Preview: The Seventh Last Word: "Father, Into Your Hands . . ."

On the Monday of Holy Week, March 30, we'll consider Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the Seventh Last Word on the Cross, "Father, into Your hands I commend my Spirit" (Luke 23:46) on the Son Rise Morning Show.

Monsignor Benson highlights the first rest the Incarnate Son of God had experienced, especially since He began the public ministry:

Our Lord has just cried aloud that Sixth Word in which He proclaimed that there was finished at last that "Father's business" of which He had first spoken in the Temple. Now He droops His Head again little by little upon His Breast, and in the words that he had learned at Mary's knee -- words in which every Jewish child committed the care of his soul into God's care through the coming night -- He commits His spirit into His Father's hands. For the evening is drawing on and the Sabbath is near in which once more, God, having seen all that He has done, pronounces it "Very good" and rests from His labours.

I. The thought of this Peace of Death into which our Divine Friend is passing is one of the most moving considerations of the Passion. He has been about His work for thirty-three years; and not for one instant, since He first drew mortal breath in the frosty stable of Bethlehem, has He ever yet truly rested. Even while He slept His Heart waked.

How many times do we read in the Gospels how Jesus responded to the needs of His people, even when trying to get some rest, some time to go away from the crowds with the disciples, or have some time for prayer?!

How utterly then has He earned His Rest! And at last He is to find it. The Soul through which such strong agonies have passed, is to sink into that peaceful place of refreshment and light where the souls that have served God according to their graces are awaiting that First Advent of their Redeemer. The Body that has borne so great a burden and heat of the day, that has been wearied with labours, and bowed down by sorrows -- and, at last, has been beaten, pierced and broken by the hands of those for whom such labours were borne -- this Body of His is to be laid in the cool rock-tomb, with wrappings of soft linen, soaked in spices and myrrh, to await once more the inbreathing of the Divine Energy which again shall pass through every vein, sinew and muscle, transforming each utterly back again to the unmarred Divine Image, in which, once again, now no longer subject to any law of limitation or weariness and waste, the Soul that can never sorrow again, shall eternally rejoice. Our Friend sleeps at last.

Monsignor Benson applies this sleep of peace to our mortality:

It is this for which we look at death -- the one hope that reassures and reconciles us to that violent cessation of activities which is to an energetic and vital soul the chief imaginative horror of death. It is even sometimes (so great is its attraction) -- we might almost say that it must be -- for every soul that is really taking part in the conflict of life, the chief attraction of death. For life must become from time to time an all but intolerable strain -- not only is there that weariness of body which arises from its incapacity to rise always to the demands of the soul; but there is that further weariness of soul arising from its effort to respond always as it ought, to the excitations and demands of grace. . . .

In the midst of our struggles, Benson urges us to find peace, "the Peace of God that passes all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) in the only place it can be found:

And it must come from one thing and one thing only, namely, a perfect balance in the environment for which our souls were made -- not as of a bird sleeping on the water, but of a bird poised in the air -- a perfect response, that is to say, on the part of our loving and lovable nature to the one adorable Nature which alone can support and can understand us -- in a word, that Peace can alone be found in that of which we have been treating throughout, in an intimate, intelligent, affectionate and voluntary Friendship with Christ, who made us for Himself, and designed His own Incarnation that the union might be complete.

That's why in the midst of our solemn celebrations of Holy Week, as we participate in those liturgies, we can't be morbid or bleak. 

Death is no longer frightful; and Life is no longer burdensome.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Michelangelo's Pieta: The venerated image with its original canonical crown from 14 August 1637 by the Pontifical decree of Pope Urban VIII. Photo circa, 24 May 1888.

Preview: "I Thirst" and "It Is Finished" on the Son Rise Morning Show

In our last discussion on the Son Rise Morning Show, Matt Swaim quite rightly pointed out that the psalm Our Lord began on the Cross, Psalm 22, ends in hope:

31 And to him my soul shall live: and my seed shall serve him.

32 There shall be declared to the Lord a generation to come: and the heavens shall shew forth his justice to a people that shall be born, which the Lord hath made. (Psalm 21 in the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition)

Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, however, does not go there immediately; he leaves Our Lord in the midst of that chosen desolation, until He endures another humiliation, which we'll discuss on Monday, March 23: 

As Benson puts it: 

Up to the present the deepest point of Christ's Humiliation has been His cry to His Father -- that call for help by the Sacred Humanity which by His own Will was left derelict -- His confession to the world that His Soul was in darkness. Now, however, He descends a still deeper step of humiliation, and calls for help, to man.

Christ asks man to help Him!

The fifth Last Word is "I thirst". (John 19:28) 

All through His life He had offered help: He had fed hungry souls and hungry bodies He had opened blind eyes and deaf ears; and lifted up the hands that hung down, and strengthened the feeble knees. He had stood in the Temple and called to all that thirsted to come and drink. Now, in return, He asks for drink, and accepts it. So David, too, in the stress of battle had cried, "Oh that some man would give me a drink of the water out of the cistern that is in Bethlehem!"{1} For both David and David's Son were strong enough to condescend to weakness.

(ii) In the age-long Calvary of the world's history, Jesus cries on man to help Him; and the Giver of all humiliates Himself to ask.

In the context of Benson's meditation on the Friendship of Christ, he reminds that we are not equal partners in this relationship:

We have spoken of the Divine Friendship throughout as if it were a mutual relationship, as if we on one side, and Christ on the other, were united in a common bond. But, as a matter of fact, it is all on one side. We cannot even desire Christ without, except by the help of Christ within. The Christ within must cry "I thirst,"{2} before the Christ without can give us the Living Water.

This appeal, then, of Jesus must be our last and final motive, when all other impulses have failed. He is so beaten and rejected that He is come even to this. He must ask for mercy upon Himself, before He can have mercy on us. If we do not find our Heaven in Him, at least let Him find His Heaven in us. If we can no longer say, "My soul is athirst for the Living God," at least let us listen when the Living God cries, "My Soul is athirst for you." If we will not let Him minister to us, for very shame let us be content to minister to Him.

And then Benson references one of the Gospel stories we've heard this Lent: The Woman at the Well of Sychar:

He first uttered His petition, by the side of Jacob's well, and on the Cross of Calvary -- even the Samaritan woman, the alien from God's commonwealth, even the soldiers of an Empire that was at war with God's kingdom, had mercy upon Him, and gave Him to drink.

