Preview: Benson on "Our Friend Vindicated" and Saint Mary Magdalene

As we pick up our series on Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ on the Son Rise Morning Show during the Easter Season, we'll explore how Benson explores the Resurrection encounter of Saint Mary Magdalene and Our Savior, Our Friend Vindicated.

Benson begins with a brief consideration of what this vindication meant to Saint Mary Magdalene--whom he considers as being the woman who washed Christ's feet at the Pharisee's banquet in Luke 7:36-50 and the woman who stood at the foot of the Cross with Our Lady and Saint John--she is the special friend reunited with her Absolver, King, and Friend:

Our affair to-day is not with the putting of Christ's enemies under His feet, but with the restoring of Christ to His friends' arms; with the vindication of Christ as our Divine Friend in whom we trusted and have not been disappointed; not with His final forcible manifestation to the world. . . .

Let us watch that process, then, through the eyes of the humblest of His friends -- one who was far from possessing the serene clear-sightedness of Mary His mother, or the desperately quiet confidence of the disciple whom He loved -- but one who at least had to her credit, in spite of her sins against the Interior Voice and even against the decency of the world, that she "loved much," and "did what she could" -- two simple virtues to which even the lowest of His lovers can aspire.

So, first, Benson relates the story of the penitent public sinner, doing more than the host to welcome Jesus:

A silence falls as, unconscious of all except herself and Him, she droops her head so low that the tears drip on to His feet; and as, shocked at her own defilement of those sacred feet, she first wipes them frantically with her long hair, and then, as if to compensate for the touch of her tears, wrenches open the pot of perfume and dashes out the nard -- the world's whispering begins, up there in the places of honour.

Jesus lifts His Head; and then, in a sentence or two, all is done.

"Thou seest this woman . . . She at least has done what thou, my host, didst leave undone . . . She loved much. She loved much . . . And therefore her sins are forgiven. Go, my daughter, and my friend. Sin no more."

Then, Benson envisions her going to see Jesus on the way to Calvary and at the Cross:

Then she has followed Him again, through the streets, out through the gate, and up the little steep ascent. And, at last, when all is done, and He hangs there, stripped and shamed and tormented, and the soldiers have broken the line and fallen out into the crowd, she has pushed her way through, fought even to the foot of the quivering tree, and once more has "done what she could" . . . Once more she has washed those feet with her tears; and there, running down together on to the ground, there has flowed a sweeter stream than any that waters Paradise -- the tears of the pardoned sinner and the Blood of the Saviour. . . .

Surely at last that Power will vindicate itself, even at the eleventh hour; and the nails will burst into gems and the cross into flower, and He, her Friend, radiant again, will come down from His throne to receive a world's adoration! Is it possible that she herself, standing there, looking to Mary and John for encouragement, and then back again at Himself, whispered in her agony, "Since Thou art the Christ, save Thyself -- and me?"

. . . "And Jesus cried with a loud voice and gave up the ghost. . . ."

At last, describes her encounter with the Angels and the Risen Christ, her Friend:

As she throws herself forward, speechless with love and desire, to grasp His Feet -- to assure herself even by touch that it is these same feet indeed which she kissed in the Pharisee's house, and on the Cross of Calvary -- that it is Himself, and no phantom -- He moves back from her.

"Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father. Do not touch me." . . . That Friendship is not what it used to be: it is infinitely higher. It is not what it used to be, since the limitations of that Sacred Humanity are gone -- those limitations by which It was here and not there; by which It could suffer and grow weary and hunger and weep -- limitations that endeared It to Its lovers, since they could indeed minister to It, comfort It, and hold It up. And Its expansion in Glory is not yet consummated -- "I am not yet ascended to my Father" -- that expansion of the Ascension and the Nine Days' Journey through the Heavenly Hierarchy, from the position "a little lower than the angels" to the Session and Coronation at the right Hand of the Majesty on high -- that expansion of which the Descent of the Holy Ghost is the expression, and the Sacramental Presence of that same Humanity on a hundred altars the result.

After this imaginative narration of Saint Mary Magdalene's encounters with Our Friend Jesus, Benson applies these lessons to us--but that will have to wait for another discussion on Monday, April 20!

Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for us!

Christ Is Risen; He is Risen Indeed! West and East Rejoice!

Image Sources (Public Domain): Christ's Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection (1835) by Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov; Jules Joseph Lefebvre - El Dolor de María Magdalena; Giotto di Bondone - Scenes from the Life of Mary Magdalene - Noli me tangere

This Morning: "Mysteries in Religion" and the Ascension

As promised, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show with Anna Mitchell at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to talk about a PPS (Parochial and Plain Sermon) St. John Henry Newman preached on Ascension Thursday, "Mysteries in Religion".

Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here.

This will be the last episode in our series of Lenten and Easter encounters with Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons on the Son Rise Morning Show. We began with Lenten reflections from a collection of sermons, mostly from his Anglican years, but a few Catholic sermons, using The Tears of Christ, edited by Christopher O. Blum of the Augustine Institute, and then we continued with selections from The Newman Reader after Easter Sunday. Although most of us won't be celebrating the Solemnity of the Ascension on Thursday, 40 days after Easter, at a Mass of Obligation, it's appropriate to conclude with this sermon.

At the end of this sermon, Newman brings up the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, based upon the Book of the Revelation of John (Revelation 6:10, 11:17-18, and 15:3-4). He has commented on the expediency of our friends and family dying and going on to Heaven to pray for us and to do God's will and continues:

Yea, doubtless, they are keeping up the perpetual chant in the shrine above, praying and praising God day and night in His Temple, like Moses upon the Mount, while Joshua and his host fight with Amalek. Can they be allotted greater blessedness, than to have a station after the pattern of that Saviour who has departed hence? Has He no power in the world's movements because He is away? And though He is the Living and exalted Lord of all, and the government is on His shoulder, and they are but His servants, without strength of themselves, laid up moreover apart from the conflict of good and evil in the paradise of God, yet so much light as this is given us by the inspired pages of the Apocalypse, that they are interested in the fortunes of the Church.

And then he concludes by bringing back the theme of mystery, especially the mystery of our cooperation in God's plan for us and our world:

What has been now said about the Ascension of our Lord comes to this; that we are in a world of mystery, with one bright Light before us, sufficient for our proceeding forward through all difficulties. Take away this Light, and we are utterly wretched,—we know not where we are, how we are sustained, what will become of us, and of all that is dear to us, what we are to believe, and why we are in being. But with it we have all and abound. Not to mention the duty and wisdom of implicit faith in the love of Him who made and redeemed us, what is nobler, what is more elevating and transporting, than the generosity of heart which risks everything on God's word, dares the powers of evil to their worst efforts, and repels the illusions of sense and the artifices of reason, by confidence in the Truth of Him who has ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high? What infinite mercy it is in Him, that He allows sinners such as we are, the privilege of acting the part of heroes rather than of penitents?

