your desires.

Remove your dwelling to your God;

A stall is now his best abode.

Sith men their homage do deny,

Come, angels, all their fault supply.

His chilling cold doth heat require;

Come, seraphins, in lieu of fire.

This little ark no cover hath;

Let cherubs’ wings his body swathe.

Come, Raphael, this babe must eat;

Provide our little Toby meat.

Let Gabriel be now his groom,

That first took up his earthly room.

Let Michael stand in his defense,

Whom love hath linked to feeble sense.

Let graces rock when he doth cry,

And angels sing his lullaby.

The same you saw in heavenly seat

Is he that now sucks Mary’s teat;

Agnize your king a mortal wight,

His borrowed weed lets not your sight.

Come, kiss the manger where he lies,

That is your bliss above the skies.

This little babe, so few days old,

Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;

All hell doth at his presence quake.

Though he himself for cold do shake,

For in this weak unarmèd wise

The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field;

His naked breast stands for a shield;

His battering shot are babish cries,

His arrows looks of weeping eyes,

His martial ensigns cold and need,

And feeble flesh his warrior’s steed.

His camp is pitchèd in a stall,

His bulwark but a broken wall,

The crib his trench, hay stalks his stakes,

Of shepherds he his muster makes;

And thus, as sure his foe to wound,

The angels’ trumps alarum sound.

My soul, with Christ join thou in fight;

Stick to the tents that he hath pight;

Within his crib is surest ward,

This little babe will be thy guard.

If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,

Then flit not from this heavenly boy.

She also highlights this beautiful devotional poem, "A Child My Choice":

Let folly praise that fancy loves, I praise and love that Child
Whose heart no thought, whose tongue no word, whose hand no deed defiled.

I praise Him most, I love Him best, all praise and love is His;
While Him I love, in Him I live, and cannot live amiss.

Love's sweetest mark, laud's highest theme, man's most desired light,
To love Him life, to leave Him death, to live in Him delight.

He mine by gift, I His by debt, thus each to other due;
First friend He was, best friend He is, all times will try Him true.

Though young, yet wise; though small, yet strong; though man, yet God He is:
As wise, He knows; as strong, He can; as God, He loves to bless.

His knowledge rules, His strength defends, His love doth cherish all;
His birth our joy, His life our light, His death our end of thrall.

Alas! He weeps, He sighs, He pants, yet do His angels sing;
Out of His tears, His sighs and throbs, doth bud a joyful spring.

Almighty Babe, whose tender arms can force all foes to fly,
Correct my faults, protect my life, direct me when I die!

Saint Robert Southwell, pray for us!