In Saint John's Gospel as soon as He has tasted the common wine on the sponge, Our Lord pronounces the Sixth Word: "It is finished." (John 19:30) Then He proclaims victory:

The evening light begins to glimmer again upon Calvary, the three crosses, and the little group that waits for the end; and as it falls upon the Face of Christ, the look of agony is gone. He has cried alike to God and man to have pity, upon tortured Soul and parched Body, and each has answered. Now in that Face, bleached by the darkness of the soul, and the Eyes, sunken with sorrow, a new look begins, that rises, as those who stand by watch Him, until the whole Face is radiant once again. The breaths come fuller and fuller, the Body nailed by its extremities begins to lift itself higher and higher till strength is regained sufficient for Him not to speak only, but to utter a cry so loud and triumphant as to startle and amaze the officer who has watched many men die, but never as This Man dies. The cry peals out, like the shout of a king in the moment of victory; and, in an instant, failure and labour and bitterness are behind Him for ever. Consummatum est. . . . "It is finished!"{1}

Benson explains the effects of this moment of victory for us:

Friendship between God and man is now made possible again, in the Body of Christ. That old irreconcilable enmity between the sin of the creature and the Justice of the Creator, between the defilement of the spirit and the Holiness of the Father of Spirits, is done away. We can be "accepted in the Beloved."

First, then: salvation is open to the sinner. No sin henceforth is unforgivable.

Even more:

Not only is mere friendship made possible by the death of Christ, but degrees of friendship to which even the angels cannot aspire. It is not only that a soul, through the Precious Blood, can pass from death to life, but that she can pass up through stages and heights and strata of that life, up to the perfection of sanctity itself. . . .

II. Christ's work, then, is "finished" on the Cross -- finished, that is, not as closed and concluded, but, as it were, liberated from the agonizing process which has brought it into being -- finished, as bread is finished from the mills and the fire, that it may be eaten; as wine is finished after the stress and trampling of the winepress -- finished, as a man's body is finished in the womb of his mother and brought forth with travail. . . .

Yet here is this vast river of grace pouring from Calvary, the river that ought to be making glad the City of God. Here is this enormous reservoir of grace, bubbling up in every sacrament, soaking the ground beneath our feet, freshening the air we breathe. And we still in our hateful false humility talk as if Perfection were a dream, and Sanctity the privilege of those who see God in glory.

In Christ's Name, let us begin. For Christ has finished.

As we enter into the Passiontide of Lent, when the glorious symbols of one aspect of that fulfillment--the sanctification of the human soul--and even the Crucifixes in our churches may be veiled, we remember both the Agony of the Passion and prepare for the celebration of its Victory. And on the Monday of Holy Week, we'll conclude this series with the Last Word 

Preview: "My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?"

As you might surmise, the next passage in Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the Seven Last Words of Christ our Friend Crucified, which we'll discuss on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday, March 16, begins dramatically, as Benson sets the scene:

The darkness of Calvary, spiritual as well as physical, draws on to its deepest. Christ has prayed for those who have outraged and repudiated His Friendship: He who was always the Friend of Sinners has added one more to the company [the Good Thief, Saint Dismas]: He who was always the Friend of Saints has united two of them yet more closely than ever by the wedding of Pain [His Mother and Saint John the Apostle].

Benson describes Jesus as drawing into Himself in this Word and choosing to experience this desolation:

Now He draws inwards from the world for which He has done so much: He directs this consciousness into His own Sacred Humanity; and in a Word at which heaven and earth tremble together, reveals to us that that Sacred Humanity, as a part of that process by which He chose to "taste death for all"{1} and to learn "obedience by the things which He suffered,"{2} has to experience the sorrow of dereliction. He who came to offer that Sacred Humanity as the bond of Friendship between God and man, wills that His own Friendship with God should be obscured. He becomes indeed the Friend of fallen man, for He chooses to identify Himself with the horror of that Fall. The Beatific Vision which was lost to man through that fall, and which Jesus Christ can never lose, is now obscured to the eyes of Him who comes to restore it through Redemption.

"My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" is the only of the Seven Last Word reported in two Gospels, Mark (Mark 15:34) and Matthew (Matthew 27:46) and occurs at the "Ninth Hour". 

Benson admits that this Word is hard to understand and to apply to ourselves because we can and do distract ourselves from the deepest realities:

This Word is the one that, above all others, is most difficult of application to ourselves. For the state in which it was uttered is simply inconceivable to us who find our consolation in so much that is not God, and to whom sin means so little. If physical comforts are wanting to us, we find refuge in mental comfort; if mental comforts are wanting, we lean upon our friends. Or, more usually, when the higher pleasures are withdrawn, we find relief, with scarcely an effort, in lower. When religion fails us, we console ourselves with the arts; when love or ambition disappoint us, we plunge into physical pleasures; when the body refuses to respond, we take refuge in our indomitable pride; and when that in its turn crumbles to nothing, we look to suicide and hell as a more tolerable environment. There seems no depth to which we will not go, in our passionate determination to make ourselves tolerable to ourselves.

I agree that we (I) do often accept our faults pretty easily and can tolerate and excuse our weaknesses readily. Perhaps we're sometimes a little less tolerant of ourselves when we make a good examination of conscience before Confession, but: 

This Word, then, is meaningless to most of us; for to Jesus Christ, when the Beatific Vision was overlaid with sorrow, there was nothing in Heaven or upon earth. . . . "I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: for one that would comfort me, and I found none."{6} The tragedy goes on, up there in the darkness: we hear the groan; we catch glimpses of the tortured, colourless Face behind which the Soul itself hangs crucified; . . . we grope, we conjecture, we attempt to form lower images of the august reality; but that is all.

Without referring to the Dark Night of the Soul, Benson says we can and probably will experience this sorrowful loneliness:

(i) Occasionally even we ourselves rise to the point in the spiritual life where our Friendship with Christ is our chief joy, among all the other and lesser consolations that God gives. The fact that we know Him and can speak with Him is reckoned by us as sufficiently sweet as to make its apparent withdrawal the most acute of all our sorrows. (I need hardly say that this requires no particular proficiency in spiritual things. It is, in fact, impossible to be sincere and persevering in our religion, without sooner or later experiencing it.) Well, such a point is reached by us, let us say; and then, on a sudden, without our being conscious of anything more than our usual faithlessness and lethargy, this spiritual pleasure in religion is swiftly and completely withdrawn.

