Newman and Septuagesima on the Son Rise Morning Show

Starting on Monday, February 7, Anna Mitchell, Matt Swaim, and I will begin a series of segments on seasonal sermons by St. John Henry Newman on the Son Rise Morning Show. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate.

We are going to start with three sermons he gave at St. Chad's (the Cathedral since 1852) in Birmingham, England after he returned from Rome. He had studied for the Catholic priesthood there at the College of Propaganda, been ordained, joined the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, and then returned to England to establish the Oratory there.

The first three sermons we'll consider are for the Sundays of the Septuagesima period before Lent: Septuagesima (Sunday, February 13), Sexagesima (February 20), and Quinquagesima (February 27). These Sundays are still celebrated in parishes and communities where the Traditional Latin Mass is still allowed, in Anglican parishes, and in the Anglican Ordinariate--and they correspond to the Pre-Lent preparation Orthodox Christians and Eastern Rite Catholics observe with their Meatfare (eliminating meat from their diets) and Cheesefare (eliminating dairy from their diets) Sundays. Even some Lutheran communities observe Septuagesima. 

It's a good way to prepare for Lent: to think about fasting, almsgiving, and prayer before Ash Wednesday arrives.

The Gospel for Septuagesima Sunday is from Matthew: the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (20:1-16). Newman delivered this sermon on February 20, 1848.

Newman jumps right into his focus in this sermon ("Preparation for Judgment"): the last verse of the Gospel reading:

"The last shall be first and the first last, for many are called, but few are chosen." Such are the words with which the Gospel of this day ends, which is the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard. In that parable, you know well, my Brethren, the Master of the Vineyard calls into his Vineyard all the labourers he can get together. He calls them in at different times, some in the morning, some at noon, some shortly before the evening. When the evening is come, he bids his paymaster call them together and give them their wages for the day past. It is very plain what this means. The Master of the Vineyard is our Lord and Saviour. We are the labourers. The evening is the hour of death, when we shall each receive the reward of our labour, if we have laboured well.

There is more in the parable than this, but I shall not go into the details of it. I shall here content myself with the general sketch I have taken of it, and with the words with which it concludes, "The last shall be first and the first last, for," etc.

When C. Stephen Dessain of the Oratory edited these early Catholic sermons for publication in the 1950's he noted that we can see Newman's transition from how he gave sermons as an Anglican and how he gave them as a Catholic: "The old mastery is there, the style, the concrete illustrations, the psychological insight, the use of Holy Scripture, the stress on the moral preparation needed for receiving the truth;—it is authentic Newman, and entirely Catholic."

And indeed, there is a lovely passage in which Newman relates evening and rest with death, which you can read online (or in the Assumption Press re-issue of these sermons, pp. 32-34). He distinguishes the particular judgement each of us must prepare for at the hour of our deaths from the general judgement at the Second Coming of Christ and concludes with this statement, emphasizing his focus on the Parable:

But the parable in the Gospel speaks of the time of evening, and by the evening is meant, not the end of the world, but the time of death. . . . It will be most terrible certainly, and it comes first, to find ourselves by ourselves, one by one, in His presence, and to have brought before us most vividly all the thoughts, words and deeds of this past life. Who will be able to bear the sight of himself? And yet we shall be obliged steadily to confront ourselves and to see ourselves. In this life we shrink from knowing our real selves. We do not like to know how sinful we are. We love those who prophesy smooth things to us, and we are angry with those who tell us of our faults. But then, not one fault only, but all the secret, as well as evident, defects of our character will be clearly brought out. We shall see what we feared to see here, and much more. And then, when the full sight of ourselves comes to us, who will not wish that he had known more of himself here, rather than leaving it for the inevitable day to reveal it all to him!

Then he brings us to a full stop: "I am speaking, not only of the bad, but of the good."

He warns that even those Catholics who are trying to cooperate with God's grace, to obey the Commandments, develop the virtues in their lives, practice their faith, pray, fast, and give alms--all will find out how they've failed and how horrible that failure was:

But I speak of holy souls, souls that will be saved, and I say that to these the sight of themselves will be intolerable, and it will be a torment to them to see what they really are and the sins which lie against them. And hence some writers have said that their horror will be such that of their own will, and from a holy indignation against themselves, they will be ready to plunge into Purgatory in order to satisfy divine justice, and to be clear of what is to their own clear sense and spiritual judgement so abominable. We do not know how great an evil sin is. We do not know how subtle and penetrating an evil it is. It circles round us and enters in every seam, or rather at every pore. It is like dust covering everything, defiling every part of us, and requiring constant attention, constant cleansing. Our very duties cover us with this miserable dust and dirt. As we labour in God's vineyard and do His will, the while from the infirmity of our nature we sin in lesser matters even when we do good in greater, so that when the evening comes, with all our care, in spite of the sacraments of the Church, in spite of our prayers and our penance, we are covered with the heat and defilement of the day.

Newman would later become one of those writers who describe the willingness of the saved Soul to enter Purgatory in the Dream of Gerontius (1865) as the Soul of Gerontius sings after seeing Jesus at his particular judgement:

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

Newman concludes this sermon with the thought that we'll be asked basically two things at our own particular judgement (not about how successful or reputable we were in business, academics, etc):

When we come into God's presence, we shall be asked two things, whether we were in the Church, and whether we worked in the Church. Everything else is worthless. Whether we have been rich or poor, whether we have been learned or unlearned, whether we have been prosperous or afflicted, whether we have been sick or well, whether we have had a good name or a bad one, all this will be far from the work of that day. The single question will be, are we Catholics and are we good Catholics? If we have not been, it will avail nothing that we have been ever so honoured here, ever so successful, have had ever so good a name. And if we have been, it will matter nothing though we have been ever so despised, ever so poor, ever so hardly pressed, ever so troubled, ever so unfriended. Christ will make up everything to us, if we have been faithful to Him; and He will take everything away from us, if we have lived to the world.

Then will be fulfilled the awful words of the parable. Many that are last shall be first, for many are called but few are chosen.

As Dessain said, we see the same concern for the Salvation of Souls in this early Catholic sermon from Newman as we saw in his Parochial and Plain Sermons.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!