With an echo of his sermon we talked about last week, "The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church", Newman concludes not by telling this congregation what they should do but what he and they will do:

We will not wish for sight; we will enjoy our privilege; we will triumph in the leave given us to go forward, "not knowing whither we go," knowing that "this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." [1 John v. 4.] It is enough that our Redeemer liveth; that He has been on earth and will come again. On Him we venture our all; we can bear thankfully to put ourselves into His hands, our interests present and eternal, and the interests of all we love. Christ has died, "yea rather is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from His love? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us." [Rom. viii. 34-37.]

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image credit: Ascension (1775) by John Singleton Copley, colonial era portraitist and historical painter.

Preview: Newman on the Mystery of the Ascension

Anna Mitchell and I will talk about "Mysteries in Religion", an Ascension Thursday sermon by St. John Henry Newman on Monday, May 18 on the Son Rise Morning Show about 7:50 am. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central.

This sermon is from volume 2 of his Parochial and Plain Sermons. He begins the sermon with the verse "It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, Who is even at the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us." Rom. viii. 34.

Unlike the sermon we talked about on Monday this week, "The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church" Newman does not mention the mixture of joy and sorrow the Apostles or even we might feel ("Thus Christ's going to the Father is at once a source of sorrow, because it involves His absence; and of joy, because it involves His presence.")--this sermon is all about the wonder, awe, and thankfulness we should feel:

THE Ascension of our Lord and Saviour is an event ever to be commemorated with joy and thanksgiving, for St. Paul tells us in the text that He ascended to the right hand of God, and there makes intercession for us. Hence it is our comfort to know, that "if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins." [1 John ii. 1, 2.] . . .

Wonder and awe must always mingle with the thankfulness which the revealed dispensation of mercy raises in our minds. And this, indeed, is an additional cause of thankfulness, that Almighty God has disclosed to us enough of His high Providence to raise such sacred and reverent feelings. Had He merely told us that He had pardoned us, we should have had overabundant cause for blessing and praising Him; but in showing us somewhat of the means, in vouchsafing to tell what cannot wholly be told, in condescending to abase heavenly things to the weak and stammering tongues of earth, He has enlarged our gratitude, yet sobered it with fear. We are allowed with the Angels to obtain a glimpse of the mysteries of Heaven, "to rejoice with trembling." Therefore, so far from considering the Truths of the Gospel as a burden, because they are beyond our understanding, we shall rather welcome them and exult in them, nay, and feel an antecedent stirring of heart towards them, for the very reason that they are above us. Under these feelings I will attempt to suggest to you on the present Festival some of the incentives to wonder and awe, humility, implicit faith, and adoration, supplied by the Ascension of Christ.

The first great mystery we should reflect upon is that Christ's ascension to the Father "is a sure token that heaven is a certain fixed place, and not a mere state." Heaven is real:

That bodily presence of the Saviour which the Apostles handled is not here; it is elsewhere,—it is in heaven. This contradicts the notions of cultivated and speculative minds, and humbles the reason. Philosophy considers it more rational to suppose that Almighty God, as being a Spirit, is in every place; and in no one place more than another. It would teach, if it dare, that heaven is a mere state of blessedness; but, to be consistent, it ought to go on to deny, with the ancient heretics, referred to by St. John, that "Jesus Christ is come in the flesh," and maintain that His presence on earth was a mere vision; for, certain it is, He who appeared on earth went up from the earth, and a cloud received Him out of His Apostles' sight. And here again an additional difficulty occurs, on minutely considering the subject. Whither did He go? beyond the sun? beyond the fixed stars? Did He traverse the immeasurable space which extends beyond them all? Again, what is meant by ascending? Philosophers will say there is no difference between down and up, as regards the sky; yet, whatever difficulties the word may occasion, we can hardly take upon us to decide that it is a mere popular expression, consistently with the reverence due to the Sacred Record.

Newman admits that there seems to be a contradiction between the Biblical view of the world and the philosophical or scientific view of the solar system and the universe, but he admonishes that the latter is too limited to explain the reality of Heaven, the mystery of Christ's Ascension--or of His return:

I will but remind you on this part of the subject, that our Lord is to come from heaven "in like manner" as He went; that He is to come "in clouds," that "every eye shall see Him," and "all tribes of the earth wail because of Him." Attempt to solve this prediction, according to the received theories of science, and you will discover their shallowness. They are unequal to the depth of the problem.

Newman then cites the description of Jesus as the Great High Priest in The Letter to the Hebrews:

Christ, we are told, has gone up on high "to present Himself before the face of God for us." He has "entered by His own blood once for all into the Holy Place, having effected eternal redemption." "He ever liveth to make intercession for those who come unto God by Him; He hath a priesthood which will not pass from Him." "We have such an High Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a Minister of the Sanctuary, and of the true Tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man." [Heb. ix. 12, 24, 25; vii. 24, 25; viii. 1, 2.]

He proposes that we cannot completely understand how Christ intercedes for us in heaven; what He does for us in heaven; how He fulfills the office of High Priest--but we believe and know that He does:

We are not given to see into the secret shrine in which God dwells. Before Him stand the Seraphim, veiling their faces. Christ is within the veil. We must not search curiously what is His present office, what is meant by His pleading His sacrifice, and by His perpetual intercession for us. And, since we do not know, we will studiously keep to the figure given us in Scripture: we will not attempt to interpret it, or change the wording of it, being wise above what is written. We will not neglect it, because we do not understand it. We will hold it as a Mystery, or (what was anciently called) a Truth Sacramental; that is, a high invisible grace lodged in an outward form, a precious possession to be piously and thankfully guarded for the sake of the heavenly reality contained in it. Thus much we see in it, the pledge of a doctrine which reason cannot understand, viz. of the influence of the prayer of faith upon the Divine counsels. The Intercessor directs or stays the hand of the Unchangeable and Sovereign Governor of the World; being at once the meritorious cause and the earnest of the intercessory power of His brethren. "Christ rose again for our justification," "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much," are both infinite mercies, and deep mysteries.

Finally, Newman quotes the words of Jesus that "It is expedient for you that I go away . . ." (John 16:7) and makes a remarkable connection between Jesus' Ascension and the death of our loved ones--that their absence from us on earth, like His, is part of God's divine plan:

This is a thought which is particularly soothing as regards the loss of friends; or of especially gifted men, who seem in their day the earthly support of the Church. For what we know, their removal hence is as necessary for the furtherance of the very objects we have at heart, as was the departure of our Saviour. . . .