Then it all depends on what we do. Do we retreat into those other pleasures, as listed above? 

Suddenly care a lot about opera and ballet, maybe?

Instead, Benson advises:

How is our hold upon our Friend to be tightened unless now and again it seems as if He were slipping from our grasp? How is real faith to throw out its roots and clench its fibres into the Rock, unless the desolating wind of trouble at times threatens to uproot us altogether? For the keener the tribulation and the more bitter the dregs, the more honourable is the draught. To hold our lips to that Cup which our Saviour drained, even though its bitterness is diluted by His mercy -- the honour of this should surely be enough to make us hold our peace, for very shame.

Secondly, Benson reminds us:

Religion is not one of the departments which make up our life -- (that is Religiosity) -- but Religion is that which enters into every department, the fabric on which every device, whether of art or literature, or domestic interests, or recreation, or business, or human love, must be embroidered. Unless it is this, it is not Religion as it is intended to be. . . .

Now this, let us remind ourselves, is actually intended to be the life of every human soul; and, in proportion as we approximate to it, we are more or less fulfilling our destiny. For it is only to a soul that has reached this state that God can be All. He becomes "All" because nothing is any longer alien to Him. "Whether you eat or drink or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God." {7} The whole of life becomes illuminated with His Presence; everything is seen to subsist in Him: Nothing has any value except so far as it is in relations with Him. . . .

This, then, is the state for which a Christian soul is bound to strive and aspire. This and this only is the entirety of the Friendship of Christ; to a soul in this condition, and to her alone, can Jesus truly be said to be All. And this, further, is the only state in which real "Dereliction" is possible. . . .

As usual, there's too much here for the time we'll have on Monday morning, but with broadcast professionals and good friends like Anna and Matt, we'll do what we can!

We adore Thee, most holy Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all Thy churches that are in the whole world, and we bless Thee; because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the World. Amen.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Michelangelo: Crucifixion of Christ, 1540

Crucifix in St. Pierre des Chartres, copyright (2026) Stephanie A. Mann

Preview: Christ Our Friend's Last Word to His Mother and John the Beloved

Next in our Son Rise Morning Show Lenten Series, on Monday, March 9, Anna or Matt and I will discuss Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the next of the Seven Last Words of Christ: “Jesus, then, seeing his Mother and the disciple he loved, said to his Mother, ‘Woman, this is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘This is your Mother.’ And from that moment the disciple took her with him.” (John: 19: 26-27)

Benson mentioned Mary and John standing at the foot of the Cross in the meditation on Jesus's Last Word to the Good Thief and he continues that reflection:

Two of the personages standing beside the Cross are, for all Christians, for all time, the supreme types of Divine and human love. There is Mary, loved into immaculate being by the Eternal Father, the Mother Herself of Immaculate Love, and John the chosen disciple, allowed to rest his head, even before he had attained heaven, upon the breast of that same Immaculate Love. Surely these two, Mary and John, are already as wholly one as Love can make them. Those who love God so perfectly cannot love one another less perfectly.

Yet Jesus, in His seven words upon the Cross, devotes one to make them closer still.

Jesus, Our Friend, wants us to be friends with others too and with this Last Word He "unite[s] these friends in divine charity to one another" to demonstrate what He desires among His followers:

"He that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not?"{1} "As long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me."{2} The second commandment is like "unto the first": "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."{3}{4}

Benson's meditation on how we in society form these friendships to love our neighbor as ourself, forming communities of cooperation by submitting ourselves to the good of all, posits that this is usually in the pursuit of rejoicing and prosperity, alleviating poverty and sorrow. 

BUT:

. . . Jesus Christ does something that has never been done before. He uses suffering as the supreme bond of love. "Love one another," He cries from the Cross, "because you are strong enough to suffer together." "Mother," cries the dying Friend of us all, "behold thy son. Son, behold thy Mother!"

This word, then, is no less significant of an immense spiritual principle than are the rest. Mary and John have loved one another perfectly -- as perfectly, that is to say, as a common joy has made possible. Together they have watched His triumph: Mary has seen Him, the Child of Joy, upon her breast: John upon His breast has seen Him rejoice in spirit. But, from to-day onwards, their common love rises to yet greater heights: they love one another now, not merely in the Sacred Heart, but in the pierced and broken Sacred Heart. Hitherto they have been perfect friends; henceforth they are Blood-relations -- relations in a blood more intimate to them than their own -- a Blood shed for the remission of sins. It is not, "Friend, behold thy friend"; but, "Mother, behold thy son. Son, behold thy Mother!"

Benson meditates further on our friendship with the Mother of God, noting that it is through her Sorrows as much as it is through her Joys; that the Sorrows are really the stronger bonds:

First, then, this is the bond which unites Mary to ourselves -- not that she sang the Magnificat, but that the sword pierced her own heart also. Sorrow, wrongly received, is a mightier force than all ordinary human affections: sorrow, borne with resentment and bitterness, isolates the soul not only from God but from her own fellows. The wounded stag creeps away to die in loneliness. But, on the other hand, if sorrow is welcomed and taken in, if it is made, by the very effort which welcomes it, a bond of union with others that suffer, a link is forged which all the powers of hell cannot break. If Mary had been given us as our Mother in Bethlehem, if she had wrapped herself in her unique joy, if she had been to us but a figure of incarnate bliss; then when the horror of darkness fell upon us, we too should have crept away from even Her, to suffer in loneliness. A religion that presented to us Mary with her living child in her arms, and had no Mary with her dead Son across her knees, could not have been the religion to which we should turn in utter confidence when all else had failed. . . .

Indeed she is the Mother of the redeemed, because she was the Mother of Redemption: she stood by the Cross of Jesus, as she had knelt by His cradle; and she is our Mother, then, by that very blood by which both she and we are alike redeemed. The "Mother of Sorrows" must always be nearer to the human race than even the "Cause of our Joy."

Benson's spiritual advice is first, to make sure that our religious duties do not separate us from our friends:

It is an appalling fact that again and again those who claim to be enjoying the most intimate friendship with God are distinguished by selfishness and a lack of charity towards their neighbours -- that it is those, again and again, above all others who live what are called "misunderstood" lives, who actually advance their "Rule of Life" or the calls of their devotion as arguments against their having time or energy to be kind to their servants or acquaintances. "She is at her prayers, therefore she must not be disturbed. He is getting ready for the sacraments; therefore it is natural that he should be a little peevish and preoccupied.". . .

