Newman's Four Last Things

As promised, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show bright and early this morning (6:50 a.m. Central/ 7:50 a.m. Eastern) to talk with Matt Swaim about Blessed John Henry Newman's poem The Dream of Gerontius--specifically in the time we have available about how Newman depicts Gerontius's happy death; the Soul of Gerontius being more truly Gerontius than he was on earth, the Christological doctrine the Choirs of Angels extol as the Demons express their emptiness and chaos; the immediacy of judgement; the Soul's rejoicing at entering Purgatory and being prepared to enter Heaven.

Gerontius is a good Catholic on his deathbed in Part I of the poem; he is prepared for death with a priest and friends with him, but he feels some fear and abandonment. He feels "a chill at heart" and a "strange innermost abandonment" so he asks his friends to pray for him because he cannot. After they've prayed for him with age-old prayers for the dead, he regains strength and can pray himself again:

Firmly I believe and truly
God is Three and God is One;
and I next acknowledge duly
manhood taken by the Son.
And I trust and hope most fully
in that manhood crucified;
and each thought and deed unruly
do to death, as he has died.
Simply to his grace and wholly
light and life and strength belong,
and I love supremely, solely,
him the holy, him the strong. . . .

And I hold in veneration,
for the love of him alone,
Holy Church as his creation,
and her teachings as his own.

And I take with joy whatever

Now besets me, pain or fear,

And with a strong will I sever

All the ties which bind me here.

Adoration ay be given,
with and through the angelic host,
to the God of earth and heaven,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. . . .

Finally the priest prays for him at the departure of his soul from his body--and Newman has adapted prayers that I find at the back of my 1962 Roman Missal--and Gerontius dies and then awakens in the afterlife, his soul able to think and perceive without a body, without the senses as he used them on earth, and yet feeling more himself than he did on earth, with greater freedom:

I went to sleep; and now I am refresh'd,
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself,
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.
I had a dream; yes:—some one softly said
"He's gone;" and then a sigh went round the
room.
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Cry "Subvenite;" and they knelt in prayer.
I seem to hear him still; but thin and low,
And fainter and more faint the accents come,
As at an ever-widening interval.
Ah ! whence is this? What is this severance?
This silence pours a solitariness
Into the very essence of my soul;
And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,
Hath something too of sternness and of pain.
For it drives back my thoughts upon their spring
By a strange introversion, and perforce
I now begin to feed upon myself,
Because I have nought else to feed upon.

The Soul tries to comprehend the timelessness of his new being and location--then his Guardian Angel comes to help him understand and to guide him to judgment:

Thou art not let [prevented]; but with extremest speed
Art hurrying to the Just and Holy Judge:
For scarcely art thou disembodied yet.
Divide a moment, as men measure time,
Into its million-million-millionth part,
Yet even less than that the interval
Since thou didst leave the body; and the priest
Cried "Subvenite," and they fell to prayer;
Nay, scarcely yet have they begun to pray.

They pass by the Demons on their way to the Judgment Seat and the Soul realizes how impotent they really are, having feared them so in life. The five Choirs of Angelicals sing, culminating in the Christological statement, summarizing the truths of the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery:

Praise to the Holiest in the height
And in the depth be praise:
In all His words most wonderful;
Most sure in all His ways!

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

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

And that a higher gift than grace
Should flesh and blood refine,
God's Presence and His very Self,
And Essence all-divine.

O generous love! that He who smote
In man for man the foe,
The double agony in man
For man should undergo;

And in the garden secretly,
And on the cross on high,
Should teach His brethren and inspire
To suffer and to die.

The Soul rushes to see Jesus the Judge, hears his fate and returns chastened and ready to endure purgation. Newman depicts purgatory, not as a fire, but as a "golden prison" with souls ready to greet him; as entering night to be awakened by day. The Soul's Guardian Angel gently lowers him into the waters, the lake of purgatory, promising prayers in Heaven and Masses on Earth:

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

"The Dream" for/of Gerontius may have been his life on earth--as Newman said in his Apologia pro Vita Sua about his youth, he "thought life might be a dream, or I an Angel, and all this world a deception, my fellow-angels by a playful device concealing themselves from me, and deceiving me with the semblance of a material world." 

Gerontius's real life has just begun because now he knows the reality of his life with God. He has also learned how that "dream", his life on earth has prepared him for this new, eternal life!

While it's a great work of art--that's why Gordon, Swinburne, Kingsley, Doyle and many others were moved to praise it whether or not they believed in the Four Last Things as the Catholic Church has taught them--it still has a didactic purpose, reminding Catholics:

1) To pray for a happy death, receiving the Last Rites and prayers of the Church;

2) To live so as to be ready to die, because we know neither the day nor the hour;

3) To pray for our beloved dead; attend Rosaries and Funerals in our parishes whenever we can, even if we don't know the deceased; to provide for Masses for ourselves to be said after death, etc.
4) To live and die as though we believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.