. . . yet, it may be, that Saints departed intercede, unknown to us, for the victory of the Truth upon earth; and their prayers above may be as really indispensable conditions of that victory, as the labours of those who remain among us. They are taken away for some purpose surely: their gifts are not lost to us; their soaring minds, the fire of their contemplations, the sanctity of their desires, the vigour of their faith, the sweetness and gentleness of their affections, were not given without an object.

I'll post some excerpts from his conclusion on Monday.

Image Credit: the Ascension by Rembrandt (1636)

This Morning: "The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church"

As promised, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show with Matt Swaim at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to talk about a PPS (Parochial and Plain Sermon) St. John Henry Newman preached during the Easter Season, "The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church".

Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here.

At the end of my post on Friday, Newman had contrasted Jesus' appearances to St. Mary Magdalene and St. Thomas: He would not allow her to touch Him but He commanded St. Thomas not only to touch Him but to probe His wounds:

Or again: consider the account of His appearing to St. Mary Magdalene. While she stood at the sepulchre weeping He appeared, but she knew Him not. When He revealed Himself, He did not, indeed, at once vanish away, but He would not let her touch Him; as if, in another way, to show that His presence in His new kingdom was not to be one of sense. The two disciples were not allowed to see Him after recognizing Him, St. Mary Magdalene was not allowed to touch Him. But afterwards, St. Thomas was allowed both to see and touch; he had the full evidence of sense: but observe what our Lord says to him, "Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 

And he concludes:

Faith is better than sight or touch.

Not that we're left with only faith to guide us to the Truth about the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Presence of Jesus in His Church, but Jesus has given us the better guide to that Truth: Faith. 

At this point in his life, Newman might have been thinking of Faith--as Reinhard Hutter explains in Chapter 2 ("Faith and Its Counterfeits") in Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits--as "a higher reason and a gifted inference", and therefore a human act of will. But as a Catholic, through studying St. Thomas Aquinas and several Counter-Reformation Thomists, Newman would understand this Faith as Divine, supernatural Faith, one of the theological virtues infused in us at Baptism, by which we believe what God has revealed--a virtue, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, above our nature.

Nevertheless, in 1838 Newman is sure that he can teach and describe what God has revealed about Christ's Presence in His Church and summarizes those teachings for his congregation, while alluding to some of the mysteries we cannot understand but accept by Faith:

Let so much suffice, by way of suggesting thoughts upon this most Solemn and elevating subject. Christ has promised He will be with us to the end,—with us, not only as He is in the unity of the Father and the Son, not in the Omnipresence of the Divine Nature, but personally, as the Christ, as God and man; not present with us locally and sensibly, but still really, in our hearts and to our faith. And it is by the Holy Ghost that this gracious communion is effected. How He effects it we know not; in what precisely it consists we know not. We see Him not; but we are to believe that we possess Him,—that we have been brought under the virtue of His healing hand, of His life-giving breath, of the manna flowing from His lips, and of the blood issuing from His side. 

Newman asserts that we may not understand it all now, but we'll know we've experienced it later (like the disciples on the road to Emmaus and back to Jerusalem). And there's a hint that this knowledge was infused by the virtue of Faith we didn't even know we had, that raises us above our human nature partly through our persistence and obedience but mostly because God is with us:

And hereafter, on looking back, we shall be conscious that we have been thus favoured. Such is the Day of the Lord in which we find ourselves, as if in fulfilment of the words of the prophet, "The Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with Thee. And it shall come to pass in that Day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark: but it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light." [Zech. xiv. 5-7.] Nay, even before the end comes, Christians, on looking back on years past, will feel, at least in a degree, that Christ has been with them, though they knew it not, only believed it, at the time. They will even recollect then the burning of their hearts. Nay, though they seemed not even to believe any thing at the time, yet afterwards, if they have come to Him in sincerity, they will experience a sort of heavenly fragrance and savour of immortality, when they least expect it, rising upon their minds, as if in token that God has been with them, and investing all that has taken place, which before seemed to them but earthly, with beams of glory. 

He further instructs them that they will know these truths through the Church (by this time Newman was asserting that the Church of England was a branch of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church of the Nicene Creed) because Jesus is present with His Church:

And this is true, in one sense, of all the rites and ordinances of the Church, of all providences that happen to us; that, on looking back on them, though they seemed without meaning at the time, elicited no strong feeling, or were even painful and distasteful, yet if we come to them and submit to them in faith, they are afterwards transfigured, and we feel that it has been good for us to be there; and we have a testimony, as a reward of our obedience, that Christ has fulfilled His promise, and, as He said, is here through the Spirit, though He be with the Father.

And thus he concludes:

May He enable us to make full trial of His bounty, and to obtain a full measure of blessing. "There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her and that right early ... Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." [Ps. xlvi. 4, 5, 10, 11.]

A sermon like this, preached a certain point in the development Newman's "religious opinions" as he called them in the Apologia pro Vita Sua, certainly demonstrates what Father Louis Bouyer of the Oratory said in the Ignatius Press one-volume edition of the Parochial and Plain Sermons:

These sermons are . . . the most lasting expression of Newman's own gradual discovery of all the fullness of the appeal and the challenge addressed to all men by Catholic truth and Catholic life, inseparable as they are within genuine Christianity. There, above all, he himself will be found, with his intellectual power, his poetical vision, as well as his moral and spiritual integrity. Nothing can constitute for us, still today, and maybe today more than ever, such a powerful introduction to what Christianity may give to and expect from our surrender to its call in the midst of a world no longer pretending to be Christian.

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Preview: "The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church"

On Monday, May 11, Matt Swaim, co-host of the Son Rise Morning Show, and I will discuss another Parochial and Plain Sermon by St. John Henry Newman for the Easter Season (at the usual time: about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central).

Since we are approaching the Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord, we've selected "The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church" from volume 6, sermon number 10, which Newman preached on May 6, 1838 (Easter had been on April 15 that year).

Inspired by the verse "A little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see Me, because I go to the Father" (from the Gospel according to John 16:16), Newman begins by contrasting two reactions to the departure of Jesus from the Apostles. In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus says that while the Bridegroom (He) is with the disciples, they cannot fast--but once He is taken away from them, they will fast. (Matthew 9:15). In the verses following the text cited from St. John, however, Jesus promises them joy even after He leaves them, and Newman says this explains a great paradox of Christianity:

Yet in the words following the text, spoken by Him when He was going away, He says; "I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." And He says shortly before it, "It is expedient for you that I go away." And again: "I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more: but ye see Me." Thus Christ's going to the Father is at once a source of sorrow, because it involves His absence; and of joy, because it involves His presence. And out of the doctrine of His resurrection and ascension, spring those Christian paradoxes, often spoken of in Scripture, that we are sorrowing, yet always rejoicing; as having nothing, yet possessing all things.