Then, he gives some practical direction:

Go home, then, and make up that foolish quarrel once and for all: go home and apologize simply and sincerely for your share in that trouble in which perhaps the other was even more to blame than yourself. It is intolerable that the friends of the Crucified -- that those even who aspire to be friends of the Crucified -- should think it conceivable to be at peace with God, who are not at peace with wife or husband or parents.

"Behold your Mother . . . your son!" That soul with whom you are at variance has a bond with you far greater than that of a common creation. The fact that the Eternal Word died for you both upon the Cross is an infinitely stronger link of union than the fact that the Eternal Word willed you both into being. For while the Fall broke the harmony of creation, the Redemption restored it; and this restoration is a far greater marvel than even Creation itself.

No man can be a Friend of Jesus Christ who is not a friend to his neighbour.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

Saint John the Beloved Apostle, pray for us! 

Postscript: My best friend and I read an Easter book last year (The Easter Impact: How the Resurrection Restores and Strengthens Our Faith by Georges Chevrot) in which the author comments on Saint John's faith in the Resurrection at the empty tomb as an immediate result of this close relationship between Mary and John: "The crucified Lord had also asked Mary to look on John as her son and had entrusted his holy mother to him. Did Mary and John merely weep and pray together from Friday evening until Sunday morning, without exchanging any conversation?"

Chevrot doesn't think so and suggests that Mary had "been guiding the apostle's faith toward the reality what was to come . . ." reminding John "of the assurance of resurrection that her Son had given them . . . ("Peter and John at the Tomb" p. 30).

 

It is certainly the hope of the Resurrection of the Dead we share as we grieve for friends and family: I'll be attending the Funeral Mass for a good friend Monday morning, and heard this week of the death of a high school and classmate's mother. May Constance and Kay rest in the peace of Christ in hope of the Resurrection!

Image credit (both public domain): "What Jesus Saw from the Cross" by James Tissot and Crucifixion Brazil, 19th century

Preview: Christ's Second "Last Word", to Saint Dismas, the Good Thief

In case you are not reading Benson's The Friendship of Christ this Lent, here is some background on this chapter on "Christ Our Friend on the Cross" as we discuss the Second Last Word, "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise."{4} on the Son Rise Morning Show, Monday, March 2:

When Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson writes these meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, he does not separate them into sections or chapters. He writes a harmony of the Four Gospel accounts of these Words; his point of view is always Jesus Christ Our Friend on the Cross. He weaves his meditations of the Seven Ways into a tapestry depicting aspects of the spiritual life in the Friendship of Christ. He constructs a chronology and even narrates the passage of time: he imagines the dialogue of the two thieves and Jesus as occurring about an hour after the three crosses have been raised on Golgotha.

The first thief, the Bad thief, after an hour of agony, is "still absorbed in his own pain, regarding it, contrasting it, turning it this way and that, seeking to adjust it" so he can deal with it; the second thief, the Good Thief, traditionally called Saint Dismas, has become "aware that there is something in this universe besides his own pain."

The first demands, out of that obsession with his own pain, "If thou be Christ, save thyself, and us." Saint Dismas has, with "the mind of a savage child--has been painfully at work" trying to figure out Who is in the center of their agony. He heard that First Word, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" and is thinking about what it meant.

Benson explores the mystery of Grace at work in the Good Thief, "its mysterious operation" and notes that "we know almost nothing, after all our theology, of that divine process; we know a little of its conditions, a fraction of his effects; we have labelled a few by-laws of its working; but no more." Somehow, "there was still in him enough receptivity for Grace to enter."

Somehow, in the midst of his pain, Saint Dismas begins to think that Jesus is not a criminal at all--that His execution is unjust, unlike his own--that Jesus is King--that the "crown of thorns were not wholly a mockery, that the title above the cross was something besides a sneer", so he reprimands the first thief and asks Jesus for something more than relief from their present agony: "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 

Because of the simple humility of that request he receives a greater promised than expected: "This day thou wilt be with me in Paradise."

Benson's application of this drama to our spiritual life is that humility is the key. He warns against "self-assertion" in the spiritual life, trying to make individual progress there as we want to in our "worldly affairs", on our own terms, according to our own standards; to "force our friendship on Christ." So, Benson advises, the way to succeed in the spiritual life is to emulate Saint Dismas. 

He warns that the "soul", when thinking about any progress in the spiritual life, should remind herself that "not one of her good actions in the past that has been wholly good, for each that has not been done out of a merely natural generosity, has been done largely out of this very love of self; she learns that her "progress," for the most part, has been in the wrong direction altogether, that she has been accumulating merits that have scarcely a touch of meritoriousness, that she has been serving self throughout in those very actions which she had told herself were pleasing to God." 

[This unmeritorious merit seems like a corollary to the "unknowing knowing sin" of the First Word of Forgiveness.]

Therefore, we should ask Our Friend Jesus to "Remember me" and when You do "in that day be to me not a judge but a saviour!" 

Then Benson starts to turn our direction to the trio of those standing near Jesus on the Cross, His Mother, Saint John the Apostle, and notes that in a way the thief has joined that group. . .

Image Credit (Public Domain): Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, medieval illustration from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, 12th century

Image Credit (Public Domain): An icon showing Christ (center) bringing Dismas (left) into Paradise: At the right are the Gates of Paradise, guarded by a seraph (Solovetsky Monastery, 17th century).

Preview: Christ our Friend on the Cross: "Father, Forgive Them"

On Monday, February 23, we'll continue our discussion of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ on the Son Rise Morning Show with a Lenten series on his meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross: "XII. Christ Our Friend Crucified [The Seven Words]." 

After acknowledging various aspects of Christ Crucified, ("Priesthood is there, Royalty, the Prophetic Office, Sacrifice, Martyrdom")Benson states the focus of this chapter:

But, for the most part, we shall pass these by: we shall consider Him from that same standpoint as that from which we have considered Him throughout -- as our own familiar Friend who trusted us, and who was rewarded by us with the Crown of Thorns; who yet is content to bear all this and a thousand Passions more, if at the end He can but persuade us that He loves us. He spoke Seven Words as He hung there on Calvary, and each tells us of His Friendship.

