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.

Cardinal Newman on the Rosary

Since today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary we thought it appropriate to discuss Newman and the Rosary on the Son Rise Morning Show in our Santo Subito series. Matt Swaim and I will be on the air about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central.

We know that Newman thought devotion to the Holy Rosary was essential to Catholic daily life. He includes it in his "A Short Road to Perfection":

If you ask me what you are to do in order to be perfect, I say, first—Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God’s glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect.

So one may ask, what does it mean to "say the Rosary well"? Newman provided some answers at a Sunday Mass on October 5, 1879.

Blessed John Henry Newman had received the Cardinal's Hat and vestments at the Consistory in Rome on May 12, 1879. He had left snowy England in April and had stayed in Rome until June because he had become very ill: first a cold, then pneumonia, then some malaria. Newman was 78 years old and he had been apprehensive about getting ill on such a journey. He recovered, however, after a huge dose of quinine, and made his way back to Birmingham.

Once home, Newman began to receive congratulatory letters and to observe several celebratory events at the Oratory in Birmingham, including a Mass in which he wore the cappa magna, a long cope (he was in choir as another priest celebrated Mass). He visited the missionary schools of the Oratory in September, and in October, he went to St. Mary's College in Oscott on the Sunday before the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary at a Mass celebrating that feast in anticipation. As Father Neville of the Oratory described the event for a book containing all these congratulations and honors, it was festive and solemn:

Cardinal Newman paid his long intended visit to St. Mary's College, Oscott, on Sunday, October 5, and by his presence added unusual solemnity and rejoicing to the celebration of the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary.

His Eminence was received by the President [Dr. Hawksford] and the Professors; in the hall the boys were assembled to welcome him. Dr. Ullathorne (the Bishop), Bishop Amherst, Bishop Knight and Dr. Ilsley were also there to greet him.

At eleven o'clock High Mass coram Cardinali was sung; Bishop Amherst, Bishop Knight and Dr. Ilsley being in the stalls. The Cardinal was assisted by the Very Rev. the President of Oscott and Fr. John Norris of the Oratory, the Rev. W. Greaney being master of ceremonies.

After the Gospel, his Eminence preached on the devotion of the Holy Rosary, taking for his text St. Luke, ii. 26: "And they found Mary and Joseph, and the Infant lying in the manger".

So here are Newman's instructions to to the boys of the College on why we pray the Rosary and how to pray it well by meditating on the great events of Jesus's life by thinking of them in the context of the Holy Family and our own families:

You know that today we keep the Feast of the Holy Rosary, and I propose to say to you what occurs to me on this great subject. You know how that devotion came about; how, at a time when heresy was very widespread, and had called in the aid of sophistry, that can so powerfully aid infidelity against religion, God inspired St. Dominic to institute and spread this devotion. It seems so simple and easy, but you know God chooses the small things of the world to humble the great. Of course it was first of all for the poor and simple, but not for them only, for everyone who has practised the devotion knows that there is in it a soothing sweetness that there is in nothing else. It is difficult to know God by our own power, because He is incomprehensible. He is invisible to begin with, and therefore incomprehensible. We can in some way know him, for even among the heathens there were some who had learned many truths about Him; but even they found it hard to conform their lives to their knowledge of Him. And so in His mercy He has given us a revelation of Himself by coming amongst us, to be one of ourselves, with all the relations and qualities of humanity, to gain us over. He came down from Heaven and dwelt amongst us, and died for us. All these things are in the Creed, which contains the chief things that He has revealed to us about Himself. Now the great power of the Rosary lies in this, that it makes the Creed into a prayer; of course, the Creed is in some sense a prayer and a great act of homage to God; but the Rosary gives us the great truths of His life and death to meditate upon, and brings them nearer to our hearts.

And so we contemplate all the great mysteries of His life and His birth in the manger; and so too the mysteries of His suffering and His glorified life. But even Christians, with all their knowledge of God, have usually more awe than love of Him, and the special virtue of the Rosary lies in the special way in which it looks at these mysteries; for with all our thoughts of Him are mingled thoughts of His Mother, and in the relations between Mother and Son we have set before us the Holy Family, the home in which God lived. Now the family is, even humanly considered, a sacred thing; how much more the family bound together by supernatural ties, and, above all, that in which God dwelt with His Blessed Mother. This is what I should most wish you to remember in future years.

