On Monday, March 10, I'll be on 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.
Sophia's selection features works from both his Anglican and Catholic periods, and we'll start with one of a series of meditations he wrote at the Oratory School in Birmingham. They were published posthumously in a collection titled Meditations and Devotions, edited by his secretary Father William Neville in 1893, three years after Newman's death. The volume was dedicated to the boys of the Oratory School:
To you, boys of the Oratory School, past and present, this collection of devotional papers by Cardinal Newman is dedicated. They are a memento both of the Cardinal's constant thought of you, and of his confident assurance that, after his death, you would pray for his soul.
For those of you who have read my posts or listened to my segments on the Son Rise Morning Show based upon Newman's Parochial and Plain--or other Anglican--Sermons, be ready for a very different voice and method from Newman in these excerpts for the next several weeks. This is Catholic Newman, meditating on the Gospels, inspired by his spiritual mentor, Saint Philip Neri. More on that later.
These meditations seem to have been planned for Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament in a section titled "Meditations on Christian Doctrine" (there's a prayer "A Short Visit to the Blessed Sacrament Before Meditation" at the beginning). The first meditation in the section "Hope in God--Redeemer" is on "The Mental Sufferings of Our Lord" and it focuses on the response of Judas and the disciples to the Anointing at the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 26 (and Mark 24):
After all His discourses were consummated (Matt. 26:1), fully finished and brought to an end, then He said, The Son of man will be betrayed to crucifixion. As an army puts itself in battle array, as sailors, before an action, clear the decks, as dying men make their will and then turn to God, so though our Lord could never cease to speak good words, did He sum up and complete His teaching, and then commence His passion. Then He removed by His own act the prohibition which kept Satan from Him, and opened the door to the agitations of His human heart, as a soldier, who is to suffer death, may drop his handkerchief himself. At once Satan came on and seized upon his brief hour.
Newman emphasizes that Jesus allows Himself to become vulnerable as He ends His public ministry of teaching and miracles and prepares for His Passion. ("And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended all these words, he said to his disciples You know that after two days shall be the pasch, and the son of man shall be delivered up to be crucified." Matthew 26:1-2 ) (Douai-Rheims translation) Only He can give the signal ("drop his handkerchief") to begin the Passion. Then:
2. An evil temper of murmuring and criticism is spread among the disciples. One was the source of it, but it seems to have been spread. The thought {305} of His death was before Him, and He was thinking of it and His burial after it. A woman came and anointed His sacred head. The action spread a soothing tender feeling over His pure soul. It was a mute token of sympathy, and the whole house was filled with it. It was rudely broken by the harsh voice of the traitor now for the first time giving utterance to his secret heartlessness and malice. Ut quid perditio hæc? "To what purpose is this waste?"—the unjust steward with his impious economy making up for his own private thefts by grudging honour to his Master. Thus in the midst of the sweet calm harmony of that feast at Bethany, there comes a jar and discord; all is wrong: sour discontent and distrust are spreading, for the devil is abroad.While Jesus takes some comfort from this anointing with its perfume and warmth, the disciples think only of the money it cost and a better use for it. From St. John's Gospel account of the anointing, Newman takes the real motive for Judas's objection: "He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it." (12:6)
Newman does not comment on Jesus's response to this remonstrance:
And Jesus knowing it, said to them: Why do you trouble this woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For the poor you have always with you: but me you have not always. For she in pouring this ointment upon my body, hath done it for my burial. Amen I say to you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which she hath done, shall be told for a memory of her. (Matthew 26:10-13)
He turns instead to Judas's actions (Then went one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, to the chief priests, and said to them: What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you? But they appointed him thirty pieces of silver. And from thenceforth he sought opportunity to betray him. Matthew 26:12-16):
3. Judas, having once shown what he was, lost no time in carrying out his malice. He went to the Chief Priests, and bargained with them to betray his Lord for a price. . . .
And Newman looks into the mind and heart of Jesus, True God and True Man, able to know what Judas was doing as he was doing it, and already feeling the betrayal before the traitor's kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane:
Our Lord saw all that took place within him; He saw Satan knocking at his heart, and admitted there and made an honoured and beloved guest and an intimate. He saw him go to the Priests and heard the conversation between them. He had seen it by His foreknowledge all the time he had been about Him, and when He chose him. What we know feebly as to be, affects us far more vividly and very differently when it actually takes place. Our Lord had at length felt, and suffered Himself to feel, the cruelty of the ingratitude of which He was the sport and victim. He had treated Judas as one of His most familiar friends. He had shown marks of the closest intimacy; He had made {306} him the purse-keeper of Himself and His followers. He had given him the power of working miracles. He had admitted him to a knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. He had sent him out to preach and made him one of His own special representatives, so that the Master was judged of by the conduct of His servant. . . .
Then Newman looks at himself and prays for faith and faithfulness:
O my God, how can I look Thee in the face when I think of my ingratitude, so deeply seated, so habitual, so immovable—or rather so awfully increasing! Thou loadest me day by day with Thy favours, and feedest me with Thyself, as Thou didst Judas, yet I not only do not profit thereby, but I do not even make any acknowledgment at the time. Lord, how long? when shall I be free from this real, this fatal captivity? He who made Judas his prey, has got foothold of me in my old age, and I cannot get loose. It is the same day after day. When wilt Thou give me a still greater grace than Thou hast given, the grace to profit by the graces which Thou givest? When wilt Thou give me Thy effectual grace which alone can give life and vigour to this effete, miserable, dying soul of mine? My God, I know not in what sense I can pain Thee in Thy glorified state; but I know that every fresh sin, every fresh ingratitude I now commit, was among the blows and stripes which once fell on Thee in Thy passion. O let me have as little share in those Thy past sufferings as possible. Day by day goes, and I find I have been more and more, by the new sins of each day, the cause of them. I know that at best I have a real {309} share in solido of them all, but still it is shocking to find myself having a greater and greater share. Let others wound Thee—let not me. Let not me have to think that Thou wouldest have had this or that pang of soul or body the less, except for me. O my God, I am so fast in prison that I cannot get out. O Mary, pray for me. O Philip, pray for me, though I do not deserve Thy pity.
So why this different tone and method in Newman's reflections on the Gospels? Because of the influence of St. Philip Neri, his patron as an Oratorian.
Father Henry Tristram of the Birmingham Oratory, who died in 1955, explained in "With Newman at Prayer" in John Henry Newman: Centenary Essays (London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, LTD, 1945):
St. Philip newmanized Newman by creating a spiritual atmosphere in which he found himself, and became what at heart he always was--the Newman of domestic tradition. It was his constant prayer that he should grow into the likeness of his holy Patron . . .
Father Tristram further explains that from St. Philip Neri, Newman drew his spiritual and devotional life as an Oratorian: frequent confessions, frequent communions, special devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, mental discipline, "obedience rather than sacrifice", an "interior religion," and "that illumination and freedom of spirit which comes of love." (p. 119) That helps explain the tenderness and humility of Newman's tone in these meditations as he sought to imitate his patron saint.
St. Philip Neri, pray for us!
St. John Henry Newman, pray for us!
Image Credit (Public Domain): Jesus's feet anointed by a sinner 1585 print by Ambrosius Francken I, S.I 1071, Prints Department, Royal Library of Belgium
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