The First Word:

"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34)

Benson describes how this First Word might have been spoken:

Our Friend has climbed the Hill; He has been stripped of His clothes and laid upon the Cross that He has carried from the steps of the Praetorium. The executioners prepare and choose the nails. . . . Those whose love He is seeking stand round looking down upon His upturned face. He, lying there, sees them, and sees behind them all those whom they represent -- all those countless souls each one of whom He desires to win. And, as the hammer is lifted and falls, He utters His first Word.

His first comments on this statement highlight the wondrous charity of Jesus: in one sense, the injustice of this punishment was obvious: remember that in "Christ in the Average Man" Benson judged Pilate harshly not because Pilate did not recognize the Incarnate Son of God standing before him but because Pilate knew Jesus was innocent of the crimes He was accused of committing, and yet gave in to the mob. 

Many in the mob knew that He had healed the sick, gave the blind sight, and fed the multitudes. The only thing that He was guilty of was that "he was no friend of Caesar"--and Pilate did not want to be implicated in that crime! (If thou release this man, thou art not Caesar's friend. For whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh against Caesar." John 19:12) 

In various ways, however, they really did not know what they were doing:

• They thought that they were taking His Life from Him; they did not understand that He was laying it down of Himself. They thought that they were ending for ever a career of mercy which displeased them; they did not know that they were co-operating in a supreme climax of mercy. They knew not what they did.
• They knew, then, that they were outraging a human friend, but not that they were slaying a Divine Friend. They knew that they were betraying a fellow-creature, that they were sinning against every code of human decency and gratitude and justice; they knew, like Pilate, that they were killing a just man, that they were taking upon their own heads the blood of an innocent person. 
• But they did not know that they were crucifying the Lord of Glory, that they were attempting to silence the Eternal Word.
• This, then, can at least be said in their favour -- "They know the horror, but not the full horror, of what they do. Therefore, Father, forgive them."

Next, Benson reflects on how Catholics in his day needed to forgive those states and organizations in Europe which had oppressed the Church in various ways:

They know that she has been the mother of ideals, of the noblest art and the purest beauty. They use to-day, in every country of Europe, for secular or semi-sacred purposes, buildings which she raised for her own worship of her God. They know that the morals of men find their only ultimate sanction in her teaching -- that where dogma goes down, crime goes up. And here, again, the only charge against her is that she is no friend to Caesar -- no friend, that is, to any system that seeks to organize society apart from God.

Benson names names that don't mean as much to us today. Nevertheless, any Catholic is hurt or even outraged today when she hears about a Catholic Church being desecrated, statues broken and toppled, or worst of all, the Tabernacle being broken into and the Blessed Sacrament scattered and stolen. 

Then he moves on to the deeper meditation for us, because "we too, in our our measure, have sinned in frantic ignorance":

We confess to a little sloth and lethargy, a little avarice, a little lack of generosity. We "know what we do," in part: we know we are not faithful to our highest inspirations, that we have not done all that we might, that we have shown a little self-will, a little malice, a little pardonable temper. And we confess these things, and give an easy absolution. And yet we know not what we do. We do not know how urgent is the need of God, how tremendous are the issues He has committed to our care, how enormous is the value of every soul -- of every act and word and thought that help to shape the destinies of such a soul.

Echoing the image of Christ lying on the ground, Benson warns of greater consequences of this unknowing knowing sin:

He lies here, and we gossip and stare, and go our ways where the tragedy is done, when He hangs between heaven and earth, descended from the one and rejected by the other -- our God whom we thought our slave, who desires to be our Friend.

Father, then, by this prayer of Thy crucified Son, forgive us also; for we know not what we do. . . .

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
Because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.

Preview: Newman on the Three Falls of Jesus on the Way of the Cross

On the Monday of Holy Week, we'll look at Saint John Henry Newman's Meditations for the Stations of the Cross on the Son Rise Morning Show, specifically at his reflections on the three times Our Lord fell beneath the cross on His way to Golgotha. I'll be on the air 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.

According to a note by J.H.N. these meditations were written "about 1860; used a second time, 1885."

Newman comments that we should pray An Act of Contrition before we begin to pray the Stations.

As I've read these a couple of times in situ at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, my parish here in Wichita, I've meditated on Newman's "I" in these meditations on the three falls of Jesus--I think it's me, not necessarily Newman himself--and his focus on how I've committed Mortal Sin. Perhaps some of us are so used to thinking how hard it is to commit a mortal sin that we might be shocked by this emphasis in these three meditations:

The Third Station

Jesus falls the first time beneath the Cross

JESUS, bowed down under the weight and the length of the unwieldy Cross, which trailed after Him, slowly sets forth on His way, amid the mockeries and insults of the crowd. His agony in the Garden itself was sufficient to exhaust Him; but it was only the first of a multitude of sufferings. He sets off with His whole heart, but His limbs fail Him, and He falls.

Yes, it is as I feared. Jesus, the strong and mighty Lord, has found for the moment our sins stronger than Himself. He falls—yet He bore the load for a while; He tottered, but He bore up and walked onwards. What, then, made Him give way? I say, I repeat, it is an intimation and a memory to thee, O my soul, of thy falling back into mortal sin. I repented of the sins of my youth, and went on well for a time; but at length a new temptation came, when I was off my guard, and I suddenly fell away. Then all my good habits seemed to go at once; they were like a garment which is stripped off, so quickly and utterly did grace depart from me. And at that moment I looked at my Lord, and lo! He had fallen down, and I covered my face with my hands and remained in a state of great confusion.

The Seventh Station

Jesus falls a second time

THE pain of His wounds and the loss of blood increasing at every step of His way, again His limbs fail Him, and He falls on the ground.

What has He done to deserve all this? This is the reward received by the long-expected Messias from the Chosen People, the Children of Israel. I know what to answer. He falls because I have fallen. I have fallen again. I know well that without Thy grace, O Lord, I could not stand; and I fancied that I had kept closely to Thy Sacraments; yet in spite of my going to Mass and to my duties, I am out of grace again. Why is it but because I have lost my devotional spirit, and have come to Thy holy ordinances in a cold, formal way, without inward affection. I became lukewarm, tepid. I thought the battle of life was over, and became secure. I had no lively faith, no sight of spiritual things. I came to church from habit, and because I thought others would observe it. I ought to be a new creature, I ought to live by faith, hope, and charity; but I thought more of this world than of the world to come—and at last I forgot that I was a servant of God, and followed the broad way that leadeth to destruction, not the narrow way which leadeth to life. And thus I fell from Thee.