Newman continues by commenting on how we know Jesus today even though He is not physically, Incarnately, present on earth today:

This, indeed, is our state at present; we have lost Christ and we have found Him; we see Him not, yet we discern Him. We embrace His feet, yet He says, "Touch Me not." How is this? it is thus: we have lost the sensible and conscious perception of Him; we cannot look on Him, hear Him, converse with Him, follow Him from place to place; but we enjoy the spiritual, immaterial, inward, mental, real sight and possession of Him; a possession more real and more present than that which the Apostles had in the days of His flesh, because it is spiritual, because it is invisible. We know that the closer any object of this world comes to us, the less we can contemplate it and comprehend it. 

He clarifies that we know Christ in His Church, even more than the Apostles did when He walked the earth:

Christ has come so close to us in the Christian Church (if I may so speak), that we cannot gaze on Him or discern Him. He enters into us, He claims and takes possession of His purchased inheritance; He does not present Himself to us, but He takes us to Him. He makes us His members. Our faces are, as it were, turned from Him; we see Him not, and know not of His presence, except by faith, because He is over us and within us. And thus we may at the same time lament because we are not conscious of His presence, as the Apostles enjoyed it before His death; and may rejoice because we know we do possess it even more than they, according to the text, "whom having not seen (that is, with the bodily eyes) ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls." [1 Pet. i. 8, 9.]

As Newman continues, it is appropriate to consider this mystery during the Easter season, so he will "say some few words" (!).

He looks first at the promise cited often in Scripture of "a day of the Lord", stating that we are now in a certain Day of the Lord: the Day of the Church:

And another special day predicted and fulfilled, is that long season which precedes and prepares for the day of heaven, viz. the Day of the Christian Church, the Day of the gospel, the Day of grace. This is a day much spoken of in the Prophets, and it is the day of which our Saviour speaks in the passage before us. Observe how solemn, how high a day it is: this is His account of it, "I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice; your joy no man taketh from you. And in that Day ye shall ask Me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My Name, He will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name; ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full ... At that Day ye shall ask in my Name, and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again I leave the world, and go to the Father." The Day, then, that dawned upon the Church at the Resurrection, and beamed forth in full splendour at the Ascension, that Day which has no setting, which will be, not ended, but absorbed in Christ's glorious appearance from heaven to destroy sin and death; that Day in which we now are, is described in these words of Christ as a state of special Divine manifestation, of special introduction into the presence of God. . . . Thus we Christians stand in the courts of God Most High, and, in one sense, see His face; for He who once was on earth, has now departed from this visible scene of things in a mysterious, twofold way, both to His Father and into our hearts, thus making the Creator and His creatures one . . .

This is the mystery that Newman continues to unfold to his congregation, exploring as he does so Trinitarian and Christological doctrines. He describes how Christ is present to us now spiritually, but still in His Person, God and Man, as "the Incarnate Mediator":

First, that Christ really is with us now, whatever be the mode of it. This He says expressly Himself; "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." He even says, "Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them." [Matt. xxviii. 20; xviii. 20.] And in a passage already quoted more than once, "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." Christ's presence, then, is promised to us still, though He is on the right hand of the Father. You will say, "Yes; He is present as God." Nay, I answer; more than this, He is the Christ, and the Christ is promised, and Christ is man as well as God. This surely is plain even from the words of the text. He said He was going away. Did He go away as God or as man? "A little while, and ye shall not see Me;" this was on His death. He went away as man, He died as man; if, then, He promises to come again, surely He must mean that He would return as man, in the only sense, that is, in which He could return. As God He is ever present, never was otherwise than present, never went away; when His body died on the Cross and was buried, when His soul departed to the place of spirits, still He was with His disciples in His Divine ubiquity. The separation of soul and body could not touch His impassible everlasting Godhead. When then He says He should go away, and come again and abide for ever, He is speaking, not merely of His omnipresent Divine nature, but of His human nature. As being Christ, He says that He, the Incarnate Mediator, shall be with His Church for ever.

For those who say that the Holy Spirit is with us now, not really Jesus, Newman provides correction:

But again: you may be led to explain His declaration thus; "He has come again, but in His Spirit; that is, His Spirit has come instead of Him; and when it is said that He is with us, this only means that His Spirit is with us." No one, doubtless, can deny this most gracious and consolatory truth, that the Holy Ghost is come; but why has He come? to supply Christ's absence, or to accomplish His presence? Surely to make Him present. Let us not for a moment suppose that God the Holy Ghost comes in such sense that God the Son remains away. No; He has not so come that Christ does not come, but rather He comes that Christ may come in His coming. Through the Holy Ghost we have communion with Father and Son. "In Christ we are builded together," says St. Paul, "for an habitation of God through the Spirit." "Ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you." "Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." The Holy Spirit causes, faith welcomes, the indwelling of Christ in the heart. Thus the Spirit does not take the place of Christ in the soul, but secures that place to Christ.

And Newman explores other aspects of this mystery of how Jesus is present to us in the Church while not being present on earth.
  

In a particularly fascinating passage, Newman describes how the Jesus's Resurrection appearances to St. Mary Magdalen, the Apostles, the two disciples on the way to Emmaus were signs of how Jesus would be seen on earth after His Ascension: By Faith:

Now observe what was the nature of His presence in the Church after His Resurrection. It was this, that He came and went as He pleased; that material substances, such as the fastened doors, were no impediments to His coming; and that when He was present His disciples did not, as a matter of course, know Him. St. Mark says He appeared to the two disciples who were going into the country, to Emmaus, "in another form." St. Luke, who gives the account more at length, says, that while He talked with them their heart burned within them. And it is worth remarking, that the two disciples do not seem to have been conscious of this at the time, but on looking back, they recollected that as having been, which did not strike them while it was. . . . For so it was ordained, that Christ should not be both seen and known at once; first He was seen, then He was known. Only by faith is He known to be present; He is not recognized by sight. When He opened His disciples' eyes, He at once vanished. He removed His visible presence, and left but a memorial of Himself. He vanished from sight that He might be present in a sacrament; and in order to connect His visible presence with His presence invisible, He for one instant manifested Himself to their open eyes; manifested Himself, if I may so speak, while He passed from His hiding-place of sight without knowledge, to that of knowledge without sight.

Or again: consider the account of His appearing to St. Mary Magdalene. While she stood at the sepulchre weeping He appeared, but she knew Him not. When He revealed Himself, He did not, indeed, at once vanish away, but He would not let her touch Him; as if, in another way, to show that His presence in His new kingdom was not to be one of sense. The two disciples were not allowed to see Him after recognizing Him, St. Mary Magdalene was not allowed to touch Him. But afterwards, St. Thomas was allowed both to see and touch; he had the full evidence of sense: but observe what our Lord says to him, "Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." Faith is better than sight or touch.

