Newman's Day: October 9, 1845

The Weekly Reflection on the website of the Birmingham Oratory is about Blessed John Henry Newman today, of course:

John Henry Newman referred to the day on which he became a Catholic, 9th October 1845, as simply, “my day”. . . .

By October 1845 the effects of grace upon his mind and heart had resolved all previous doubts and he asked Fr.Dominic Barberi to receive him into the Church Christ founded, the one true fold of the Redeemer.

Blessed John Henry Newman’s long pilgrimage exemplifies to a heroic degree both spiritual persistence and spiritual docility. He actively quested, and he also let himself be led.

It was the tenacity and sobriety of his unremitting quest for God’s truth that made him great and which underpinned the heroicity of all his other virtues.

Please pray with us that our belovèd Cardinal may soon be raised to the altars. Then he will truly belong to everyone throughout the universal Church, and his holiness and wisdom will shine forth even more brightly, for the good of all.

He did struggle with his previous prejudices against Catholic doctrine, his lack of contact of any Catholics and experience with Catholic worship, and his comfortable positions as Vicar and Fellow in Oxford. He knew all that he stood to lose and was still exploring what he stood to gain. (Loss and Gain!) Soon after his conversion on October 9, 1845, sustained by the Sacraments, he began to see what he had gained in the same way that St. Paul had, and did not repine for what he'd lost: 

Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ. (PHILIPPIANS 3:8)

Once in the "one, true fold of Christ" he was happy and never looked back.

Please check my blog on the National Catholic Register website for a reflection on how my knowledge of Blessed John Henry Newman as an academic subject has changed instead to devotion and prayer. Also today, please check Aleteia for my discussion of what Blessed John Henry Newman and St. Teresa of Calcutta have in common. I'll update this post later today when the stories are published online.

Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us!

UPDATED: Here's the link to the National Catholic Register post; here's the link to the Aleteia post!

Frances Chesterton @ Aleteia

Head over to Aleteia.org to see my guest blog post on Frances Chesterton, G.K.'s wife. I used the adage "Behind every great man is a great woman" to demonstrate instead how Frances was sometimes beside her husband, sometimes ahead of him and sometimes behind him:

If Frances Chesterton had been behind her husband, we would never have seen her. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a giant of a man in stature and personality. Instead, Frances stood beside him and even sometimes in front of him and thus we seen both her and her influence on him, especially through the efforts of Nancy Carpentier Brown in her 2015 biography, The Woman Who Was Chesterton. . . .

Frances and G.K. Chesterton met in 1896 at a literary debating society. His immediate admiration and growing love for Frances meant that she led him to greater faith in Jesus Christ and attendance at Church of England services. In 1911 Chesterton dedicated his epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse to her: “Therefore I bring these rhymes to you/Who brought the cross to me.” He would return the favor 26 years later when he became a Catholic in 1922 and led her to join him four years later.

They were engaged in 1898 and married on June 28, 1901. Frances stood beside Chesterton in his professional work but also led him to a healthier lifestyle as they moved away from London and the pubs to live in the country. They wanted to have a house full of children—hoping for “seven beautiful children”—but bore the crosses of infertility and ill health.

Please read the rest there! IF you like it, please share it and comment on it so the team at Aleteia might ask me to write for them again! Thank you.