Perhaps the meditation on the Third Fall is the most surprising as Newman parallels the three times in the Stations when Jesus falls as He carries the Cross with the three times Satan falls:

The Ninth Station

Again, a third time, Jesus falls

JESUS had now reached almost to the top of Calvary; but, before He had gained the very spot where He was to be crucified, again He fell, and is again dragged up and goaded onwards by the brutal soldiery.

We are told in Holy Scripture of three falls of Satan, the Evil Spirit. The first was in the beginning; the second, when the Gospel and the Kingdom of Heaven were preached to the world; the third will be at the end of all things. The first is told us by St. John the Evangelist. He says: "There was a great battle in heaven. Michael and his Angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels. And they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, the old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan." The second fall, at the time of the Gospel, is spoken of by our Lord when He says, "I saw Satan, like lightning, falling from heaven." And the third by the same St. John: "There came down fire from God out of heaven, ... and the devil ... was cast into the pool of fire and brimstone."

These three falls—the past, the present, and the future—the Evil Spirit had in mind when he moved Judas to betray our Lord. This was just his hour. Our Lord, when He was seized, said to His enemies, "This is your hour and the power of darkness." Satan knew his time was short, and thought he might use it to good effect. But little dreaming that he would be acting in behalf of the world's redemption, which our Lord's passion and death were to work out, in revenge, and, as he thought, in triumph, he smote Him once, he smote Him twice, he smote Him thrice, each successive time a heavier blow. The weight of the Cross, the barbarity of the soldiers and the crowd, were but his instruments. O Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, the Word Incarnate, we praise, adore, and love Thee for Thy ineffable condescension, even to allow Thyself thus for a time to fall into the hands, and under the power of the Enemy of God and man, in order thereby to save us from being his servants and companions for eternity.

But Newman has another meditation on this third fall, one that returns to the theme of how I am complicit in Our Lord's suffering in my struggle to be faithful:

Or this

This is the worst fall of the three. His strength has for a while utterly failed Him, and it is some time before the barbarous soldiers can bring Him to. Ah! it was His anticipation of what was to happen to me. I get worse and worse. He sees the end from the beginning. He was thinking of me all the time He dragged Himself along, up the Hill of Calvary. He saw that I should fall again in spite of all former warnings and former assistance. He saw that I should become secure and self-confident, and that my enemy would then assail me with some new temptation, to which I never thought I should be exposed. I thought my weakness lay all on one particular side which I knew. I had not a dream that I was not strong on the other. And so Satan came down on my unguarded side, and got the better of me from my self-trust and self-satisfaction. I was wanting in humility. I thought no harm would come on me, I thought I had outlived the danger of sinning; I thought it was an easy thing to get to heaven, and I was not watchful. It was my pride, and so I fell a third time.

In these three meditations Newman emphasizes our moral and spiritual difficulties, our temptations, our failings, and our danger of thinking it's "an easy thing to get to heaven." 

They're rather bracing, aren't they?

SOUL of Christ, be my sanctification;
Body of Christ, be my salvation;
Blood of Christ, fill all my veins;
Water of Christ’s side, wash out my stains;
Passion of Christ, my comfort be;
O good Jesu, listen to me;
In thy wounds I fain would hide,
Ne’er to be parted from Thy side;
Guard me, should the foe assail me;
Call me when my life shall fail me;
Bid me come to Thee above,
With Thy saints to sing Thy love,
World without end. Amen. (Newman's translation of the Anima Christi)

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Preview: Newman's Sympathy for the Sorrows of Mary (More than Seven!)

On Monday, March 31, we'll conclude our discussion of Saint John Henry Newman's meditation on how "Our Lord Refuses Sympathy" on the Son Rise Morning Show as Newman focuses on Mary's sorrow after Jesus leaves Nazareth for His public ministry and the Cross. I'll be on the air 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.

Remember these are Catholic meditations: Newman reflects on Catholic devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary, relating them to the parting of Mother and Son at the Marriage Feast of Cana: 

Let us linger for a while with Mary—before we follow the steps of her Son, our Lord. . . . O Mary, we are devout to thy seven woes—but was not this, though not one of those seven, one of the greatest, and included those that followed, from thy knowledge of them beforehand? How didst thou bear that first separation from Him? How did the first days pass when thou wast desolate? where didst thou hide thyself? where didst thou pass the long three years and more, while He was on His ministry? Once—at the beginning of it—thou didst attempt to get near Him [Matt. 12:48-50], and then we hear nothing of thee, till we find thee standing at His cross. And then, after that great joy of seeing Him again, and the permanent consolation, never to be lost, that with Him all suffering and humiliation was over, and that never had she to weep for Him again, still she was separated from him for many years, while she lived in the flesh, surrounded by the wicked world, and in the misery of His absence.

Newman alludes to the warning Jesus gave Joseph and Mary when they found Him in the Temple in Jerusalem when he was 12 years old [Luke 2:41-52]: "And he said to them: How is it that you sought me? did you not know, that I must be about my father's business?".  But He had gone back to Nazareth with them and stayed 18 more years until beginning His Father's business and she would not see Jesus again until she was at the foot of the Cross:

The blessed Mary, among her other sorrows, suffered the loss of her Son, after He had lived under the same roof with her for thirty years. . . . [At last] and she reached him in time, to see Him hanging on the cross and dying. He was only forty days on earth after His resurrection, and then He left her in old age to finish her life without Him. Compare her thirty happy years, and her time of desolation.

In the next paragraphs, Newman describes his own "composition of place", imagining Mary at home without Jesus for the three years between Cana and Calvary, as she yearned to hear about Jesus and to see her Son. Newman has used Saint Ignatius of Loyola's method, to see "the persons in my imagination, contemplating and meditating in detail on the circumstances surrounding them, and I will then draw some spiritual fruit from what has been seen":

I see her in her forlorn home, while her Son and Lord was going up and down the land without a place to lay His head, suffering both because she was so desolate and He was so exposed. How dreary passed the day; and then came reports that He was in some peril or distress. She heard, perhaps, He had been led into the wilderness to be tempted. She would have shared all His sufferings, but was not permitted. Once there was a profane report which was believed by many, that He was beside Himself, and His friends and kindred went out to get possession of Him. She went out too to see Him, and tried to reach Him. She could not for the crowd. A message came to Him to that effect, but He made no effort to receive her, nor said a kind word. She went back to her home disappointed, without the sight of Him. And so she remained, perhaps in company with those who did not believe in Him. [Mark 3:20-21; John 7:3-5]

Then he imagines her life after the Resurrection and Ascension: 

I see her too after His ascension. This, too, is a time of bereavement, but still of consolation. It was still a twilight time, but not a time of grief. The Lord was absent, but He was not on earth, He was not in suffering. Death had no power over Him.