As Newman concludes this sermon--which I'll post on Monday--he returns to the theme of the Day of the Lord, the Day of the Lord in His Church, the Day of the Lord we are living in today just as the congregation in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford heard it described to them 182 years ago.

This Morning: Loving Religion and Looking Forward to Heaven

As promised, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show with Anna Mitchell at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to talk about St. John Henry Newman's PPS (Parochial and Plain Sermon) for Easter Sunday 1838, "Love of Religion, A New Nature".

Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here.

Saint John Henry Newman, whom we may be assured is enjoying the splendors of heaven, concludes this sermon with some comments about the end result of believers' love of religion, comparing aspects of church services and prayers on earth to the worship of God in heaven:

That indeed will be a full reward of all our longings here, to praise and serve God eternally with a single and perfect heart in the midst of His Temple. What a time will that be, when all will be perfected in us which at present is but feebly begun! Then we shall see how the Angels worship God. We shall see the calmness, the intenseness, the purity, of their worship. We shall see that awful sight, the Throne of God, and the Seraphim before and around it, crying, "Holy!" We attempt now to imitate in church what there is performed, as in the beginning, and ever shall be. In the Te Deum, day by day we say, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth." In the Creed, we recount God's mercies to us sinners. And we say and sing Psalms and Hymns, to come as near heaven as we can. May these attempts of ours be blest by Almighty God, to prepare us for Him! may they be, not dead forms, but living services, living with life from God the Holy Ghost, in those who are dead to sin and who live with Christ! . . .

He reiterates the purpose of the liturgical seasons of Lent and Easter in the Christian life. Newman emphasizes that our religious worship in church here on earth is a preparation for heaven. 

(In another PPS, "Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness", Newman made the connection between religion on earth and glory in heaven clear: “Heaven, then, is not like this world; I will say what it is much more like — a church. For in a place of public worship … we hear solely and entirely of God. We praise Him, worship Him, sing to Him, thank Him, confess to Him, give ourselves up to Him, and ask His blessing. And therefore, a church is like heaven; viz. [namely] because both in the one and the other, there is one single sovereign subject — religion — brought before us.”)

Make use, then, of this Holy Easter Season, which lasts forty to fifty days, to become more like Him who died for you, and who now liveth for evermore. He promises us, "Because I live, ye shall live also." He, by dying on the Cross, opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. He first died, and then He opened heaven. We, therefore, first commemorate His death, and then, for some weeks in succession, we commemorate and show forth the joys of heaven. They who do not rejoice in the weeks after Easter, would not rejoice in heaven itself. These weeks are a sort of beginning of heaven. Pray God to enable you to rejoice; to enable you to keep the Feast duly. Pray God to make you better Christians. 

He also brings up an image anyone who has read his Apologia pro Vita Sua will recognize: this world as a dream ("… I 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.").

Perhaps he exaggerates, but he is pressing a point, that heaven, not earth, is our true home:

This world is a dream,—you will get no good from it. Perhaps you find this difficult to believe; but be sure so it is. Depend upon it, at the last, you will confess it. Young people expect good from the world, and people of middle age devote themselves to it, and even old people do not like to give it up. But the world is your enemy, and the flesh is your enemy. [Not to mention the Devil!]

Finally, Newman exhorts them:

Come to God, and beg of Him grace to devote yourselves to Him. Beg of Him the will to follow Him; beg of Him the power to obey Him. O how comfortable, pleasant, sweet, soothing, and satisfying is it to lead a holy life,—the life of Angels! It is difficult at first; but with God's grace, all things are possible. O how pleasant to have done with sin! how good and joyful to flee temptation and to resist evil! how meet, and worthy, and fitting, and right, to die unto sin, and to live unto righteousness!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

All Holy Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us!

Preview: "Love of Religion, a New Nature"

Anna Mitchell and I will talk about this Easter season sermon, "Love of Religion, a New Nature", by St. John Henry Newman on Monday, May 4 on the Son Rise Morning Show about 7:50 am. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central.

This sermon is from volume 7 of Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons and he offered it on Sunday, May 3, 1840 (Easter was on April 19 that year). So we're just one day late celebrating this sermon's 180th anniversary.

Newman begins this sermon inspired by a verse from St. Paul: "If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him." Romans vi. 8, contrasting death and sin with life and love of God:

TO be dead with Christ, is to hate and turn from sin; and to live with Him, is to have our hearts and minds turned towards God and Heaven. To be dead to sin, is to feel a disgust at it. We know what is meant by disgust. 

He offers some ordinary human examples:

Take, for instance, the case of a sick man, when food of a certain kind is presented to him,—and there is no doubt what is meant by disgust. Consider how certain scents, which are too sweet or too strong, or certain tastes, affect certain persons under certain circumstances, or always,—and you will be at no loss to determine what is meant by disgust at sin, or deadness to sin. On the other hand, consider how pleasant a meal is to the hungry, or some enlivening odour to the faint; how refreshing the air is to the languid, or the brook to the weary and thirsty;—and you will understand the sort of feeling which is implied in being alive with Christ, alive to religion, alive to the thought of heaven. Our animal powers cannot exist in all atmospheres; certain airs are poisonous, others life-giving. 

And then he applies the same rules to the spiritual life:

So is it with spirits and souls: an unrenewed spirit could not live in heaven, he would die; an Angel could not live in hell. The natural man cannot live in heavenly company, and the angelic soul would pine and waste away in the company of sinners, unless God's sacred presence were continued to it. To be dead to sin, is to be so minded, that the atmosphere of sin (if I may so speak) oppresses, distresses, and stifles us,—that it is painful and unnatural to us to remain in it. To be alive with Christ, is to be so minded, that the atmosphere of heaven refreshes, enlivens, stimulates, invigorates us. To be alive, is not merely to bear the thought of religion, to assent to the truth of religion, to wish to be religious; but to be drawn towards it, to love it, to delight in it, to obey it. 

At the end of that first paragraph, Newman sets up the practical implications of these truths:

Now I suppose most persons called Christians do not go farther than this,—to wish to be religious, and to think it right to be religious, and to feel a respect for religious men; they do not get so far as to have any sort of love for religion.

He then begins an almost dizzying array of generic examples of how we can see this lived out: Newman describes willful sinners, repentant sinners, irreligious sinners, religious sinners, hypocritical sinners, young and old sinners, self-aware sinners, angry sinners--all kinds of sinners who share one thing: they are unhappy. (They may enjoy pleasures, but they are not happy.)

