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).