Then Newman finds and offers "the spiritual fruit" from what he has imagined as he thinks of Mary receiving Holy Communion: 

And He came to her day by day in the Blessed Sacrifice. I see the Blessed Mary at Mass, and St. John celebrating. She is waiting for the moment of her Son's Presence: now she converses with Him in the sacred rite; and what shall I say now? She receives Him, to whom once she gave birth.

O Holy Mother, stand by me now at Mass time, when Christ comes to me, as thou didst minister to Thy infant Lord—as Thou didst hang upon His words when He grew up, as Thou wast found under His cross. Stand by me, Holy Mother, that I may gain somewhat of thy purity, thy innocence, thy faith, and He may be the one object of my love and my adoration, as He was of thine.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image source (Public Domain) at the top: Mater Dolorosa with Clasped Hands by Titian and his studio c. 1550-1555

Image source (Public Domain) at the bottom: The Virgin of the Host by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1854

Preview: Newman on "Our Lord Refuses Sympathy" and Mary's Sorrows

Tuesday, March 25 is the Solemnity of the Annunciation, so it's so appropriate that we continue our Newman Lenten series on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, March 24 with the next section of Newman's meditation on how "Our Lord Refuses Sympathy" from Newman on Lent: Meditations and Sermons as he recounts the separation of Jesus from His mother Mary.

I'll be on a 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.

After the death of Joseph comes in time the Marriage Feast of Cana and parting of Jesus from Mary:

The last day of the earthly intercourse between Jesus and Mary was at the marriage feast at Cana. Yet even then there was something taken from that blissful intimacy, for they no longer lived simply for each other, but showed themselves in public, and began to take their place in the dispensation which was opening. He manifested forth His glory by His first miracle; and hers also, by making her intercession the medium of it. He honoured her still more, by breaking through the appointed order of things for her sake, and though His time of miracles was not come, anticipating it at her instance. While He wrought His miracle, however, He took leave of her in the words "Woman, what is between thee and Me?" Thus He parted with her absolutely, though He parted with a blessing. It was leaving Paradise feeble and alone.

You might remember that we discussed an Anglican sermon for the Marriage Feast of Cana from a collection titled Sermons on Subjects of the Day, "The Lord's Last Supper and His First," in January on the Son Rise Morning Show. If anything, Newman goes even more deeply into the mystery of this parting of Jesus from His Mother in this reflection. 

But first, he discusses, as Saint Thomas Aquinas would certainly approve, the "fittingness" of how Jesus separates Himself from all the family bonds He'd lived with from birth, dwelling on the priesthood of Melchizedek and the Levites in the Old Testament:

For in truth it was fitting that He who was to be the true High Priest, should thus, while He exercised {313} His office for the whole race of man, be free from all human ties, and sympathies of the flesh. And one reason for His long abode at Nazareth with His Mother may have been to show, that, as He gave up His Father's and His own glory on high, to become man, so He gave up the innocent and pure joys of His earthly home, in order that He might be a Priest. So, in the old time, Melchisedech is described as without father or mother. So the Levites showed themselves truly worthy of the sacerdotal office and were made the sacerdotal tribe, because they steeled themselves against natural affection, said to father or mother, "I know you not," and raised the sword against their own kindred, when the honour of the Lord of armies demanded the sacrifice. In like manner our Lord said to Mary, "What is between Me and thee?" It was the setting apart of the sacrifice, the first ritual step of the Great Act which was to be solemnly performed for the salvation of the world. "What is between Me and thee, O woman?" is the offertory before the oblation of the Host. O my dear Lord, Thou who hast given up Thy mother for me, give me grace cheerfully to give up all my earthly friends and relations for Thee.

Thus Newman makes the connection between Our Lord's priesthood and the celebration of Mass by His priests to this day, and the sacrifices both priest and people offer at Mass. 

Newman then considers the other family members Jesus has given up, the extended family of Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist, and how John had been set apart too:

The Great High Priest said to His kindred, "I know you not." Then, as He did so, we may believe that the most tender heart of Jesus looked back upon His whole time since His birth, and called before Him those former days of His infancy and childhood, when He had been with others from whom He had long been parted. Time was when St. Elizabeth and the Holy Baptist had formed part of the Holy {314} Family. St. Elizabeth, like St. Joseph, had been removed by death, and was waiting His coming to break that bond which detained both her and St. Joseph from heaven. St. John had been cut off from his home and mankind, and the sympathies of earth, long since—and had now begun to preach the coming Saviour, and was waiting and expecting His manifestation.

Newman's prayer:

Give me grace, O Jesus, to live in sight of that blessed company. Let my life be spent in the presence of Thee and Thy dearest friends. Though I see them not, let not what I do see seduce me to give my heart elsewhere. Because Thou hast blessed me so much and given to me friends, let me not depend or rely or throw myself in any way upon them, but in Thee be my life, and my conversation and daily walk among those with whom Thou didst surround Thyself on earth, and dost now delight Thyself in heaven. Be my soul with Thee, and, because with Thee, with Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and John.

So he prays both to love his friends and family on earth but also to love Jesus's friends and family in Heaven!

Next week we'll look at the second part of this meditation and how Newman reflects on Mary's life without Jesus until she stands with Saint John the Evangelist at the Cross on Calvary.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Saint Elizabeth, pray for us!

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us! 

Image Source (Public Domain): Holy Family and the Family of Saint John the Baptist by Andrea Mantegna, c. 1504-1506 (in Mantegna's chapel in the Basilica of Saint Andrea in Mantua).

Preview: Newman on St. Joseph and Sympathy

Since we'll celebrate the feast of Saint Joseph on March 19, it seems appropriate to focus on Saint John Henry Newman's commentary on the Holy Family and the death of Saint Joseph in another meditation in the next installment of our Son Rise Morning Show Lenten Series. So Anna Mitchell (her turn, I think) or Matt Swaim and I will discuss part of Newman's meditation on how "Our Lord Refuses Sympathy" as He enters His passion. 