What is the antidote to their unhappiness? Being religious; being a true Christian who wants to be sinless and religious:

He is not a Christian who is one outwardly, who merely comes to church, and professes to desire to be saved by Christ. It is very right that he should do so, but it is not enough. He is not a Christian who merely has not cast off religion; but he is the true Christian, who, while he is a Christian outwardly, is one inwardly also; who lives to God; whose secret life is hid with Christ in God; whose heart is religious; who not only knows and feels that a religious life is true happiness, but loves religion, wishes, tries, prays to be religious, begs God Almighty to give him the will and the power to be religious; and, as time goes on, grows more and more religious, more fit for heaven.

Newman reminds us that we don't stand a chance on our own:

We can do nothing right, unless God gives us the will and the power; we cannot please Him without the aid of His Holy Spirit. If any one does not deeply feel this as a first truth in religion, he is preparing for himself a dreadful fall. He will attempt, and he will fail signally, utterly. His own miserable experience will make him sure of it, if he will not believe it, as Scripture declares it. 

And he also warns us that we can't use that as an excuse:

But it is not unlikely that some persons, perhaps some who now hear me, may fall into an opposite mistake. They may attempt to excuse their lukewarmness and sinfulness, on the plea that God does not inwardly move them; and they may argue that those holy men whom they so much admire, those saints who are to sit on Christ's right and left, are of different nature from themselves, sanctified from their mother's womb, visited, guarded, renewed, strengthened, enlightened in a peculiar way, so as to make it no wonder that they are saints, and no fault that they themselves are not. But this is not so; let us not thus miserably deceive ourselves.

He describes how saints are made not born and how even saints are tempted to sin:

This is a point which must be insisted on for the encouragement of the fearful, the confutation of the hypocritical, and the abasement of the holy. In this world, even the best of men, though they are dead to sin, and have put sin to death, yet have that dead and corrupt thing within them, though they live to God; they have still an enemy of God remaining in their hearts, though they keep it in subjection. . . . A holy man is by nature subject to sin equally with others; but he is holy because he subdues, tramples on, chains up, imprisons, puts out of the way this law of sin, and is ruled by religious and spiritual motives. . . . Even those then who in the end turn out to be saints and attain to life eternal, yet are not born saints, but have with God's regenerating and renewing grace to make themselves saints. It is nothing but the Cross of Christ, without us and within us, which changes any one of us from being (as I may say) a devil, into an Angel. We are all by birth children of wrath. We are at best like good olive trees, which have become good by being grafted on a good tree. By nature we are like wild trees, bearing sour and bitter fruit, and so we should remain, were we not grafted upon Christ, the good olive tree, made members of Christ, the righteous and holy and well-beloved Son of God. Hence it is that there is such a change in a saint of God from what he was at the first.

This is Newman's way of saying that every sinner has a future and every saint has a past, although he doesn't want us to think every saint had a past like St. Augustine's or St. Paul's:

And so now many an aged saint, who has good hope of heaven, may recollect things of himself when young, which fill him with dismay. I do not speak as if God's saints led vicious and immoral lives when young; but I mean that their lower and evil nature was not subdued, and perhaps from time to time broke out and betrayed them into deeds and words so very different from what is seen in them at present, that did their friends know of them what they themselves know, they would not think them the same persons, and would be quite overpowered with astonishment. We never can guess what a man is by nature, by seeing what self-discipline has made him. Yet if we do become thereby changed and prepared for heaven, it is no praise or merit to us. It is God's doing—glory be to Him, who has wrought so wonderfully with us! 

He concludes that paragraph with an interesting image of "a heaven upon earth" gained by sinless saints:

Yet in this life, even to the end, there will be enough evil in us to humble us; even to the end, the holiest men have remains and stains of sin which they would fain get rid of, if they could, and which keep this life from being to them, for all God's grace, a heaven upon earth.

There is no heaven on earth:

No, the Christian life is but a shadow of heaven. Its festal and holy days are but shadows of eternity. But hereafter it will be otherwise. In heaven, sin will be utterly destroyed in every elect soul. We shall have no earthly wishes, no tendencies to disobedience or irreligion, no love of the world or the flesh, to draw us off from supreme devotion to God. We shall have our Saviour's holiness fulfilled in us, and be able to love God without drawback or infirmity.

More about Heaven and the Easter Season on Monday!

Happy Feast of St. Joseph the Worker!

This Morning: "Keeping Fast and Festival" (Turn, Turn, Turn)

As promised, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show with Matt Swaim at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to talk about St. John Henry Newman's PPS (Parochial and Plain Sermon) for Easter Sunday 1838, "Keeping Fast and Festival".

Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here.

After reading and discussing eight of Newman's Anglican sermons, I think we can see his homiletic and rhetorical pattern. He always begins with a line from scripture as his inspiration for the topic he has chosen to present but he goes well beyond a simple exegesis of that quotation. For instance, in today's sermon, he chose the same line Pete Seeger/The Byrds chose: "A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance." Eccles. iii. 4. Instead of offering an explanation of the rest of that biblical passage, Newman goes on to explain what it means to Christians in the context of Easter celebrations.

He notes how the celebrations of Christmas and Easter are different--not so much liturgically but emotionally--Christmas is a warm, simple, family festive time, with many traditions, particular and universal. Easter is a deeper, richer, and even subdued celebration because the Resurrection comes after Good Friday. Good Friday and all that Jesus suffered that day are still on our minds even as we read the Gospel passages describing how St. Mary Magdalen and the Apostles discovered that Jesus had risen from the dead: slowly, tentatively, and finally, joyfully. 

Then Newman explores the meaning of King Solomon's admonition to either fast (weep and mourn) or feast (laugh and dance) at the right times and in the right order. He condemns the way that the World and even some Christians fail to observe this order and deplores what it means for their celebration of Easter and the Resurrection: it will be superficial and lacking true religious feeling or there will be no religious feeling at all (no thought of Heaven or the life to come).

Continuing this explication of Fasting in Lent and Feasting in Easter, Newman explains how even in feasting, the Christian spirit is different than the World's: it is more subdued. And Newman states that it is right that it is:

This too must be said concerning the connexion of Fasts and Feasts in our religious service, viz., that that sobriety in feasting which previous fasting causes, is itself much to be prized, and especially worth securing. For in this does Christian mirth differ from worldly, that it is subdued; and how shall it be subdued except that the past keeps its hold upon us, and while it warns and sobers us, actually indisposes and tames our flesh against indulgence?

Then Newman explores the events of the Day of Resurrection and all the witnesses of Christ's Resurrection, holding St. Mary Magdalen, the Apostles, and the Blessed Virgin, holding them all up as models for our own response to that great day and the days that followed.

Finally, he delivers his exhortation to his congregation: how to live out this pattern of Easter Feasting after Lenten Fasting through their daily duties.

