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