On Monday, March 17 (Saint Patrick's Day!), 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.

Newman focuses on how Our Incarnate Lord had been born and raised in a loving human family and yet how, in His Passion, He eschewed the support and sympathy that humanity could provide:

1. SYMPATHY may be called an eternal law, for it is signified or rather transcendentally and archetypically fulfilled in the ineffable mutual love of the Divine Trinity. God, though infinitely One, has ever been Three. He ever has rejoiced in His Son and His Spirit, and they in Him—and thus through all eternity He has existed, not solitary, though alone, having in this incomprehensible multiplication of Himself and reiteration of His Person, such infinitely perfect bliss, that nothing He has created can add aught to it. The devil only is barren and lonely, shut up in himself—and his servants also.

Thus, He lived on earth for most of His life in a human image of that relationship among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

2. When, for our sakes, the Son came on earth and took our flesh, yet He would not live without the sympathy of others. For thirty years He lived with Mary and Joseph and thus formed a shadow of the Heavenly Trinity on earth. O the perfection of {310} that sympathy which existed between the three! Not a look of one, but the other two understood, as expressed, better than if expressed in a thousand words—nay more than understood, accepted, echoed, corroborated. It was like three instruments absolutely in tune which all vibrate when one vibrates, and vibrate either one and the same note, or in perfect harmony.

One reason Jesus Incarnate lived in such a Holy Family and received their sympathy and support is, as Saint Thomas Aquinas writes in the Summa Theologicae, the sympathy of friends (and family I presume he would allow), helps us bear sorrows:

When one is in pain, it is natural that the sympathy of a friend should afford consolation: whereof the Philosopher indicates a twofold reason (Ethic. ix, 11). The first is because, since sorrow has a depressing effect, it is like a weight whereof we strive to unburden ourselves: so that when a man sees others saddened by his own sorrow, it seems as though others were bearing the burden with him, striving, as it were, to lessen its weight; wherefore the load of sorrow becomes lighter for him: something like what occurs in the carrying of bodily burdens. The second and better reason is because when a man's friends condole with him, he sees that he is loved by them, and this affords him pleasure, as stated above (Q [32], A [5]). Consequently, since every pleasure assuages sorrow, as stated above [1331] (A [1]), it follows that sorrow is mitigated by a sympathizing friend.

I think this feeling of sympathy also resonated with Newman, for he loved his friends and family, even after his conversion to Catholicism meant that they were separated, even when some refused to be with him or even correspond with him. This post from the website prepared in 2019 before his canonization provides many examples of his thoughts about friends: "All of the extracts in this article are taken from his ‘Sermon on Love of Relations and Friends’ and his ‘Sermon on Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Truth’, along with extracts from his spiritual autobiography ‘Apologia Pro Vita Sua’." 

Perhaps one of his most moving sermons is his last as an Anglican on September 25, 1853, "The Parting of Friends", which left many in the congregation at Littlemore in tears.

But, being human, the earthly trinity of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph was not to last:

3. The first weakening of that unison was when Joseph died. It was no jar in the sound, for to the last moment of his life, he was one with them, and the sympathy between the three only became more intense, and more sweet, while it was brought into new circumstances and had a wider range in the months of his declining, his sickness, and death. . . .

Newman's comments on the death of Saint Joseph remind us why he is the patron saint of Holy and Happy Death:

4. O what a moment of sympathy between the three, the moment before Joseph died—they supporting and hanging over him, he looking at them and reposing in them with undivided, unreserved, supreme, devotion, for he was in the arms of God and the Mother of God. As a flame shoots up and expires, so was the ecstasy of that last moment ineffable, for each knew and thought of the reverse {311} which was to follow on the snapping of that bond. One moment, very different, of joy, not of sorrow, was equal to it in intensity of feeling, that of the birth of Jesus. The birth of Jesus, the death of Joseph, moments of unutterable sweetness, unparalleled in the history of mankind. . . . 

So Mary and Jesus were left alone together for a few more years:

5. The birth of Jesus, the death of Joseph, those moments of transcendentally pure, and perfect and living sympathy, between the three members of this earthly Trinity, were its beginning and its end. The death of Joseph, which broke it up, was the breaking up of more than itself. It was but the beginning of that change which was coming over Son and Mother. Going on now for thirty years, each of them had been preserved from the world, and had lived for each other. . . .

Newman concludes this part of the meditation with this entreaty:

O my soul, thou art allowed to contemplate this union of the three, and to share thyself its sympathy, {312} by faith though not by sight. My God, I believe and know that then a communion of heavenly things was opened on earth which has never been suspended. It is my duty and my bliss to enter into it myself. It is my duty and my bliss to be in tune with that most touching music which then began to sound. Give me that grace which alone can make me hear and understand it, that it may thrill through me. Let the breathings of my soul be with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Let me live in obscurity, out of the world and the world's thought, with them. Let me look to them in sorrow and in joy, and live and die in their sweet sympathy.

Newman even offers a prayer for a happy and holy death:

OH, my Lord and Saviour, support me in that hour in the strong arms of Thy Sacraments, and by the fresh fragrance of Thy consolations. Let the absolving words be said over me, and the holy oil sign and seal me, and Thy own Body be my food, and Thy Blood my sprinkling; and let my sweet Mother, Mary, breathe on me, and my Angel whisper peace to me, and my glorious Saints ... [choose your own here!] smile upon me; that in them all, and through them all, I may receive the gift of perseverance, and die, as I desire to live, in Thy faith, in Thy Church, in Thy service, and in Thy love. Amen.

Next Monday, we'll look at the continuation of this passage in which Newman meditates on "that change which was coming over Son and Mother."

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us.

The images above are (C) 2025 Stephanie A. Mann; taken in Sacred Heart Catholic Church  in Colwich, Kansas.

Preview: Lenten/Newman Series on the Son Rise Morning Show

On Monday of the First Week of Lent, we'll start a Newman/Lenten series on the Son Rise Morning Show, using a newly published collection/selection of Saint John Henry Newman's works on Lent. Sophia Institute Press produced this lovely collection, including a well-illustrated section with Newman's Meditations on the Stations of the Cross. 

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