He exhorts them to find a balance between this world and the next, reconciling what seem to be opposites:

May we partake in such calm and heavenly joy; and, while we pray for it, recollecting the while that we are still on earth, and our duties in this world, let us never forget that, while our love must be silent, our faith must be vigorous and lively. Let us never forget that in proportion as our love is "rooted and grounded" in the next world, our faith must branch forth like a fruitful tree into this. The calmer our hearts, the more active be our lives; the more tranquil we are, the more busy; the more resigned, the more zealous; the more unruffled, the more fervent.

Newman reminds them that Christ has triumphed over sin and death so that they may also:

There is nothing impossible to us now, if we do but enter into the fulness of our privileges, the wondrous power of our gifts. The thing cannot be named in heaven or earth within the limits of truth and obedience which we cannot do through Christ; the petition cannot be named which may not be accorded to us for His Name's sake. For, we who have risen with Him from the grave, stand in His might, and are allowed to use His weapons. His infinite influence with the Father is ours,—not always to use, for perhaps in this or that effort we make, or petition we prefer, it would not be good for us; but so far ours, so fully ours, that when we ask and do things according to His will, we are really possessed of a power with God, and do prevail . . . so let us believe with full persuasion that all that He has bequeathed to us has power from Him. 

(In this paragraph, Newman also explores the seeming contradiction between what Christ has done--and what the Christian can do because of it--and how all this greatness comes from small beginnings and a means of salvation and redemption no one would ever expect.)

Even as he urges them to follow Jesus as obedient disciples, Newman reminds them of the realities of suffering, torture, mockery, salvation, and triumph, demonstrating again the connections between Fasting and Feasting, even in the Easter Season: 

Let us accept His Ordinances, and His Creed, and His precepts; and let us stand upright with an undaunted faith, resolute, with faces like flint, to serve Him in and through them; to inflict them upon the world without misgiving, without wavering, without anxiety; being sure that He who saved us from hell through a Body of flesh which the world insulted, tortured, and triumphed over, much more can now apply the benefits of His passion through Ordinances which the world has lacerated and now mocks.

His last words in this sermon once more balance opposites (rest and activity) as he describes the cycle of the Christian liturgical year as a reminder of all that God has done and does for us:

This then, my brethren, be our spirit on this day. God rested from His labours on the seventh day, yet He worketh evermore. Christ entered into His rest, yet He too ever works. We too, if it may be said, in adoring and lowly imitation of what is infinite, while we rest in Christ and rejoice in His shadow, let us too beware of sloth and cowardice, but serve Him with steadfast eyes yet active hands; that we may be truly His in our hearts, as we were made His by Baptism,—as we are made His continually, by the recurring celebration of His purifying Fasts and holy Feasts.

Thus Newman has maintained a tension between fasting and feasting, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, resting and acting, being strong and being weak, etc., throughout the sermon, even as he describes the lasting reality of things that happened long ago and yet happen now and happen every year and happen every day. 

Image Credit: Resurrection of Christ, Noël Coypel, 1700, using a hovering depiction of Jesus

Preview: "Keeping Fast and Festival" in the Easter Season

Or: weeping and laughing; mourning and dancing when the times are right! (Ecclesiastes 3:4)

On Monday, April 27, Matt Swaim, co-host of the Son Rise Morning Show, and I will discuss another Parochial and Plain Sermon by St. John Henry Newman for the Easter Season. It's another sermon he gave on an Easter Sunday, April 15, 1838, "Keeping Fast and Festival", published in Volume IV of his collected Anglican sermons.

Newman had been the Vicar of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford since 1828 and a leader of the Oxford Movement since 1833. In 1838 he became the editor of The British Critic, the High Church conservative journal that became, during his control, a vehicle for Tractarian Movement ideas. His influence was rising in the Church of England, but in a year he would begin to have doubts about the Via Media he had been trying to foster.

But on this Easter Sunday in 1838, Newman was rejoicing in the Resurrection of Christ and describing the special manner of that celebration to his congregation--comparing it, for instance, to how we celebrate Christmas:

AT Christmas we joy with the natural, unmixed joy of children, but at Easter our joy is highly wrought and refined in its character. It is not the spontaneous and inartificial outbreak which the news of Redemption might occasion, but it is thoughtful; it has a long history before it, and has run through a long course of feelings before it becomes what it is. It is a last feeling and not a first. St. Paul describes its nature and its formation, when he says, "Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope; and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." [Rom. v. 3-5.] And the prophet Isaiah, when he says, "They joy before Thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil." [Isa. ix. 3.] Or as it was fulfilled in the case of our Lord Himself, who, as being the Captain of our salvation, was made perfect through sufferings. Accordingly, Christmas Day is ushered in with a time of awful expectation only, but Easter Day with the long fast of Lent, and the rigours of the Holy Week just past: and it springs out and (as it were) is born of Good Friday.

On such a day, then, from the very intensity of joy which Christians ought to feel, and the trial which they have gone through, they will often be disposed to say little. Rather, like sick people convalescent, when the crisis is past, the illness over, but strength not yet come, they will go forth to the light of day and the freshness of the air, and silently sit down with great delight under the shadow of that Tree, whose fruit is sweet to their taste. They are disposed rather to muse and be at peace, than to use many words; for their joy has been so much the child of sorrow, is of so transmuted and complex a nature, so bound up with painful memories and sad associations, that though it is a joy only the greater from the contrast, it is not, cannot be, as if it had never been sorrow.

Having prepared with fasting, almsgiving, and prayer in Lent and having remembered Christ's Passion in Holy Week at least the Christian is ready to celebrate Easter, in contrast to the unbelieving world and even some nominal Christians:

And yet, though the long season of sorrow which ushers in this Blessed Day, in some sense sobers and quells the keenness of our enjoyment, yet without such preparatory season, let us be sure we shall not rejoice at all. None rejoice in Easter-tide less than those who have not grieved in Lent. This is what is seen in the world at large. To them, one season is the same as another, and they take no account of any. Feast-day and fast-day, holy tide and other tide, are one and the same to them. Hence they do not realize the next world at all. To them the Gospels are but like another history; a course of events which took place eighteen hundred years since. They do not make our Saviour's life and death present to them: they do not transport themselves back to the time of His sojourn on earth. They do not act over again, and celebrate His history, in their own observance; and the consequence is, that they feel no interest in it. They have neither faith nor love towards it; it has no hold on them. They do not form their estimate of things upon it; they do not hold it as a sort of practical principle in their heart. This is the case not only with the world at large, but too often with men who have the Name of Christ in their mouths. They think they believe in Him, yet when trial comes, or in the daily conduct of life, they are unable to act upon the principles which they profess: and why? because they have thought to dispense with the religious Ordinances, the course of Service, and the round of Sacred Seasons of the Church, and have considered it a simpler and more spiritual religion, not to act religiously except when called to it by extraordinary trial or temptation; because they have thought that, since it is the Christian's duty to rejoice evermore, they would rejoice better if they never sorrowed and never travailed with righteousness. On the contrary, let us be sure that, as previous humiliation sobers our joy, it alone secures it to us. Our Saviour says, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall he comforted;" and what is true hereafter, is true here. Unless we have mourned, in the weeks that are gone, we shall not rejoice in the season now commencing. It is often said, and truly, that providential affliction brings a man nearer to God. What is the observance of Holy Seasons but such a means of grace?