He talks to the boys about the successes and failures they may encounter once they're finished with school and making their way in the world and offers the Rosary, prayed in their future family's home, as a means of solace and grounding:

I ask you when you go out into the world, as you soon must, to make the Holy Family your home, to which you may turn from all the sorrow and care of the world and find a solace, a compensation, and a refuge. And this I say to you, not as if I should speak to you again, not as if I had of myself any claim upon you, but with the claims of the Holy Father, whose representative I am, and in the hope that in the days to come you will remember that I came amongst you and said it to you. And when I speak of the Holy Family I do not mean Our Lord and Our Lady only, but St. Joseph too; for as we cannot separate Our Lord from His Mother, so we cannot separate St. Joseph from them both; for who but he was their protector in all the scenes of Our Lord’s early life? And with Joseph must be included St. Elizabeth and St. John, whom we naturally think of as part of the Holy Family; we read of them together and see them in pictures together. May you, my dear boys, throughout your life find a home in the Holy Family; the home of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and St. John.

At the International Centre of Newman Friends website, you'll find the text of this sermon and a picture of Newman's Rosary kept at the College in Littlemore, Oxford, where Newman lived after he left St. Mary's and Oriel College in Oxford, and where he was received into the Catholic Church on October 9, 1845 by Blessed Dominic Barberi. 

Those words about home and family could be rather poignant: Newman had sacrificed the domestic home and family first by his vow of celibacy and then by his conversion. Even as an Anglican minister he had not married because of that vow, made when he was 15; by becoming Catholic he was estranged from his sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews. 

As I mentioned on Friday, when Cardinal Newman's sight failed, he could not read either the Roman Missal to celebrate Mass nor the Breviary to pray the Daily Office. Father Neville of the Oratory explains in chapter 35 of Wilfrid Ward's biography that Newman memorized two Masses (of the Blessed Virgin Mary and For the Dead) and turned to the Rosary in place of the Breviary:

'Other religious privations had already come upon him. First that of the daily Office in the Breviary. He had always been greatly attached to the recital of the Office, and he rejoiced especially in the recurrence of the Sunday and other longer offices; his favourite parts of which never palled upon him as subjects for conversation. But the time came when he could no longer use the Breviary, and then, by the advice of Bishop Ullathorne, he substituted the Rosary in its stead. What the Rosary became to him under these new circumstances, those can imagine who know what his attachment to the daily Office had been; his ready reply to a condolence on his loss of the power to say it being, that the Rosary more than made up for it; that the Rosary was to him the most beautiful of all devotions and that it contained all in itself. In time, however, the Rosary had to be abandoned, a want of sensitiveness in his finger-ends disabling him from its use. From far back, in the long distance of time, memory brings him forward, when not engaged in writing or reading, as most frequently having the Rosary in his hand.'

BTW: you may order the CD pictured above from the Aid to the Church in Need UK shop here:

Let Blessed John Henry Newman and Aid to the Church in need founder Fr Werenfried van Straaten (RIP), inspire you in prayer. This unique recording of spoken word and music leads the listener in Our Lady’s devotional prayer, the Rosary. Each of the traditional mysteries of joy, sorrow and glory are introduced with readings from the writings of Cardinal Newman and Fr Werenfried, while the organ music and plainsong interludes, reverentially sung by the Oxford Oratory Schola, reflect the appropriate moods of the mysteries and give a musical uplift to the prayer.

James Collinson, PRB, RIP

James Collinson was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (the PRB), who died on January 24, 1881. He was a follower of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement and almost married Christina Rossetti. Collinson left the PRB, as this website contends, over religious issues. He was a convert to Catholicism--but returned to the Church of England when he was going to marry Christina--who then returned to the Catholic Church and even studied for the priesthood as a Jesuit at Stonyhurst. He left his seminary studies and married, and continued to paint religious subjects and what are termed genre studies. The same website provides many details about Collinson's life and works.

His painting of the "Renunciation of St. Elizabeth of Hungary" probably represents his Pre-Raphaelite period best:

The bright colors, the architectural and textual detail, the dramatic scene and scale, and religious subject are all PRB traits.

May he rest in peace.