"Hence they do not realize the next world at all."--that's a line to meditate on. If we don't remember the events of our salvation, events that took place in time here on earth, we won't be fully aware of the life to come and want to gain it (both are meanings of the verb "to realize"). 

When people just treat the events of Christ's Passion, Death, and Resurrection as historical events--gone and past--they cannot enter into their liturgical meaning and celebration, their anamnesis, being present with us today.

Newman says what many of us observe in the world: we have it backwards most of the time:

In the world feasting comes first and fasting afterwards; men first glut themselves, and then loathe their excesses; they take their fill of good, and then suffer; they are rich that they may be poor; they laugh that they may weep; they rise that they may fall.

The Church, he reminds us, shows the right way to observe the times of fasting and feasting:

But in the Church of God it is reversed; the poor shall be rich, the lowly shall be exalted, those that sow in tears shall reap in joy, those that mourn shall be comforted, those that suffer with Christ shall reign with Him; even as Christ (in our Church's words) "went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain. He entered not into His glory before He was crucified. So truly our way to eternal joy is to suffer here with Christ, and our door to enter into eternal life is gladly to die with Christ, that we may rise again from death, and dwell with him in everlasting life." [quoting from prayers for the "Visitation of the Sick" in the Book of Common Prayer] And what is true of the general course of our redemption is, I say, fulfilled also in the yearly and other commemorations of it. Our Festivals are preceded by humiliation, that we may keep them duly; not boisterously or fanatically, but in a refined, subdued, chastised spirit, which is the true rejoicing in the Lord.

Looking to the Gospel passages that describe the Resurrection and the reaction of the women at the Tomb and the Apostles when Jesus appears to them, Newman sees a model for our own rejoicing:

In such a spirit let us endeavour to celebrate this most holy of all Festivals, this continued festal Season, which lasts for fifty days, whereas Lent is forty, as if to show that where sin abounded, there much more has grace abounded. Such indeed seems the tone of mind which took possession of the Apostles when certified of the Resurrection; and while they waited for, or when they had the sight of their risen Lord. If we consider, we shall find the accounts of that season in the Gospels, marked with much of pensiveness and tender and joyful melancholy; the sweet and pleasant frame of those who have gone through pain, and out of pain receive pleasure. . . . 

And he makes reference to other mysteries during the forty days between Resurrection and Ascension:

And here perhaps we learn a lesson from the deep silence which Scripture observes concerning the Blessed Virgin [Note 3] after the Resurrection; as if she, who was too pure and holy a flower to be more than seen here on earth, even during the season of her Son's humiliation, was altogether drawn by the Angels within the veil on His Resurrection, and had her joy in Paradise with Gabriel who had been the first to honour her, and with those elder Saints who arose after the Resurrection, appeared in the Holy City, and then vanished away.

Note 3 refers to John Keble's poem for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday) in The Christian Year, I presume this stanza:

As when the holy Maid beheld
Her risen Son and Lord:
Thought has not colours half so fair
That she to paint that hour may dare,
In silence best adored.

We can see that Newman--and Keble--wanted to realize the world to come.

Image Credit: Guercino, Apparition of Christ to the Virgin, 1628-1630

This Morning: "Christ, A Quickening Spirit" and the Church

As promised, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show with Anna Mitchell at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to talk about St. John Henry Newman's PPS (Parochial and Plain Sermon) for Easter Sunday 1831, "Christ, A Quickening Spirit".

Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here.

The quotation that Newman cited as the inspiration for this sermon is "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen." Luke xxiv. 5, 6.

In the conclusion to this sermon, Newman urges his congregation to take action. As he has reminded them of how Jesus has left them the Blessed Sacrament as a continuing Presence after His Ascension, so Newman also reminds them that Jesus left them His Church, founded upon the Rock of St. Peter ("Simon Peter the favoured Apostle, on whom the Church is built"):

He has appeared to His Holy Church first of all, and in the Church He dispenses blessings, such as the world knows not of. Blessed are they if they knew their blessedness, who are allowed, as we are, week after week, and Festival after Festival, to seek and find in that Holy Church the Saviour of their souls! Blessed are they beyond language or thought, to whom it is vouchsafed to receive those tokens of His love, which cannot otherwise be gained by man, the pledges and means of His special presence, in the Sacrament of His Supper; who are allowed to eat and drink the food of immortality, and receive life from the bleeding side of the Son of God! 

As usual, Newman reminds them that there are Christians, those who consider themselves followers of Jesus, who yet reject His Church:

Alas! by what strange coldness of heart, or perverse superstition is it, that any one called Christian keeps away from that heavenly ordinance? Is it not very grievous that there should be any one who fears to share in the greatest conceivable blessing which could come upon sinful men? What in truth is that fear, but unbelief, a slavish sin-loving obstinacy, if it leads a man to go year after year without the spiritual sustenance which God has provided for him? Is it wonderful that, as time goes on, he should learn deliberately to doubt of the grace therein given? that he should no longer look upon the Lord's Supper as a heavenly feast, or the Lord's Minister who consecrates it as a chosen vessel, or that Holy Church in which he ministers as a Divine Ordinance, to be cherished as the parting legacy of Christ to a sinful world? Is it wonderful that seeing he sees not, and hearing he hears not; and that, lightly regarding all the gifts of Christ, he feels no reverence for the treasure-house wherein they are stored?

So he concludes with a final exhortation for his congregation that morning in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin to remain faithful to God's will and His Church in spite of any trial or trouble, mockery or rebuke, and to persevere.

St. John Henry Newman had been born and raised in a Church of England family; he was seeking the True Church that Jesus had founded and as part of the Tractarian movement that began just a couple of years after he preached this Easter Sunday sermon, he had sought a way to see that Church of England as a branch of the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church". When he began to see that the Via Media he and Pusey and Keble were trying to establish only worked on paper and did not exist in the Church of England at all, he again had to search until he found the One True Church: the Catholic Church. And as he wrote in the Apologia pro Vita Sua, after becoming a Catholic he did not need to contend by himself to find the Truth and convince himself of it; he had heard the living, quickening oracle of God in the Church Jesus founded:

FROM the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I never have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption. . . .

People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. . . .

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit: Altobello Melone – The Road to Emmaus, c. 1516-17